131: When Others in Your Life Don’t Let You Grieve
Hello friends! I’m coming to you from my car. Yes- I sit and talk into a microphone in the Walmart parking lot. I decided when I began doing this work and helping other women, that I create this business in a way that works with my life. I love doing this and I love all the work I do inside of Grieving Moms Haven, but my family and my kids come first, and I do the business and work around what works with them, so I record in the car.
As a reminder, if you leave a review for this podcast, and send me a picture of it to hello@meganhillukka.com you will be entered into a giveaway for a $100 amazon gift card that I will draw every 50 reviews. So leave a review, especially if you like this podcast and listen weekly, I’d greatly appreciate it, and you also get the chance to win $100!
Ok, this is a very sensitive topic. A very fine line that each of us has to navigate in our own lives, and I want to try to cover it from a few different perspectives.
First, as the grieving mom, your grief is your responsibility and nobody else's. Nobody else can do the grief work for you, this is something that is fully and completely yours. So, it’s also not up to others in your life to tell you how you should handle it or how you are supposed to grieve. This is a deeply personal journey and process that we each have to navigate on our own.
It’s a very lonely journey in so many ways because it is so personal and so many parts you just have to do on your own. Community, connection, sharing with others is so helpful, and it would be nice if you got the validation from everyone in your life you feel like you need, but in the end, it’s your grief and up to you.
When you seek validation from others in your life, you are putting your grief and heart in somebody else's hands, who might think your grief is too much. Who might think that you need to do it differently. Who may think you are grieving too much, changed too much, sitting in the past too much. Whatever that may be.
The validation you need is from yourself. That you are doing what is best for you in your grief. To sit with the pain and process the emotions. To grieve in a physical, mental, and emotional way. Let you be in charge of what that looks like for you, not someone else who doesn't fully get what it feels like to be you.
Ok, I said this is a fine line, and this is the other side that I want to talk about. Your grief is yours and very personal. And it also affects those in your life around you. Your husband, friends, other children, whoever it may be. As a grieving mom so often it can feel like you are doing everything you can to hold yourself together and yet your world just continues to crumble around you. When you are in a relationship, everything can’t always be only about you.
The relationships in your life can be greatly affected, especially if the people in your life are not comfortable with grief or with the strength and enormity of your pain. I know when you are the one in pain it is frustrating, that they should be okay with it, and it shouldn’t affect them this way, but if it is, it is. And getting angry about it doesn’t change it.
So- here’s the thing I want to get at- when your grief and expression of grief, and how much you’ve changed, and your sadness and pain, affects your relationships in your life where it feels like your marriage is going to end, or your other kids don’t want to be around you anymore, or it seems like nobody wants to be around you.
This is a very hard thing. Because your grief is real and needs to be felt. And yet, if your relationships matter to you and you want to have these relationships, you have to find a way to grieve in a way that feels right for you, without furthering the gap and creating a bigger division in your relationship.
A starting point could be listening to the how to have hard conversations podcast which is episode number 129 , so you can begin to have these open and very hard conversations with the people in your life. About what their needs are and what your needs are, and how you can best support each other.
But another thing that’s important is that if you want to keep your relationships it can’t always be only about you. This is difficult for me to say because I think too often we put our grief on hold for others and it’s so important to feel and process.
But there is a will deep inside of us that can put grief on a shelf for a moment, to be able to interact, and be in the world. Not pretending to be okay but making an effort too. This is a gift you can give those in your life, because of course they are worried about you. They love you and want you to be okay. They care about you and want to know that everything is going to be okay. While it might not feel like you will ever be okay, creating a sense of normalcy might help.
Something that you can try to help support you as you move through your grief and also try to navigate all your other relationships in your life.
Say you are with your husband, and your husband has a really hard time with your grief, and so that causes a lot of friction and tension in your relationship. I think most people would say well then your husband just needs to learn how to deal with your grief, but remember this is a relationship and if you want to keep this relationship, how do you honor yourself, and respect the way your husband is grieving? How do you give yourself time to grieve, and also honor your husband’s own and different grief journey?
Ok- so the thing that you can try. When grief comes up for you at a time that feels not ideal or you don’t have the time to work through it right now. You can tell your mind and your body, okay I feel that you need to come out, but right now is not a good time. I am going to deal with you at x time. I will make time to sit with and process that, it’s just not right now.
The most important thing to remember is that by doing this, you don’t kick that can down the road and keep pushing it off for another day, but that you actually do take the time to sit with it, and do whatever it is that helps you process and feel and move through pain.
But when you do that, you can stay present where you are at, and know that you are also taking care of yourself and the grief inside of you. That everything doesn’t have to be felt right here right now. That you can have spaces or times in your life where you don’t allow the emotions to overwhelm you.
I am always an advocate for feeling, process, and moving through emotions, but there’s also a side of it, that you need to be able to function and live life too. So how do you personally navigate that in your life?
Another perspective is putting it through the emotional framework- say your husband tells you he doesn’t like when you cry, and you get hurt because you are thinking things like he should be okay with me crying, he should be there to support me and hold me and hug me. What in the world do these thoughts cause you? Deep suffering, especially if your husband repeatedly tells you he doesn’t like it when you cry.
So of course, you get to decide- if I want to continue this relationship, then I have to make peace with this in some way, because trying to change your husband isn’t going to help either of you, and saying he should be doing something different than he is is only fighting with reality and also only causing yourself suffering.
So again, say your husband tells you he doesn’t like when you cry, how do you want to feel when he says that? Maybe you want to feel upset, and think he shouldn’t say that- but what if you could think something like, of course he doesn’t like it when I cry, it hurts him to see me cry, and he loves me so much all he wants for me is that I’m happy and okay.
How would that make you feel? Maybe it wouldn’t make you happy with the situation, but it would give you a little more compassion and understanding of where he’s coming from. There are other thoughts you could try on too like, of course he doesn’t like it when I cry, he’s trying to not think about it, and this is a strong reminder of the pain that’s underneath. And not from an angry place, but a compassionate place.
I am always an advocate for feeling, process, and moving through emotions, but there’s also a side of it, that you need to be able to function and live life too. So how do you personally navigate that in your life?
I hope this episode has given you a few ideas of something you can add to your life.
I’m always rooting for you. Always thinking of you and knowing that you are never alone. You got this, see you next week.
Make sure you check out my free weekly workshops I’m hosting over on www.meganhillukka.com. Check out this weeks topic, which can include anything from anxiety and grief, how to get through grief, navigating difficult emotions of grief and so on. See you there!
If you like this podcast, and found it helpful, I want to invite you come check out Grieving Moms Haven, my monthly community for Grieving moms, where you can learn positive coping mechanisms, find a safe space with others who understand, and learn life long skills that support you as you learn how to carry this weight of grief in your life.
There are group coaching calls where we do guided meditations, tapping meditations, breathwork, and just talk, knowing that everyone in the group is also walking the path of child loss
You can come check out Grieving Moms Haven at www.grievingmomshaven.com
