Making Room

There is not a lot of room for grief in our society. Instead of offering you a place to be sad, most people offer platitudes (it happens for a reason) and reasons why you should have perked up by now (you still have your healthy child).

To a large degree, most folks seem to have lost the ability to empathize. A good friend of mine lost her brother to leukemia when we were in our early twenties. As grief does, it would occasionally wash over her in waves. Friends would ask her what was wrong. 'I'm sad about my brother.' 'Wasn't that, like, last year?'

I had a massage client once who was trying to grieve a loss. She had been stoic for so long because showing her pain meant listening to 'well meaning' persons lecture her on how good her life still was. I made space for her grief, and she cried through her session. It was one of the most wonderful moments of my career. I felt blessed to have been a part of her process.

My own grief has felt like a cartoon amoeba. A little bit taller than me, and shadowing my every move. Sometimes It just hangs out near me and tickles the edge of my awareness with it's cilia. Other times it gloms on to part of me, but leaves me able to function. Yesterday, it engulfed me. It was hard to breathe and I cried every time that I slowed down even briefly. It left me hollow-eyed, unable to sleep and drained. 

I don't have time for this. The Toddler is an emotional sponge. She has taken my grief and turned it into endless whining tantrums and sleepless anguish. Even now she's glued to the floor of her room with her face pressed into the crack under her door BEGGING me to let her out. Protesting furiously that she can't sleep. She's been there for half an hour. I, on the other hand, am so tired that I can barely function. Yesterday, I fell asleep on her floor while she played boisterously. I didn't even wake up fully when The Man came home and took her. Today, after a mostly sleepless night, I broke down crying and begged her for sleep. She patted my face, hugged me, and announced that she wanted to 'go watch t.v. other room'.

Where is my room to grieve? How do I make the space to heal?