Walking in the grief wilderness without a map!

My grief map is a topographical map of the wilderness, except I left home without it. I don’t think I can re-draw a grief map. I actually feel as if I’m wondering in the wilderness a little lost without a map. Being lost is not foreign to me, because I’ve actually been lost in the wilderness before for a few days. Having had that experience I’m not really frightened of not having a set way to find my way through grief.

I’m comfortable with the idea of wandering. Of not knowing when to turn left or right, east or west, north or south. I’m just walking and going with the flow, as if I was following a stream downward in hopes of finding civilization. 

I’m lonely at times. The grief I feel can overwhelm me, but I manage to compartmentalize. I’m taking one small step at a time, because any faster and I won’t be able to keep the pace and any slower and I’ll feel as if the grief wildnerness is going to swallow me up. I’ve decided the best option is to take one day at a time.

Even though I’m sort of wandering and a little lost, I’m still noticing the beauty in the scenery. As I remember the massively tall beautiful evergreen trees with snow bunched up on the bushy limbs their beauty is like the people I’m meeting along the way in my grief expedition. Their beautiful souls give me hope, just as nature’s beauty gave me hope when I was lost.

Sometimes I doubt myself that I’ll be able to make it to wherever this path is leading me. I feel like I’d be better served with a guide. But I lost my guide to the otherside in September. If she were here I’d feel a whole lot better about walking without a map. But I do draw upon her strength spiritually. I know she’s with me, just as I knew how much she loved me when I was actually literally lost in the wildnerness.

Like many of my experiences I have a tendency to share with other what I learn. Right now, I’d share that I’m not sure grief really does follow any kind of map. I think everyone really has to figure out how to get from here to there…wherever here and there is. 

What I’ve come to learn is that the more I explore grief, the more I find it. Sometimes lurking in the shadows of the past. I ask myself, “Shouldn’t that 30 plus year old loss not bother me today? Why do I still feel pain and sorrow?” And then, I laugh as I answer my own question. “The pain is tolerable. The memory of loss will always be sad. There’s no way to make it happy…to turn it into something it wasn’t.” 

Walking step by step, one day at a time and noticing all the things that make me feel one way or another is helping me heal. Though healing isn’t always linear. It doesn’t matter if I go East, South, North or West, as long as I’m walking I’m surviving. And as in the case when I was acutally lost in the wildnerness, I eventually found other people in the wildnerness who helped me, I’m finding other people now who are helping me navigate the grief process.

As long as I keep moving. I’ll find my way. It may not be easy and the terrain can be treacherous at times, but I’ll draw on my inner strength and the fact that I was loved unconditionally by a woman I called mom. The love will help me survive long enough, until I meet other travelers along my journey.

I can rest peacefully knowing I will be okay. 

Author and Olympianamy gamble

I’m an author and former Olympian who writes about mental health. Having recently lost my mom, I’m writing my way through grief.

Amy’s Author Page

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