242: When You're Waiting For the Other Shoe to Drop
Before I dive into today’s episode, I want to share a few life updates about my work and what I’m up to!
I’m finally got all the details figured out, which can be very challenging when I don’t even know where I’m going to be at any given point in time, and I have a newborn, but I’m going to be flying to Washington D.C. to the Bereaved Parent Conference in a few weekends. I’m very excited about it, and I’m teaching a workshop there. So if you happen to be going there, come say hi, and come join me live in person for my workshop!
Also, I created a free quiz for you to take, if you are wondering if you’re doing this whole grief thing right. I know people will get mad at me about this because they will say there’s no wrong way to grieve, but I know from my own experience that I wanted to know I am grieving healthily, and if I wasn’t, I wanted to get the help and assistance that would help me grieve healthily. So, if you’re wondering if you’re grieving healthily, go to www.meganhillukka.com and you can take this free quiz. As a reminder, this is kind of an interesting way to get a baseline, but it’s not a therapeutic or medical assessment.
So, let’s get into today’s episode. Just because your child dies, doesn’t give you a free pass from other things happening. It seems like it should, but for some reason, crap can still happen. Hard things can still happen. I had this thought after Aria died that nothing more can happen because I’ve been through the worst. But the truth is, bad things can continue to happen. Not only do they continue to happen, but if they keep happening over and over again, you can start to feel really weighed down and like you just want to give up.
I’ve recently had some experiences that have not been fun. In the last week, I got in a fairly minor car accident that totaled our brand new car, which is such a bummer because we need a 9-passenger suburban so we can tow it behind our bus and still fit in there as a family and it’s peculiar and not very common. So, with the accident plans changed, appointments made with chiro and massages, and trying to make sure there are no physical lasting pains from this.
This happened 4 days before we were supposed to move from the Airbnb we were renting to have our baby and recover and added a lot of headache and hassle to this time. So we finally got moved into the bus, on the road, and we went to Bryce Canyon National Park and met my brother and his family there.
So me and my sister-in-law and a few of her kids go mountain biking. The trail is 8 miles, and a lot of it is black diamond, which we walk during those parts, but it’s a loop trail, and at mile 4 my tire pops on my bike. Now what? I have had this happen before and I only had to walk my bike like a quarter of a mile on a easy trail in gorgeous weather and that was hard enough. Now to have to walk my bike 4 miles on a black diamond trail in the middle of the day with the blazing southern Utah sun? My sister-in-law was very nice and took turns pushing my bike with me, but we had to push it standing it up on its back wheel, and just another part of the story, while we were pushing it on its back wheel, the back wheel fell off twice. I was just watching my bike come to pieces on the trail. It was crazy. But some amazing guy fixed my back wheel the first time, and when it fell off the second time, I watched him put it back on, and so I learned how to put my back wheel on my bike. Meanwhile, we came with not enough water because we weren’t anticipating getting stuck on the trail this way, and I have a nursing baby back at the bus that I need to get back for.
Anyways, how did we get out of this mess? We took turns pushing my bike up and down the crazy hills and Justin, my amazing husband borrowed a tire from my nephew's bike and biked uphill the 2.5 miles to us to try to trade it out on my bike. The only problem with this was when he tried to put it on it didn’t fit. The wheel was the same but the brake size was different. So he disconnected the front brake, and there was no way I could bike like that. When your front brake is disconnected your back tire skids, and I was scared I would skid right off the mountainside, as the whole way was downhill and we were riding right along cliff sides.
So anyways, Justin rode my bike down, without front brakes, carrying my big bike tire, on a bike that was way too small for him. He was quite the sight!
So, why am I sharing these stories, this past week has been pretty awful in so many ways.
Because my brain keeps trying to tell me that this is just the beginning of all the bad things happening in our life. That things are just going to continue to go wrong.
It’s a feeling I know well after Aria died. The dread and waiting for everything to fall apart. For everything to continue to fall apart. The question of what next, and who next?
It’s a time of my life I don’t miss, this has been bringing this back to my memory, and I now have more tools to navigate this when this happens.
It’s been a stressful week, where I’ve felt pretty crappy emotions, been tired, stressed, overwhelmed, and at the end of it, I’m still super grateful for my life, and I’m working at staying present.
And, as we all know, our children dying is the worse thing that can happen, but there can continue to be hard things that happen, and learning how to navigate these hard things is critical to being able to thrive and survive.
I would say, that your child dying, can create a resilience in you that makes you more able to handle hardship, to “bounce back” from hardship quicker, or even re-program your brain so it’s easier to get up after a hardship. And, child loss can also destroy everything about you, shatter you, and make it incredibly difficult to navigate any sort of challenge and hardship.
Resilience doesn’t just happen. There’s no easy way about this. And I don’t know about you, but I would rather use my experience to make me stronger and more able to navigate the challenging things that no doubt will come in my life, instead of the experience destroying me and I’m not able to handle any little thing that comes in my life.
So I wanted to share with you what I do in this time where my mind keeps trying to wonder what’s next, how I deal with this, and feel okay in the end.
So, I do think all the work I’ve done in processing emotions and even just recreating different brain patterns in my mind has helped me be able to move through this a lot quicker. The bike tire example in my past could have ruined my whole day. This time, it was pretty junky in the moment, but I do feel like I still had a pretty good attitude, and did pretty good emotionally when I think of how I’ve been in the past. There are some moments I can think of in my past before Aria died, that when I ran into something challenging, do you know what I did? Did I figure it out? Did I keep going? Nope. I simply gave up. I cried. Cried and cried and gave up. I was useless to those around me in the situation. Not only was I useless to them, but now I was crying and they were trying to console me, be the strong one, and figure out the problem.
So yes, I feel like I’ve come a long way since then.
So yes, just finding the good things in it. It was junky, but I learned how to put on a back tire, everyone ended up being okay and we got to water before it was a huge problem, my husband got to show me his physical capabilities, and I got to tell him how amazing he is.
When I focused on the good things, it helped me move past them quicker. This is not toxic positivity where you only focus on the positive and put a cover over the hard stuff. I’m saying it was so complicated and challenging. And in the end, I let myself feel that, and then look for the good.
Having a gratitude practice where I just sit and breathe, and notice the things I’m thankful for, helps me stay in the present moment. Through this, I bring my mind to being right here right now, instead of going to the future and wondering what else can happen.
Being in the here and now is so helpful for me instead of going into the future wondering what if. What if this happens? What if that happens? Because you better believe my mind wants to go there. But it’s almost like I reign my mind to it, and just nope. I don’t need to think or worry about that. Breathing and being right here in this moment has helped me a lot.
Taking time to notice little things. When you slow down enough to notice the leaves on the trees. The sun shining. The way the flowers blow in the breeze. The sound the wind makes in the woods. These are always ways of bringing me back to the present here and now.
As part of RRT, I’ve learned that our brains will continue to see threats and believe there is a threat and thus prepare us for a threat if we keep having thoughts or creating this threat in our minds. So telling my mind there is no threat, there’s no reason to be worried, and there’s no threat, has been helpful for me as well.
To just tell my brain. Hey, chill. It’s okay right now, and that's all I need to worry about.
Okay, but what about in the middle of crap happening. Like from our car accident, and when I was stuck in the hot sun with my bike. I could have easily just given up. I wanted to just chuck my bike to the side and leave it there. But what you think, and the resilience you’ve created makes a huge difference. Even though it was very hard at the moment, I just did was needed to be done. Kept doing the next thing that needed to be done. And you may think that’s silly because that’s what you would do, but I assure you I wouldn’t have done that in the past.
If you’re waiting for the next shoe to drop, practice grounding activities, have a gratitude practice, calm your nervous system, and work on creating different patterns in your brain that make it easier to pick yourself up after bad things happen.
If you’re having trouble with that and want assistance, come join Grieving Moms Haven and have a guide to assist you with this.
Even though this feeling of doom and waiting for the next bad thing to happen is a common experience, it’s not something you need to live with forever or continue living with.
All my love to you, thank you for listening and thank you for being here. If you like this podcast, can you share it with another grieving mother who is also looking for guidance and assistance on her grief journey? That would mean the world to me. This podcast is completely free, and I pour so much into it, if you could just share it, I would be so grateful.
Take care, my friends.
Have you felt anxiety after your child died?
The racing mind, unable to sleep, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, unable to breathe, panicky kind of anxiety, whole body riddled with anxiety?
Watch my free video on anxiety and grief below!
So that you can think clearly, feel calm in your body, and live your life without the chains of anxiety.
