Missing is the Hardest Part

When you lose someone you love to the arms of death, you experience so many feelings, thoughts, and body sensations. Some are familiar and some are new. Some are understandable and some are confusing. Not only do you have to process the primary loss of the death, but there are other secondary losses that must be processed as well, like perhaps, financial gains or losses, changes in your social connections, loss of security, and changes in your view of God, the world, and others. But many people express that “the missing” is the hardest part and it opens the doorway to feelings of loneliness even when you are surrounded by others.

When social connections change, you might tend to withdraw and isolate yourself. Or, you might have friends with whom you do activities and friends with whom you can share your feelings (intimate friends), but then you come home to an empty house and the loneliness engulfs you. Before you know it, you’ve had one too many drinks of alcohol or one too many bowls of ice cream to try to numb the intense feelings you are experiencing.

According to my teacher and grief expert, David Kessler, there’s a difference between feeling alone and being lonely. There are times when all of us are alone for various reasons; it’s a common occurrence. However, feeling lonely is a longing for someone else. Sometimes, the longing is healthy and normal, especially in the first year or two of grief. However, over time, it can develop into an unhealthy preoccupation that leaves you abandoning yourself and having thoughts like “I’ll never be happy again” or “No one will ever love me like they did” which can lead to depression. The truth is the more you disconnect from yourself, the more you will develop a pattern of disconnection.

The truth is when you are in the first year of loss, it’s really difficult to do anything other than allow yourself to experience the pure grief – so know that this article is not for those in early grief.

The most common antidote to loneliness is connection and enjoyable time spent with those you love and those who love you back. But another thing that can happen when you feel loneliness is that you have abandoned yourself and stopped connecting with you!

It’s good to be there for others, but when you start to define your purpose around what you do for others, you can start to become other-focused. You can start “overing” – overdoing, overthinking, and/or overidentifying. But what if your purpose is not about what you do for others, but your purpose is in your God-given created being? The truth is you are right here, right now for a finite amount of time. You must decide how you will live out the remainder of your days with the unique purpose that God has given you! While you can’t change what has happened, you can influence how the rest of your life will be lived.

Since you have a limited amount of time, think about what kind of ending you want to write to the story of your life. Do you want to volunteer? Do you want to invest more time with your family? Regardless of what you choose, you are writing your story whether you realize it or not. And not making a choice, is a choice too. Ask yourself if you are willing to show up and live your life. The truth is no one can live it but you! Think about one thing that you can give to you. If you aren’t quite sure how to answer that question, ask yourself what someone would do to enrich your life if they showed up for you in the way you need them to.

Instead of thoughts like “I’m stuck with me”, what if you changed that thought to “I’m choosing me!” I remember David Kessler sharing the example that when you go to a city you’ve never been to before, you usually try to find things that you want to make sure you do while you’re there because you only have a limited amount of time in the city. It’s the same with your life. What is one thing you could do for yourself that you aren’t currently doing? Is there something you’ve always wanted to learn and could attend a class? What is a restaurant in town you haven’t visited that you could enjoy? Is there a state park you haven’t been to?

If you are struggling with choosing yourself, ask yourself why it’s so hard to choose you. You might need to enlist the help of a professional therapist or life coach to help you disentangle yourself from those things within that keep you stuck. More times than not, I have seen that grief activates old memory networks of trauma. If you think this may be your story, reach out to someone to get help. If you don’t think you can afford therapy, checkout Open Path Collective to see if there is a therapist in your area who participates. (There is a one-time lifetime fee that they collect and then they assess if you meet the need-based requirements.)

After reading this you may begin to think about doing something, but remember thinking about it and doing it are two different things. What if you decided to pick something and do it as a way to connect with yourself again? Even going back to what you enjoyed as a child can be a great way to reconnect, like coloring, mini golf, riding a bike, playing a game, or watching a favorite cartoon. If you can’t remember how to play, find a child under the age of 10 that you know (and whose parents know you) and ask if you can join them in their favorite thing to do.

One thing I do know is that the more you choose you, the more you will like choosing you! So, the question is “What will you decide to do?”