Lately, I have been thinking quite a lot about life its meaning, fairness, no wait the lack of fairness seems more appropriate here… death, grief and all sorts of things which you do when you have just experienced an immense loss.
All of a sudden you realize you are not as resilient as anticipated. All of a sudden you get in touch with emotions you never thought you had developed to such a deep level, they never came to the surface. Oftentimes the stress of losing someone and emotions caused by the event cause physical health issues too (in my case stress-induced eczema and weird pain in my hands and legs plus tension headaches)…
You are lost, your all world pauses and you don’t know anymore what to believe in and how to live your life now…
Grieving is a complex process. In my case I was so upbeat during my dad’s illness, always believing we can stabilize the disease no matter what…That we can and will find a way, doctor, clinic, etc.
Sadly ‘my way’ did not guarantee anything and as we know definitely not a happy ending, sadly just ending… After dad’s passing, I felt quite numb for some time….then the numbness changed into anger and sadness mixing each other as a sinusoidal at the speed of light…
As I am a highly sensitive person every memory even vaguely connected to my dad reminded me of him and that he is not here anymore and about the drama, we have just lived through…You know when you drive a car and then there is a song you used to listen to together or a place which was ‘yours’ or a saying you both used to say…
The stress of caring for an ill parent may have subsided but the emotional rollercoaster has just blown out exponentially…It has never been easy since my dad’s diagnosis but having lost him I lost myself too…with quite a lot of contradicting thoughts and difficult emotions to face…
It is only last Friday which brought me some needed, calmness when I came across a resilience course from Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. They were talking about ‘obvious’ things yet it was good to hear it and process to get a bigger picture and learn from Sheryl’s traumatic experience.
You can find their free course on building resilience here. Later that day I listened to ‘Lost without you’ by Freya Ridings – thinking of course about losing my dad.. Weird yet wonderful You Tube algo suggestions listed a course on the subject of ‘The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong’ by Amy Morin.
I take both things appearing on my social media as a sign, that I am yet to work harder on my recovery following the loss of my beloved father. I found both recordings rather helpful. It felt good to reflect on what both those ladies said and their grief and their ways of managing their emotions and working things out at the time you barely want to stay alive…
I read somewhere that traumatic and deeply painful events have the power to help one to either develop into a far better human being or change nothing for them. I do believe in my case it will be the first one and that this is the only ‘positive’ from the whole negative, situation, the only sense in my father’s suffering is for me to grow so that I become an even better person than I have been. To open my heart to more things while improving my life and hopefully the lives of others. That is the reason I created this blog, after all, to keep dad’s legacy alive.
We say in my home country ‘ suffering makes you noble’ and there is truth in that I think. Of course, I would rather not have to experience that difficult journey which was my dad’s and our family’s reality in the whole of 2019…but I couldn’t control the fate…so the only consolation of the whole experience is that hopefully, it will allow me to grow further on a personal level…
With that I am going to focus still on :
- Meditation as gratitude and meditation help to calm down and become happier.
- Having realistic expectations in order to avoid disappointment caused by romanticizing the world around me. Yes, I could easily be found in Goethe’s novel experiencing ‘ Weltschmerz’…
- Helping others as much as I can
- Finding joy in everyday life when being more mindful, sort of the way my dog takes every day 🙂
- Being less online while reconnecting with nature and friends offline engrossed in meaningful activities. When was the last time you cooked for your friends and played cards or board games or did something for them that took their breath away?
- Spending time wisely thinking more about ‘quality of the events I may follow and asking myself a question ‘ does that make me happy/relaxed’? If not letting go of that certain event/activity while practicing assertiveness. I am finally putting time in perspective too!
- I am asking myself: ‘Wait but why?’
- Taking even greater care of my body- as my dad used to say ‘in a healthy body, a healthy mind is to be found – so true. Running, exercising, and of course, carrying on with my largely plant-based diet is I hope a key to restoring a balance on a physical front.
In trying the sense of our earthly existence we may follow the most asked question from my fav series called ‘Lucifer’.
‘What is it that you desire’ ???
Lucifer Morningstar 😉
weirdly enough I think that once one discovers the answer(s) to that question life gets its meaning all of a sudden.
What do you think? How do you live your life? By any ‘weird yet wonderful’ realizations coming from both a hard-faced reality or experiences or quotes of others be it movie characters?
