Hi everyone! It’s Melinda. Welcome to Melinda’s Grief Corner! If this is your first time here, be sure to check out my intro post to learn more about the inspiration behind this new Article Club feature and what to expect from this series! Glad to have you here!
In the early days (I guess it’s still early days? Time is stupid) after my dad’s death, I kept thinking that grief was the only thing I could feel. That my body had absolutely no capacity for anything that wasn’t the smorgasbord of grief-y feelings.
And I kept asking myself “will my life just be this now, just BIG grief 24/7?”
I did what people normally do in this situation.
I asked Google for its opinion. Note - I do not recommend doing this.
Now while I got a lot of weird stuff in the 24977897829789 search results that Google spat out at me, I did find an article that I found extremely helpful.
Let me introduce “Growing Around Grief,” a 1996 article by Dr. Lois Tonkin (via whatsyourgrief.org).
Dr. Tonkin describes being in a workshop with a mother whose child had died years prior. The mother drew a sketch of her grief and how she thought it would progress over time and then how it actually felt for her.
From “Growing Around Grief: another way of looking at grief and recovery” by Dr. Lois Tonkin. Figure 1 represents the mother’s grief and figure two is her prediction of what grief would look like as time passed.
Also from Dr. Lois Tonkin’s article. Figure 3 represents how the mother’s life grew around her grief
The figures show that the mother’s grief always stayed the same size, but that her life grew around her grief. Put another way in the article, her life expanded around her loss.
After reading through this article, I had an “Ah-ha” moment to quote Oprah. The loss I felt would always be big. It wouldn’t change in its big-ness. But my life could get bigger around it.
My dad is foundational to who I am. He is everything I wanted to be in life. Losing him felt like losing the air in my lungs and also all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. It felt like the ground underneath me had cracked open and I’m just going to be free-falling until the world ends.
The big-ness of losing him is terrifying. But I’ve realized shrinking my grief is not the point. And also not possible.
He may no longer be alive, but he is just as important today as he was when he taught me how to make pancakes when I was 5 years old. He may even be more important.
What I’ll try to do each day is to make my life bigger around the loss. And dear reader, I think I have in some ways!
A few months after his death, I started working with a personal trainer and I can now deadlift 105 pounds (I know, unbelievable, but I would NEVER lie to you!).
I made new friends.
I finally made a mug in pottery class I am not ashamed of.
I’ve gone out on dates (yes, I am single! I do come with a cat!).
I have found ways to add to my life. To feel the bigness of my grief. And to feel the bigness of my life.
So dear reader, I hope this resource resonates with you as much as it did with me. And that it gives you hope for a future where your life gets bigger around your grief.
And I’d love it if, in the comments, you shared one way that you’ve made your life a bit bigger in your grief. Or one way you want to make your life bigger! I’m here to cheer you on!
Big hugs!