Finding Others (Getting Help pt. 1)
The human brain truly is not equipped to handle intense grief on its own. We don’t have the vocabulary to express the intricacies and nuances of the experience (see: the fact I've needed to write multiple blog posts to even get a mild grip on things). In the early days, I could actively feel my brain compartmentalizing things and locking away certain worries or intrusive thoughts for a later date.
“Don’t worry about affording rent right now, you're good for at least a few months, focus on making sure you get dressed and have a shower (not in that order)”
- My Brain, probably
I thought of it as some sort of survival mechanism. My brain knew that I was in the midst of a hurricane within a whirlpool within an tsunami of worries, emotions, and stresses, and it knew it wasn’t able to handle it all at once, so it actively shut things away. I want to write in more depth about this part of things at a later date, but what I want to focus on now is how it became almost immediately apparent that this defensive action from my brain wasn’t sustainable. I couldn't keep putting things in boxes marked ‘Later’ forever, but also, I was in no way equipped to open the boxes that already existed alone. I needed help.
I went back to Glasgow for a month or so after Julie died to be with family, take some time to recover, and to step back from ‘real life’ so I could have a moment to think about what would come next. One thought that kept coming back again and again in a way that almost felt compulsive was that I needed to talk to someone who had been in my position. I yearned to speak to anyone who might be able to understand, or could shine even a dim light on what might lie ahead. It became almost obsessive. Any time I’d try and think about what comes next or what I needed to do, I would always default to, “I need to find someone like me”.
Most of this stemmed from feeling so truly alone in the whole experience, which makes sense. The “Widowed Before 30 Club” doesn’t have the largest membership, and is not a club that you go about boasting being a part of. You are surrounded by countless loved ones who want to help in whichever way they can, but ultimately fall short at the final hurdle. They don’t know what it’s like to live this experience. They can empathize, but at the end of the day, their life will continue mostly as it was before. The entirety of my life and what I had envisioned would come next had gone. I needed to know I wasn’t alone. I wanted to believe that things would get better.
This was meant as a joke, but honestly, there’s some truth to the fact that the idea that things could get better felt alien and impossible
This drive led me to Bereaved Families of Ontario (BFO), a free-to-access charity that provides support services for those who have experienced a loss. The real pull of BFO is that they are peer-led. All their facilitators are people who have experiences a loss in one way or another. Put simply, they ‘get it’. As soon as I found them, I reached out and signed up. I was paired up with a facilitator who had been through a similar experience as me for a few intake one-on-ones and it was a game changer. Here was someone who, when they said “I understand…”, I had no sarcastic response to, because they truly did know. They validated each and every worry, thought, emotion, and idiosyncrasy I shared and it truly felt like a weight was being lifted off of me. My experiences were ‘normal’ (in a highly abnormal situation to be fair), which was such a relief.
These intake meetings were done in preparation for an 8-week support group, the “Younger Spousal Loss (Under 55 Group)” (‘Younger’ doing a lot of heavy lifting when you realize you’re almost half the age of the cut off). Without a doubt, this was the single most impactful and restorative ‘healing’ steps I took after Julie’s death. Suddenly, I had gone from feeling completely alone to meeting and hearing from 10 other people who were in, or had been in, a similar place as me. Here were people who weren’t quite in the boat I was in, but we were definitely adrift on the same ocean. Absolutely everything was validated, here were people who did understand, they didn’t need to say they can only imagine how what it must be like, because they actually knew what it must be like.
They were also all at different stages in their grief. I was one of the ‘freshest’, while others were months, or even years, down the line. Now, I was meeting people who had managed to reinvent their lives, start anew and take ownership over their tragedy, turning it into a positive force of their beings. There was hope.
It also allowed me to shine a light back on myself in ways that I wasn’t expecting. While listening to everyone share their personal stories, I was overcome by how sad and tragic they all were. I even caught myself thinking, “my god, I can’t imagine what that must be like.” before realizing, “Wait… I know exactly what that must feel like…”.
Moments like these really reinforced the surreality of it all. But also these moments allowed me to better understand how my friends and family must feel towards me.
I found the whole experience transformative and invaluable. It by no means ‘cured’ my grief or made everything better, but I can’t stress enough how powerful that level of validation was. These were my peers, I wasn't alone, things will change.
I am indebted to BFO for the comfort and peace of mind they provided me. I highly recommend anyone who is experiencing a close, personal grief to try and find a group of people with similar experiences. Company really is the best medicine.