“I’m grieving the ability to just sit and be. My brain is in a constant state of over-stimulation and I can’t just sit, turn it off and just be with myself anymore. Work is high stress, parenting is never ending, the chores pile up, and theres no time to not sit and not do anything. Anytime there appears to be a moment of that, there’s always something that can be done. I don’t even remember the last time I was able to actually enjoy a movie. I also miss being me, not being me for someone else. I once was a stand alone person but now I’m someone’s wife or someone’s mom before I’m anything for me.”
“For the first time in a long time, I'm riding a high where the grief doesn't seem so present. So I'm celebrating that instead!”
“Such a weird day for this prompt. Nine years ago today (to the day) the man I was in love with, died in a motorcycle accident. He’d just bought a one way plane ticket from Dallas to Atlanta, where I was living, for New Year’s Eve. We were going to drive back to Dallas on New Year’s Day and I was going to move in with him. It felt so symbolic and romantic. I’m sure my parents and his had some raised eyebrows since we’d only met a few months before. In fact, I’d never even met his parents nor had he met mine. But, we were stupid, throw caution to the wind, in love.
The night he died I woke up twice in my sleep. When I learned the details of the accident I believe I woke up when he wrecked his bike. I woke up again a couple hours later, with a heavy feeling in my chest when he died. We had a connection that was so real that he reached me in my sleep a time zone away. I was devastated.
Fast forward nine years. I live basically on another planet. I have a really good life; a funny handsome, smart father to my 3 healthy and insanely awesome kids, a job I love. But every year, in the middle of October, I write a clumsy email to a mother that I only got to meet after her son died. I grieve for her.”
“I'm grieving my freedom and ability to go into my studio basically whenever I wanted before I became a mother. I've come to terms with how my life looks now. I'm working on arranging my schedule so I can make sure to include the activities and practices that fuel me and help my mental health.”
"I'm grieving feeling physically strong and balanced like I was before children. I'm grieving feeling conditioned, and getting that mental breather from the sweat I used to work for. I forget that this was basic to my happiness before everything else (and everyone else) became the higher priority."
“The list is long for our state of the world - so much continued violence against women, the widespread hate and violence against anyone who fits the category of "other" from whatever standpoint of the person yielding these feelings, climate change and our ongoing lack of urgent action toward making changes, there are so many things on this list.
“ On a personal level, I grieve right now that I can't seem to find the depth of connection with my dearest loved ones that I wish I could develop. Sometimes there is such distance. Sometimes there is such closeness. Does everyone go through this?”
“I’m grieving the loss of faith/organized religion, and with that the loss of closeness and community. My heart breaks over how things from the past no longer make sense and align with the present. How unfamiliar everything feels.
I’m grieving that my family no longer fits nicely in my life. I’m in an unknown, with no one to tell me how I should feel or what I should do for the first time.
So for now I sit and grieve the things I wasn’t allowed to feel before and prepare for the waves of feelings to come.
I have to start over, find new people, make new friends, figure out how to coexist with the old and it’s daunting.
I’m holding space for the pain and the joy, because that’s where most of life is lived.
But in that is conflicting emotions.”