GRIEF IS NOT LINEAR

I fell to me knees in agony, screaming. “I JUST WANT MY MOTHER BACK!!!”.

My husband tried to hold me up, but I couldn’t even stand on my own two feet. Sobs poured out of me as I laid in a fetal position pleading for her to come back.

I turn and look at the clock. 6:30am. Time to get up.

“Grief is not linear” she wrote to me.

My mom passed away over 4 years ago and still the dreams come. The horrible dreams of me trying to find her, sometimes she is kidnapped, or just someplace else, someplace unknown and I realize she isn’t there, with me desperately trying to find her. Sometimes she is in the dream, but a shadow, a white shadow not fully formed.

Grief is not linear.

The dream sticks with me today like a stale bagel in my stomach. The one you ate because you were starving, but not because it was delicious. The one you can’t wait to digest and be done with.

Grief is not linear, nor is it the same for everyone.

Not everyone loves their mom, but everyone will lose someone they love deeply. When you experience it yourself, you know there is nothing that can replace them.

Time does not heal, nor does it make it better. Time only puts distance between the moment they were here and the moment they left.

You never get over it, but you get through it.

There is a sadness that never fully leaves. Sometimes you spend your time thinking about what else you will lose.

Even 4 years later.

And probably 14.

I will lyk when I get there.

You know it is an epic loss when you realize no one will ever fill that hole. You will try – getting remarried, leaning on friends, doing extreme sports, extreme shopping, multiple vacations, drugs, alcohol, whatever you try to fill it with – it never stays in the cup. It may leak quickly or slowly evaporate over time, but it won’t stay filled.

And it really sucks.

The worst thing you can do when someone is grieving is to tell them how to grieve. Advice is usually given by someone who has never experienced a great loss.

I couldn’t feel when my Mom died. It was so traumatic, so sudden, so overwhelming. I cried very little. I cried more when our dog died. It was so painful, I didn’t know how.

My business/life coach/therapist Maggie explained it well – she told me humans will do ANYTHING to escape feeling discomfort – but the only way to get through the feelings is to feel them.

And so I write my feelings.

And I dream them.

And for me that is what works.

It is how my subconscious processes the fact that someone I loved for 50 years left me suddenly and unexpectedly. Someone I spoke with at least once a day, evaporated. Just like that.

I expect to never get over it tbh.

Grief is not linear. It doesn’t ever end. It just is.

I wish my mom was here to talk about it.

Xo Christine