Thinking back I always believed that psychotherapy alone was the golden ticket to solving life problems, until I lost Zahira.
The pain of losing a child is unimaginable when I tell you I felt myself not only in a emotional warfare but in war for survival, I am not kidding, it literally hurt to breath, I would crawl on the floor because of the physical pain I was in, some days I felt like someone came and beat the life out of me and I couldn’t even get off the couch without help.
I would spend my days staring out the window looking at the sun because the sun and the warmth of it brought me comfort. I felt in those moments that all that was keeping me alive was God and the warmth of Zahira by way of the sun.
The interesting thing about my early grief process was I needed to make sense of her loss so I would make meaning wherever I could, in some ways I guess this was my way of staying sane.
What’s the connection here?
Therapy for me at the time was not an option because I didn't want to talk, I didn't want someone to process what happened to me or tell me how my past influenced my present thought process, all I wanted was my daughter back.
What I needed was someone to just walk this painful journey with me, support me and guide me to alternative healing practices, to be open to discuss my crazy thoughts without worrying that I may be diagnosed psychotic. Someone who could truly understand the pain I was in and just be present without the need to “treat” something. Help me with ideas on how to memorialize my daughter's memory. Someone who could recognize the trauma but humanize the pain. It wasn’t scientific to me at the time. It was a raw, gut wrenching, soul stripping pain that needed space to work itself out.
I can imagine you may be reading this and saying wait isn't she a therapist? How can she speak this way about therapy? Let me clarify. Therapy is amazing and wonderful in its own right and there is space for it in the healing process but therapy is not the only way. In a perfect world I wish I could have had both thinking back at it. I needed both but I was so angry at the world for taking Zahira that I knew if given the opportunity and knowing what I know now, I would have gone with a grief coach to help learn how to move forward from my loss, to help me find the beauty in my loss, how to use my loss as power, and ultimately find the fulfillment I so yearned for when I no longer knew how to make sense of my life without Zahira.
DISCLAIMER:
This blog is a place for my self expression and it is not intended to be used as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment for any medical or mental disorder.
In addition, if you belong to the Grammar, Spelling & Punctuation Police, please heed warning. This blog is my place of reflection and creativity and will probably not be grammatically correct most of the time.
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