complicated grief

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complicated grief
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    Ambiguous Loss/Ambiguous Grief..

    My oldest daughter died this month..She died in my mind, because she acts as though we were dead to her. I don’t wish her harm. I’ll still pray for her..but I don’t like living with the deep hurt.

    “She died,”might be easier to accept? She has Stage 4 Metastatic Cancer and is now on year 4 and in a NED for a year. I tried to reconcile with her, but apparently there is no give with her and she can not meet me halfway. She never said why she alienated us. We were friends, we were her parents.

    I know that she isn’t good for my mental health. It will take some time to move on from this figurative death. I’ve been grieving for sometime at the thought of losing her to actual death..To an anticipatory death, instead of an ambiguous loss or grief. I wonder if it’s that far from actually accepting that she’s gone? Most likely, we’ll never talk again, and that I might not see her again in this life.

    Some people might not accept or understand this as grief. It’s very lonely, because those around me can make me feel isolated. They don’t give me permission to grieve because they don’t wish to acknowledge it. I give myself permission to grieve the loss..#ComplicatedGrief #Grief #PTSD #Depression #MentalHealth #movingon

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    I recently lost my dad and I’m finding myself feeling a void in my life

    #ComplicatedGrief #sad #depressed

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    On Grief and Bulls in China Shops

    I’m reading Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’. I have always found comfort, and a home in books. Where some parents elect to use the television as a nanny; mine was reading books. I’m grateful for the understanding and wisdom I learned through the accumulation of stories from my fellow outcasts. This knowledge however, in time became a bridge between myself and my family. For at some point I journeyed too far beyond their comfort zones, their norms, and their unhealthy coping mechanisms.

    The bridge will always be there for them, but I don’t think they’ll ever be in a position to cross the distance between us, so fixed they are in their fear. I still have love for them, but it is also mixed with sorrow; that their faith in themselves and others is so limited; they are in effect hiding from life and the kind of enrichment that can only be achieved through being vulnerable with others, and find that—flaws and all—you can still find unconditional love and acceptance, for none of us here are perfect.

    The strange thing I’ve come learn about interpersonal boundaries is that they are isolating no matter what. For the person who is forced over time and error, to learn how to create healthy boundaries and then put them firmly in place, and equally the person who lives in a world without boundaries. For they embody the relationship version of a bull in a China Shop; they only know how to break things—despite the very thing they long for most being wholeness.

    My father passed away several years ago, and more recently since the cutting of ties between my mother and myself, I have felt what Didion refers to as “the loneliness of the abandoned child of whatever age.”

    A friend writes to Didion about the death of a parent after the passing of her mother “despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, (death) dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and they may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean’s bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections.”

    Reflecting further on loss, Didion writes that “Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

    For myself, I mourn the loss of my mother while she is still alive, and in the worsening of my poor health, it has dislodged so much within that I feel numerous waves of grief. For the good that was in my mother, for all the times she abandoned me, and for all that might have been. I grieve the understanding that my own mother’s mother abandoned her numerous times too, and my mother—whether she tried to or not—failed to break this cycle that leaves nothing but destruction in it’s wake, as it creates multigenerational bulls in China Shops. Capable of breaking much, and healing nothing.

    #ComplicatedGrief #Grief #GriefQuotes #StagesOfGrief #ChildhoodEmotionalAbuse #Childhoodtrauma #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #Relationships #MightyBookClub

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    A weird hope, maybe? #ComplicatedGrief

    So, maybe a little TMI but it's relevant. I have irregular periods, always have. Also lost my boyfriend end of September. Its been 2 months since I had my last period. I guess a small hope was that there would be a child even though I have never been regular. Even though I know having a kid to hold on to some part of my boyfriend is not a reason to have a child. I know, it's a stupid thought. I have been having weird grief thoughts. Like losing it every time I find one of his long hairs or not being able to get rid of the expired food in the fridge he bought. Or not being able to reset his alarm, so it goes off at 5:50 am Monday through Friday.

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    Grief defines me…

    I came across this - ‘sometimes in grief rock bottom so feels like home than a place of discomfort & joy is the scarier emotion.’

    So is one’s sense of reassuredness obtained more in our seeming gloom, grief & misery? Is pain and anguish the overarching and more truer condition of our living? Not sure which philosopher it was - Schopenhauer or Spinoza or Kierkegaard who had a similar premise but speaking for myself, all the loss, defeats and shame I have endured, suffering has been more determining of life’s trajectory. Even as i cannot but acknowledge few moments of exaltation, joy and contentment, the larger narrative of misery and despair renders me deeply suspicious, indeed dread whatever seeming moments of happiness that objectively speaking is on hand. For example I should be elated today for my book has finally been published. But the occasion has only made my deep sense of loss more pronounced, absences of folks I hold very dear more acute and my grief so apparent.

    The existential crisis - of loss of meaning, of no emotional peg to hold on to, the hollowness of positive affirmations, emptiness, the very collapse of hope, the uselessness of faith, sacraments & prayer - is so permanent, structural, so default that the so called affirmative, hope inducing path not to speak of so called moments of celebration & joy, appears so misguided & pathetic.😕

    My ex is descending into vegetative state and i’m unable to provide any succour or reassurance to her…😢I love her so deeply…being with her was much more than being with a person…there was our house, our beautiful garden, our soul enriching dogs…it was elevated living in every sense of the word all coming together in her. In her presence, company I grew, my soul nourished and my spirits soared…But her ailments consumed her reducing her to an existence of excruciating pain (people can’t even begin to comprehend how debilitating her illness is) and agony. Yet she braves it all. She doesn’t want to give up. i still can’t & couldn’t deal with her suffering. And she couldn’t deal with my suffering me & she insisted on separation . I failed as a care giver. I felt so then and I feel so more now. Is it my love morphing into something evil that is causing her to suffer? To love is to suffer as someone said. The painful poignancy of it all. The appalling conditions of existence with its ordeals, misery & aches being showered on few in unrelenting flow🤦🏽 if my condition is such, imagine what she is undergoing saddled with both excruciating mental & physical condition.

    The free who may have been following my posts here would probably figure my drift. Most may barely comprehend what i’m babbling about. I often don’t comprehend it myself. Figuring all these in isolation & loneliness is all I have for attempts at reassuring me by few (maybe well meaning) with bare cognisance of such travails, shame & suffering has been more damaging… most don’t even bother or attempt anymore. They have had enough of my moping & lament and my seeming inability to get over for many years now. But this grief is my own and overwhelming and i won’t allow anyone to trivialise it.

    For as things stand i’m my own best friend, counsellor, confidant even as I’m my own critic & enemy. I dedicate the book to her - the endearing, bravest soul I know notwithstanding being rejected. The research, the writing, the readings, the visits, my work…all that the writing of the book involved her presence was constant. But it was no therapy. Today the despair and anguish has only flared up. What satisfaction or contentment leave alone celebration or joy when the most dear to me not around…?!!😢 I do want to be cherished, hugged and in the least desire quality time of deep conversation, over food, drink and drives -things which did transpire between us for sometime but alas ! Very voodoo of life undid it all and in certain viciousness! 😔 #Grief #ComplicatedGrief #Pain #Rejection #Shame #despair #Depression #Loss

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    Even Things Lost Were Once Gifts

    My mind skips around like an old recorder
    Scratches at each jump between
    Times when I think I’ve settled on an answer
    For what might seem a simple question
    If it weren’t loaded

    If I sleep with this keepsake tonight
    Will holding it close to my chest
    End up breaking it apart more later
    Just like our first to last of five months in this home
    Except boxes are, already, packed to leave
    And one of two of us already left completely

    I’m not sure what happpened to the you I got to see one last time
    It was just four or five hours
    But you were “back”,
    You were “alive”
    And you were kind
    And I had missed you so
    But that’s not why the tears streamed down my face
    It was bc I knew the you that you’d replace
    Would be the you that killed who you really were
    And all we could have been
    We wanted so much more
    Than “could have beens”

    I’m sorry I had to make the call
    When just days before, you had kissed my face
    But the Black Eyes returned within only days
    And just like that,
    The man I loved was replaced
    With a punishing parent
    From a patterned past
    Don’t you know there’s a reason
    Only Jesus should attempt to raise the dead

    Black Eyes moved toward
    And swiftly fell upon me
    3 digits and a screen had to intervene
    But they could only save me
    And that night I felt the loss of death
    There was nothing left in your eyes

    May Jesus raise you up like Lazarus
    May the One who is outside the bounds of
    Space and Time and Death
    Reunite us again
    When we are ready

    #BPD #Splitting #codependence #Loss #ComplicatedGrief

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    Grieving

    I never thought I would have to grieve our so much. As a child I thought grief was for when someone died. As an adult I know it's so much more! I grieve for the future success in my career, for the children O can't have, for the things I cannot do, for the family I have lost, for time I have lost, for the childhood I never had. The list is much longer than that! So much longer! Chronic Illness and Abuse steals so much from a person. #abusesurvivor #CPTSD #PTSD #arthymias #Anxiety #Depression #treatmentresitantdepression #HypermobilitySyndrome #PsoriaticArthritis #spondylarthritis #methylationissues #Grief #ComplicatedGrief #StagesOfGrief

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    Friend Lost Wife to Covid. They were married for 22 years and very much in love with 3 kids. In less than 6 months he slept with another woman.

    #ComplicatedGrief I am concerned that he is trying to fill a void and longing companionship. He met a woman that he is falling quickly for and wants to be exclusive and in another relationship. It’s only been 7 months to date and I am worried that he is moving too fast! Is it normal for someone who was in love and then lost so suddenly to want to move forward so quickly? It just seems kind of fast for me but he keeps saying that he doesn’t want to waste anymore time in his life bc tomorrow is not promised to us. What advice should I give or is this a normal reaction? Should the woman be concerned and demand he wait and let time heal and just be a friend to him? He genuinely looks at this woman with strong like, the chemistry is there, he is transparent, patient, loving.. he is a very good man. He said he doesn’t want to sleep around he wants to be with one woman. It just seems like 7 months is not enough time to grieve his wife whom he loved deeply or did he?

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    Hard day

    I used to love being alone, in fact I enjoyed my own company over others at times. I'm an introvert and extrovert. When I go to the store I talk to everyone. I love meeting people and hearing their story. I planned to go to a bar/restaurant that has trivia tonight. I'm not a drinker but do enjoy being around people for a limited time. Now I just want to climb into bed and cry. I heard the following on a TV show I watch "life isn't meant to be solved, sometimes it's a tragedy that you endure" (not exact) but it's tragic but somewhat true " I'm not sure I can endure it any more. #sad #Hopless #Depression #ComplicatedGrief #estranged #alienated #alone #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder

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    Need to forgive myself

    My 28 year old son committed suicide on thanksgiving 2019. Our last conversation was him asking me to move to NY to help him and I was so sick and told him that I promise I will be there by the 1st of the year. He responded with " that will be too late " I never thought he meant he would not be here in life. I wish I could have that memory erased from my brain. I let go of the most wonderful young man and failed him in the worst way. I can't go a day without thinking about it #ComplicatedGrief

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