The thing about the mental fog that comes with loss, loss of any kind, is that you can’t just rent a wind machine and blow it away. You can’t will it away, or wish it away. For that matter, half the time you don’t even realize you’re in a fog.
Nasty stuff, fog. And when it starts to lift, it tends to do what fog so often does. It rolls right back in again.
But eventually it dissipates for good, and then you’re left to figure out where you are, where you want to go next. Sometimes you even need to know who you want to be next, because you were in the fog for so long that your world changed shape while it was waiting for you to come back. Friends left. Your job changed. The world moved on because it exists in a fog-free zone. Lucky world.
I’ve always thought that the biggest failing of the 12 Step programs is that they don’t have a thirteenth step and a fourteenth step. Why stop at 12?
Because the thirteenth step involves leaving the past behind and joining the present. No one has written a program for that. But they should. Maybe Cee and I will.
Peace and many hugs, my friends.
Chris
Hi! Chris here. My life took a little curve last year (in a very good way), and that took me away from this blog. But it’s a new year, and I have a new focus that I can’t wait to share with all of you. Over the course of the coming week, I’ll fill you in on what I have planned. I hope you’ll be interested in it.
I had a wonderful story to tell you for today’s post, but Cee distracted me with another blog that deserves to be recognized for exceptional writing. I would like to present 
Just as we have to allow ourselves to feel the pain of loss, so we also have to be willing to feel the lightness of laughter when it comes. Staying sad won’t bring anyone back into your life. But as we take those steps to recovery, smiling, laughing, enjoying life once again are natural outcomes. And let’s be honest, isn’t that why we’re all here? To go beyond the loss?
Many blessings and lots of cyber hugs!
Something I hear quite often from the grieving parents and children I work with is that they can’t remember what their loved one sounded like. They have plenty of pictures and other mementos, but they are missing a voice. I’ve seen children become quite upset by that, as if their parent will be truly gone only when they are no longer heard.
Many hugs!
It’s taken years, but Cee has convinced me that taking baby steps is much better than trying to quantum leap over life’s challenges. She’s so smart! Baby steps, to me, were things people did when they were sick or feeble. Not so! There is a wonderful advantage to breaking things down into tiny steps instead of trying to take the world by storm.
Many hugs and a big smile,
Loss and the grief it causes tend to create a lot of pressure inside you. You have so many conflicting thoughts and feelings bouncing around that you start to feel like a tea kettle that is ready to boil, and sometimes like you’re going to explode. And since loss and grief accumulate, if you don’t do something to complete them, the pressure can be overwhelming. That’s when people look for ways to relieve those feelings inside. Everyone does it some way or another. Alcohol or drugs are hugely popular choices. “Retail therapy”. Too much binge watching of television. Other types of escapism. Sex. Working extra long hours. We all find ways to dull the pain and tension that come with grief.
My coping mechanism was eating, because it seemed like the only fun thing left in my life. I started with some overeating at the beginning but that sunk into eating all the wrong foods. It was easier to walk to the car, drive to a fast food place, and walk back into the house with a bag of unhealthy food than expend the energy to cook. That took planning. And caring. Two things I didn’t have much of back then. So now I’m overweight, addicted to taking the easy way out of meal planning and now sure how to unravel that.
I decided to try the Instant Pot (IP), just to see if it made it easier to get things cooked. And it does. It is amazing. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s an electric pressure cooker that has replaced my sauté pan, rice cooker, crock pot and soup kettle. It’s incredible, and reduces cooking time. I can grab some frozen chicken breasts, throw them in the IP and have them perfectly cooked in about 10- 12 minutes. From frozen. Go figure! No fuss, no muss. I can add it to a salad for lunch and I’m done. I can focus on eating healthier instead of creating excuses.
I heard Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game” playing the other day and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. (The song and lyrics links are below.) It speaks so much to loss and grief. It’s a poignant song about a young boy growing to manhood and how his hopes and dreams are changed by the losses he encounters going through life.
I have been a Grief Recovery Specialist for nearly twenty three years. The loss of a grandchild was the catalyst for me, an event that started me on this life-saving work so that I could help others. My loss history is lengthy: I’ve lost parents, a 2-year-old niece and a 25-year-old nephew, a brother, other family members, pets, jobs, lifestyles, husbands, friends, trust, and patients. Now, as I move deeper into my mid-seventies, I am becoming more acutely aware of the losses associated with aging.
The most obvious loss in aging is the fact of limited time on earth. It becomes more real that gravity is chipping away at us. There are subtle and not so subtle clues that we are disappearing. One of my friends talks about the invisibility in this elderly period of life as we are embedded in a culture of youth. “When people talk to me, I don’t feel like they see me.” Others say they don’t recognize the person in their mirror. “Who is that old lady? I don’t feel like what I am seeing.” Friends complain that their lives are narrowing, that doctor visits are crowding their calendars. Some are losing their joints and other body parts. They are getting hips and knees replaced, cataracts removed, hearing aids fitted, open heart surgery. Almost all of us have arthritic changes, we lose flexibility and dexterity, we lose cadence when we reach for words that don’t come as easily as they used to. We are generally slowing down. We adapt to the gradual losses, but as I am wont to say hoping to lighten up with dark humor, “None of us is getting out of here alive.”
When we talk about 
