We are not meant to human alone or to feel isolated on a desolate island of grief. It is what naturally happens to so many of us in early loss when all the doing is over. We may find ourselves blankly staring out our windows and life is moving ahead for the world, yet for us it is in a state of inertia, frozen and our feet may feel glued to the spot where we are standing.
I remember this feeling vividly, looking out of my dining room window and realizing that my world had ceased to be as it has always been. How was I to ever figure out how to pick up the jagged shards of a life I had lived and create a life now without my beloved in it? It felt as if an anvil had been thrust upon my chest and I could not catch my breath. I needed help and it takes tremendous courage to name it for ourselves and then go in search of it. It was up to me as I could not expect anyone to understand what I was needing when most days I didn’t even know as it changed moment by moment.
My go to people, whether they were family, friends, a spiritual mentor and or a healthcare professional, felt sorely needed as I began to emerge and there was some part of me that knew this could not be placed upon just one person as it would not be sustainable and was an unfair expectation.
I had a friend who called me on the 13th of every month for quite a long time as Douglas had transitioned on the 13th of July. Others would check in and ask me to share memories of my son, simple ones, what did he love during the holidays, those kinds of questions that helped me to feel a connection and tether to him. They did not have to feel worried about saying the right things, because what they were asking were free flowing questions about him which encouraged me to remain open rather than the alternative of completely shutting down.
Finding my community became my work as I could not expect any one person, place or thing to become my source. The author, Luvvie Ajayi Jones, speaks of finding our charging stations in our friendships and relationships, those who fill and energize us and those who remind and jump start us to remember who we truly are when we might have forgotten. Perhaps too in time finding those who help us to reframe and look at things from a new and different lens.
Today, I have my go to charging stations depending upon what I am navigating. One friend may be my soft place to land, another may be one who brainstorms with me, another my mirror, able to say those hard things of their experience of me. You can see that I cannot expect for one person to BE all of this for me.
May we each find our community and create a revolving door. Some may come, some may go, others may remain and it’s all okay as each offered something during a season that was life giving.
I adore what Maya Angelou says about friendship, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
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