The grieving parents club: how to tell your story. Part 2
Your story, and telling it is important. We yearn for the opportunity to share our child, our grief, and to connect with others. There’s a scary desire to tell more than just the dry disconnected facts and include the emotion behind the story. But it feels vulnerable, and there’s a lurking fear that the listener won’t adequately honor your child’s memory. The problem is, if the telling doesn’t happen in one way, it will come out in another so here’s a chance to do it consciously and constructively. I know this firsthand.
It was New Year’s Eve. I know…I know it is so cliché. I wish I could take credit for planning my launch into 2006, but trust me, if I’d written the script it would’ve been much less sloppy and embarrassing. I don’t remember how it happened, but I ended up sitting crumpled on the stairs in the middle of a concert venue in the literal center of everything, attempting to force down the tears welling up. The tears quickly turned to uncontrollable, inconsolable sobbing. It was the ugliest of ugly cries. In mere minutes another new year would begin and my daughter wouldn’t be in it. I was surrounded by dancing strangers and acquaintances who either knew nothing or very little of my story. I was overwhelmed with grief and a feeling of utter aloneness – loneliness in my grief surrounded by hundreds of people.
I woke up the next morning mortified, but determined with one clear thought, “I will never let that happen again.” While I don’t do public emotion, I’d allowed myself plenty of moments for feeling and crying so this caught me completely off guard. My private sessions clearly hadn’t been enough.
Believe it or not, I am by nature a very private person. In spite of that, throughout Alison’s illness we’d let a lot of people in our lives. We’d needed the support and frankly, I didn’t have the energy to navigate setting boundaries. Shortly after Alison died, we had an explosive and visible divorce that our whole network of support was well aware of and in large part, involved in, to some degree or another. I felt overly exposed and vulnerable so I went turtle like, creeping into my shell. This crying debacle showed me it was clearly time to not only find people who would honor my story, but begin the process of writing it in a way that left me feeling good, not sobbing in a celebrating crowd.
I realized I’d been holding onto a story, a big story of my daughter, my grief and my strength, and the life that I was no longer living. It had all built up inside of me. I’d given it no real outlet outside of myself so somewhere my psyche had decided, whether or not I’d given it permission, to break down the dam. According to a wise sage, Mr. Willoughby, (of the series Outlander), “A story told, is a life lived.” On January 1, 2006 I decided Alison’s life would continue being lived through telling her stories.
From this moment forward, I was taking the reins and I didn’t want my story and the retelling of it to be focused on me as a bereaved parent or just the sadness of losing Alison, but the positive and good her presence brought me and the growth I’d experienced since her death. I was resolute. It was time for me to be in charge of my story telling – the content and the telling of it.
When a memory is recalled it’s also rewritten. Through recording and telling your story in a deliberate way you begin redefining your life in a meaningful way.
Through sharing your story you have an unique opportunity to establish safe connections and feel heard. And I would be remiss in not warning you, when Mr. Willoughby was asked if he would tell his story, he responded, “Not yet. Once I tell it, I have to let it go.” When you allow your story the freedom to move among the clouds, it releases its hold on you. You no longer carry its weight alone; it’s got its own legs to dance.
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