Go Ahead & Break Down (The Healing Power of a Good Meltdown)

Lately I’ve been thinking about how overwhelming it is for so many of us to deal with loss.

Mainly because here in the U.S., we don’t really ‘do’ loss. We do high achievement, striving for success and cheering on our co-workers, our sports teams. Our kids. The code is simple: Work hard, play hard, get it all right. And don’t forget to have fun. And smile!

This means when the bottom drops out and we stop getting results—or worse we lose something or someone we loved… well, then what the hell do we do? This world doesn’t seem to provide many clues. Our pain becomes nothing less than overwhelming.

Here’s when a perspective shift can be helpful. For what I learned after grieving my daughter’s death and losing most everything I had in 2012 is that loss is actually an extraordinary catalyst. It can literally heal your life… but only if you let it.

There’s a saying among parents who’ve lost children: You can either become better or bitter. And I love that, because it offers us a powerful reframe.

Don’t expect fast results. It took me a good two to three years to really climb out from under my grief at losing Teal. The good news is that I did, and I learned a lot about life and myself and how supported I am. The bad news is that along the way I had no idea what to expect next.

It wasn’t easy. And yet, the alternative—avoiding grief altogether—is just as hard. If not worse.

Losing a loved one generally requires a complete surrender to grief, and to the unknown, and this is where we all get tangled up. This is the road we don’t want to go down, the one we’ll do anything to avoid.

And yet, by fighting it, we just prolong the suffering. For sure, you can seal that vault and bury it deep in your psyche. But seriously, it’s not going anywhere. All you’ll have to do is be reminded of what or who you lost, and that discomfort will come swimming up again and again until you finally resolve it.

The key is to embrace the pain. To just finally, lovingly give yourself a break and stop holding it all together. You can begin the process by simply getting quiet, and sitting with yourself for a while. Notice what’s going on in your body, for starters. Then have at it.

Ugly cry, beat the pillows on the couch, primal scream if you need to. Get a great big pad of newsprint and some fat magic markers and scrawl out your darkest thoughts. Go to grief groups and bitch all you want about your losses. And keep a box of tissues in your car. (For some reason driving was my favorite place to cry. When it got really bad I just pulled over and had a meltdown.)

Permission to utterly collapse into your pain is what we all need at such times, and what so many of us don’t want to give ourselves. We worry that we won’t ‘be there’ for others, or somehow be able to keep up our responsibilities. And we may not be able to. That’s when we ask for help.

Embracing the totality of our situation is critical. This is when we truly have to get real…for our own sakes.

I also mentioned dealing with the unknown, as in what’s going to happen next? I lost my business, my relationship and the home I lived just a few months before I lost Teal. So there was a lot up in the air, beginning with how do I make a living? It took a long time to sort out.

Honestly, I had no choice but to surrender. I couldn’t worry about these things. Instead, I just hunkered down in a rented room in someone’s house, and my ‘job’ became grieving, reading, and taking care of myself.

I made becoming better my focus, and that was my only certainty in life.

In the end, this approach guided me well. In fact, I think it literally saved me. The right work eventually found me, as did a wonderful new home, a new city and a marriage to the love of my life. My trajectory has simply kept on rising in the nine years since Teal’s death.

I attribute this to my complete and total meltdown, in which I expected nothing—NOTHING—from myself for a good long while. And yes, just for the record, I had some savings in the bank I could live on. I moved in with a friend, and found all sorts of free resources for people in my situation. And I found copious support and like-minded others in grief groups  at the local hospice. These became my footholds as I climbed up to my new life.

So whatever you are dealing with, may this little essay inspire you to let go and have at it. The Universe truly wants you to heal, one tear drop, one wail, and one precious ache at a time.

You will get through this, my friend, just as you always have.

 

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