Hi I am new here, I hope this is a safe space to grieve.
My mum passed away suddenly at 47 years old. I was 25 and newly married by 3 months before she passed. I have a supportive family but I’m sort of labelled as the strong one so no one really checks in with me as I have my husband who is really supportive, most friends my age haven’t experienced loss of a parent, but I don’t think they knew how to cope with a friend grieving so a few friendships now have fizzled out. I do not blame them, or myself but just purely down to the fact that grief has changed me. The true eyeopener is that I didn’t realise how life changing, it is to lose a parent at 25 years old because that is actually really young. I’m a student nurse and work in healthcare, so can empathise strongly with loss, and when patient’s children(often 60>)/grandchildren (often 30>) are older and lose their parent, and I just think it such an eyeopener to actually have lost my mum at just 25 years old, I still need her. I say this with such care - as I feel that I have been on autopilot for the past 3 years, worked on myself, had counselling and as I have younger siblings to care for I’ve mostly been making sure they are ok, before myself.
One of my long - term effects from grief is lack of sleep, I don’t know why I just can’t sleep, I am currently coming off an all nighter as I type this. I have received counselling from previous occupations, sleep hygiene and sleep routines, cruse bereavement, tried medication but hated them so that was short-lived, practiced mindfulness, basically you name it and I’ve tried it!
*DISCLAIMER- I am not promoting, just discussing** *** Going back to the reason I titled this as ‘thinking out loud’ - I have recently read a book. It is a range of emotions, and mainly focuses on grief and how the characters life had changed because of grief. I felt ok to read it, as it has been 3 years, and at the time when I finished it I actually thought it was a good book, some parts crazy, funny and sad. Now on reflection, without giving too much information away about this book, I literally thought ‘omg I experienced very similar emotions to this book, but this is when I had my realisation of s***, it’s not just me that went through similar emotions of just wanting to run away from it all, and give up everything to start again.
Grief has just completely transformed me as a person, as long as I still make my mum, husband and my family proud, that’s all that matters. But recently I still find myself reverting back to 3 years ago me feeling lost and not sleeping. I’m worried I’m going to lose myself again after working so hard to rebuild her.
Sorry that is a lot of information to bombard anyone who does read this.
Did anyone else have similar experiences? If so, what has helped? with grief in general, sleep, previous feelings of wanting to run away from it all?
Even if I have listed what I have previously tried, I am happy to try again. Thanks.
This is a judge free zone, and thinking of you all.