Category: Uncategorized
Noise of a 7yr itch…
6 years ago today, I accepted an award for the challenges, choices and changes I was making in my life. I accepted this award from my concurrent disorder support worker. A special hand on this journey, a crucial time in its beginning. An award she had nominated me for. An award I didn’t feel I necessarily deserved, yet knew I did all the same. I remember the feeling of that time. Tearing myself apart, inside-out, trying to grab hold of any kind of understanding of the 5 “W”‘s of ME. Something I had struggled in for several years prior. Self-image. Enduring trauma, it changed everything, including all I ever knew of me.
Looking back, I could never have known true impacts and how vast some are and can and would be. How long some linger. How quickly some seem to fade away. Almost any and every area of life. From minor to major details and scenarios. Every ounce of the heavy that is grief I have, still do and always will carry, it weighs in and impacts life.
If I have learned anything about grief it is this… Grief, is love. It is love with no place to go. It is what lingers in the absence of something we have come to know, so well. It comes in many forms, many scenarios, touches many facets of life and living in the thereafter of it, can bring us to places and scenarios we never dreamed. The good, bad and yes, the ugly.
The misunderstanding I still see, feel, receive… It’s never changing. I’ve just learned to adjust and adapt to what surrounds me. To LIVE, in a manner which my loves are safe. My grief is love. It is entitled to be safe. The grief I carry bridges into my living son. That love in grief, it carries us. We remember. We laugh. We cry. We allow our grief to BE. When you’re searching for a way of survival in unchartered waters, we grab what we can in hopes we can survive. I hang onto memories that brighten faces and spaces… I allow space for that. I forget my son is the BIGGEST piece of a love I grieve….. He IS a world in himself and what we always dreamed he may be and more!! His dad would be so bloody proud, and he is so much every part of his dad. I take that love and apply it to the grief I carry for a love of my life, in my life, that made him. It truly is the ultimate peace in grief. A living piece. I am blessed for it. I celebrate that. I am faulted for appearing “stuck” to the blind eye. Grief, it has its demons. And this scratch I’m itching is the result of 7yrs of a rough bloody go!
It’s been a ride and many strides across this pond. I look at that woman from 6 years ago and am proud AF of her for hanging on. For gripping on for dear life that time she felt she couldn’t hold on much longer, and the noise… ughhh the noise. The noise. the naysayers and the novelty of boundary crossing, well it has long worn off and the running to stand still I have felt bound to, it’s finally lifting. The hyper vigilance I feel in parenting, let alone living and being…. It has crawled over me too long. Regardless of why, how, when… all the shit that ppl just do not get, just know, this has all been enough to make skin morph to depths unseen.
6 years ago, I accepted an award, so naive to what was before me still. Seeing more depths of grief after the loss of a child proved too insane to process. I am pushing 7 years into what feels like the war of a bloody lifetime, the war within me, isn’t so much the noise anymore. This chart I’ve navigated, the heavy ass, pea soup thick fog of it finally falls away from my shoulders and the pond that fog sat over moves further and further behind. The good never fades. The laughter always carries. The love forever lives. This day, this hand on my journey, all the hands that have graced me…. good, bad, ugly… I know the ugly truth more than some will ever understand or give me credit for. And ignorance, especially in grief, will always be bliss.
Live real & laugh and love abundantly.
Forever grateful to the hands that grace this climb with loving support… you all know who you are!!
Brave, not strong…
If there were one thing I wish… it is that we could always see through our pain to the place of acceptance and peace… To not fall into the parallel of disorder, addiction or mental health when the universe and life seem to be dealing, shit cards to your hand…
Watching someone you love be lost and in pain is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I’ve experienced it’s depths with 3 people in my life who I hold near and dear. You are helpless to the choices another makes. It’s difficult to comprehend at times and is exhausting and draining trying to remind someone how worthy they really are when they are carrying a heavy dark soul.
I’ve seen pain. I’ve watched pain fall upon people and change their life in seconds, I’ve held pain and the heavy dark soul that can attach itself to it. It’s a massive dark cloud that does not go away easily. Every scenario has it’s venture, it’s journey through. There are always different stages and parts of any story. So many perceptions and perspectives on any given situation or scenario. We can get lost sometimes in the perspectives and perceptions from others, into our stories… we can sometimes lose sight of our own selves, our own thoughts and ideas while reveling in the world of others ideas, thoughts and/or judgements. It’s not a place to stay, however.
They say we are what we allow. Are we fully though?! Sometimes, shit happens. Sometimes, we have 0 control of what is occurring in front of us or to us. The power to control is not always in our hands. Understanding how to let go and let things just be is a very difficult concept to comprehend. We are programmed in ways to do for ourselves. However, we are not always programmed for healthy choice making or how to maintain healthy boundaries for ourselves with yourself or others. Making the healthy choice at a time of crisis or life being in disarray, for example, is not always the case for someone living in turmoil whether a chronic or isolated issue, making a healthy, wise minded decision or choice does not always come easily to someone in pain. Be it physical, emotional or mental pain. Finding the right stuff for yourself to keep going and in a positive way, can be such a difficult search.
I’ve said before what it’s like to have someone tell me “You’re so strong, I don’t know how you do it”.. Things such as this being said, for myself, is almost like a double edged sword. “You’re so great but, I have no idea how you take on this pain everyday.” Fact is, I’m not strong. The courage to continue when it feels like nothing is left to fight or continue for is one I battle everyday. Even though I truly do know now more than ever that there is so much left to hold on for, it still doesn’t bring my losses back. Holding on to that belief and hope is what makes me brave as hell to keep going at all, because there are many a day where giving up felt or still feels like the only option at all.
The courage to face a bad anything and the brave heart it takes to endure the ins and outs of that will never change for me. I keep going. Through what feels like the same ridiculous motions, over and over but, I didn’t come this far to only come this far. I have not endured this all for nothing. Great words of advice in healing and recovery “prove them all wrong”. This journey feels like the never ending story to me in ways and is always in motion even when I’m on stand still… I’m idling again at the starting line…. Running to stand still, is how I describe it to my counselor. Like the U2 song Jamie introduced me to years ago….
“And so she woke up, woke up from where she was lying still. Said I gotta do something
About where we’re going. Step on a steam train, step out of the driving rain, maybe run from the darkness in the night.”
Choose to believe, choose to see more, choose to see more within yourself. We are a force to be reckoned with when we carry courage and hope for ourselves and our lives. Finding the positive somehow within the negatives or the beauty within our pain can lift us to places we never knew existed. All because we shifted our perspective and choose to perceive differently than our norm. Maybe, it’s not happening to you, but rather, for you. It’s all about perspective. We’ve been through and endure so much more than just our traumas or life experiences. They can lift us to greater places.
“You will not always be strong, but you can always be brave.”
Beau Taplin
Grief is love, with no place to go…
Grief only exists where love once lived.
Piece buy every intricate piece, little by little, one day… sometimes moment at a time, we DO let go of our loss… but never of love.
In Litost….
I found myself in disbelief and shock late afternoon this past February 14. I was notified of the loss of a former love and friend. The past week has been a difficult path to navigate emotionally. Having minimal information to understand always makes things more difficult. However, by end of week, I felt comfortable and confident in the knowledge and acceptance I had made with the information I had.
2 days later, I found myself reading a message from a reporter from our local newspaper. Looking to write a story of my friend and his life and loss. He had been referred my way by a few unknown callers who stated that we were a couple,… seeing we were a couple in words, it choked me immediately and my heart immediately broke at this loss again and also at the idea of anyone looking for information I had made peace without knowing days earlier,
I found myself in heavy grief the past few days. For the loss of someone I truly loved and cared about. A friend who was there for me and me for him. Irregardless of outcomes, learned lessons, hard realities ….. when you know someone and you love someone no matter what, you always cherish the pieces that you had.
I always saw so much more than what my friend ever believed of himself and I used to tell him that all the time. It’s funny, because his career choice would tell you a much different story. However, sometimes we all wear masks as to not expose our insecurities and I am just as guilty as the next of the same along this way. I am grateful a mask was removed late last year and for the last communication I have that is the unmasked friend I knew and loved. I’m grateful I was able to say how much more he was to me than he believed and how much I would always care. The tears I have cried, will still cry, tell me just how much I did. Like I always said … “You always steal the show, Babe”…. I hope you are at peace 💜🙏🏼😇
I never liked Valentine’s Day anyway…
February 14th is forever significant for Jackson and I. Not to celebrate Saint Valentines Day. 4 years ago, we awoke to early morning door knocking to inform Jackson and I, we had lost another we love dearly the night before, February 13. Jamie was taken as abruptly and traumatically as the loss of my son, Brandon, a short 2.3 years earlier. Had I known than, what I know now…
The rumination; It has taken me to dark places and spaces. Ones I felt I’d never see or dare dream of coming across again. Even though I thought I had mourned my love for and within our relationship, Jamie.. he was my heart for over 10 years. One of my biggest supporters, my best friend and love of my life to the core. I was sorely wrong on thinking I had mourned anything at all. So. Very. Wrong.
The morning of February 14, 2018, I was suddenly flung into a confusion of more loss, disrupting the platform I had built-in healing and recovery from 2016 on and than…. it hit me…. Jackson. Jamie and I’s sweet boy. My everything, my mind, body, soul was disrupted to levels I’d not seen in the wake of Brandon. Jamie cared for and protected Jackson for me at that time. This time, I was on my very own and this was a massive reality for me to accept with confidence and hope because I knew from the wake of Brandon’s death, Jackson and I would NEVER, EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN, AGAIN. Ughhh…
I’d been there already, in the wake of loss. My childs loss at that. But, let me tell you the heavy I carried being back in the aftermath of loss again. Grieving, healing, recovering. A very frustrating deal for someone who battles mental health diagnosis’ and the desire to numb it all.
It’s been another 4 gruelling years. This ultimately stripped me of so much more than I could ever find words for, humbling me in a way that pained me so deeply into the roots and core, it shifted everything I had busted my ass for 6yrs prior. I had to reset, remembering everything I had and was working so hard for and why. I remembered what was important. It’s been another 4 years of this process for Jackson and I. Relearning. Rebuilding. Becoming, again. Therapy has been the key component to the successes that haven’t led me backwards. Being supported in healthy ways is a gift in healing that is second to none! Reaching out and believing in that help along the way is half the battle. We can let this shit make us, or, break us but I assure you, we cannot do it alone.
What we believe directly affects our environment. I believe there is hope still for all Jackson and I do while carrying forward from this foggy pond that has gripped me almost frozen under its dreary cloud. I believe there is still beauty to be found within our pain. I believe Jackson and I will thrive IF we can just hold on to that hope we still feel and have!
Once the shock began to wear down about 4 months later, My mental health spiraled. And FAST. I struggled to merely maintain, my anxiety, the heavy of complex PTSD and grief/loss, the hyper vigilance I gained (a big useless gift built from many symptoms shared through my complex grief, PTSD and my anxiety) I’ve slowly and gradually become more and more hyper in my vigilance 4 years later. I had it all back together prior to that day. I was flung back into a “protect what could implode our world yet again” almost robot, as a mom, as a human being begging for some calm from the universe. I became angry at ignorance, saddened by loneliness, mourned a human I felt the most connected to in my life and still wonder if I will ever find something quite like the happy that I got to feel when the going was good. I isolated. I cried, I talked to air. I drank, I slept. I over ate. I still do all these things. Feeling like you are morphing out of familiar skin into unknown is an experience I struggle to find words for. My brain has thought some fucked up thoughts, dreamed quite a few fucked up dreams and witnessed unmistakable trauma. But, right there, that’s where I finally begin, 6yrs into complex grief, to cut myself some slack for being self aware enough to know all those things. Remind myself that healing requires time. That grief is not and will not ever be linear. Refresh my exhausted mind of the intensive therapies, treatments and constant self work I have been involved in since 2016 The huge progress and strides that I’ve made and how proud I am of it all.
There’s a quote I’ve seen around..”Be everything you loved about the person you lost.”.. I can carry the compassion and love that Jamie so loyally gave me time after time, and be exactly that part of him that I fell in love with in 2006, when his face burned itself into my mind, my heart and my soul for the first time. I can carry those things and continue to embody them into our outstanding “not so little” boy, who, never fails to remind me, just how strong and resilient we are. I still cry if I need or want to and miss 2 very loved human beings who profoundly changed my view on life, love… on living.. I hope the heavens are beautiful for you both, above.
In loving memory of…
James Alexander Rohr
Novemeber 21, 1971 – February 13, 2018
Miss you, so much, My Jame
On 6 years…
6 years. 6 years of finding ways through. Through the thickest fog I’ve ever travelled through. Days of floating in beauty I’ve found. Nights drowning, pained, frozen like bound. Feels forever and a day ago and yesterday all the same. It’s entirely a clusterfuck to explain grief.
6 years. 6 daunting years of relearning living. Living after loss. Surviving circumstance. Fate beyond control. 6 years of flailing, falling, rising, life epiphanies, falling, life reflections, life rejection, standing up. beginning again. 6 years of befriending, battling.. an most unwanted, feared and intrusive reality.
6 years ago death knocked and was beneath my lips. A grievous tsunami to life without warning. The calm before the crash was newfound ground. Purposeful. Hopeful. The tsunami collided with life 6 years ago and took out every foundation I ever knew. Direction I had, gone. Clarity to navigate, next to impossible.
Grief handed me the most shittiest card grief can deal. In the world or “afterworld” of loss, child loss is acknowledged as the most “unimaginable pain”, irregardless of age, circumstance, any factor at all. Fact of the matter, out of order death does not promote the ‘typical’ life cycle we may know or believe in. We are born. We grow, learn, live life into golden years and pass away, in old age, completing the cycle of life categorized as natural
I believe any loss and the grief we carry from it, is no more unimaginable or painful than any other loss any one has endured. Loss is loss. It’s devastating and life altering. Losing someone we love to an out of order death, it has the ability to steal life entirely from those sitting in its wake and aftermath. And there is aftermath, unique to our grief journeys. It’s chaotic. It’s disorganized. It’s pea soup fog you row lightly towards, over and over and over hoping the ride somehow guided you out of that foggy marsh. It’s running to stand still on the shore of that marsh, unable to let go of the heavy cloud that desperately needs to be released so I am no longer running to stand still. A war within a love/hate relationship I hold with grief. A reaction to loss, the 24/7 buffet of emotion encompassing it. Six years. 6 years of making peace, embracing grief, tearing myself down, inside out, in desperate hope that any and every thing good that fell away from me, will somehow find it’s way back.
6 years later, what has fallen away I know and understand never find their way back. I’ll never be ok with the fallen pieces. The raw and real in my life, within me. its seems to have fallen away, in a way. I accept it and continue striving for peace and calm. I rebuild. Reset. Readjust. Refocus. As many times as needed. Moment by moment, day by day, month by month, year by year I have slowly but most assuredly, found understanding and perspective in this love/hate relationship I’m in with grief and, always will be. Without it grief, there’s no healing. Beauty within pain are words I first spoke 5 years ago. The idea that pain can bring beauty is ridiculous to some minds but, opening my mind to understand the reality, facts and details of my story and experience… it gave me the ability to see life after loss again.
Forever a work in progress, maintaining in traumatic loss is one of the hardest struggles I still face. I am leaps and bounds away from 6 years ago. So much change and challenge but what will never ever change in grief journeys, you are not here. Never changing. Never ending. Never a day has, Never a day will pass, when your face and spirit doesn’t grace my life or mind. It’s an undying rule for me that your loss taught me how to live again. It will always be the most beautiful part of the pain I have carried. Floating in that beauty, allows me to feel weightless. It’s a beautiful thing to feel, from the most unimaginable event, 6 years ago. It is the truest statement for me today, that the me today, is entirely proud and so glad, 6 years ago me, never gave up.
On Healing and Recovery…
It’s day 32 of lockdown and day 15 of the stay at home order for the province of Ontario, Canada. It feels like day 1000 to some. I know for myself, I’m beginning to feel some cabin fever in ways and frustration in the fact that I am off work, while our province gets its shit together.
I was in a VASTLY different environment during our lockdown here in 2020. 2020 was unkind to the majority and for so many different reasons why. The environment I find myself in during this 2nd lockdown is healthy. It’s filled with support, care and concern. Truth be told, I was battling my mental health, heavy grief I had not acknowledged and with those, addiction during the 1st lockdown. I was a walking concurrent disorder until the end of August 2020.
I faced nuisances from human beings I trusted and cared about and learned allllll over again what boundaries are and that it’s ok to enforce them for myself. I did just that and still had nuisances fighting those boundaries. A sign of non acceptance on their part, not mine. Hindsight is always 20/20. When it all came to a head at the end of August, as angry and hurt I was by others, I couldn’t be anything but honest with myself about my reality. My role in my own demise in 2020 was equally as harmful as the nuisances of others because the fact is, we are what we allow and life is all about the choices we make. My choices sucked!!!
In the wake of the exploding head in August, September brought some new light. Fresh light to a very dark world I was living in. I got back into intensive therapy with a local agency to address my ever declining mental state, the grief I was carrying and stuck in and my newfound addiction with an illicit drug, rather than alcohol this time. Not knowing how or where to begin again was paining me. Harming me and the environment in which I lived and cared for my son. My circumstance left me no other option or choice. I was forced to address it all. Much like an incident after my infant sons passing, it was the best thing that could’ve happened amidst a very shitty situation.
One of the largest bumps for me to overcome was feeling like I had done this work all before, only to bring me where I was again. It was difficult to understand how I could’ve fallen so hard when I knew better or thought I did at least. This is where my concurrent disorder clinician came into huge play. Reminding me upon my initial assessment (a 2.5hr process in which my truths fell) that I had lived and endured trauma of great significance and impact to my life. Reminding me my PTSD diagnosis was diagnosed for a reason and that my responses to trauma were valid, even if not healthy. What I laid on the table with my clinician that day, it laid the foundation for the recovery and healing I not only needed, but, also desperately wanted underneath my numb and cold mind, body and soul.
I find myself today, sitting here typing with clarity. The clarity I had 2 years ago today when I first created “My Afterglow”. A blog I dreamed of writing to not only help me, but, others too. To share my story of living after loss. To help remind everyone that there is a rise to every fall. To bring awareness to grief. A topic with so much stigma around it, no different than mental illness and addiction. That therapy with a professional is the healthiest choice to make to address all the issues and illnesses we may face, be it body, mind or spirit. That admitting we are not ok, is OK!! That it’s ok to not be ok and it’s OK to ask for help! It is by far the strongest thing I have now ever done for myself. Ask for help. Times are trying at the best of times and during COVID times the struggle becomes even greater for some who may never have experienced things like anxiety, let alone anxiety to just go get grocery’s! Reach out to professional and personal supports! Doing it for the 2nd time in my life, it saved me.
Happy 2nd Anniversary to “My AfterGlow”…. I’ve never been prouder to live my truths, to live and share my story and I hope 2021 finds be blogging more than ever before.
On Acceptance…
Of all the definition points of acceptance, I feel the most appropriate for grief would be “willingness to tolerate a difficult or unpleasant situation”. Noted under this definition of acceptance are words like tolerance, endurance, sufferance and forbearance. Words that seem to encompass the word resilience in ways.
It is my experience that in order to find acceptance, especially in grief, we must understand the pain and the changes to ourselves that has come from it. Pain changes people. Whether better to bitter or bitter to better, pain paves paths we never dreamt we’d walk.
Understanding and addressing my pain has been a battle for years and for many reasons however, in hindsight, at this moment, I’ve learned enough to understand and be self aware in a wise and healthy mind to make the choices that have brought me to these days I have been recently living that remind me of a place where I have lived before when life wasn’t a fogged bowl of pea soup to navigate daily. A place of happiness and calm. A place of belief and faith in the idea that life IS going to be ok.
Making peace with pain and acceptance of that pain is a difficult task in any scenario. Finding peace in child loss for example, has been quite frankly, the most painful hell for myself. I still struggle in it and may always. There’s an unspoken grief to child loss that seems to be a “faux pas” of sorts in “normal” life. People can’t fathom the loss of anyone let alone their children and it’s not spoken about near as often as it should be. Stigmas remain. There is shocking self doubt in even the bravest, an unspoken guilt in the aftermath of it. I have torn myself apart and down in the loss of my son because I could not save him and as a Mom, every instinct I have is to be that protective mother who had it sooooo together that she of course should, could and would save her child from sudden infant death syndrome. Reasonable, yes?! Of course not!! A coroner told me so however, that is the world of child loss and an example of how a mind created self expectations and doubt. Enough that it allowed me to lose discipline and control of myself.
All of the acceptance I have found has come because of some epiphany in self awareness and in healing. Perspective allows insight and in the fine and many many details we face in grief in loss or life, we need perspective in order to navigate a path of healing and healthy living. Acceptance is a regiment. It’s a daily affirmation and self routine applicable to any form of recovery and healing. It’s self discipline that can give so much clarity to a scattered and disorganized mind, body and spirit. Its utilizing professional and personal healthy supports. It’s believing and having faith that everything is going to be ok and after losing site of that twice in my life now, this round of lessons is making me feel like just maybe, the third time may just be my charm. Maybe I am resilient enough to endure and live the beauty of my pain. All I can do is believe.
When one door closes…
It’s the end of an era for Jackson and I.. Today, we said goodbye to our home for the past 3yrs. A small 1 bedroom space that was once a beautiful new beginning for him and I. It’s disappointing and upsetting that leaving isn’t anything but a bitter end.
The landscape of this space and the life within it has changed drastically since we moved in August 2017. We loved this space, I loved this space at one time. It was a solice, a clean slate, an accomplishment to be back in my own environment after recovery and healing. It was mine and Jackson’s home after a traumatic loss and so much turmoil and life felt healthy and intact again. It’s been an emotional morning looking back over a timeline that tells a sad story of a slow decline of what was fought so hard to gain. A product of more grief and losing sight of myself AGAIN, within it.
There is no question for me or the professionals I work with for mental health support that I am battling the hardest I ever have for my own state of mind. For my life, really. Harder lessons are a pill to swallow, especially in grief and loss and I am still making my peace with a few hands I’ve been dealt. Namely, Jamie’s loss and the heaviness that came with single, only living parent, parenting. Parenting while grieving one of the great loves of my life. I felt that pain everyday since I awoke February 14th, 2018. I am a product of what I have allowed, however that day, that moment I opened the door to Jamie’s death, it changed the environment and landscape of our home in ways I have desperately failed to get back. As a parent, it’s blown the wind out of my sails and I’ve failed my boy because of it.
I’ve been encouraged to remember the saying that when one door closes, another opens. Leaving here and closing this door is bitter, but, it is a welcomed end to a very tumultuous period of time and I am trying to have the perspective that I’m not ending anything, just beginning again. Taking an opportunity to walk through a new threshold in life and I’ve already begun to move forward into it.
Changing routines, habits, toxic environments. Getting back to the things I love like writing, playing baseball and remembering all the positive things I am and how capable I am of being so much more like I set out to do in 2017 when we moved in.
I feel brave and safe closing this door. Carrying huge gratitude and love for the ones supporting, loving and helping me do this, again. Especially, my cousin, Ange, who not only knows beginning again is not easy but, knows loss and how mine have impacted my life and why. She understands my mental health and how it and my grief has driven my addiction into an active overdrive again and HARD for the better part of the past year of my life. She knows my pain but, she also knows the courage and hope I hold and believes so hard in me she’ll be the first one to put my ass in its place or a foot up it and QUICK!!..if I waiver from what I need, want and am doing for Jackson and I moving forward. I love you, Ange and our friendship has kept me sane thus far through this chaos. I’m forever grateful for simply even that. The laughter is equally as healing, let’s never stop doing that or playing ball together please!!!
Closing this door to end this era of pain and sadness that has impeded so heavily is an easy one to pull shut. I’m desperate to do it and have been for so very long now. I’m tired of merely surviving. I’m beyond ready to open a new door to living a life that allows me to feel alive again and I’ve begun to do just that.
Every end is a new beginning.
AfterGlow 