Category: New Year

Holidays are over – so why am I still so mad?

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Each holiday season I pine for January. Since my daughter passed away, I find the holidays to be less than cheerful. So when January arrives, there seems to be a collective sigh of relief that comes. But not so much this year. Now I’m just mad.

I’ve been mad for weeks now. A few weeks ago I found myself out walking and at some point during the walk I’m talking to myself and asking “what is wrong”? Then it hit me and I began to cry. Sobbing for the remainder of my walk and I’m sure had anyone crossed my path they’d have thought I was having a breakdown. Actually what I was having was a breakthrough. I wasn’t sad. I’ve been sad for too long. I was just plain mad.

So when I get mad, I cry – that is how I roll. Then when I cry, I get madder. I’ve spent too much time crying these past 8 years, in fact, I’ve spent many years crying over tragedy after tragedy. After the realization that I was just plain mad, I realized that I am so tired of grieving. It’s worn me down to a place where there is nothing left to grieve. Not sure why now. Why now am I just so mad?

I think it may be in large part because I have battled the good fight of grief and now I’m just pissed. I want to know why me. Why my daughter? And I know I won’t know the answer to this until I’m face-to-face with God – and that does not make me feel any less mad. I’m still mad. I feel beaten down, dragged through the mud and kicked until I can’t breathe. Yeah that is grief. It’s hard, it’s tough and it’s exhausting.

So I pray and I talk to God and I talk to Brittany daily. I ask for help to understand. Because my human brain can no longer make any sense of it. I do know too that I’m too distracted and haven’t done my homework. Reading, writing and prayer – those things have kept me from losing my mind some days. When I stay focused on my faith, my writing and connecting to those who understand what I’ve experienced – well it helps. But even that is exhausting some days. I know it has helped me get to here, but now I feel like I’m at a cross road and need to know what I need to do next. Praying for that guidance is all I can do now.

Until next time,

M

What’s Next

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One of the many trials on the road of grief is finding our way to what lies ahead for us. Making our way through the pain and sorrow that has permeated our hearts for so long – it’s as if we don’t know how to take that leap of faith into “what’s next”. So often we are told that things will get back to normal, but seriously that is far from the truth. What we knew of normal has all but left us and we are left with a heap of a life that seems foreign and no playbook to follow.

God leads people in different ways to embrace life anew, but those ways invariably will involve the demonstration of genuine faith, love and hope. – Dr. John Terveen “Hope For The Brokenhearted”

 

At some point it becomes time to address the “what’s next” and take that leap of faith and pursue life with hope and love. One of the ways that worked for me was to “arm” myself by soaking up as much of God’s word as I could. I also had to get it from a variety of ways: bible reading, Joyce Meyer and TD Jakes and of course, my church family. So for a couple of years after Brittany’s death I pursued God passionately with reckless abandon. I soaked up as much as I could learn, feel, touch and breathe.

What I came to understand is that God had this. His plan wasn’t something I understood or comprehend. But in faith, I accepted whatever was to come and to do my very best to follow that plan. The one message I got over and over was this message from Paul – “encourage one another”. This blog was born of that message and continues today to be what I believe is the plan to honor my daughter’s life, the journey I have been on during and after her death to where I am today.

I have a desire to take this blog to another level and that is what is next for me. It will take some planning on my part, prayer on my part and a lot of faith on my part. But it’s God’s plan. Where I need to be and where I exist is paper thin. I wrote that line a few years ago and honestly believe this is where a lot of us find ourselves. It takes energy to move out beyond our comfort zone. It takes faith.

I find that in getting to “what’s next” I do need to step back into the plan by first feeding the soul. Bathe myself in God’s teachings and those who He has bestowed the skill of teaching to keep my faith strong, my love bold and  my life renewed. I pray that for you all so that you too can step into “what’s next” and find the purpose to move forward into your new normal.

Until next time,

M

Being Real

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This will be the first in a few installments about what it means to get real with where you are and where you are going.

The past few days I’ve been posting comments about the character of people on my Facebook page. Interestingly enough, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on the topic. So I thought to myself that out of that there has to be a story that is related to grief. So here it goes.

Being real to who you are during your journey is the first step you really take to begin the healing process. Coming to own your emotions, your fears, your doubts, your pain – it all comes down to breaking those things all apart and picking up the pieces of your life. Then you begin to put it all back together to create a different picture. A different way of living.

That picture will not look like what you might have imagined in any scenario you dreamed up. The picture I had in my mind 3 years ago is the not picture I live today, and I imagine that the picture I will be living 3 years from now is one I can not see now.

Life works that way. But in order to put those pieces of your life together again, you must get real. See it for what it is. Embrace what has happened. Because it happened and you cannot wish it away, dream it away, sleep it away, eat it away or use substances to numb it away.

Getting real with your grief is a necessary truth that has to be revealed for the growth and healing to start to mold the new you. The exciting thing is that even through the midst of your grief, wherever you are, a vision of what can be is possible. You can believe it possible, you can dream it possible, but it’s in the everyday hard work at chipping away and getting real that creates that new version of who you will become.

until next time

m

Another New Year Comes and Goes

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Happy New Year – 2010 Is Here.

I have never been happier to see a year go like 2009. Besides the year 2006, 2009 ranks right up there as one of the worst years in my life. Well 2007 and 2008 didn’t go so well either. So here’s to 2010!

So I enter 2010 with the hope that I am able to feel I am making a difference some how, somewhere, for some one in the world. Whether it is my Twitter family, my Facebook family, my WordPress family, my church family or my own personal family – my goal for 2010 is to make a difference. To bring the message of hope that you can not only survive a crisis, but you can turn it into something positive by helping others.

With each year that passes since Brittany’s death, I become more focused on what I have to do to move on with purpose. Not to just plainly move on. Because just moving on isn’t good enough. There has to be some purpose. Some reason to get up everyday and say this could be the day I may be able to help someone through a tough time. This could be the day I make a difference.

Making a difference in today’s world has become increasingly important in the healing process for anyone who has experienced a loss. For someone like me, a single mother of an only child who died – well the future wasn’t looking too good for me back in late 2006. In 2007, I made so many changes that I wasn’t sure if I was coming or going. In 2008, it was if it all came to a head and my life imploded right before my eyes. My health took a dive, I realized I could no longer work in the job I loved. And the financial ramifications that started the moment Brittany became seriously ill until the months after her death all came to a unpredictable end.

In 2009, it was if I was just existing, trying to make sense of the past 3 years. Where I had been, how far I had come and that going back wasn’t an option. The life I knew I could no longer pine for. My life with Brittany was over. My life with someone I was in love with was over as well. Everything I knew to be safe and true was destroyed. So for me 2009 seemed as if my life was on hold so to speak. But seriously it felt like it was non-existent. So again I said goodbye to a year that meant so little as far as my healing goes.

The most incredible thing that has happened to me in 2009 that I will be forever grateful for are my friends on Twitter. You know who you are. The Farkles – Lynn, Jill, Lisa, and Sara.  I also have other friends on Twitter as well and to them and to the Farkles – thank you! These friends have been an incredible support for me and I will forever be grateful for their love and support this past year. I look forward to continuing getting to know them in 2010. A small side note about Sara. She is so much like my sweet Brittany. Loves God, loves children, loves to help the needy and just plain has a heart that glows because her soul is good. Getting to know her has been, on some levels, a saving grace for me.

To my church group ACCESS – I love being involved in this group. They give me energy that I haven’t had in so long. When I’m with them, all is right with the world. With my world.

God has surely placed so many great people in my life in 2009 – so now I have to admit 2009 wasn’t so bad at all. It was the foundation for what is to come in my life for 2010. So Happy New Year and I say bring it on 2010 –  I’m ready and get ready to see something phenomenal happen – you only have to believe it.

Until next time

m