Grieving requires others
Grieving our childhood, the Truth of what we experienced, is key to being set free from our past. When I was a child, I was incapable of “feeling & expressing” much needed emotion from what was going on around me because no one was trustworthy in my home growing up. My parents did NOT foster a healthy environment, so I was forced to stuff my emotions, my pain from what was truly going on. I had no where to go to process my feelings. Adults were not interested in what was really going on with me so I had to pretend things were fine when really they weren't. I made up a false reality to live, because the pain of my reality was too much to handle.
I had no idea I was dragging this baggage of repressed emotions around with me everywhere I went until one day I learned the wisdom in being “Triggered”.
I was able to “pretend” my life was fine until one day I wasn’t. The day my mother died 28 years ago put me on a path of uncovering and discovering what the hell was really going on with me because I sure didn’t know, and neither did anyone else! The truth of my life has been exhausting to uncover because of the psychological abuse that was inflicted on me by my Narcissistic father & Co-dependent angry mother. Today I’m grateful I’ve stayed the course in figuring out “ THE TRUTH” of my life while learning how to heal. It’s been a long exhausting painful journey as so many didn’t know how to help me. It wasn’t until I discovered the power of grieving did my life ultimately truly change.
Much of my journey I felt I was caught in a dark dark forest unable to see as I felt bad so much of the time while pretending I was fine. I found it hard to find relief as my drinking and drugging days were over and escaping with most other distractions just didn’t seem to help. I was left with myself and all my feelings. Not just the feelings of the day, but the feelings from my past, the painful unprocessed (repressed) emotions as they have remained stuck inside my body just waiting to escape, waiting to be released, waiting to be set free, but I didn’t know this or even what to do once I figured it out.
The past 10 years have been most healing, most emotionally productive, as I discovered the power of grief. I discovered the healing that occurs when I stop reacting, stop distracting and just sit with my emotions without judgment.
It’s been a process, a process that I discovered requires others
10 years ago I started seeing a grief counselor who has become my mentor, healer and friend. Dr. Patrick Arbore saved my life by being authentic himself, showing (modeling) me the way to heal, and the way to grieve as I had no clue. After seeing him weekly for months, he suggested I take one of his 8-week grief groups. These groups were for people to process their grief around loosing a loved one. At first I didn’t understand why I would attend one of these groups as my mother had been dead for almost 20 years, but I intuitively knew I needed to grieve (whatever that meant), much about my childhood and thought maybe this would help.
Because I repressed my emotions from as early as I can remember due to feeling unsafe in my family home, I was not equipped to deal with any kind of grief, especially when my parents died. I didn’t understand this at the time, but looking back, I see things clearly now. When attending my first of four 8-week grief groups with Dr. Patrick Arbore, I was asked to select a person that had passed in my life to do the 8 week exercises on. I said to Patrick “My mother has been dead for 20 years, isn’t that too long?” He said no, that’s not too long. I trusted Patrick so I did what he suggested and completed the 8 weekly assignments with my mother in mind. Week 4 was the letter writing assignment. The group was asked to write a letter to our loved ones that passed sharing how we felt, what we missed, how much we’ve changed since they’ve been gone and anything else we felt called to write. We were instructed to read our letters to the group the following week. As one might imagine, this exercise was quite challenging for me since my relationship with my mother wasn’t good my entire life. What was I going to write? What was I going to share? What was I going to do?
I’ve been learning in recent years to have a deeper respect for the Truth as I didn’t understand the truth much of the time growing up in a dysfunctional home. The authentic part of myself knew embracing the truth with this exercise would be a wise thing to do, and the truth was, I had a terrible relationship with my mom. I didn’t respect her; I was angry at her most my life as not only were my needs not met when I was a child, I was emotionally and physically abused instead getting love so how was I to grieve her? I didn’t miss my mom because the truth was there wasn’t much to miss. Unfortunately the things my mother did that were note worthy like put dinner on the table was overshadowed by my fear and anxiety of not knowing what the day would hold. How would I share this with the group as everyone that was participating in this 8-week grief group was grieving someone they loved, someone they missed, someone that left a hole in their soul as their loved ones were gone and seriously missed. I didn’t feel this way about my mom so what was I to say?
I intuitively knew the TRUTH was what was supposed to be shared even though I’d trained myself to lie about these kinds of things so I could somehow fit in, but knew I was done fitting in as I yearned to be real, I just didn’t know how? I knew I wanted to stop pretending and learn how to feel comfortable in my skin, but was so confused I didn’t know which way to turn. Once again the deeper part of me knew the truth would help set me free, so that’s what I did, I shared the truth the following week when I read my letter to the group and as a result, I was shocked at what happened to me in the process.
As I read my letter to my mother to the group of grievers, the flood gate of tears started flowing and little did I know would be the beginning of my repressed emotions starting to emerge, starting to get unstuck, starting to be released. When reading the words I wrote on paper of the “Truth” to the group, I experienced my tears being stronger & louder than my words. I’m pretty sure no one in the group understood a word I read because my sobbing was so loud it overshadowed what I was sharing. I was not prepared for how my body was going to respond,
because I felt trust with in this group of people; felt trust with the space that Dr. Patrick Arbor created, made it possible for me to release these repressed emotions from my Childhood - (Trauma) that was inflicted on me by my mother (and father).
After the end of this 8 week journey, I felt different, felt lighter, felt better. Was I healed? Was this all I needed to do to get these repressed emotions out of my body? Attend an 8 week grief group? Well, in my case, no… I now realize that this first 8-week grief group was just the beginning of my repressed emotions to starting to flow. I later discovered releasing old emotions is a process that takes time and the answer of how much time I believe will be different from person to person. I’ve learned from this process that each time I’ve released old emotions in a group setting, I’ve felt better and better, but because I had much past stuck emotion in my body from decades of not feeling, I’ve learned it takes what it takes to get this emotion up and out.
As I continued my weekly counseling with Patrick grieving my old emotions while understanding the “Truth” of what happened, Patrick could tell when I was stuck, when my past grief was controlling me, keeping it difficult for me to move forward. Patrick suggested I do another 8 week grief group as he had an advanced 8-week version as well; so I did. And one more time after completing this 8 week group on my father, I felt lighter, better and experienced once again the value of learning how to grieve and doing it in a group setting. It took me attending 2 more 8-week grief groups after the first 2 before I was able to be successful in getting off my 22 years of antidepressants, as before grief therapy I could NOT.
I continued my grief therapy with Patrick as I gradually changed into the person I was always meant to be, but because of my childhood trauma, couldn’t see or connect to the real me until I learned how to grieve with others. I’ve learned it takes more than therapy to get re-connected to our true selves and often wonder, does the therapy industry understand this most important concept? Do they suggest their patients try grief therapy before prescribing medication? Well in my case they didn’t, and I often wonder how educated the Therapy world really is when it comes to grieving and the healing that comes as a result?
Not only is it my intention to bring awareness and clarity to Childhood Trauma Survivors so they too can figure out how to feel and heal from their past, but my hope is that the medical and therapeutic communities can also become aware in understanding this phenomenon as well. If these organizations have clarity and awareness about the power of grieving in a group setting, just maybe they could direct their patients towards groups such as these before prescribing medication, or in addition too. Who knows, maybe our walking wounded could start to heal from the inside out instead of continuing to live from a dis-associated state as they continuing their medication regimen….. Just Maybe?