Am I doing this “right?” I remember asking myself this question over and again as I was thrust into a foreign country with no map, no signposts, not even a language that I could call upon. I felt out of my body, as if I were watching myself go through the motions of living, yet inside only hollow and barren chambers echoed back to me of what was once there and was no longer.
Our bodies instinctively know what to do and some may look at us and say, “Oh, she’s in denial.” Yet, the paradox of denial is that it created an on and off valve that I could access when I was ready to slowly allow the bits and pieces of this foreign land to enter within me. Martha Beck, in her book, The Way of Integrity, says, “Denial is a survival mechanism that keeps us from dying of shock by blocking our perceptions of things that are too frightening to face. We can experience something, right out in clear daylight, and honestly not be conscious it exists.”
Slowly over time each of us has an inner barometer, a knowing, which sends a signal to our being that we may be ready to take those first baby steps. I might have heard words, suggestions and advice, yet they had to be placed on a shelf until I was ready to take them down and sift and sort through them in my own way and on my time table.
A constant looping that often occurs is a deep seated anxiety and worry that if I’m not doing this grief path “right” I will always feel the way that I am in this moment. There has to be a way, an aligning of the dot to dots on this blank canvas, yet there is not. The only way is our way and comparing ourselves to others becomes a slippery slope and is one mountain I had to learn to not climb nor try to traverse.
Healing is ours when we least expect it and how I knew something was shifting and realigning itself within me was when I could accomplish tasks that I simply could not have done a moment earlier. I was asked to speak at a drug and alcohol conference at the University of Utah in early loss and I did it. I made a call to meet with another bereaved mom nine months after Douglas had shed his earth suit because I felt an inner leap, spanda, the Sanskrit word derived from the root spade, “to move a little.” Tasks that might seem so very simple to another, yet for me became significant markers that I could gaze upon in my rear view mirror when I was in doubt that anything was happening or was I doing this “right?” Showing up to my life as it is, rather than remaining in what I had hoped my future may look and feel like became a major corner for me to turn. I knew it was possible because of those a few steps further ahead who were a living example that if it could be theirs, it could become mine too in time. May we each become that reminder for one another as we turn back around and lend a hand and a listening and caring heart.
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