Last week, I was talking with an acquaintance about a messy situation she'd experienced a few years ago. While she didn't lose a partner to death, she did to a very unexpected breakup that she felt blindsided her. Although it happened over two years, she feels like she's still working through a lot of the emotional aftermath. "My friends say I'm stuck," she told me, "but it doesn't feel like I am."
As we talked more, she mentioned she hasn't really been interested in dating since then and likes to be alone a lot more often. And while I get why her friends may think she's "stuck," I agree that she's not, and here's why: she's resting and recovering.
In the aftermath of my 2019 and 2020 (as in, now), I experienced something similar. I was in survival mode for 2019, and then most of 2020 as well due to everything that was going on in the world. My own grief was so compounded that I muddled through the best I could but at a certain point it hit me that I was just... tired. I needed rest. I needed down time. I needed to recover.
From the outside, the lack of activity or social interaction can indeed make it seem that we're stuck in our loss or in our grief but to me, we're just following the patterns of nature. After periods of frenzied activity, all beings go dormant for a while. It doesn't matter if we're talking about bears or grapevines: living beings need time to rest and recover. We humans are no different, expect that we think we've mastered nature. That's impossible. And further, our visceral beings can't differentiate the difference between physical activity and emotional or psychological activity so the subsequent need to rest and recover is essentially the same.
Think about it: when we start a new job, for example, we're usually exhausted for the first few weeks due to the amped up amount of information our minds have to accommodate and work around. When we travel to a country where our native language isn't spoke, we tend to find ourselves exhausted as well because our brains are still working to understand everything that's going on. While we may not feel the physical fatigue, we find ourselves completely drained at the end of each day.
Experiencing loss and grief has the same effect. Our minds are working overtime to come to terms with the new reality before us. If we've lost a partner to death, we also usually have to now take on all of the tasks our partner once handled. And it may look like we're handling it all like champs - but that doesn't mean it's any less exhausting.
Patience and grace with ourselves goes a long way to provide space for rest and recovery. That's not being stuck at all. That's allowing enough healing time for the next growth spurt.
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