Permission to Mourn

July 14, 2011 Was the day I entered the wildness of grief, and I learned in order to get out you must go through.

As much as I’d like to tell you that grief will be orderly, neat and tidy, predictable, and unfold in five stages, it will not . Grief expresses itself in surprising and confusing ways. You must give yourself permission to mourn; you must choose to heal instead of choosing to stay stuck in that spot. You must choose to move forward.

I have had to decide to live many times since in the face of my daughter’s death. It’s a decision you will have to make too. Not just once. But over and over again choose life. Say yes. Life has other plans for you too.

Grief is wild and messy and unpredictable and uncertain and ever-changing and unsettling and unnerving.

There may be times when all you want to do is sleep, and there may be other times when you can’t sleep at all. There maybe be times when you can eat and eat and other times when you have no appetite at all.

When your arms physically ache to hold your beloved , when you have heart palpitations and stomach pains and fight to keep your balance, this too is grief.

You’ll think you are going crazy. You are not. You have entered the wilderness of grief. And in order to get out you must go through. You must give yourself permission to mourn.

It’s in the telling the story of what happened over and over and over again that you are able to see and come to know the truth, the magnitude of what has happened.

It’s important to comb through the details. To relive the sights, the sounds, and the smells. Go ahead and ask “Why if, and “Why didn’t I,” and “if only.”

Make sure nothing is off limits. Look in every corner. In every crevice. Turn over every rock.

So that nothing is secret or hidden. So that no part of the experience is hands- off or locked behind a closed door. Allow no part of the experience you’ve lived through to have any kind of power over you. Walk through all of it.

And yes, it’s painful. Especially at first.

But keep on telling your story. Over and over and over again.

And after much time has passed, and you’ve told your story more times that you can possibly remember, you will come to the day when you begin telling it again. Like you’ve done so many hundreds of time before, because you know that telling the story is a path to healing.

And you discover that you can’t tell it. Not one more time. You don’t have the energy or the desire, or the strength, or the need to tell it one more time.

You just can’t do it.

And with your exhale you say to yourself, this is what healing feels like.

I invite you to sit down in the chair next to me. And when you are ready to talk I’ll listen.

To all of it,

Permission to Mourn-Tom Zumba