{"id":871,"date":"2020-02-12T17:27:01","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T23:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/candyce-counseling\/?p=871"},"modified":"2020-02-12T17:27:04","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T23:27:04","slug":"resilience-a-new-grief-myth-that-can-hurt-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/candyce-counseling\/2020\/02\/resilience-a-new-grief-myth-that-can-hurt-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Resilience: A New Grief Myth That Can Hurt You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The antidote to despair is not to be found in the brave attempt to cheer ourselves up with happy abstracts, but in paying profound and courageous attention to the body and the breath. \u2026 To see and experience despair fully in our body is to begin to see it as a necessary, seasonal visitation and the first step in letting it have its own life, neither holding it nor moving it on before its time.\u2014 <\/em>David Whyte, <\/em><\/a>Consolations<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I had a hard time sleeping last week. I jolted awake with my heart pounding two or three times every night. Lying with eyes wide open in the dark, images of resilience tapped into a deep, old trauma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience was setting off trauma? Isn\u2019t that weird?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me explain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week I read Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy <\/em>by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years ago, Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, lost her 47-year-old husband to sudden death, and became a widowed mother to her two young children. Her experience led her to write about \u201ckicking the shit out of Option B\u201d when Option A (e.g., the dead husband) isn\u2019t available. Grant is an organizational psychologist who applies to grief his cognitive behavioral strategies for changing the way one thinks during hard times \u2014 strategies he uses to help businesses rebound after financial setbacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sandberg and Grant\u2019s message for making it through grief centers on the concept of resilience, which they define as \u201cthe strength and speed of our response to adversity.\u201d The goal of the strategies they offer is to help people bounce back to normal as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Different Paths Through Grief<\/em><\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Sandberg is clearly a loving mother who wants more than anything to make sure her kids survive their tragedy intact and happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I identify wholeheartedly: When I was suddenly widowed at the age of 30 and my son was an 11-month-old nursing infant, the only reason I got out of bed in the morning was to keep my son alive and to try to make some semblance of a normal life for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But clearly, even though Sheryl Sandberg and I share an almost panicky desire to assure an ultimate post-death wellbeing for our children, we have very different philosophies about how parents need to deal with their own grief in order to help children thrive in the face of loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sandberg is a living example of getting back to normal quickly. She\u2019s a high achiever who applies her high-achieving nature to grief. Adam Grant\u2019s tips for \u201covercoming\u201d sadness and guilt, and for plunging into a full-out plan for finding joy resonated with her, and she applies those strategies with fervor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, 22.5 weeks into her widowhood, she decided to stop journaling because she consciously chose to try to \u201cmove on from this phase of my mourning.\u201d<\/em> She said, \u201cI am pushing myself to move onward and upward \u2014 and part of that is to stop writing this journal.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, fewer than two years after her husband\u2019s death, she somehow found the energy to not only parent her children alone and be back at work, but also to write a book, pose for publicity photos in which she looks radiant, and go on book tour doing interviews all over the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty-five years ago, I responded to my widowhood differently. I had a different kind of support and a different personality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within a culture that wanted me to hurry up and return to \u201cnormal,\u201d I was fortunate enough to have family and a fearless therapist who insteadencouraged me to feel whatever I needed to feel for as long as I needed to feel it, and to allow happiness to make its slow and natural way back into my life over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn\u2019t rush me back normal or push me to strive toward joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNormal\u201d had been irrevocably destroyed, and joy was an insult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though I was also a high achiever in life, I trusted that what was best for my son was for me to follow my instinct to allow the experience of being a widowed mother of a young child to humble me into slogging slowly, almost imperceptibly at times, through my days and through my healing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

22.5 weeks into my widowhood, I was nowhere near finished journaling. I was still wading through a thick fog of pain with no vision of moving beyond<\/em>anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My journal entries from that time were like this: \u201cEverything hurts. Even though it was fun to go out to lunch with my friend today, I still had that weight on my heart. Everything is still colored by my loss. <\/em>Everything is still flat and gray because my pain is always there. It might not be as intense as frequently as it was before, but it is ALWAYS there. I <\/em>will miss you forever, Marty. You were the love of my life, and part of me died with you. I will never be the same.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second year after Marty died, I was still reeling with pain and seething with anger at the universe for the destruction of my baby\u2019s childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still had to scrape together every residual droplet of energy I could muster to pack a snack bag and take my toddler to the park. My skin was still a funny grayish color; my hair looked dry and shriveled; and I\u2019d cracked three teeth from grinding them while I slept. I would never have been able to write a book or leave my kid to go on book tour. Publicity photos would have hideously revealed my suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet in my vulnerability and pain, I was stronger than I\u2019d ever been:<\/p>\n\n\n\n