You Can't Stop: Grief and Coping Skills

Well Happy New Year new friends and readers, and might I add a sincere watch your back. "Did she just say that?", why yes I meant to catch your attention. Anyone else getting inundated with the overbearing backlash of hearing that someone is sick or injured; maybe worse, a friend passed away? There are very different mind sets at stages in life that help one to process the inevitable bad news from day to day. Are you aware you have one and that it is bound to change? It isn't a permanent trait it is a survival skill, to be able to go on with a smile when things are NOT ok. I've heard it referred to as compartmentalization, courage, faith, and denial to name a few. This is not written to argue the semantics of titles and their limitations. It is to reach every person, regardless of their view.

Now that i've so rudely brought the black cloud into the day, I promise to make it worth your while to consider. When you were a child you may have cried, you may have shrugged and gone back to kickball or tag after hearing bad news. As an adult we are no different, we just choose to show the emotions differently. Ever watch your hands tremble or feel your throat close so tight you couldn't breath? Yeah, that, you know precisely how that feels, and you couldn't forget it either. We all think if we disregard pain we are cold or heartless, we can even see emotional training for autism to combat, hmm, that specific trait. Would society continue to put such a large pause on their fear, if they knew they were hurting children? Please, look at our process for child abuse for a moment and what factors cause disciplines to ensue. We want our children comforted at every turn, but we also force unhealthy grieving habits down their throats. What if I wanted my child to be a warrior, not a victim? Some would say I'm cold, but I let my child cry and process emotions with hugs as well as leaving space for the shrug off.

Life is loss folks, it is in your everyday life so don't you dare deny it. It is also a learning experience. I feel confidence from learning to process my emotions, and that is a hard earned lesson. Hyperventillating on the side of highway about my baby in heaven, screaming in the woods over a suicide I'll forever wish I'd stopped, intense physical pains, yes I had moments I felt I was failing in the faith department. I also could never know how strong the force of love is, i could never have stood like the statue of liberty over the darkness in my world without having lived through it all.

I don't want my son to sit numb in front of his video games for the entirety of his life. I make him aware there are others in pain and give him an honest account of life around the world to the best of my ability. I also make sure that includes showing him the victories, the smiles, the miracles, and the peace that makes it all irrelevant. If he knows now that there is going to be pain, there is going to be loss, and yes there is going to be a lot of pressure on him to respond the way others deem natural; then he will also be able to reach his own faith sooner. That is the title I will use, faith, because it comes down to a knowing that requires no one piece of evidence. Faith is an infinite course of miracles flowing in our hearts waiting at every moment for us to notice. We teach children the bible, we teach children super heroes risk it all, we teach children science, why are we not teaching them to smile at funerals?

Take a breath, there you go, this isn't to judge, this is an honest question. When will we turn the music up, light the night and dance our fellow lives into the beautiful celebration a life deserves? If tears pour down our faces as we smile, then so be it, but let the graves be lifted to the songs they came to this earth with. In many societies this is a norm, and yet in america I've seen so little of it. We speak of strength, we pray to god, but we walk as victims and ask for forgiveness repeatedly. You, my friend are no victim, you are a warrior. As a fellow survivor and brave heart, take each pain as it comes, but know there are millions of souls around you still singing. Make the choice, to raise your voice and smile through the good and the bad, make the choice to be a true role model. Do not speak again of what limits us, scream of how we overcame it.

I promised to make this worth your while, and here's the light. I promise to stand with every person hurting today and days to follow. I promise to smile for you when I want to fall, to scream my emotions out like a spartan goddess daring the universe to make me stop fighting. I am one, one simple little lady, and friends there are millions of me. We are each others army of angels, we are the lit torch and we aren't going out. Don't shelter your children or brainwash them, teach them to appreciate the torch of freedom and to carry it on. Teach them that every person around them has had the world on their shoulders and chose to carry it for them. Teach them super heroes entertain our minds, but it's the miracles of everyday people that sustain our lives.