Rediscovering your identity and facing your fears
Life after loss is difficult, strange and unpredictable. You're plunged into an existence you never expected to be living in, navigating new feelings and mourning what you have lost.
You don't feel like yourself.
You don't know yourself.
The things that you loved to do feel futile. Enjoyment feels like guilt. The parts of you that only that person could bring out will never be brought out again. A massive part of you is missing and cannot be found again.
So what do we do?
For a long time I had no idea. But recently I've been thinking about how we don't need to find that piece we lost. That piece cannot be replaced. BUT we can find new pieces to add. We find a way for joy and grief to co-exist.
Another but... trying new things can be scary. Especially when so many of the 'worst case scenarios' we created in our heads have come true.
If we don't try these new and scary things then our sense of self will only dwindle further. It sucks. It sucks that we have to feel fear in order to feel better, but maybe in the process we will connect more with the traits of the people we mourn for, maybe we will discover new things about ourselves, maybe their memory will be stronger and brighter and they'll feel closer to us.
Forcing ourselves to do something when we're not feeling our best is difficult to say the least. We always feel better after we do though, right? We just need to find a way to keep a hold of that good feeling.
I asked a selection of my closest friends and followers to tell me something they have always been scared or nervous to try. Whether it was fear of failing, of being 'bad' or the activity was a scary one in itself. I then asked a smaller group who I knew to be experiencing grief that if they too felt their sense of self was unsettled after a close death.
Turns out, I wasn't alone in this feeling.
So I've decided to do something pretty daunting in the name of helping you guys out...
I'm going to try all of the scary things so you don't have to.
I have only 2 aims for this, what shall we call it... experiment?
To show that these things aren't so scary. That we can all do scary things, that the world won't end.
To figure out what I like, to see who I am after experiencing such losses.
The submissions ranged from making and eating tomato soup to starting a running streak to paddle boarding.
If you're reading this and there is something you want me to try before you do... let me know!
Let's see where this takes me next
- Lucy