Making space for grief
Originally posted March 7, 2022
As I wrote in one of my grief essays, ”sometime between the deaths of my father and stepfather, someone asked what I was doing for “self-care.” I stared at them. What were the options? Self-care was a laughable concept, the well of need inarticulately deep.”
I’ve been reflecting on my grief journey and remembered that the habits I’ve formed to help me process only started after my stepfather died. For me, with a traumatic loss amid the slower expected loss amid parenting a 2 year old and while writing grants on my second year on faculty…there was no space to grieve. It was as if someone had asked me to write a grant on a new topic “in my free time” without advice on how to write grants. The concept of self-care was insufficient in this context. As I went on to say in the essay, “It took one colleague insisting, and another rescheduling my meetings, before I took a week off: what would have been my father’s next birthday. Every day of this “grief sabbatical” I hiked and cried, until I could find words again.” After a bolus of processing, I was able to begin chipping away at the need.
“After my stepfather’s funeral, I began pursuing…not recovery, nor healing, but rebuilding myself around these wounds. No one had advice on how, so I started small. A yellow journal with a self-made calendar, aiming to record at least one activity daily from my list: exercising, therapy, journaling, meditating, crying, massage, acupuncture, and more; a visual summary of self-investment, of the effort of recovery.”
I never had a habit of journaling before these losses, but that colleague who had asked about my self-care mentioned that options included journaling, meditation, therapy. I kept gathering ideas from others about what could possibly help, and tried things out. I purchased a journal in a warm yellow that felt like sunshine. You can see an example of my calendar and self-care menu in the image for this post.
There are months where I forget to journal or track self-care, but in general I’ve kept up the habit of tracking daily investments in self-care for the last three years. It helps me to have this analog visual tracking system. The menu shifts over time based on what I’m finding useful.
It also helps me to have my tracking system in my a journal, so that I remember to write in it. If I don’t know what else to write, I write about things I’m grateful for, or things I want: these are things I forget to articulate to myself on a regular basis.
I’ve discovered that if I’m particularly angry or irritable or feeling on a knife-edge of grief, the boxes of my calendar are more empty, or if they have colors, there’s a lot of yellow indicating tears. This is usually a sign that I need some time for a break or a reset.
This, along with most other things I share, is not intended to be advice. I’ve learned with that advice is useless in grieving. However, what is useful is having a large and flexible toolbox so that we can try things out and see what works for us. Here’s another potential tool to consider for your own toolbox.