Moving on, vs Moving with

holistically: emotional

I've got skills. Maybe not Liam Neeson-level skills, but I have some useful ones. I have skills and knowledge that assist me with helping others. This same skillset supposedly helps myself, too. If someone wants help with breathing techniques when they feel anxious? I know how to find helpful tools. If someone's feeling squirrelly after something huge and upsetting? I know how to normalize what they're feeling (because other people feel those huge, earth-shaking emotions, too in the face of trauma).

If you're a helping professional and/or work in the human services, do you ever have trouble reconciling your own knowledge with what you're feeling? As in, "my rational, professional knowledge base tells me that it is normal to feel [enter emotion here] based on this situation. Why did this hit me so hard, then? I knew it was coming?!" Oh yeah. Helping professional or not: we're all human. That's why. Doh!

Life has been quite the learning experience lately during my schooling while I'm recovering from grief. And other loss, too. Loss from long ago, loss of parts of my identity, and loss due to a couple life changes. I've had incredible supports, and I'm ok most of the time. Even when I'm shaken or raw, I'm still ok, just less so. Life has been a rollercoaster in learning how to live it in a new context (school) that's somewhat familiar (I've been in school before) but altogether different for me, as I'm a different person this time around.

Let me turn the lens to something else for a moment: there exists copious literature on how to process and deal with grief (and a plethora of other upsetting issues). Just do a Google search (though I warn you of the quality of some articles....................) Seek professional help when possible or at least professional advice to suss out the dross from the actually helpful.

However, there also exists an overarching pressure to "get over" or to "move on" from these upsetting things. Sure, you can ugly cry RIGHT AFTER you lose someone, but what about 2 months down the road? 1 year? 2 years? 10 years?

As a helping professional, I'd tell you: "ugly cry all you want. In fact, let's simply call it crying. It's normal and actually potentially healing to cry (hard or not) when you feel like crap."

As a human in North America, I would feel embarrassed, ashamed, and "crazy" for crying hard over a loss that happened more than a couple months ago. Why, though?

There's the crux of the issue: sure, you're ok to be stuck in pain right after a loss, but when the rest of the world around you has "moved on," it's assumed that you have, too. Most of us know, however, that that's bullshit.

I'd like to offer an alternative discourse: a discourse of moving with. With whom, might you ask? The person you've lost. Carry them with you. A friend of mine reminded me of something I knew in the dark, dusty corners of my brain but had forgotten: the importance of ritual and honouring a lost loved one. Do this.

If the loss was complicated, however, ignore what I just said and seek some professional help in aiding you with your maelstrom of feelings. That's a topic for another time. Grief is messy. Complicated grief is even messier. They're not on a hierarchy, really, but are more like apples and oranges in a fruit basket of pain. Grief (the apple) is difficult to crunch and digest, but there's a relatively expected/known method to eating and processing the fruit. Complicated grief (the orange) can explode, sting your lips if your skin is dried out, it doesn't open properly if the peel is on there too damn tightly, and it can surprise you with crunchy seeds when you least expect it. It takes forever to peel and eat an orange most of the time, doesn't it (if it doesn't for you, then think of another complicated fruit....pomegranate maybe?).

Again, that's a topic for another time.

If you've lost someone you deeply cared for, do your best to dissipate the pressures of getting over it when it seems everyone else has. I'd argue that "everyone else" likely hasn't completely, either, even if it seems like it. Honour your feelings. Cry your heart out when you need to. Bring your loved one along in your proverbial pocket to the good times and bad times ahead. If there are celebrations coming up that meant a lot for you and that loved one, do something to remember them. Light a candle, eat a cookie or candy they liked (thanks my friend for that suggestion), pray to them, write about them, go play a game outside (basketball? soccer? wall-ball?) or go for a walk. The options are endless but need to be meaningful to you.

Take your time. As familiar as an apple is, it can still surprise you. Has anyone ever found a worm in theirs before? I haven't. Happened with a peach once, though. That was unfortunate. I digress. Even if the apple is something you know about, you still need to take your time. It sucks to get apple chunks lodged in your throat, so chew it slowly, process it bit by bit--however long that takes. But, here's the parallel challenge: live your damn life.

It'll feel awkward and painful to be happy or content sometimes. That's normal. It's also imperative, then, to enjoy moments, occasions, rise up to challenges life hands you WITH THE OTHER PERSON. Bring them along. You can't leave them at home, or at the grave, or in the dark recesses of your mind where your skeletons hide with dust and cobwebs building up. They'll haunt you (they probably hate cobwebs as much as you do). Bring them into the daylight with you. Carry them in your heart. Acknowledge their presence and live your life.

Easier said than done, but in truth: we're all in this together. We don't leave a soldier behind, right? We've got to carry each other, in life or in death, because a person's impact does not extinguish in physical death. It simply changes. Move with that person in your life: don't move on.