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Taylor P.Comment
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The Ultimate Motivator

 

In early 2020, I unexpectedly lost my partner.

 

It was a sudden event wedged in between holidays and the onslaught of COVID, and I really didn’t have the time or energy to properly grieve then. I went into a state of being emotionally barren, yet also went straight into fight-or-flight mode because events were unfolding very quickly in my life, and in the world, in general. I had subconsciously postponed the process of working through my grief only because my family’s survival became more important than myself or my feelings. So many things happened at once and I became overwhelmed, so my emotions were the first thing to vacate the scene. I channeled my energy into what I was capable of at the time and did my best to pretend it all wasn’t happening. And it was hard to articulate an experience that was truly personal to me, but forums provided so much insight into what I was feeling and how best to proceed. The situation was too complicated to explain and I felt just incredibly alone and confused by it all at the time.

Predictable Outcomes
The ironic part was that for a person who always felt so overwhelmed by her feelings (and often overwhelmed others with them as well,) I suddenly became so numb that I stopped feeling at all. I didn’t even want to talk about it. I built up walls around myself miles high. I was angry, I was sad, and suddenly I was nothing at all. I quietly caved in on myself and felt swallowed in the cold emptiness that suddenly surrounded me. I reached out to a few people closest to me, but I generally shut the world out. I quit social media for a while and plunged into solitude and work. I was grateful for COVID in some ways because it allowed me to slow down enough to face the darkness head-on rather than run from it. I did not have time to grieve first, but I did have time to fight for a better future.

The situation was unavoidable and I felt so unfathomably lost in the sea of my soul. At times, I felt like I was drowning— carrying that weight far below the surface. I reflected inward, as I generally do with most things, and let the waves crash over me. Many psychologists call this “the work.” It took me almost a year to properly cry over it, to truly come to terms with everything that had happened, and all the open-ended questions that will likely never have answers. I struggled with my reality. I struggled with the revelation that my partner had lied about a lot, and those feelings of disgust and anger that I wish I didn’t feel toward them but did anyway. I struggled with the spiritual death of the person I knew and loved. I couldn’t believe that one moment that person was there and the next they were just gone—as if they never existed in the first place. The life we had and the plans we made had been shattered in an instant. I felt as if I was experiencing the suspension of disbelief.

Grief can come in many forms.

Grief is universal. It can mean the death of a loved one or friend, the trauma of physical/emotional abuse, divorce, divorce of your parent, loss of a pet, ending of a friendship or relationship, loss of what is familiar, traumatic experiences, seeing someone you love suffer, major life changes resulting in a loss, losing one’s identity/self/wasting lifetime doing things you regret, remembering past losses or abuses, etc. Grief usually follows a cycle of 5 stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But there is a whole different set of things AFTER that initial process. And some people struggle to get through the first part and stagnate there, which can be detrimental to you and your existence.

In the months that followed, I passed by so many familiar places and fond memories would come unbidden. Everything reminded me of our life, of our plans for the future, and all the memories and conversations we shared. The future we no longer had and the millions of questions that I suddenly had as I began tracing my steps and the events leading up to it. Grief was physically painful yet some days I would purposely place myself in the seat of memory just to feel something. Some days, everything reminded me of him, and all the ambiguous emotions I felt about everything just seemed to suffocate each other.

I spent a long time trying to make sense of it and trying to feel something other than feeling like there was a gaping hole where my heart used to be. I threw myself into my work, into parenting, into grad school, into businesses and projects, and all the things to keep me from feeling so remarkably alone. The word “bereaved” sounds inherently hollow in comparison to what it actually feels like.

And for a time, that was the medicine I needed. I grew gardens of victory. I carried my sadness like a badge of honor. I propped others up and supported them. I created worlds and destroyed them in my writing. All the while inside I felt like I was dying over and over again every time I let my mind wander toward the great loss I felt as the fragility of human nature weighed so heavily on me. I thought of my own mortality a lot and of just this incredible bleak emptiness and loneliness that I was facing now. When someone is a huge part of your life, the space they hold in your heart can be colossal.

 I thought about who I was as a person and what I needed to do with my life. Loss makes us selfish, in this regard. It shakes us and moves us, but in the end, it does not break us. Grief was ironically one of the things that made me feel whole again.

 

In this way, grief is the ultimate motivator. Because while it may have caused me to quietly implode and withdraw from life in the beginning, it slowly fused me back together into someone else. Someone stronger and wiser than before. I have seen death, whether physical or symbolic, change people in terrible ways— into unrecognizable people who have no grieved properly. And I never wanted to become one of them, but for a time I did. I lost the light within me and became a shell of myself for a while. I found myself inexorably drawn into that realm of thought, so I understand it a bit more now how people sink into despair.

It’s a choice we make every day to continue to live and thrive in the face of what isn’t quantifiable or knowable. It’s a choice we make every day to survive past the endings in our lives. By choosing to be motivated by our experiences, rather than trying to run from facing them, we can transcend that pain more quickly and find improvements to the situation.

 

Grief can come to us so many ways— the death of a loved one, the end of significant relationships, or loss of a job, to name a few— but the outcome is always the same: You WILL inevitably change (hopefully for the better.) Some days I would literally wake up questioning if I had somehow wandered into a simulation of my life—it felt unnatural and inhumane. Some days were more surreal than others, and some days you see a car like theirs or something that triggers a memory and it feels like the stitches that bind you together are being ripped to shreds. And many days, most days, are so full that I don’t think about much of anything at all. Each day gets a little easier now that I have come to terms with my powerlessness in the situation and accepted that I am still actively grieving some things to some extent. There is nothing I could have said or done differently because the outcome was always meant to be this one. I know some of this will fade in time, but it does many days feel like life is on pause. Some days are great and some days I really struggle with trying to understand why things happen as they do.

And I think that is the important lesson to take from loss because it gives us a sense of our own fallibility and fragility as human beings. Slightly narcissistic as many of us are, to some degree we feel the universe is more malleable to our wills than it actually is. Loss and grief prove that we lack the control and fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of our existence. Finding that our worlds which we thought were so concrete and strong can be so easily turned to dust, while unsettling, only further shows us our own insignificance. It is a system of checks and balances that our universe has to show us that we were but a small part of something much larger.

You move forward, despite the pain and all the raw emotions that come with it, because you have no alternative. You choose to throw yourself into the crucible to be rendered anew. Some throw themselves into substance abuse, poor decisions, or (in my case) work. This is not sustainable and is counterproductive as you will experience the grief even heavier when the other shoe drops. Which it will.

Uncomplicated grief is a perfectly natural and healthy response to difficult, dramatic situations. Some symptoms of this include: Missing the person or situation, longing for the past, difficulty accepting the changes, unusual moods (agitation, irritability, anxiety, or overreactions,) grieving an unlived childhood, or experiencing long-term attachment issues, and preoccupying yourself with sadness or depression. Complicated grief, on the other hand, which affects 10-20% of those grieving, means those symptoms get worse. Clinging to the past or constantly obsessing over the person or event can cause sadness and a cycle of pain/pleasure that often leads to abuse of drugs, alcohol, or unhealthy attachments. This is also called toxic grief, and not what you want.

Men, especially, have been shown to deal with grief poorly because of the emotional stigma that has existed in our society. So it is really important to get help when you feel yourself sliding in a bad direction. No one likes to be in pain, so being able to relieve oneself of the pain of grief is enticing, but surrendering to the process rather than proactively creating toxic situations is really the best remedy. It is hard and will feel like it is breaking you at times, but it is really the only healthy way through it. So, barring that you aren’t on the extreme end of the grief spectrum, are there any GOOD things about the grief process? Yup. Absolutely.  

Here are some ways You Might Change as a Result:

You Become Less Attached
Grief can feel like a kick to the throat. But as you work through the grief process, an ironic thing is that you care a little less. If you didn’t care much to start with, this can be problematic, but for those who felt too much to start with (i.e. me and possibly you,) it can almost feel like a relief not to feel so much. I always thought I was fairly emotionally intelligent, but grief taught me that I still had quite a bit of work to do. Being able to turn off emotions is just as important as being able to turn them on. 

The little things stop bothering you like they once did, and caring a little less means you find more fulfilling things to do with your time than worry or need to be in control all the time. For a Type A personality, especially, it is important to give yourself space to breathe sometimes. Grief compels you to practice the art of detachment because it pushes you toward a less emotional, more rigid state of being. I used to have so much anxiety about every decision or interaction and now I have reached a state of disinterest in most of that.

You Focus More on Yourself
I don’t know about you all, but I historically had a tendency to neglect myself and my needs in favor of other people. And you know what? It kind of sucked. Some people have a tendency to walk all over you if you let them. Plus, loving someone is no excuse to lose your identity or neglect your own needs and goals. When you focus inward, you begin looking at all of the things you would like to do differently with the time you have left here. It might be a misconception, but it is actually extremely healthy to have some degree of self-preservation and self-interest. Don’t like your life? Change it.

You build so much more confidence when you realize that you are alone now. You, and only you, can make your life more fulfilling and meaningful. Being able to overcome the loss of someone or something dear to you is one of the greatest skills you can accomplish because it ultimately can be the most debilitating experience you can have.

You Develop Stronger Relationships
You learn who you can or can’t depend on. I spent much of that year dealing with everything else, but my family and a few close friends, like my dear friend Mary, really helped put things in perspective and provided constants in my life to outweigh the feeling of displacement I was experiencing. I tend to deal with most things like this on my own, but it did make me feel better having a good support network and being able to process those various emotions or focus on other things entirely, with people who loved me. I feel like we’re all stronger for it and I know that if everything falls apart, those people have my back, and am grateful for it. Gratitude is really important in these situations and practicing gratitude daily really made a difference in my mood and how I encountered the world around me.

You Learn Ways to Adapt Gracefully to Change
Change is always a really scary word for most folks, and many of us like some degree of structure to keep our sanity. Seeking perfection from life is a fool’s errand, as things happen organically however they will with little regard for your needs or desires. So the grieving process gifts us yet another gift: grace. I find myself so much more understanding of others and am able to look back into the past with much greater clarity and humility. It took a lot of soul-level work and experimentation to arrive at that point in my life, but it has made me grateful for the change. Rather than look at change as an enemy of progress, I look at it as an ally of evolution.

You Become Colder
A friend of mine once said that I needed to cut out all the people who were making me miserable or constantly putting me down, and I think before this experience I still felt some guilt around doing that. I streamlined my life last year and surprisingly didn’t feel bad at all about doing that, but it took a traumatic event to make me much colder, less trusting, and choosier about who I spent my time on or let into my circle. It is a weird side effect of grief but being more aware of the lifespan of things (or lack thereof) can make you more selfish with your time. I became cold enough and strong enough to keep my distance from people that were toxic, unkind, or otherwise not a good fit for the new person I was becoming. I learned how to uphold boundaries and not go against my inner integrity and value system.

You Value More and Become More Decisive
In the same thought process, because my time became so much more important, I was able to become much more decisive with how I allocated my time and energy. I did an overhaul of my value system and found where I was falling short or needed improvement. You are also able to look at those you value and the things you value with a new set of understanding. I look at every minute with my family and friends as precious time spent, and do my best to ignore the day-to-day small annoyances of life.

You Strive to Live Better and Set Better Goals
Living healthier is, ironically, a benefit of this process. Seeing others struggling with deteriorating health or toxic behaviors can really bring you to a better understanding of the human body, mental states, and better living practices. It sounds counterproductive, but the best way out of the darkness is to find realistic goals for yourself to help ground you. Death is permanent and life is not. Recognizing and accepting that universal law can help you live your life to the fullest. With goals, start out small and let that become an iterative process as you arrive at a new point in life.  You have all the tools so it is up to you what you achieve with them.  I don’t want to live a life full of regrets and you shouldn’t either.

You Rebuild Yourself, Become More Self-aware, + Become Self-sufficient
I can’t count the number of times in my life that I have risen from ashes, but I can say with some certainty that this was one of the worst experiences I have had to deal with in my lifetime.  But once you begin to feel some degree of acceptance for your situation, you can become detached enough to have the ability to rebuild yourself. Human beings are adaptive, after all. So you channel all the energy you would use to grieve into something positive: Self-sufficiency. You honor the memory of the person and life you shared, but painstakingly do the work necessary to stand alone. If this means reading self-help books, or this means making the space to become aware of who you are as a person and where you are headed, you alone hold the key to recovery. It may not have overnight, but every step is a step in the right direction if the focus and drive are there to do so.


So that covers some of the positive changes you might experience. For those going through the negative ones, here are Some Ways to Effectively Work Through Grief:

Write All the Letters
I am admittedly an avid letter writer and not exactly a succinct one, either. Historically, I had difficulties expressing myself or identifying my emotions, so in situations of extreme emotion I tried to write it out—which wasn’t all that effective but later on I learned better ways of interacting (like just speaking my mind to the person and having a conversation, rather than letting things build up and get intense.)  But being able to write open letters to the other person, even though obviously you will never send them, can be therapeutic.

There is no right or wrong way to do this and you can leave insecurities or worries at the door. Also, something that greatly impacted me was periodically writing letters to myself or writing down memories/stories. One of the biggest reasons many of us hold on to memories and reminisce often is not wholly emotional but also that we are afraid somehow we will forget them or those involved. There is a great deal of anxiety in fearing that distance will cause that information to become obsolete in your brain. So, write everything down, no matter how small.

Have Some Tough Conversations
In the same manner as the previous statement, sit down in a quiet place and have a conversation with this person. Tell them everything you are feeling, even if you are angry or ugly crying or whatever. In fact, this is a good practice in general. What would this person say and how will they respond? It’s more about you and working through your grief, but if there was a chance that they might be listening in, what would you say to them? 

Take Breaks But Don’t Run Away
Take even just 5 minutes out to do something new or something that brings you comfort. So many people, especially long-term caregivers, fail to take care of themselves or take the necessary breaks they need as human beings because of the guilt or responsibility they feel. Don’t be those people. For me, any time I felt myself sliding toward depression, I would proactively focus on positive things and carve out time for myself to have a bit of breathing room. That being said— don’t run away from the problems. The more open you are to accepting the inevitable, the more quickly your will work through the brunt of the process.

 Get Healthy
Join a hiking group, paint something, write some music, binge something that inspires you. Anything to get your feet moving or your heart healing can be so important. Focusing on a hobby can not only bring joy and new skills but can get you in touch with your own inner nature. Nature is a powerful healer, so being able to live in the stillness of the moment and return to a simpler state of existence can really be reinvigorating. For me, creative activities were the most therapeutic. Creating is cathartic and can be a no-judgment zone for your experiences or emotions. Exercise has been proven to be a great mood elevator, too. Practicing healthy habits and setting good boundaries can also really go a long way to helping you heal faster.

Cry if You Wanna
That’s it. Cry ugly tears. Cry in the car, on a boat, or a moat, whatever. It’s therapeutic and helps manage those big ole feelings that seem to lurk just below the surface. And if you’re prone to screaming, find a good private place and let ‘er rip.

Find Ways to Relax
Meditate. Take a walk. Sit with nature. Read a good book. Try to find ways every day to channel that destructive energy into constructive energy.

Honor the Memories but Don’t Dwell on Them Too Much
Remembering things can be great and healthy. Thinking of them 24/7 is not. Make sure you have set up some limitations for yourself. If it gets to be debilitating, get thee to a therapist. But honoring memories is good, too. These things happened. This person or situation was important to you. So a big part of accepting a loss is to think about those things but also find a degree of emotional detachment from them. It’s a hard balance to strike, but in time you will be able to look on those memories fondly without feeling like they are destroying you.

Don’t Self-Medicate
Booze, pills, and one-night-stands? Just don’t. You CAN grieve yourself to death in this way. Instead, start asking yourself what your purpose is and how those things can fill that void. Guess what? Those things won’t— at least not for long. Regret is often synonymous with grief. Self-medicating can turn uncomplicated grief into complicated grief. Obsessing over the losses also is a form of self-medication, as thinking of the person or situation can create chemical rewards in your brain, and deplete happier chemicals when reality continually hits you that you are still experiencing a loss. I know so many people, who barring the grief process, are perpetually trapped in this cycle under the guise that they are going to find some satisfaction or meaning within it (nope.) Finding who you are and loving yourself is the best medicine. I know it is easier said than done, but it can be done if you will yourself to overcome it.  

Reach Out and Reach In
Support groups, therapists, family, and friends want you to reach out, so don’t be afraid to do it. I found forums (like Quora and Reddit) particularly helpful initially, especially when I would not be able to sleep and would have burning questions on my mind.

Cut Yourself Some Slack
Some days it will consume you. I know on days I feel a bit irritable or just off-kilter, I am likely grieving something or a situation has triggered a memory. So definitely give yourself some time periodically to deal with things when you need it. Grief is not a lateral process and some days something will hit you out of nowhere that will make you just want to fall apart. You’re not failing. It is natural to feel this way and it just means you are human.  

Dream Big
Set lofty goals. That trip you guys always planned? Start planning for one of your own. Sit down and write down all those things you wanted to do or want to do now—and take steps toward them. Set realistic goals and budgets for yourself, but the ultimate goal is to get you out of the past and into a future—a happy future where life is still beautiful.

Unpredictable Outcomes
Because of this experience, I know I have changed significantly as a person. I think in my 20’s I was very focused on developing relationships with other people and pleasing others, and that often set me off-track for a while. And just feeling insecure and under-confident, in general. My first major relationship was abusive for many years and it set me on a path that made dating awkward and unfamiliar, social interactions stressful, and left me with a major issue with body dysmorphia. Something about this process has made me more inclined to put that past version of myself to rest. Maybe it was the relationship that healed that part of myself, or maybe it was the grieving process, but I know I have fundamentally changed, and my priorities have as a result.

 I spent several years before this working on myself before all of this happened, and hammering out some of the more volatile aspects that I did not like, so I think that helps some. I became stronger and more resilient, less serious, and more accepting of others, but it also made me harder and less inclined to tolerate bullshit behavior from people. With increased self-awareness came also more awareness about how many people’s issues are not your issues to deal with, and also that it isn’t your place to fix someone else. When I find myself feeling uncomfortable with something or thinking about the past, that is a signal to myself that I still have some work to do. Grief or adversity can be the best character-builders out there.

So, I do not know what the future holds. The idea of dating again or getting close to anyone on that level is terrifying to me and pretty dang depressing, and I’m not sure if that is something I want at this stage of my life anyway. I’m admittedly a workaholic and like to do my own thing most of the time, so it would really take a special person to deal with me. and give me the ample space I need. I have a very busy and interesting life and am surrounded by many people I love, and that just really has to be enough for now. I had a fulfilling life before this person, and continue to have a fulfilling life, but there is this somber feeling of empty space that just exists within me. It’s not an empty space I really want to fill, either—to do so feels unnatural to me at this point and there is a certain degree of anxiety when it comes to attachment or losing someone else like this.

This isn’t something that everyone goes through, depending on the cause of their grief, but in my situation, there is just this sense of things not feeling “right” in that respect and I don’t anticipate that going away for a long time. It won’t happen overnight, and I still have a lot of work to do on myself. But the key takeaways from this experience were learning to stand on my own to weather storms, becoming more confident in my capabilities, building healthier habits for myself, and learning detachment from outcomes.

 I guess in some ways I channeled all of that love and devotion I always held for others toward myself as well, and that generally has made a huge impact on my life and how I move through the world. Because it was only in the last few years that I became strong and mature enough to understand who I was as a person and what I needed to be and do.  I hate that it took me so long to learn how to value myself and my lifetime here, but traumatic experiences can be incredibly transformative if you let them change you.

I strive to be a better person every day and do good things in the world to impact others in a positive way. I will instill that lesson in my children, too, so they can become good stewards of the world. I’m more focused than ever on getting healthy, being socially responsible and being a good human. This experience has inspired me to always act with integrity and not to sweat the small stuff so much. It has shifted my focus to the most important things in life. Living has an expiration date and we don’t know what time we have here, so it is best to do good things and make positive impacts on others. So, if nothing I have said here really registered, the most important thing I can say is this: Be good and live well.


NOTE: A few words may sound a bit mispronounced but it is entirely intentional. Some weren’t sounding very clear on the recording (like “volatile”) so I had to get creative. This one was completely candid but I plan to do more fluid ones in the future. Thank you for listening/reading! We will cover a wide variety of subjects and stories, but this one seemed timely given the amount of loss many of us are experiencing with life, aging, and COVID.  

 

 

 

 

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