This is Why Our Grief Hurts So, So Much
The Weight of Grief as depicted by artist Celeste Roberge
The grieving process totally sucks, doesn’t it?
When I was in the middle of it I thought the searing pain was going to kill me. It sucked the life out of me and I felt so much hopelessness and anger and depression along with that aching hole inside of me. There were days I wished I could just die.
If I hadn’t had a teen son to take care of and homeschool I probably would have rarely gotten out of bed.
And on top of the grief there was so much fear about what my soon-to-be-ex was up to and what was going to happen to my future. Not to mention the crazy-making thoughts going around and around from cognitive dissonance, “Is it me? Am I wrong? Can he really be that bad?”
I felt like a pinball bouncing around in a machine, often out of control of my feelings.
My feelings were roaring around me.
The loss and pain was unfathomable – discovering who my husband really was, seeing how his covert abuse had hurt my son, and being betrayed and abandoned by my close friends who thought he was great guy and took his side.
And those Christian platitudes didn’t help either. “Rejoice in all things.” “Forgive and you’ll magically feel better.” “Just focus on what you’re grateful for.”
“Grief isn’t a lack of a faith.
It’s normal human emotion that doesn’t just go away with
forgiveness or gratitude.”
I was wreck, often eating lots of chocolate or watching Netflix or trying to stay busy so I could run from the pain. It never helped and I’d just feel worse and worse.
But there were days when I actually stopped to feel the pain and let it out with sobbing and screaming and running in the woods shouting at God. When I did that, I felt a teeny, tiny bit better, and a teeny, tiny bit less anxious, unsettled, and overwhelmed by daily life.
So I made a decision. I would stop avoiding and turn towards the pain even though that was the last thing I wanted to do. I took the anger I was feeling and directed into determination to not let this pain become never-ending and one more way that my ex stole another thing from me.
I made a commitment to myself to feel that awful, horrible pain a little bit each day and accept that the pain wasn’t the enemy – it was my broken heart needing to heal.
I trusted that grief was like a full cup and letting it out a little each day would slowly drain that cup. I trusted that this really was just a season, and I would come out the other side.
And I did.
As I look back, I see that honoring those feelings was an act of self-love, self-empowerment and incredible bravery.
It was a big step in taking charge of my own healing and believing that I really could get my life and myself back, and that I deserved to after the hell I’d been through.
And you do too.
Treating ourselves gently in our grieving HELPS US
begin to find ourselves again.
Don’t underestimate the amount of energy grieving takes. It’s exhausting. For months on end. And don’t be frightened by other feelings that comes along with it like anger or depression.
An aside about anger: if you’re still married and getting angry over and over again at his behavior, just venting the anger won’t heal it. That anger is an indication that you are feeling powerless and need to find a way to make some changes in your life.
For some people feeling the grief is really hard because some of us are wired so we have a harder time with emotions than others.
For many of us, because the present grief ties into unhealed grief from our childhood or other unhealed losses in our lives, all we know to do is run from the pain as fast as we can.
But this just ends up with us devaluing, dismissing or hating our feelings. And hating ourselves for having them.
Part of our healing process is coming to a place of self -acceptance, self-compassion, and self-care, knowing we are worth fighting for and deciding we won’t let our husband (or the enemy) steal another thing from us.
And this means accepting our pain and knowing it won’t kill us.
We have complex grief
All of us have very complicated grief. We are grieving so much more than, for instance, the death of a loving spouse.
In addition to loss, we are also facing betrayal, confusion, trauma, fear about our future, the death of our dream, the shock of realizing who our husband is, self-doubt, wondering if we could have done things differently, and often not being believed or supported by others.
Another complication is that we are grieving two different people – the one we thought he was and the one he turned out to be, and the shattering betrayal that we’ve experienced from this.
This leaves us with contradictory feelings like missing him yet being hurt and furious that he lied and pretended to be someone he wasn’t. We feel conflicted about missing him, and we also battle with self-blame and shame, and it really becomes messy.
But it’s OK to be in the mess. It’s OK to be exhausted. You can get through this.
God is with us in this pain even if the church isn’t
Jesus wants to be our loving companion in our sorrows as well as joys, with our broken hearts and burdens as well as our praise. Facing our losses and mourning them is walking in truth with Him.
We have nothing to be ashamed of as a suffering, grieving woman. But the church has much to be ashamed of for turning away from the suffering ones who Jesus loves because they are turning away from Jesus Himself.
Who is Jesus? Love, faithfulness, comfort, safety, truth, patience. And the Body should be all these things to those who suffer. It’s members should weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn.
I remember after my divorce when an acquaintance of mine shared that she was divorcing her husband because of abuse. Very few people knew. Then her husband died suddenly and she was surrounded by the love and support that most of us never see during divorce. I remember thinking that this woman was “upgraded” in the eyes of Christians from a divorcee to a widow. This shouldn’t be.
In the Bible, the term “widow” includes divorced women, yet most churches don’t acknowledge or understand our pain. Instead they blame us for it.
Trauma complicates grief
It really helps the grieving process when we learn about how the trauma from our marriage is affecting us, and that some things that feel like grief are actually coming from trauma and need a different kind of healing.
Grief heals with feeling it, letting God meet us in the pain, and letting ourselves go through the grieving process.
But so many other feelings we have need more than that – they need trauma healing.
For example, anger can be part of grief, but it can also be a trauma reaction.
So can loneliness, hopelessness, anxiety, depression, being easily triggered, feeling numb and even feeling disconnected from yourself or others or God.
Understanding this and knowing which feelings are originating from what is all part of our healing process and the self-awareness we can grow in.
Something that is very healing is to have a community of people who understands not only our grief, but all the other complicated trauma reactions we are going through.
And you can find that in my Arise Healing Community.
In Arise is a trauma-informed program for healing from emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse.
It’s about healing so much more than grief. We get into healing what plagues us like self-doubt, self-blame, shame, and cognitive dissonance, and learn how to walk in self-acceptance and self-leadership with good boundaries and a clear mind.
It’s a healing journey for finding your real self and finding trust in God again.
Some day you will be grateful for your growth, not for the abuse and trauma you’ve gone through, but for what a brave, amazing woman you truly are. Don’t lose hope!
Healing our hearts and minds is one of the 6 pillars of the Arise Healing Journey. If you’d like to join with other women of faith on a journey of healing from the trauma of spiritual abuse and emotional and psychological spousal abuse, and learn practical tools for healing, you can read about the Arise Healing Community here.
Wondering how to heal?
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