I am currently experiencing these sneaker waves of grief. My youngest is graduating from high school, and we have started the “lasts” of his senior year – recently, it was the last musical of his high school career. Soon, it will be the last band concert…and more.
The thing about grief is that it kicks up old grief and trauma wounds. As I’ve worked down the layers of grief and trauma wounds, I’ve noticed that while I’m grieving my youngest leaving high school, I’m also working through pandemic stuff (my oldest graduated in 2020), empty nest emotions and feelings, divorce wounds, and attachment wounds. It’s a lot.
I wrote this in March 2019, as my divorce was finalized. The specific grief is different now, but the experiences are similar.
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Waves of grief and resilience.
I stood in Goodwill the other night, flipping through the blouses. The hangers clacked together as I sorted through the rainbow of fabric, occasionally freeing a blouse for a closer look. It was a rare “wandering night,” a free evening during which I could do what I wanted, and I wanted to haunt thrift stores, just for fun.
I studied an olive green shirt and put it back on the rack, and was overtaken by a wave of sadness. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. It felt like the emotional equivalent of violent nausea with a tinge of panic, where you know your body is going to expel whatever is floating around in your gut. Fast.
I texted a friend of mine, standing in that aisle under the fluorescent lights: “At the risk of sounding overdramatic, I feel engulfed by grief.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I put my phone away and considered putting all of the clothes on a random rack and just getting the eff out of there. I felt dizzy and confused.
Exhausted. Soul tired.
A Sneaker Wave of Grief
Later, I sat in the parking lot, not knowing where to go or what to do. The wave of sadness crashed and I fought to sort through it.
What was this? Was it PTSD? There had been no trigger; it didn’t even feel like a trigger. Garden variety grief? Depression? I didn’t know. That’s the trick, isn’t it? The keeping my head above water in these critical moments, triage in the waves.
The only thing I did know was that I didn’t want to be alone. I searched my brain for people who were closest in proximity to where I sat in the Goodwill parking lot. I called the closest person, they didn’t pick up. I went to the next closest.
That person picked up. We met at a restaurant. We talked. I cried. She called it a Sneaker Wave. That’s exactly what it felt like – I had turned my back for a moment and a wave appeared out of nowhere and engulfed me. Like a real wave of nausea or from the ocean, it was alarming and panicky and scary and I didn’t know what was happening.
What Does Resilience Look Like?
Resilience is asking for help. I felt panicky and alone and confused, and I asked for help, even through the voices that said, “You are needy. You are weak. You are pathetic.” I said out loud, “Stop. I am not any of those things.”
Resilience is telling the truth when your friend meets you at a restaurant and asks if you’ve had dinner and you haven’t, and she buys you fajitas. Resilience is holding hands on the table while you cry, accepting that you are really not alone or needy or weak or pathetic. Resilience is acknowledging that you are a deeply feeling person in the middle of enormous stress and transition, and that maybe you are a fucking rock star.
The waves crashed over me and inside and welled up and spilled out and I did not drown.
I did not drown.
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