Thursday, August 4, 2011

On Grieving

I conveniently saw my doctor the Wednesday after my mom passed (I hate the word died, it seems insensitive for some reason) and after I started crying in her office, she asked me what was wrong and then suggested I speak to a therapist.  I figured what the hell and scheduled an appointment that took place on Tuesday.

I should point out a few things.  I have never seen a therapist in my life and I suspect that hardly anyone in my family has either.  It's kind of taboo, something we associatedwith mental illness and weakness (no hate please).  We much prefer to suffer in silence and deal in our own ways.  We hardly ever talk about feelings.  I didn't tell my dad I loved him until 2001 (on the phone).  We'd always just say "Bye".

Because of this, and the way mid-westerners tend to be (it's that Lutheran background or something), I don't really express how I'm feeling at any given time.  C even tends to agree with that, telling me that it takes a lot to get inside me & my head.  So I felt pretty weird going and wondered just how it would go.


I'm still not sure how it went or even what I'm trying to get out of it.  I suppose I want validation for my feelings.  I want to be told that it's normal.  I want to be told that I'm reacting in a proper way, no matter what I'm doing.


There's such a stigma about grieving and I feel like I should have fallen apart and not showered or gotten out of bed for 3 days or something and I didn't.  And this was my own mother!


I'm seeing her again next week and we'll see how it goes.  At some point I need to figure out exactly what I want and if we're getting there.  I need to see if it's helping.

1 comment:

  1. If you feel like you need to, do it! I know there were a couple times that Adam would notice (when he'd take his eyes off the PS3 for a second or two!) that I wasn't sitting on the couch anymore (I didn't move much at first after the c-section, and when I did it was pretty slowly) and would search me out. He'd find me in bed with a box of tissues. There wasn't anything he could really say or do. Sometimes he would coax me out of bed, sometimes he would let me sob a little longer. Take some time this weekend and let it all out if you want. I'm not sure if it helped or not, but it was what I needed at that time. Not everyone needs/wants that. Adam would just want to get away from it and not think about it. Which was hard for me at first, cause I wanted to talk about her. But I think we've come to a point of understanding between the two of us where we know what each other can deal with and when.

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