People don’t like to talk about Adult Child loss or Child Loss period. After all it is uncomfortable. Searching the web, book stores and anything I could get my hands on to help myself was futile. Many blogs of parents who had lost a child would only mention, to join a grief support group. No one talked about the unnatural process of this type of grief, the emotional and physical pain, nor the moments of insanity that ensued. No one spoke of details, experiences nor recommendations of what helped them, to validate or confirmed what I would endure.
Getting The News
My heart broke into a million pieces upon hearing the news that my daughter was found dead in her apartment. The utter shock and trauma was insurmountable. The emotional pain unbearable and I had no idea that the human body could produce so many tears. In all honesty, I wanted to die. When people say this type of grief renders one to their knees, they are correct. My husband and grandson grabbed me before I hit the floor in disbelief.
Parents bear the unbearable, unimaginable and unthinkable when we loose our child; regardless of their age or how they died. It is the most gut wrenching and excruciating pain of all bereavements in my opinion.
My body shook for days from the shock. My chest felt tight and after the numbness wore off, my physical body laterally ached with a gapping hole of emptiness that filled my entire being.
How do parents survive this? I thought to myself.
I can’t do this, screaming in my mind, praying and begging for all the powers that be, to let me die.
Dear friends and family came to see me, hold me and hold space for me. One who had lost her daughter years prior kept saying; “You’re okay, deep down you’re okay”.
I wanted to slap the hell out of her at that moment; I’m not f*%$..ing okay; I cried! We laugh about that now, however, somewhere deep, deep down I would later find out, I am okay. Not the same but okay.
It is okay to not be strong. It is okay to cry as many tears as I needed and still need to cry. To scream in agony, to swear, get angry, let the hurt out and be where I was, feeling what I felt; throughout this horrifying journey. I also realized during this bereavement, when people asked if they could do anything I’d simply say; “Thank you, You decide”; as I had no clue of what I needed.
For a long period of time, time did not exist for me. I was existing in a realm of a surreal world. While the world kept moving forward, mine stopped. My spiritual gifts of Reiki seized to be. I could no longer massage or do esthetics on people, not wanting them to feel my pain. My oath as a Reiki Master and Instructor and ethical individual knew healers also need healing. Wounded people can not assist wounded people.
There were no words, no place, no thing, no person that can mend us after child loss. We are forever changed.