The Grief of Acceptance

     Today a person in my primary support group reached out in an effort to identify why she was feeling so much sadness and low worth.  She has been on no contact status with her abusive mother for four weeks now, and this is the third time doing it over the past several years.  Resuming contact in the past was in hopes that things would be better, and she is realizing that that hope has been in vain.  The first time she cut off contact, she grieved the loss of a mother.  The second time, she claimed her identity as a person. This time she felt a deep sadness whose origins she was having difficulty identifying.

     There are so many layers of grief that come with this territory of saying "No more!" and letting go.  As I was reading comments from other members reassuring her that what she is going through is normal and part of the process, it occurred to me that another aspect to the grief that she is feeling this time might have something to do with finality--an acceptance on her part that her mother is not going to change.  I think there is a sense of hope that we as survivors instilled in ourselves from a young age that things COULD change.  For me that hope stemmed from a basic belief that all people are essentially good, and thinking that if I could only get it right then I could have the carrot my mother was always dangling in front of me but never really allowing me to have (her acceptance).  It was also part of how I survived--it was too frightening to consider as a child that my mom was that dangerous and that that's just how it was.  Feeling that it was my fault and that I could therefore fix what was wrong felt much safer, although it was terrible for my self-esteem.  Realizing that what was  essentially wrong had nothing to do with me but was her stuff has been freeing, but has also brought grief as I've worked on accepting that it's not fixable.  It is a harsh reality to accept that you really never had a mother in the sense of what a mother is supposed to be.  It is hard to accept that you were really never loved because this person simply does not love--her overriding emotion is a need to feel superior to everyone else, her own children included.  Because of this we never received the true love and nurturing that a child is supposed to be able to receive.  Grieving that loss is huge, and acceptance that it will never be what you always held out hope for brings another layer of grief.

     I'm learning to sit with grief and sadness when it comes up.  I'm trying to do that without distracting myself through food, shopping or keeping myself ridiculously busy.  I'm trying to learn to allow myself to just "be."  Doing this isn't easy, but when I have done it I have learned a lot about myself and gained better understanding and insight to myself as a person.  I've been able to make sense of why I feel the way I do about certain things or why I have certain behaviors or responses.  And those things in turn have helped me to grow as a person.  I have so much less fear and anxiety than I had even six months ago and it feels really good.

How To Hurt

    I am hurting a lot today.  My heart is very, very sad.

    I'm still learning how to do grief and pain.  For a long time I have used food to mask it when it comes up; some people drink, do drugs, or have other coping behaviors.  The religion I was brought up in discourages use of alcohol, so the "good girl" version of addictive behavior for me is reaching for comfort food when I feel sad.

    I didn't realize for a long time that I was doing this; a lot of times I just felt this compulsion to eat.  I did go through a period of time where I overate, a LOT.  I have lost about 60 pounds and don't generally overeat as far as volume goes, but darned if I don't eat the wrong things when I'm not in a good emotional state. What I realized over time was that not only was I eating in response to feeling sad, but when I did so I literally did feel better emotionally. There was a chemical change that took place and I didn't hurt as much. There are a few reasons why, although in the short-term I feel better when I do this, it's not a good idea. First, not good for my health.  Food may always be there for me, but. . .it's always there for me.  Like, it stays on the hips and stomach.  I also don't want diabetes and I still need to lose more weight.  Second, when food deadens the pain, it doesn't get rid of it; it stuffs it back down. There is still a residual ache, and it's just a matter of time before it comes back up.  I also learned over time that when I felt that pain or sudden anxiety/panic, etc. that was my system indicating that something was coming up for processing, so masking it and stuffing it back down wasn't allowing me to do the healing work my system was indicating it was ready for.

    I've been told that I've never seen grief through all the way.  If you visualize being on one side of a lake with the lake symbolizing the grief process and needing to get across the lake to the other side, I've never gotten to the other side.  I have usually gotten about halfway across the lake and then gotten stuck, then go back to the side I just came from rather than continuing through the water to the other side--so I've been carrying a huge amount of grief around with me throughout my life.  Part of the reason is that growing up it wasn't safe for me to express what I needed to and I have carried that nonexpression into my adult life. Besides eating, there are other ways to distract yourself from feeling grief.  Shopping, staying "too" busy, hyperfocusing on other things or the needs of other people, etc.  I'm the poster child for all of this.

    One thing I hate about trauma-related healing work is that when I'm processing something hard and then get to where I feel like I'm in a pretty good place, it's not long before I start feeling that old feeling again ("that old feeling" can show up in many ways for me: a sudden feeling of panic or anxiety that seems to come out of nowhere, feeling a sudden compulsion to stay overly busy all the time, compulsions to stay up all night and not let myself sleep, feelings of depression and hopelessness when I've been fine and taking steps to support feeling that way on an ongoing basis, sabotaging myself on the eating front when I've otherwise been doing really well) and something else comes up.  There are so many layers.  Sometimes I feel like it will never be done.

    I went to the pool late this morning and did water aerobics; I always feel better after I've been in the water. Besides the exercise, I find that I am able to literally release a lot of stress into the water. Even if I have a day where I don't do a great "workout," I still feel better just from being in the water.  As I was changing, etc. afterward I was keenly aware of this pain.  This past weekend was a major conference event at church where there were many speakers and I found some of the talks to be just what I needed to hear.  But other talks hurt.

    One of the age-old questions that comes up about God is why He allows pain and suffering, and this is why a lot of people don't believe that there can be a God.  The explanation I hear and that makes sense to me is that God can't interfere with our free agency and that learning to use our agency is one of the reasons we are here on earth. Intellectually I get it, but I am having the hardest time with the fact that sometimes there is intervention. Sometimes people do get strong promptings that help them avoid danger.  I was in danger from the time I was born, and I was in an environment that made me vulnerable to further abuse and being used by other people. I wasn't protected.  Furthermore, these circumstances conditioned me to not readily trust my instincts when they signaled to me that something was wrong, and so throughout my life I have had poorer boundaries than the average person and have been more vulnerable to opening myself up to unhealthy people and situations.

    Many people would be quick to point out that God has helped me persevere through everything, and generally I'm part of that group. But a huge part of me feels so betrayed by that same God who I have tried to put my trust in my whole life.  As an adult one of my sole, constant prayers was for my children to be protected, and while we gave them a better home environment in a lot of ways, I have learned of abuses that happened to them.  To me, that has been the ultimate slap in the face.  With all that I endured, I just wanted my children to be safe and well, and it feels to me like God just turned his head the other way and said, "Ummm, let me think about it. . .actually, no. There are other people who are more important than you, so that's where I'm going to direct my attention."  Sometimes I hate God.  And then I feel guilty because that's not showing faith in Him, and then I feel that being that way makes it so I'm not as worthy to be blessed as someone who doesn't have these feelings.

    One of the constant things that comes up when I'm hurting is this feeling that I don't matter, that I'm an afterthought, that by my nature I'm not as worthwhile as other people.  The message I got from my mother early on was that my very existence wasn't acceptable.  So many people have always seen me as a project that they needed to fix, or someone to feel sorry for.  Very rarely was I built up or allowed to "just be."