photo credit: bonus1up

Often we experience personal losses (big or small) as if they were physical blows to our psyches, they wobble our equilibrium and give us pause – and enduring this period of grieving is a very personal and unsettling experience.  How we bounce back is also a very personal thing.  Here’s a glimpse into one person’s encounter with grief and relief.

After reading my post In a Pickle a few weeks ago, one of our readers (who prefers to remain anonymous) wrote me an eloquent email describing their own A-B-C-D-E.  S/he wrote (bolding by Ellie):

I just wanted you to know that your blog is helping someone else through some grief. While my grief is different than yours, I feel we share some similar pain in the process of healing. Your ABCs inspired me to write my own. It really helped me to focus on moving on, but at the same time [I could] allow the grief to be there. Grief is useful and temporary, but I need help reminding myself on that aspect.

But what blew me away was the “D” – Distract and Dispute passage:

Think of my grief as a wave and I’m on a surfboard. I must watch that I don’t lose my balance and become engulfed by the water. Water has power and can drown me. But I don’t want to drown, so I will stay on top of the wave of grief and let it carry me to the shore where I will be safe and feel stable. This wave will crash and I will have survived.  I will be stronger for having made it to shore unharmed. But I will never forget the ride.

WOW!

Just one short paragraph, seven sentences that speak an infinity of hurt and sorrow and hope and strength and HEALING – it surges with emotion, vulnerability, risk, self-preservation, danger and release. Again I say, Wow.

It brings to mind the words of Eric Allenbaugh, author of Wake-Up Calls: You Dont Have to Sleepwalk through Your Life, Love, or Career!

Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us — and those around us — more effectively. Look for the learning.

The reader’s email went on to say that s/he read the post and immediately started writing.  This visceral, almost knee-jerk response to the A-B-C-D-E tool says two things to me – insights I think we all might find useful:

• It’s a good thing, sometimes, to “Just do it!” Don’t think, just do.  And then, following one of my favorite mantras: “See what happens.”
• Apparently this reader was, at that very moment, READY to tackle some very intense, personal and distressing personal realities.

This convergence of receptivity and timing produced a breakthrough for our reader.

Resilience can (sometimes) be a slow process; we don’t always get an immediate bounce, sometimes we just have to roll with the punches and give ourselves the time we need to be “ready”.  There’s the rub, whether we want to or not, we often have to wait for our own “readiness” – and pushing ourselves to heal faster is futile.  And then, seemingly out of nowhere we get the bounce – a teacher appears and we respond.  For this reader, the teacher was the A-B-C-D-E exercise.

So I, reluctantly conclude that sometimes, for personal breakthroughs to happen, we must dial back our anxiety, endure our present discomfort and “let things be” for a bit, all the while LISTENING to our inner voices as they guide us on the path toward teachers and healing.

Take care, dear readers – listen to your inner voices and be open to whichever teachers come along.  And, keep in touch…