How do I “get over it?”
As she drove home from work, Lynn was thinking that life was good. In the past few months, she’d moved into a new townhouse, received a promotion, and started dating a wonderful man. But just as she turned onto her street, the radio began playing an old Michael Bolton song that pushed open her memory bank.
On the night they met and fell in love, she and Gary had danced to that song. Several years into their marriage, he had pulled her from the dinner table and begged her to dance again as the song played on their stereo.
She could still see his blue eyes sparkling as he swung her around the kitchen while they danced on the brown tile floor. One month later, it was on that same floor that she cradled his head in her arms and felt his life slip away at age 42 from a massive heart attack.
Even though five years had passed, hearing that song instantly brought a crushing pain into Lynn’s chest. A tear slid down her cheek, followed by another.
The moment she pulled her car into the garage, she buried her head on the steering wheel and began to sob. She cried for those blue eyes and his gentle touch, and for her sadness of having him taken away too soon.
Finally, she stopped crying and tried to pull herself together. As she snatched her briefcase and stumbled into the house, she thought, “What’s wrong with me? I should be over this by now!”
Getting over it
In reality, no matter how much time passes, you’ll never be “over it.” Even after you’ve recovered and moved on, you’ll always carry some leftover grief in your heart.
When you grieve a loss, you gradually move down a healing road. To understand this process, imagine a long path that’s divided by markers at various points. Each marker represents the amount of healing you’ve accomplished so far.
At the time when the loss occurs, you step onto the path at the zero percent mark. When you eventually reach the end of the path, the marker at the end would signify that you are 100 percent finished with your grieving.
If you’ve experienced a major loss in the past, see if you can follow your healing progress by relating it to the markers on the path. Use this chart to help you see where you are in your healing.
Begin by picturing the time you experienced the loss, followed by the early days of agony and emotional pain. After those initial weeks, you began moving along the path, gradually inching forward until you reached a healing level of 10 or 20 percent.
As more time passed, you continued to make progress, moving slowly to the point of 30, 40, and on up to 60 or 70 percent of your healing.
At the 80-percent mark, you probably feel like you’ve healed and that much of your grief is behind you. But this is where you stop.
I believe most people never move past that point in their healing work. That final 20 percent is where you hold your memories. It also represents the love and meaning you originally felt in the relationship or situation, even if it was years ago.
It’s that last 20 percent that makes you choke up, even years later, because you see a forgotten photo or, like Lynn, hear a favorite song on the radio.
In my own life, it’s what causes me to cry on Mother’s Day or when I visit my father’s grave. In other words, you never “get over it” completely.
Knowing you don’t ever have to be “done” with grief gives you a tremendous sense of freedom. Those shadows of grief are important because they remind you of the love and memories you still hold.
Eventually, that 20 percent may open up less often. But when it does, don’t fight your feelings. Instead of pushing to get past them and forget your loss, remind yourself they are part of your healing.
Help for the holiday season
If you struggle to deal with grief and loss during the holiday season, I encourage you to look for help and support.
A wonderful organization called “GriefShare” provides grief recovery seminars and support groups throughout the US, Canada, and in over 10 other countries. They do special programs to help people during the holiday season.
Click here for GriefShare resources