Andy107 I am almost 10 years in after my son died and have forced myself to rebuild everything; forced myself to start again with those around me. Please get good counselling where you can learn to live again. Life will never be the same but it can be good again. You will be sad on the key days - birthdays, Xmas, or any other day really. But give yourself a chance.
Hi Iain, I am sorry for your loss and I am so glad that you have been able to rebuild your life. Things for me have improved since I wrote this post. I had some counseling and a couple of things stuck with me that really helped. Despite the counselor telling me to the contrary I still canāt help feeling guilty for being alive when my son canāt be. Many thanks for dropping me a message because it helps me a lot. I canāt talk to my family as I donāt want to upset them and writing this helps me assess how I am actually feeling. Sounds silly when I wrote it but itās so hard to check in on yourself until someone prompts you to do it. Again many thanks and good luck on your journey.
Itās over 2 years since my daughterās sudden death. It broke me and my family. I got counselling from a lovely counsellor who helped me see for myself that somehow there is a way to carry on. Life for me is changed forever. Through the bleakest times I carried on by just ākeeping on keeping onā and itās enough. The only other choice was to die myself and increase all the pain to those who love me and my daughter. Life is more bearable than it was but thoughts of my daughter run like a thread through every day. I can only speak for how I managed to carry on but the difference from the start of my journey to how life is today is that somehow along the way with good counselling Iāve learned to multi task the grief so that Iām learning to accept those grief thoughts and pain will never go away but I can also do the things that need to be done by all all of us, like paying the bills, interacting with others and even laughing as well as crying. I needed something to do that was absorbing and gave me something to focus on that produced a visible result. Iāve spent a lot of time redecorating my house and making that look better so I could achieve something for myself that showed change for the better. Iāve just finished all the work and having a task to do, even when I just wanted to give up has helped me do the ākeeping on keeping onā. I think the hardest thing many of us going through this hellish, cruel experience of losing our child is to allow ourselves some kindness to ourselves. None of us expected or wanted or deserved what happened to our children, they are gone but we are left bereft, itās not our time to die yet so somehow we have to find a way to continue. Everybodyās different with different circumstances but Iām gonna come right out and say we are doing the best we can and thatās good enough and each day is hard but it takes courage and determination to get through each day and this website is a lifeline where we can say what we think and we support each other. Losing someone we brought into the world is the worst thing any parent can face and totally overwhelming and isolating and all our expectations for our child and our own future is gone forever. Thatās the cold hard facts and as far as I can tell everyone in our shoes knows it and feels it. It never goes away but the absolute hopelessness and fear can be endured over time and at our own individual pace. Websites like this do help a bit because we can see others who are enduring too. We can see from what others in our position are feeling and saying so we know that these awful, crushing feelings are ānormalā. We donāt have to be strong all the time, we donāt have to pretend everythingās ok when itās not. We are entitled to cry or rage and we donāt have to take advice from people who havenāt got a clue what itās like. As Iām writing this Iām thinking of a long term friend who, meaning well, said to me ā I know all about grief, my friend lost her husbandā. So she knows about grief third hand and considers herself an expert! I think most of us have experienced stuff like that. No one knows how we feel but sharing with others who have experienced that huge loss can help cos we āget itā. Sending love and thanks to the people on here who have listened and shared with me to offer a glimmer of hope that although the grief is there in all we do, we can learn to start to live again. Not the life we want but the one we are stuck with. We wonāt be like we were but we can learn to live with what we canāt change. Every day we manage to keep on keeping on shows we are doing the best we can and even if the best we can do is hide in bed or cry all day thatās what deep grief is like. There really is no going back to before all this happened but we can, at our own pace and in our own individual way find a way to endure and keep our children in our hearts pocket, forever. Xxxxx
4 Likes