What To Do When Life Knocks You Down . . . Hard
By Kate Kerry Spencer
Loss is a natural part of life. Intellectually, we know this, but emotionally, not so much. If we’re lucky, we have gentle losses when we’re kids that prepare us for the larger losses that lie ahead. And still, as practiced as we may believe we are with our manageable losses, nothing can adequately prepare us for the big ones, the ones that buckle our knees and take our breath away. Getting back on our feet and learning how to breathe again is a process that is neither linear nor won and done.
Six Ways to Deal and Heal With a Major Loss
Acknowledge what has happened: Recognizing that something big, frightening and life altering has happened to you or someone you love is the first, most difficult step. A part of us wants to believe that surviving trauma will be the end of trauma itself, or at least that it should be if we are fortunate enough to have survived it in the first place.
The thing we forget is that adrenaline gets us through trauma, but not much past it. When the adrenaline recedes, we can become engulfed by exhaustion, sorrow, anxiety, anger, denial, guilt and fear.
Whether you, or someone you love, are battling a life-threatening illness, the fallout of job layoffs, the legacy of troubled family dynamics, the end of a cherished relationship, the death of a beloved friend, or the full-on war of war itself, there is always a cost to survivors. In order to find peace, we have to acknowledge that cost.
Face the agony. Acknowledging traumatic loss can pretty much make every cell in our bodies want to run away from it. Or we can intellectualize trauma from a kind of clinical distance. Or we can talk ourselves into believing that it wasn’t so bad, that lots of people have it worse, and that there’s no use in crying over what cannot be undone.
And it’s true, whatever your circumstances, there will always be others—sometimes thousands—who have lost more than you. It doesn’t change the agony of your own loss. So face that agony and treat yourself with the kindness you would offer a heartsick child. Deep down, there’s a heartsick child in all of us, or there will be if we live long enough.
Grieve. In the simplest terms, this means cry, rant, rage, deny, run away, come back, pace around, sit down and cry some more. Repeat as long as it takes, knowing that it will take longer than you think it will.
In the quiet moments of your grieving, find or create a place in your home or somewhere in nature that makes you feel part of something enduring and bigger than yourself. For some, that may be a little altar of touchstones, for others, it may be a forest of trees. Find that place and go to it when you need solace. Know that wherever you go, that place lives within you.
Talk about it. Long before there were houses or huts, there were caves. And in those caves there were storytellers who made sense of the wild world for their tribe. Some told the story of love and gain and some told the story of death and loss. And often, those stories were likely combined, because that’s what life has in store for all of us. One of the greatest gifts of being human is the sharing of stories. Tell your story, both for yourself and for that tribe waiting to hear it--and share their own--in this still-wild world.
- Cry with intention. This is different than the spontaneous, grief-stricken tears that can burst out of you without your desire or consent. Crying with intention, (also known as a good cry), can reset your mood, and over time, your heart. Tears are our bodies’ way of putting out into the world the emotions that are too big to be contained within us, from the joy of our first breath to the longing of our last.
Movies are my vehicle of choice for intentional crying. My current favorite is Collateral Beauty, a story about a man who loses his child, and in the aftermath, loses himself in grief. In his agony, he writes three letters, one to Love, one to Death and one to Time. To his surprise (and many sanity-questioning moments) all three of these entities answer him.
Will Smith is amazing as the grieving father, with great performances by Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Keira Nightly, Michael Pena, Naomi Harris and Jacob Latimore. To see the trailer, click here:
Forgive and Find Strength in What Remains. Forgive the disease, God, your parents, your partner, the enemy, and yourself. Forgiveness is the beginning of a reclaimed life. And life is why we are all here.
Even at its worst, there are moments of light and beauty in each day. There are people who would give everything they have to live one more day to see that light, if only they could. You know some of these people, or you will. See that light, be that light, for them and for you. Know that in opening your heart to the broken places of others, you’ll begin to heal your own.
ABOUT KATE
Kate Kerry Spencer is a Pacific Northwest writer, editor, and publisher. Learn more about her upcoming memoir, Smoke: A Story of Love, Lies and Cigarettes.
Smoke is the story of fatal consolations--tobacco, denial and deceit--and the second chances that can come to us in the most unlikely places. For this mother and daughter it was a rehab center where the two women wrestled with cigarettes, scrambled brains and each other--and in the process, found the long way back to love.