A story about the metaphorical deaths in our lives, the grief that comes with them and how I finally accessed my own.

I’m a nurse and so when I think of grief, my automatic thought is naturally a logical, medical one. Said person dies, grief happens afterwards. So, in my mind, grief was only related to physical death.

Logical, yes.

True? No.

Once again, my healing has humbled me.

What I hadn’t considered in my pragmatic brain was that life would deliver me grief by means of metaphorical deaths as well. And that THAT grief was just as important to feel as its post-mortem counterpart.

So, after careful discourse, and some lived experience of said sadness, I’ve now come to define grief as;

The human expression of God’s voice.

And I’m not a religious person, so that’s a big statement for me to make.

In other words, I believe that grief is the Universe delivering a clear, unabated shot of pure love straight to our hearts. There are no b-lines or speed bumps.

Nope, real grief (once you can get to it) is just like a dagger, WHAMO, and there it is.

I’ve seen many people die.

These humans were all unrelated to me and their deaths were witnessed and held in the sterility and control of a hospital setting. I can say out of close to probably 50 deaths, only a few of them have affected me. And even though that small handful had a big impact on my heart (I attended some of their funerals), I still didn’t earn the right to truly grieve any of them. They weren’t my people and other than being at their bedside, I would not do their loved one’s justice by even pretending to know what they had gone through. I didn’t and I don’t.

I’ve been fortunate enough, thus far, to have only personally grieved the loss of my grandparents and/or distant relatives, all sad but none were tragic, traumatic, or unpredicted.

The grief I want to talk about today is hidden inside the other things.

The unseen things that many of us skiff over as if they aren’t really there.

This kind of grief is the one that is created from the aforementioned metaphorical deaths.

It is right next to, underneath and inside:

• the marriage/life you dreamed of but didn’t get
• your own children growing up in what feels like a literal minute and then, just as quickly, they are gone
• the friendship you thought would last forever but had to end
• the betrayal that ripped you to shreds but you chose to act tough
• the needs that weren’t met when you were a child but that you absolutely deserved
• the things that didn’t happen right next to the things that did
• the beliefs you once held true about yourself (and the world) that you now know absolutely aren’t true at all.

That grief. 

That’s what I want to talk about today.

This grief bleeds through and affects us all without us consciously even knowing it. It’s sneaky and often doesn’t show up as grief at all.

It shows up instead as; defensiveness, curt responses, no responses, resignation, justified resentment, excuses, the “I told you so’s”, the “I’m fine’s”, the “I’m over it‘s”,
and my personal favorite, the “It’s ok, I’m better off without them anyway”.

We falsely believe that if WE made a choice or if we did what was best for us, we automatically get to leapfrog the grief of said choice, or that we can skip over it entirely if the pain of what happened is just too deep. As if doing something that is fundamentally ‘good’ for us and in alignment with where we are NOW (moving on for example), gives way to only smooth sailing and that any grief related to it is therefore unwarranted.

We are simply wrong.

Like boiling water percolating under a huge sheet of ice, this grief is very much right there.

We are all either walking, shuffling, gracefully sliding or even falling up top, seeing the bubbles clearly with our eyeballs but feeling disproportionately safe thanks to the thick layer of ice that we’ve convinced ourselves is somehow unbreakable and could not (or will not) melt.

Breath Sally, breath.

We keep our eyes up, pretend it doesn’t exist and we truck on. 
Nope, we are good. 

Just keep going.

But, just like the boiling water will eventually find a place to release its steam, so too will this grief. If we don’t feel it, it finds a way to be felt by means of said defense mechanisms and those oh so prickly personality traits. It’ll show up over and over again until hopefully we are brave enough to actually feel it.

To let it in, to let it UP.

I’m not a crier.

In fact, every time I’m about to cry, I can feel my face make its ‘I’m about to cry ugly face’ (coined by my own inner voice) and I can feel myself resist the f*#k out of it. (I mean, I labelled it ‘ugly’ so of course I resist it).

During therapy, in the middle of my most recent transgression, I was trying to access my grief around my childhood trauma and my counsellor asked me if I felt sad.

I reflexively and very quickly said, “No”.

Mad, yes. Sad? No.

I have spent my life unconsciously training myself NOT to feel my sadness.

To muster on, to find the positive, to help someone else, to fight against the hurt.

Little did I know that I too was ignoring my grief and that I had created an entire avatar around the I’m fine, I’m strong, I’m ok version of Chantelle.

Keep. Your. Eyes. Up.

However, with this newfound awareness, I couldn’t muster on anymore and I knew that I was ready.

That even though I couldn’t feel it at all, I fundamentally knew that it was time for me to find MY grief.

And so, I asked the Universe to help me access it.

I’m ready, I want to feel this.

I believe, if something is important enough for our growth and our evolution, that the Universe will find a way for us to feel it. 

Grief isn’t just sad, it’s also angry. And I can and have accessed my anger without a problem. Which is an important part of grief and should not be skipped over either. But the tears? Those I couldn’t access by means of my own pain, hurt or sadness. Almost like I didn’t even feel it.

Actually, not almost, I didn’t.

So, no matter how hard I tried or how many sessions I did with my counsellor, my sadness stayed under the ice. I couldn’t even pick axe those feelings out, and believe me, I tried.

Then one day while driving to work, I was hit with a memory from my past, a memory about my Ex.

I remembered a day that he broke down and cried in front of me. He was apologizing to me for all the times he couldn’t or didn’t apologize to me in the past. It was a moment in time that seemed literally frozen.

Stuck right there.

Driving to work that day, I cried and cried thinking about this memory of him. I remembered his heart-felt tears, and authentic expression. I cried picturing his unconditioned grief, his sadness, and his heart underneath all HIS protection. I cried because I could now see how fleeting that moment really was. That soon after he would armor up again taking him farther away from not only me, but from himself as well.

Funny, yet impossibly ironic that I would find my grief by means of a memory about my Ex. 

I remember laughing at God that day, thinking;

“This is how you get me to feel my sadness, through him?”

“Yes”, He answered.

“You and he are the same Chantelle, he just learned how to protect himself differently.”

Whoa.

And just like that my ice cracked, I could feel MY own grief rising to the surface.

The one I had stowed away under the “you’re the one that left” chunk of ice, next to the “you made the right choice” chunk, and closely nestled up to the “why would you be sad” one.

My real, unabated sadness was able to seep through all those justifications and 'ego speak' blocks of ice and I could finally feel my heart.

At this point my tears flowed way past my ugly face cry, into tears that weren’t attached to thought, they just fell. Like a faucet being turned on, simple yet abrupt.

The God shot had pierced. 

I could feel the real loss of my marriage, the grief of a dream that I wanted so badly but didn’t get. The one that could have existed had that protection not been in place. Both his protection, and mine. The one that had to die, for me to live.

I felt the sadness and the un-fettered reality of what our survival adaptations felt like inside our relationship and how they fundamentally ran the show.

That with them, not only were we further from ourselves and each other but that too, no matter my will, drive, or desire, it was never my job to drop them for him. 

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

Sigh.

A few days later, my tears came again.

But this time, it was by means of my children.

Again, the Universe knew exactly how to access my heart and there was no messing around.

Be careful what you ask for folks.

I had just discovered a video taken of me and my then 18-month-old son, where he and I were singing together. I didn’t even know this video existed and hadn’t ever seen it before.

As soon as I hit play, I began sobbing at what I saw. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Aside from feeling impossibly emotional from the unbearable cuteness of my youngest son singing and acting out all the motions of the song, I was crying at the sight of witnessing me, a young mom that was full of nothing but light and love.

You see, I don’t have a lot of these videos or pictures, and so seeing it struck me hard. As I’m pretty sure it is for most moms, I was typically the one that took all the footage, so any pictures or videos I have with me in them, are almost always posed pictures or selfies.

* PSA: men, record your wife interacting candidly with her kids, don’t make that only HER job. And if you don’t have kids, take pictures and videos of her without her having to ask or prompt you. When did this become a female only thing?!? I love you but do better.*

I watched that video over and over, in awe, with tears streaming down my face. Aside from not seeing many captured moments with my kids, I was also crying because I didn’t know how amazing I actually was.

I was too busy taking care of everyone else, doubting myself, and internally adopting the projected insecurities of others, that I had unconsciously dimed my own light.

But she was still there, I could see her.

In that video, clear as day, she was there.

Seeing myself back then with my wiser healed eyes today brought up a deep and beautiful sadness. I remembered what it felt like to be her and the her then didn’t know what the me today could see so clearly. Who she was and how she felt didn’t match.

She’s always been bright, had a huge spirit and been full of love.

So, I cried for the girl that didn’t know, that didn’t believe what was right there. The girl that couldn’t see it.

I grieved for her losing precious time, time spent over there instead of in here, worrying and focusing on others and not on herself.

I cried for me.

Again, these tears fell freely from my eyes, and they didn’t stop. They were a beautiful juxtaposition between a deep quiet sadness and a profound gratitude, even waking me up at 5am the next day, to shed them more.

Thankfully, I was able to receive them.

Through first my Ex, and then my kids and my role as a mom, I got access to my own grief and to a deep love of self.

I was able to witness ME and see underneath my sheet of ice for the first time, ever.

I had to move all my justifications aside. All the chatter in my brain that was perpetually keeping my eyes up, that was stopping me from letting my grief in. Once I did that, and with a little help ;), I could finally feel it.

Mine came to me in funny and unexpected ways, God knew that the only way to access my grief was sideways and not directly from the top.

He’s clever like that.

So, put down your pick axe, lower your eyes and see if you can get curious about what’s underneath your sheet of ice.

I promise you, regardless of how hard it is, feeling it will set you free.

xo