I’m Not Okay, and That’s Okay

I was scrolling through Facebook the other day. Just another mindless activity to occupy my mind so that I don’t fixate on my loss and grief. As I flipped from reel to reel, I didn’t really stop to take in what I was looking at. Until I came across a picture and text that froze me in place.

The picture showed mourners surrounding a coffin on a rainy day. The text read …

“A grief counselor revealed what people ACTUALLY NEED after loss (and why almost everyone gets it wrong):”

I sat there staring at the screen on my phone. Waiting for the miracle answer to arrive. What was it that I needed? I was saddened when the answer did not come. The same music looped through again and again and still no other text appeared on the screen. Eventually, I opened the caption, and this is what I found …

“Stop asking ‘how are you’ if you already know the answer is going to be terrible. A therapist explained that grieving people are often drained from pretending everything is okay just to make others comfortable. One woman said she started automatically saying ‘fine’ because telling the truth made people feel uncomfortable and distant. What she really needed was someone to say, “I know you’re hurting. I’m here anyway.’” (1)

I stared at the caption thinking of how I present myself to others, what I’m truly feeling daily, and what is it that I need the most.

I know that in public I probably seem pretty put together. I’m grocery shopping, getting my youngest to school and attending school events, attending to my dogs’ health, paying bills, and working. Our home is clean, laundry done, yard managed, and dinners cooked. I’m actively working with Adam and the board members for Alana’s nonprofit. I even went out and found a new job, completing all the transition requirements from one job to the other.

On the surface, our family probably looks like life has continued. We are managing all the daily aspects of life that we are expected to by society. Every morning when I drop my youngest off at school, we hug and I tell her that I love her. Some days she teases me. Other days I remind her of after school activities we have. My husband decided he wants to play weekly bags events with his sister and brother-in-law. My youngest’s friends come over to hang out or have sleepovers. Alana’s friends will text, stop by or call periodically. On the outside I’m sure we look like every other typical family.

What people don’t see is the struggles we endure every … single … day.

In many ways I feel like my identity was shattered on September 3rd. Many of the things I have loved and enjoyed since I was a child were activities that I shared with Alana. She, in many ways, was my mini me. Now many of those things remind me that she’s not here anymore. They remind me that I will never get to do those things with her again. Every time that happens my heart shatters all over again.

I went from being an avid reader to refusing to pick up a book. Many times, over the years I would take my daughters to the bookstore to treat them to a book and snack from the café. As Alana grew into being a reader herself, she and I would often go to the bookstore for some mommy daughter time. Now … I can’t touch a book without thinking about her. I refuse to go into a bookstore. It has been six months since she passed, and I haven’t read a single book in that time. I have tried a few times to start a book, but I have zero desire to read and finish them.

In so many aspects of my life, I see all the places that Alana “should be” and no longer is. It guts me time and time again. I struggle to interact with many parts of my life … parts of who I was before her passing. Every single day is a reminder that she is gone. I try to “force” myself to do all the things I did before, but, in the end, I just can’t do them. It is like the part of me that spent time with Alana was hollowed out when she passed. In so many ways, I feel empty. When I look in the mirror I see a stranger. That silly, happy-go-lucky, music-loving, book-obsessed, adventurous person no longer looks back at me. In her place is a shell. Moving through the motions and pretending as if life didn’t deliver her the greatest fear and nightmare of any loving mother.

In so many ways things would be easier if it were just aspects of life or the activities I decided to do or not. Instead, there is an emotional battle raging within me. It is something that no one can see, and I feel so much pressure to just “act normal.” To not allow my emotions to get the better of me, so I don’t upset others or do things that could make my life worse.

The reality is that I have an insane amount of anger boiling inside of me. That being said, I know that snapping at others or getting into fights won’t make anything better. So, I fight to keep the rage in check. Over the weekend, on an unseasonably warm day for northern Illinois, I decided that I would cut down some bushes. I thought if I released all that pent up anger on the bushes that maybe I might feel a little bit of relief. After cutting them down I walked over to Adam and burst into tears. The realization hit me that despite trying to direct and release my anger in a healthy way, it didn’t help. I said to him as I cried, “It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t seem to stop. Because in the end she still isn’t here.” He hugged me as he said, “No it doesn’t.”

A random blood clot from a broken ankle, something that I was told there is a 1% chance of happening, stole my daughter from me. And I’m absolutely furious about it! I’m furious over the unfairness of what happened to my family … to MY daughter. I find myself becoming angry when I see other parents that are taking for granted the time they have with their kids. Or how other people survive situations while my daughter couldn’t be saved. The worst part of all of this for me is that I’m not normally an angry person. It usually takes a lot to get on my nerves or upset me. Feeling this kind of anger isn’t like me.

Then there is the jealousy that I feel. Like with the anger, I’m not typically a jealous person. I’m usually a “to each their own” kind of person. Now … every moment that other parents get with their daughters I feel myself become insanely jealous. I crave those moments with Alana, but I know I will never get them. I try to be happy for others, but jealousy tends to win out most of the time. As the world continues to turn, there are family members and friends of ours getting married, having kids, buying homes, coming out on the better side of health conditions. When we are notified of these moments, I feel jealousy rising within me. It is such a foreign reaction for me that I often feel rocked to my core when it happens.

Then flowing underneath all the anger and jealousy is my sadness. A never-ending stream that steadily flows. At six months the pain hasn’t lessened. I’ve learned to hide it better or tolerate it more, but it is still as strong as it was on September 3rd. Like the sadness, my tears flow every day. There are the constant reminders of her passing. The bedroom that stays clean because she’s not living in it. The lack of emails from the high school about her grades or school activities. Her cell phone that remains quiet and steadfast by the T.V. The emptiness that stands in place of her smile, laughter, jokes, “fun facts” or stories. Then there are the random moments that blindside me. A song, memory, joke, TV show.

There was a day in the last week, as Adam and I got ready for bed that I realized it was the first day I hadn’t cried. Sitting dumbfounded, I told Adam that I hadn’t cried today. That was when the tears started to flow. The guilt was overwhelming me, making me feel like the worst mother ever. If I don’t cry for Alana, then I felt like I was forgetting her. I’m fully aware of how irrational that thought is. That being said my mind and feelings are often at war with one another. I understand that my feelings are irrational, unfair, or coming from my grief, but the feelings still come. The anger. The jealousy. The sadness. Experiencing all these feelings day in and out is exhausting.

All of these moments. The struggle to connect with myself. The overwhelming feelings. I have many moments when I feel like a giant mess or an asshole. In one of my angry moments, I told Adam what I was thinking and how it made me feel like the biggest asshole in the world. He told me that in some Reddit threads he’s read about grief and loss that many people have shared having similar reactions. That I’m not alone in my experience. Another day, I sat in my SUV sobbing on the phone with a friend. She asked me how I could expect myself not to be angry. Then she told me that every time she thinks of what my family is living through and the unfairness of it all, she starts to cry and get angry herself. I broke down and told her there are many times that I wished I would have passed instead of Alana. Or that the situation was one that allowed me to pass with her. I had been hiding these feelings from everyone. I didn’t want them to worry about my mental health. She paused and told me that if one of her children passed, she didn’t know how she would continue to live without them. As she’s expressed to me many times over, she doesn’t know how I was doing it. How it is that I’m still functioning despite the fact that I lost my daughter suddenly and tragically. Another bereaved mother reached out to me when she saw we had hit the six-month mark. In our exchange I opened up to her that Adam was watching Avengers End Game. I told her that when the scene came up with the big snap and people turning to dust, that I wished I was able to turn to dust too. That way I could be closer to Alana. If I was dust then all the feelings, thoughts and struggles swirling inside of me would go away. She told me she often feels that way too. A moment where I was facing intense fear about opening up, thinking that she might think I need to go to the hospital for suicide watch, faded.

What I’m learning is that I need to be okay with not being okay. I need to learn that it is okay to feel so utterly shattered. That the anger, jealousy, sadness and whatever other feelings I might be experiencing are truly justified. The challenge is to allow myself to be okay experiencing it all without letting it consume me. In that same SUV conversation, I told my friend that I now understood why people become so mean after losing a loved one. Why they end up closing their hearts to others. Or how some people “are never the same.” What I didn’t tell her is that I have struggled since the day Alana passed to interact with one of my dogs. He was a birthday gift that a 7-year-old Alana adamantly expressed to Adam that I needed following the passing of my other one. Now he is a living reminder that she is gone. I feel awful that I’m like this now … but maybe it is more of a natural response than I think it is?

What I’m also learning is that I really truly do not need people to ask me how I am doing. I don’t have the energy or desire to fake being okay to avoid creating discomfort in an interaction. I, personally, don’t need additional reminders that Alana is gone. There are so many reminders that I face on a daily basis, any additional ones add to the overwhelmingness of it all. What I do need is for people to continue to show up. To be willing to talk to me during my worst and darkest moments without judgment or the desire to fix it. As oddly as it may sound, the times when others have opened up about their grief with losing Alana have been some of the most validating interactions that I’ve had. One of her friends sent me a song she wrote for Alana. Another friend sent a picture of an ornament that someone gave him. That person made the ornament to honor and remember her. In these moments I feel less alone. I feel like others know, in some way, the struggles I’m facing. They can understand my struggles because in some ways their world shattered that day too.

And I have to say, I don’t have words for the appreciation I have for every single other bereaved mother that had the strength and willingness to reach out to me. Sitting here writing this, I would like to say I think I could be that person for another mother … but I don’t know if I could. Maybe someday? Right now, I know I can’t. I try to imagine for them what it is like having to live through this pain only to watch another mother go through. What reminders, wounds, memories does being there for me open for them? I can’t imagine. I am forever grateful for their love, strength and kindness that they have all shown me.

In one grief book that I was reading shortly after Alana passed, the author expressed that our society is addicted to happiness and joy. (2) I think that it is that addiction that adds so much pain and suffering to the world. How many people are struggling and trying to pretend it’s all fine just to appease those around them? When the reality is that not being okay in the face of challenges, heartache and loss is normal. As much as I need to learn that it is okay for me not to be okay, I think the rest of society needs to learn to grant people that same grace because the journey is harder and more complicated without it.

1 – Facebook page; Psychological Treatment

2 – Bearing the Unbearable by Joanne Cacciatore