My parents became ill. Simultaneously, I underwent two surgeries. All of this happened before the end of the year. Merry Christmas? While the surgeries were successful, it was a tough holiday season.
There are a plethora of things to take care of when loved ones decline (within weeks of each other), especially when they’re your parents. I wanted to do everything right for the ones who have always done right by me, so this added extra stress. I can’t mess this up! Every move I made was an important one because it’s for their health and well-being. And furthermore, I’m the only one making these important decisions, as their only child.
(Can we have a course in high school called Aging Parents where students get prep for this life changing event?) Anyway…
It’s been an exhausting journey.
The thing is many of my friends are going through similar grief with their aging or ill loved ones. The decline. The suffering. It’s a part of life that most of us will experience.
If this is your journey, you may have feelings of overwhelm, feeling lost, angry, apathetic, with brain fog and low energy. You may find that at any moment you’re just a breath away from yet another miscommunication because you’re constantly “on edge”. It’s okay. Apologize when needed. Your friends and family will understand.
It’s just suffering. You won’t feel like yourself. You’re not supposed to. Embrace it. Radically accept it. As a society, we don’t talk about suffering often, but we are now. We have friends that lost their homes during the recent and ongoing L.A. fires. The fact of the matter is suffering is normal. That’s your first self-care tip.
You may want to cocoon. Second tip. There’s so much going on in your mind when going through emotional pain, that it might be more effective to go inward to process the situation before sharing with a trusted friend or even therapist. There is clarity within silence. You might not reach out to friends as much during this time of cocooning. All good. No one can expect you to skip through the fields like a unicorn in a children’s book. There will be time enough for that down the road. Right now, face your feelings. Even if you think: I feel awful and I don’t know what to do about it. That is strength because you’re aware and present to it. Your body will likely respond to this awareness with tears which is good and cleansing for the soul.
When we decide to embrace our emotions and deal with our feelings around them, we allow ourselves to experience the journey of how to deal with pain and suffering. This makes us more resilient to life’s unforeseen tumbles. We become more empathetic and compassionate to others and ourselves. And yes, we get stronger, too.
Life moves on, so we want to move on with it. Because after all, the ultimate goal is to transform the pain and cocooning into a fully emerged and brilliant ‘butterfly’ ready to fly… and that is you.
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