I felt the fear and did it anyway - life after loss

What happens when your worse fears become reality? Do you embrace the trauma and carry on or do you become paralysed by grief and fear of what’s next? Personally, I became paralysed, it was and still is my greatest challenge in life, but here’s how I felt the fear, and did it anyway. I’m sharing my story and how I felt, which might help others struggling with loss, or people close to them struggling with loss. I am sharing my story in the hope that it may help others face life’s unexcepted and most fearful situations.

There were six key things that helped me on my journey to starting to live life again after loss.  The main areas were:

1.       Finding a new purpose and associated goals

2.       Seeking help – from a professional and read, read, read!

3.       Support – from family and friends

4.       Activities to support physical and mental health

5.       Time – recognising it’s a journey and will take time, being patient

6.       Feeling the fear and doing it anyway!

Below is my story.  First, I have to say I am not a therapist, so this is purely my own story and what helped me, I recognise that everyone’s life journey and needs are different, but the intent is that my story will give hope to others who face life challenges.

My story

Adult life has always been challenging for me, my Mum had Multiple Sclerosis which gradually worsened through the years, my husband had a brain tumour that caused epilepsy, both of which worsened through the years, and my youngest daughter (I have three children) has a severe learning disability.  I worked full time, so my husband didn’t have to work, and had carer/parental/financial responsibilities that were very hard and very challenging. Despite all of that I was happy, and I was strong.  Whatever situation came along, and believe me, there were many of them, I would face it head on with positivity and a massive amount of resilience.  I was very busy, but being productive was my greatest strength.  I had learnt tools to help with my physical and mental health, they worked, and life was good.   I used my skills everyday no matter what the situation, like they were my armour.

Then life got harder.  My husband left the family home after surgery because of brain damage.  Then two years after that my Mum passed away of lung cancer.  Through this I kept thickening the armour in order to cope, which I did as always.  Then my husband passed way, bam, gone.  The armour shattered to pieces, my resilience was gone, learnt coping mechanisms no longer worked, and the two people who supported me the most, my Mum and Husband…gone! My tools and support mechanism gone, I was paralysed by loss, I was in agonising pain and had no idea how to keep going.  What once felt like strength was now nothing but anxiety.

It has been a long challenging journey, but now I am starting a new chapter in my life.  I have moved house, the children are settled, I am launching my own Human Resources consultancy, and although I miss my Mum and Husband every day, I am now able to put one foot in front of the other into an unknown future without them.  I felt the fear and did it anyway, and below are the main strategies I have used so far in life after loss:

1.       Finding purpose

I felt in complete despair, I did not know who I was, what my purpose in life was, I wanted my life back, I felt like I was in a story and didn’t know how to get out.  However, I had three children who had also felt the same trauma, they needed me now more than ever, I knew I had to swim and not sink, but I was on the bottom of the lake floundering about, I had to have something to grab hold of! So, I started to read, I read a lot.  Trying to understand what I was going through and what strategies might help. I realised I felt like I had no purpose, no goals, I was a carer with the majority of the people I cared for gone, what was now my role in life, what would make me happy? I spent a long time thinking about what my purpose was in life now and what my personal and professional goals were to support this purpose.  The weird thing is as I started to map out my goals and how I was going to get there, it opened up a whole host of things that would also help, mainly captured below, it was like a spider’s web, each small thing I did helped.

2.       Seeking help

I realised that the way I was feeling was bigger than me, I could not fix me, I needed professional help.  I was lucky to find a therapist who got to the root cause of my problems, and then was able to help me work through them, arming me with new better ways to face future life challenges.  I found a therapist that I totally trusted, and it was the hardest but the best thing that I could have done.  I will be eternally grateful to my therapist for helping me ‘reclaim my life’ as she called it.

I also read a whole host of books on lots of different self-development topics, how to stop overthinking, how to find your purpose, understanding grief, how to achieve your goals, how to build good habits and so on.  Each book providing valuable insight, but also giving me some motivation, firstly because self-development was one of my goals, but secondly that I could learn and grow, it was purposeful, it gave me hope and something to live for.

Learning helped me feel stronger.  I used to want to control the way I was feeling, but through this learning I recognised what I was feeling and why, this allowed me to be at peace with what I was feeling and not be anxious about it. I no longer feel the need to fight my own feelings, which is like a weight being lifted!!

3.       Support

I have never been very good at asking for help from others, I’m the one who gives the help! My mental health meant that I withdrew from people around me, also Covid didn’t help with this, so I found myself in an isolated situation at a time when support was key.  Part of my therapy was ‘reclaiming my life’ which included rebuilding connections.  Slowly with the support of my therapist, I started reaching out to people that had been important to me.  There was a reason they were important to me and that is because I have some lovely and supportive family and friends, but I had to play my part in nurturing those relationships.  It was lovely to have conversations and helped massively with the loneliness, my friends and family bring me joy. 

It was incredibly difficult attending family events that my husband would always attend, and was life and sole of the party, but I felt the fear and did it anyway.  Eventually I stopped dreading these events and used them as an opportunity to laugh and celebrate my husband’s life, someone else always has memories to share that I had forgotten, it now brings me comfort.

4.       Activities to support physical and mental health

Once again, this joins into the spider’s web, a goal of mine is to be physically healthy, which also for me has massively helped with my mental health.  I started off slow, mainly going outside into nature at lunch time for a walk.  To begin with I started to feel other problems, I had pain in parts of my body, probably caused by sitting too long at a computer or stress.  I started to seek help for the pain, I went to a chiropractor and a physiotherapist.  So, at the same time as seeing a therapist for my mental health, I was also seeking help for my physical health.  The act of seeking the help and starting to feel the benefits gave me hope.

After a period, I started reading about how to help with mental and physical health through exercise and activities. As a result, I now have a daily physical routine of yoga, pilates and walking. I also have a daily mental routine of writing in a gratitude journal and meditation.  I have always found meditation to be very challenging, so this is still a slow learning process for me.  I have found that using an app is useful, especially ones that relate to your own personal situation, for me I have one that helps with things that I find difficult such as self- compassion, relaxation, positive affirmations and so on.  I have found that although I find the meditation difficult, it quite quickly helped shape my mood and motivation for the day.  Don’t get me wrong it is not a magic cure for me, but with all the other items I mentioned, it does help me change what might be a wash out day to a day that I carry on and achieve at least my main goal for the day.

I try and do all these activities every day, but it doesn’t always happen, so I’m kind to myself and try to do it the next day. The reason for this, is that it has such a positive impact on me it’s well worth the time…..which leads me onto….

5.       Time

I would say my biggest weakness is patience, but this whole process has taken such a long time, and it’s not always in the right direction.  One day could be good, the next three could be more challenging and so on.  It’s a slow gradual process.  Actually, for me it was so slow, I’ve only really appreciated the journey I’ve been on whilst writing this article, and reflecting back on where I was and where I am now, it’s so slow that I didn’t actually realise the changes that were occurring.  But slowly for me change did happen, it was not easy, and I was not patient with myself at times, but nonetheless I kept going, and it was worth the effort!

6.       Feeling the fear and doing it anyway

Lastly, one of the books I read was ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ by Susan Jeffers*.  This book helped with my personal obstacle of facing fear.  My greatest fears becoming a reality made me scared of life, if the worst can happen, then lots of things can go wrong too!  However, Susan talks about change and if you don’t change nothing will change.  I did not want to continue feeling paralysed and in despair, so I knew I wanted to change that! The whole book goes through all the different dimensions of fear, how to face it, and how to do it anyway, but in a supportive way so you can live life to the full.  I can’t change the past, I can’t bring my husband back, but I can live my life the best I can in the circumstances.

In Summary

By using a multitude of different strategies, that all linked together like a spider’s web, they all helped support me in my journey to live life after loss.  What I have learnt through my trauma is that life is a journey, giving the opportunity for different experiences, if you “feel the fear and do it anyway”, you have the opportunity to change and learn new ways of thinking and living, which aligned to your purpose, can bring you joy.  I will always wish my husband was still with me, and will always miss him, but I now try to find new ways to enjoy life….and I am now living life after loss!  I still have lots to learn on this journey, but as long as I am learning I am living.

Reference: Jeffers, Susan (2012) Feel the fear and do it anyway. UK: Vermilion.