Grief affects so many things. What’s happened to your interest in participating in social media? Are you normal if you can’t stand it anymore?
Quitting or taking a break from social media is #perfectlynormal in grief.
There are more reasons for doing this than we have room to list. For many grieving people, taking a break from social media is an act of self-care. Another thing some grieving people decide to do is create new accounts for themselves, under a different name, so that they can participate in grief support communities privately or simply be online without having to see or interact with people they know.
How about you? Have you ever taken a break from social media (or wish you had) or created new user accounts? The more we talk about this stuff, the more we tell the truth about what grief is really like, the more people realize they’re not alone.
Grief is hard. It impacts every aspect of life, big and small. There are so many things grieving people experience, things they do or don’t do, that they (or the outside world) might think are unusual or weird, but are actually perfectly normal. You aren’t weird. You’re grieving.
The problem is, people often don’t realize they’re normal until they discover they aren’t alone in feeling a certain way or doing a particular thing. And feeling alone makes grief even harder than it already is.
Because it’s such a relief to find out we’re not alone, we’re creating a series of posts acknowledging as many of those things as we can, one #perfectlynormal thing at a time.
Want to share something with project #perfectlynormal?
Contribute here.
Submissions are anonymous. Share as many things as you like.
These posts were created using personal contributions people just like you and from our awesome Grief Revolution patrons. My patrons get to see everything we create before anyone else, suggest topics to cover in future projects, participate in live Q&A sessions, and more. Join the Grief Revolution at patreon.com/megandevine/
Megan, I am 80 years old. I found your book while searching for something to help me find my way through the devastating loss of my adult sons. Scott to heart failure age 55, 11/13/16. Mark to pancreatic cancer age 56, 1/25/19. Between those two losses, on 8/3/18 my daughter ChrisAnne 55, suffered a serious fall with fractures of wrist, knee, ankle, and worst of all, a concussion that went undetected for 6 mos. Those around her, including her medical team, attributed symptoms to grief and depression. That is the back story. I found myself living the worst nightmare one could imagine. For 2 years I searched for anything that could help me live the nightmare. Just about the time, I felt like I could breathe my daughter suffered her fall. At about the same time, Mark began having GI discomfort and was misdiagnosed with an ulcer. It was in October 2018 I realized somebody had to be missing something. By that Thanksgiving, Mark was very ill and finally, at UPMC in Pittsburgh PA, he was Dx with pancreatic cancer. I will go to my grave wondering if I missed it because I was focused on his sister’s issues or was it just as sneaky as it’s said to be. And in Dec 2018 I had to have my cat put to sleep.
The search continued for something to help me deal with the loss of two sons and ways to handle platitudes and thoughtless remarks. Nothing seemed to speak to me – until I found your book. I got the sample on my kindle. I read things like “somethings cannot be fixed, they can only be carried.” How “it’s as bad as it seems.” ” How broken our society is.” The title got my attention, but I still almost passed on it because you had lost your partner not your son. And I was trying to find something to help me through the loss of two sons. Yet there was something drawing me to your writing. Perhaps your intellect, your way of connecting to the reader, how real your story and especially your pain was.
I had a beautiful network of friends, I had my faith, but that wasn’t enough. I had shared some of your writing with my therapist; she was touched by your work. so much so she bought the book and loaned it to me. I read it and mentioned it to friends. One of my friends actually gave me a gift card for Amazon to buy the e-book. I
m on a very fixed income and every extra I get goes to my daughter as she is still only working part-time and has a lot of therapy costs. I have read the book, listened to the book taken notes on the book and my therapist and I are doing a mini book review as it were. My therapist is convinced this book should be required for anyone studying to be a therapist. I am so sorry you had to suffer your loss in order to be able to write this book. I’m sorry I had to suffer my losses in order to find your book. I was very broken, with your book, my therapist and many hours of hard work I’ve somehow kept my sanity. I never once thought of taking my life because I have a beautiful daughter, 1 beautiful granddaughter, and 3 beautiful grandsons. my sons had 2 children each and they had spouses. So I felt I had to be strong for them. Having said that, I will say there have been many a night and morning I’ve thought it would be ok if it were my last. Yet I’m OK with being here for as long as is my lot.
I’m still numb, but I’ve had to continue to work at living. On page 152 of It’s OK – you wrote: “creative practices can’t fix you and can’t bring back what you’ve lost, they can help you find a way to live what has been asked of you.” I try to remember that each day. You would be hard-pressed to find a woman anywhere blessed with sons and a daughter, grandchildren, dtrs-in-law, and friends as I have been. I am not able to work and have been widowed since 2007. Not a day passes I don’t think of my husband and sons. I’m sure they are together.
Having read your book I found a path to peace and gratitude. I hope someday I might be able to take your writing course. While that may never happen I will be forever grateful for having found your book.