What if I told you that the journey you are on is so long that you can’t see the end of the tunnel.
That every day will feel like eternity, and every step is so small that you can’t tell if you are healing or not.
Then what if I said to you that some days you will feel as if you are going backwards.
Other days you will be stuck and won’t be able to move at all.
You see, this is the absolute truth of life after loss.
Anyone who tries to sugar coat it, is lying.
Anyone who puts a timer on it is a fool.
Here is what I discovered on this long road.
Grief is grief at first. Relentless. Gut wrenching.
And sure you go through the stages during that time.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
But you are not done. Not done at all.
A couple of years or more down the road you find yourself somewhere nobody told you about. This place is nowhere.
A town without a name.
It almost feels like you go blind and deaf as soon as you enter.
Nobody said that after these stages of grief you will still not be done.
It will almost feel like vertigo.
The up is down. And the down is up.
You will be inside a loop. Like a broken record.
Remember the record players we used to have?
When there was a scratch on the record the dial would keep jumping to the same two second track. That’s what life after the stages of grief is like.
This is also why I have spent 10 years of my life trying to fix the record so we can experience Life Reentry. The gap. The scratch. The loop.
Maybe small. Almost invisible. But don’t be fooled.
It holds millions of us.
The hidden stage of grief is what I have coined the Waiting Room.
The tough thing though is, that it is not a stage.
Or anything that makes you believe it is a passing thing.
A place without an end or a beginning.
This is what truly happens to millions of people after loss. (Click to tweet!)
The reason why I have been talking about this for a whole decade is so that you know where you are when you are lost.
So you can see. And hear again.
When I am no longer here, Life Reentry will be in all Academia.
Therapists, doctors and scientists will still be able to hear my voice yelling.
“Get out of the Waiting Room.”
I will teach this forever because I want you out of the city of Nowhere.
I want you to find a new chapter to go to.
You see now, you are homeless.
Hanging upside down in the middle of nowhere.
You think you are home. You think this is the aftermath of loss.
You think you are going somewhere.
You are, but not if the stuckness part of this long journey lasts forever.
You and I will die there. And I can’t have that happen.
So here’s what you need to do.
Go get the book Second Firsts. Even if you have not lost a spouse.
This is for every loss.
And start doing the work of unstuckenss.
It will save your life.
Do you know what the first step is?
I call it Invisible losses.
The scratch on the record.
The loop on the track. The blindness.
They all come from the losses you can’t see.
Not secondary losses. I know so many people confuse my Invisible Loss work with the word secondary.
The losses I am talking about are invisible.
Hard to track down.
And unless we figure out what we have really lost we can’t get unstuck.
The work of Life Reentry is not easy, but it is your only way out.
Promise you will get the book. Not for me. But for you.
Promise you will say yes to seeing all the things that hurt you.
No matter how hard it is to look at them.
And I promise you that one day your community church, your school, your local therapists will all be trained on this so you can get all the help you need to get pulled out of that Nowhere place.
I am working on this behind the scenes for you all.
Hold on tight.
And start the work on your own until I can get to you.
With many blind spots and invisible losses,
Christina
PS. I hope you have listened to this week’s Dear Life Podcast about money after a loss.
Thank You for this honest’ and to the core truth of what it really is to become a widow’ to grieve the death of my special person … You’ve found the exact words to truly transmitt the reality of grief’ each phrase resonates so profoundly now’ one year into widow status ‘
Thank you for this much needed long distance therapy and support and comfort’ though in my family circle I’m alone in my grieving’ making me feel weird’ odd’ a fool’ weak’ insane’ yet somewhere I do belong to a another larger family of fellow widows and grievers’
Christina your insight, thoughtfulness and wisdom have helped me so much! One year in and I’m definitely still in a horrible “loop.”
Will be buying your book today & hoping I can attend your next retreat as this next one won’t work with my schedule.
With much love & appreciation for all your hard work,
Pam
It can be defined as a circle 8, a rounding with no edges, no door, no escape. ♾and sometimes it is ⬆️and sometimes ⬇️ and sometimes just crazyl loopity-lopp????????????↕️⬅️. Something like thismfor visual people. (Me). Today and last night I was in the twirl of the middle example of the last five example. #3.