⌛️ It has been 842 days, 13 hours, and 41 minutes. Roughly 2 years, 3 months, and 22 days. But the trauma, the slow agonizing torture, started for me more than five years ago with his terminal brain cancer diagnosis. It blindsided us.
If your person was ill for a while, you know what I mean. If your person died suddenly, that is another kind of hell.
Both different, both horrible.
I personally lived in terror every day for more than three years, and in the two years since he died, in deep grief. My mind and body have’t recovered, haven’t forgotten.
Recently, I’ve been getting annoyed at myself for not remembering things. Our kids love to make fun of me for forgetting something they “just told me.” I have to remind myself of one of the thoughts that has helped me survive this far, and has helped me explain my experience to people who have never gone through it.
“Grief is a Traumatic Brain Injury”
In the spirit of not remembering where I heard it, I think it was on a podcast, or somewhere along the way someone said: “Grief is like a traumatic brain injury.” Aha moment. “Yes, that makes so much sense!!!” I said to myself. The widow fog 😶🌫️, the inability to make simple and hard decisions, the difficulty knowing what you need when friends or family ask.
T.B.B.S.I.
I then added my own layer and concluded that, to me,
Grief is a Traumatic Brain, Body, and Soul Injury
Me 😊
Let that sink in for a second… It may resonate with your experience.
Whenever I get frustrated with myself for not being productive or sharp, I sit with this thought. And I have so much grace and compassion for that girl. The one who left it all on the battlefield of a rigged war against a cruel enemy. The one who was trying not to drown in the middle of the worst storm of her life, pulling her two kids along with no life jacket. The one who had to say goodbye to the love of her life, way before he took his last breath.
Now, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but I do know this:
There is no ICU for the soul,
No bandage for a broken heart,
No cast for a grieving body.
Otra vez, Me 😊
With the passage of time grief gets harder to spot. There are days when I don’t want anyone to know what I’ve been through. I just want to be me, the woman without the trauma, the loss, the grief. On those days, I want to scream to the world, in the loudest voice possible, “I’ve been through the worst. Nothing can break me.” 🤬
And there are days when I wish everybody could see the weight I am carrying, the deep pain I am feeling, so the @$$hole driver doesn’t cut me off in traffic, or the person with the nasty attitude finds a little compassion. On those days, I wish I could wear a label that reads, “Fragile. Please handle with care.”
“Fragile and Bad@$$”
Maybe we’ll create a pin we can wear, or a reversible t-shirt: “Fragile, please handle with care” on one side, and “Badass widow/er, you can’t break me” on the other. We would choose which side kind-of-day it is.
Because there are still days when it is really hard to get out of bed. Days when I don’t want to be an adult. Days when I want to escape my life by sleeping or binge-watching. Days when I can’t make a decision as simple as whether I want or can make cafesito ☕️ . There are still days when I don’t want to face the reality that I am a young-ish grieving widow, raising two grieving teenagers on my own. And then there are many nights when I can’t sleep, still…
It is so validating to know that science now confirms that trauma lives in the body and hijacks the brain.
So on days like today, I remind myself to be my own best friend. To take care of myself, mind, body, and soul. To give myself grace and compassion first, then offer it to the world, maybe…
This was truly a grief dump. Gracias and lo siento!. I don’t really have a point to this writing or maybe I do…
It’s a dish of scrambled thoughts 💬 with a side of trauma.
If it doesn’t make sense to you today, I am 🏷️ “Fragile, please handle with care.”
If it rocks the literary world 🤣, I am a “Bad@$$ widow. Nothing can break me!!!”
Hasta la próxima! Until next time ✌🏼 Peace.
