Permission to Grieve
Strapping in for the full-price emotional roller coaster ride of grief is a daunting proposition. To make matters worse, unlike the admission pass to an amusement park you excitedly buy for yourself, grief’s ticket is usually handed to you by others. Life then seems to wink at you with an I-dare-you-not-to-scream look right before you plunge down the first drop.
I was stuck. The ride beckoned. I stood there, ticket in hand, unwilling to go. The ticket, in my case, was a little box of horrors I kept firmly locked and tucked out of sight. The ride didn’t care. Sometimes it took me without permission, leaving me with whiplash and pounded with strange looks.
Grief is a process best not avoided. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”[1] Here’s the rub: one has to intentionally grieve to get the full benefit of the promised comfort. Denial only leads to destruction.
The past decade of my life is pockmarked with the craters of emotional trauma I believed were easier to stuff away in a dark, deep corner of my mental attic than to navigate through. Memories too painful to handle burned against the fear of being seen as weak and forged the lock that kept my mental trauma box “safely” shut. But traumas locked away still clamor for attention.
When we turn a blind eye to our trauma, we fail to see and treat the wounds the trauma leaves behind. Grieving is a natural process, a means of acknowledging things are not right in the world. When we live in denial, emotional trauma causes damage on a cellular level and creates red flags in your brain as evidence that all is not well. The mental dissonance of denial increases the difficulty of seeing your way through the fog of pain. After all, if the trauma didn’t happen, why are you so upset? I was tired of keeping a brave face, but couldn’t see my way out of the pain.
Perhaps the loss of my career as an officer wouldn’t have hit so hard if grief hadn’t already been pummeling me with constant blows in quick succession. The loss of my grandparents within eight months of each other. Nearly a dozen other deaths within an eight-week period, where the tragedy of suicide and the heartbreak of cancer left their significant marks. During the time frame that I was pushing myself through the extremes of the police academy, my dad was fighting Stage IV throat cancer, a sister was wasting away with an undiagnosed eating/liver disorder, one prodigal sibling was making his return while another was set on their betrayal of the family they once held dear. As a family, we were also reeling from the abandonment of relationship from people we had come to regard as close friends. All valid reasons to keep my box of traumas locked and hidden away, my mind told me. But trauma cannot stay hidden away forever.
A few months ago, I was talking with a friend and sharing some of my story with her. What she told me next was a life-line that has slowly allowed me to find my way out of the fog of pain and trauma and begin to have a vision again. She told me that it was okay for me to grieve the losses and experiences I had been through. Essentially, I had to give myself permission to grieve. Permission to grieve no longer being a cop. Permission to grieve the loss of my career. Permission to grieve past traumas. Grief clouds vision. By allowing myself the freedom to fully grieve, I was acknowledging the pain of what had happened so that I could then release it. And by releasing the pain and taking care of the emotions along with it, clarity started to come, and I began to move forward, away from the fog.
By giving myself permission to grieve, I have begun to realize that there is so much more freedom and healing that occurs by dealing with the trauma than by keeping it tucked away in a nice little padlocked mental box. I started sharing my story with others in hopes that what I’ve experienced and learned will help them. I wasn’t able to do that six months ago. It was still too raw and painful. This process is also helping me recognize and begin to heal from other traumas that I have not fully allowed myself to grieve. I had a very practical application of that recently.
I was on edge all this past week and feeling emotionally drained and I couldn’t figure out why until I was reminded that it was the anniversary week of a deep emotional trauma. Five years ago, my brother closest to me in age became very sick, flat-lined, and was flight-lifted to a major hospital, were he spent nearly two weeks in the heart ICU. In a nutshell, his lungs had filled with so much fluid from an infection that his heart had gone into overdrive. By the time he was flight-lifted, his heart was enlarged by 30% and his ejection fraction was functioning at less than a 10% capacity. His resting heart rate was between 124-128 beats per minute, with spikes into the 130s. My family and I put life on hold to fly across the country to be with him. We didn’t know if he would have to have an artificial heart pump that was run by external batteries, if he would need a heart transplant, or if he would even live. The thought of potentially having to live the rest of my life with him not alive was too painful to even consider and I stuffed that pain away, along with all of the rest of the pain from that week.
To the amazement of the doctors and hospital staff, my brother improved. Then the impossible happened. Over the course of a year, his heart shrank back to a normal size. His left ventricle ejection fraction, which had plummeted to 10% and below, rose to nearly 50% (something we had been told was impossible and couldn’t happen short of a miracle). He does have an internal defibrillator, which has given him a scare or two, but it’s a far cry from the heart pump and possible transplant he was facing during the first three weeks of the ordeal. I am forever grateful for the amazing medical team that took care of him and for the miracles that God did during that time. My brother is healthy, fit, and living life to the fullest.
By walking through this process of allowing myself to grieve, I was able to recognize the emotional triggers that the anniversary of this event entailed. I finally gave myself permission to acknowledge the pain and allow myself the freedom to feel the emotions that needed to flow. I wanted so much just to stuff those emotions back into their box. Instead, for a brief moment, I let them out. I allowed myself to cry the gut-wrenching sobs that needed to be released. In doing so, I finally felt for the first time, a bit of that healing balm that washes over you when letting go of the pain. I still have layers of this wound that need healing. But I am grateful that I was able to recognize the triggers, allow myself the permission to grieve, and take the first step in beginning to heal from this particular trauma.
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[1] Matt. 5:4 NIV