Grief

If you follow my Facebook posts, you know that last weekend was unexpectedly hard.  I went to Time Out for Women with four friends.  Friday was so much fun, with the evening portion of the event.  Michael McLean was there, singing for us, the presenters talked about five women who helped keep Christianity alive through the dark ages (well, really early Renaissance, but who's counting?).  I hoped they had a book on that, but maybe they're still working on it.  Michael performed, with his partner, songs from his new show Threads, which was really good.

Saturday began well enough, but once it started, it began to go downhill.  Presenter one talked about how half his family was killed in a car accident.  Presenter two talked about her struggles to have children, including adopting a child only to have the birth mother want the child back.  Presenter three must have talked about something else because he didn't fit the unintentional theme of the day.  Presenter four talked about how his brother-in-law and baby died - from illness at separate times, but the baby was named after the brother-in-law.  At this point I was about ready to die myself.  But it wasn't over yet. Also, interspersed between the presentations was the musical group, Mercy River.  All so sweet, singing about being 'higher' and the challenges they face being mothers.  Yeah.  Mothers.  I'm not a mother, I'm probably not ever going to be a mother at this point, and so far the themes have been overcoming death/adversity and motherhood.  So the last presenter gets up, and first thing says that "no one died".  Then proceeds to tell how she had cancer in her eyes when she was a child and lost most of her sight and later in life lost the rest of it, and even though she was so funny, I found it most upsetting and disturbing.  I walked out of there far more depressed than when I walked in.  The theme of the conference was "Higher", as in Think Higher, Believe Higher, Live Higher.  Uplifting, right?  So how was I so depressed afterwards?

I posted a sad litte fb post afterwards, on our way to Cheesecake Factory (man did I need some cheesecake!), got a lot of random comments on it, but one friend said that maybe there's something I need to deal with, and that this is really a blessing.  I think she may be right.

I went and talked to a friend last night - she works at an end-of-life center, so she knows a lot about dealing with grief.  I needed to vocalize what I was feeling and thinking, and she was the perfect sounding board.  We came to realize that that I have been stuffing and storing a lot of grief, not wanting to deal with it, not having time to deal with it - making myself too busy to deal with it?  I'm trying to make lifestyle changes, not just counting calories or killing myself exercising, but actual changes that will make me overall healthier and happier.  I'm realizing that I need to deal with these these things along the way.  It was interesting to me that as we were driving to CF after the conference was over, I had a great desire to eat.  I didn't care what, I just wanted to eat for comfort.  I was smart about it, mostly, but that's what I did.  And I felt better, except that I'd given myself a headache from crying/trying not to cry.

So lifestyle changes, dealing with things I was saving for a rainy day (tears count as rain, right?).  You know what I miss?  I miss the opportunity to just talk with my sister on a regular basis.  I really should call her up about once a month just to talk.  Just because.  Course then she'd have to listen to me (!) but I'd get to listen to her too, and all about her kids' antics.  Miss you, sis.