Grief Share

I started Grief Share class at Lakewood Church in November of 2012. My friend asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told her that I wanted to go to church. I had long stayed away from church because I couldn't understand why I lost my sister and then my mom. I was lost. I am still lost, but finding my way.  So, we went to church at Lakewood and it was good. I found out they have grief classes on Mondays, so I went. My first class I cried almost the whole time. When we sat down in a small group to talk, I said out loud what I had been thinking. I was angry with God. I was angry at the relationship that I didn't have with him and the relationship that was strained because of my losses. I was angry that my sister was taken and that I had to be the one to make the decision about my mom. I was angry that I was put to the test to the degree that I had been. I was angry that I was still reliving the days over and over. Remembering hearing my brother in law tell me that my sister was dead. Hearing them tell me that my mom had flat lined and that I needed to get to the hospital asap. Hearing that I needed to make a decision. Standing over my mother and saying okay to taking her off life support. Angry that I lost my two biggest supporters. I was angry that my identity depended so much on the support of those two women. I was lost. I was angry that I was so lost without them. I suddenly became the oldest and the decision maker. I suddenly didn't have a support system in place. I had to move a 4 bedroom house into a two bedroom apartment. I didn't know how I was going to take care of me, Justice and Ashley. I was lost. I was in denial. I just went through the motions for two years. I was on depression meds and they were just keeping me in a fog. I got up to 355 lbs. and was miserable.  My friend had the lap-band done in October 2011 and was doing so well. She was the one that told me to find out about it. I did and decided that was the route I was going to take because I didn't want to die. I was now a diabetic and had my son to live for. I thank God for giving me Justice, because honestly if I didn't have him I wouldn't be here now. My fight would be gone. Once I made that decision to get the lap-band done, it was less than 30 days and it was surgery day.  Before having the surgery I had to get off all medicine. I decided that I wouldn't take the depression medicine anymore. I didn't want to be on them anymore anyway. It was just a crutch that really needed to be gone so that I could try and do this and I needed all of me coherent in order to do it. It was time to try and live again instead of just going through the motions of life in my new reality.  So, after surgery and with the holidays approaching, I found that I was emotional eating. The emotions were grief. They were the losses overwhelming me for the first time. It was living through the emotions and loss and missing them all over again, yet for the first time. Hard to accept that makes sense, but it does. I gained 15 lbs during the holiday season. While I had Ashley home for a while, it was comforting to have her there yet I still ate.  During that time, I also started questioning the validity of the band. I was hungry. I was eating and with little restriction. I wasn't ever really satisfied for a long period of time. It was another level of emotional eating at this point. I had done this to myself and now this crap wasn't working. OMG!  So, it was at that point that Roxanne (the nurse practitioner) believed in me and we started to test the band's validity. By January, it was proven that the band wasn't holding fluid like it should. They sent me back to my surgeon and by the end of that same week, I was at the surgicenter having my revision surgery. It seems like I do everything fast! :\  Justice got sick over that weekend while he was over at Aunt Carrie's house while I healed. I met my Aunt at the pediatrician's office on Monday and he had the flu. So naturally I had to be put on Tamiflu since I had just had surgery and had put myself at risk of the flu. It made me sick, so I only got a few doses into me before giving the medicine to my aunt who got sick because Justice was with her. :\ Justice was out of the daycare for a week and away from me for a full week. It was rough. I missed him and he missed me. I got him back on Friday and he was better and I was still sore, but better. Anyway, long story short, it was along this journey that I decided that it was a good thing to find a support group for grief since I was going to a support group for my lap-band. Grief share has been wonderful. I got a workbook and while I admittedly am not doing it daily, I have been going to class. I have missed a few because of the surgery and then sickness this week. The classes are 13 weeks and then they repeat, so I will be able to take them all eventually. It just has shown me that I need to keep working the process, because I can tell when I have missed a week or two that I need to get back to God and the group. I feel so much better when I get to go there and even when I don't really feel like the lesson was intended for me, something I say may help someone else or something they say will have helped me that night.  It is a beautiful thing.

In class week before last that I figured out that journaling my grief journey was helpful. While the video was going I wrote and jotted down ideas and thoughts and it was like a release. The next week the same thing. It was like I was for the first time letting it go by writing it down. I think writing it down meant I was acknowledging it and thus able to move forward. It sounds good anyway right?

So, I missed last night's class. I am glad I stayed home because the nasty green stuff that my body is throwing out is gross and I wouldn't want anyone else getting sick. This, of course, means that I miss Zumba tonight too since Wal-Mart didn't have my medicine in last night it will be tonight before I even get my first dose in to me. Here's to hoping that Thursday's Zumba class with be an option! 

So, now that I have set a short background for my grief and this journey, I am going to use this place to journal my journey through my workbook. I will take on each session of the workbook. It is time to put in the work in order to grow and start to live again.