So earlier this week, I had my first therapy session with my old therapist about my grief over my grandmother’s death and I feel so much better now. It was really freeing to have a place where I could unload all of my feelings and not be concerned with overloading the person I was speaking to.

I told my therapist about how I seem to be having a grief resurgence and she explained that may be a result of some of the numbness of the initial shock and denial of my grandmother’s death wearing away. I hadn’t thought of that before but that makes a lot of sense to me.

I talked to her about feeling such despair over the loss of my grandmother that it scared me. She asked me what I did in those moments. I said I usually just laid in my bed and cried until it passed. She asked me if I ever thought about reaching out to someone in those moments. I told her no. She asked me why that was.

At first, I told her I didn’t know. Then, as I was sitting there, I realized it’s because I don’t want to be that vulnerable in front of someone else. This is a really weird realization for me because I will tell a stranger on an elevator something about myself most people would consider to be extremely personal. Also, of the people I talk to right now, the person who has known me the shortest period of time has known me for almost 14 years. There’s not too much I’m not comfortable saying to people who have known me for so long.

But, apparently, I’m not comfortable with them seeing me at rock bottom. And in my case, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I am so open with my thoughts, feelings, and everything else about me that I think it’s important for me to keep something for myself. People don’t need to know everything about me.

Since my session with my therapist, when I experience deep, dark moments of despair, they don’t scare me anymore. I know I’m going to get through them because I’ve gotten through them before. And I know I’ll get through them again the next time they come around.

These moments are just part of the grief process. It’s going to take a very long time for me to feel ok again and I’m ok with that.

As my therapist said, grief is not a puzzle you can solve, it’s a process.

I can’t wait to pour out more of my feelings in a week and a half when I have my next session.

P.S. Someone at work asked me how I was and I said, “I’m ok.” The person said, “Why just ok? I want you to be fabulous.” I said, “My grandmother passed away recently.” Then of course, he felt like an idiot and said he was sorry and gave me a hug. At this point, I’m enjoying watching people struggle to take their foot out of their mouth when they question how I feel and I validate my feelings to them (which to be clear, I do NOT owe them but choose to give them). It’s been an interesting social experiment to say how I really feel and watch people struggle to deal with it. It’s still shocking to me just how uncomfortable people are with someone being willing to express her true emotional state. But I already wrote about that. Lol!