Lessons Learned from Loss...
Five years ago this week, I was busy thinking about what to make for Thanksgiving dinner and preparing to leave for Hawaii right after the holiday. I’d be spending my 44thbirthday there and my husband and I were hosting a large community festival on the 80-acre parcel of land we’d just bought with big plans to build a retreat center on it. We were also in the midst of our first cycle of IVF with lots of green lights from our docs to keep moving forward. And one of my best friends, my soul sister Myra, had just gone into hospice after a valiant 18-month battle against multiple myeloma.
The week before this I’d had a small procedure to remove and biopsy a tiny lump form my neck. It’d been there for at least a year, didn’t bother me, and I felt great overall. But my IVF doc insisted I have it removed so we knew what it was. Another of many boxes to tick off, which I gladly did, keeping in mind the vision of a healthy pregnancy and baby in the not so distant future.
I’ll never forget the doctor’s office calling me to see if they could switch my follo-up appointment form Tuesday to Monday to review the biopsy results. “Trying to juggle our holiday week schedule and if you can come in earlier it’d really help us out.” I was able to make the change and showed up on Monday afternoon.
As I sat in the exam room, scrolling through news and emails on my smartphone while I waited, I felt relaxed and at ease. Not at all anticipating what would come next. When my doctor came in, he greeted me warmly and said “Well, Melinda, I’m glad we erred on the side of being safe and went ahead with the biopsy. As it turns out, the lump we removed is malignant. A type of cancer know as B-cell follicular lymphoma. “
After this, his words all began to blur together but what I made out was that this was a low grade, slow growing cancer and the next step would be to get a PET scan and have it staged. Thus the impetus to move my appointment up so that they could get me in for a scan before Thanskgiving.
I walked out of his office and down to the lobby of the medical plaza. Standing there in the sterile-smelling hospital where I’d worked as a social worker for many years prior, it all felt surreal to me. Cancer? How could that be? I felt so good. No bothersome symptoms. Just a tiny lump that was now gone.
Tears streaming down my face, fear beginning to flood my system, I took my phone out to call my husband and tell him. Patrick, always the voice of calm and reason, reassured me that it would all be okay. I’m sure he was shocked and afraid, too, but in that moment he simply reassured me that all would be okay and that together we would meet whatever this brought.
A mix of shock and acceptance followed in the days and weeks to come. I vacillated between thoughts of “Is this really happening?” to “Well, why not me. Of course even healthy people who take care of themselves get cancer.” Fear was present, too, as I sat with the uncertainty around what this new diagnosis would mean in terms of treatment, quality of life and longevity.
I had many other things to distract me in those weeks that followed, though. A delightful Thanksgiving dinner with dear friends. Getting ready to leave for two weeks in Hawaii. My birthday. And then, the following day, after a long walk on the beach that morning I got a call from Myra’s husband saying she’d passed away a couple hours earlier.
As I looked at the heart rocks (Myra’s favorite, and mine too) I’d collected on the beach on my walk, I thought of how unfair it was that she should die and I was still alive. Why? It wasn’t a sense of guilt I felt about being alive still, but rather a deep sadness that God had taken my friend way before I was ready to say goodbye to her.
Long walks along the ocean in the days to come would help ease the sadness as I recalled all the joyful moments Myra and I shared together. She was someone who could light up a room with her laugh. Who made you feel like you were the most important person in her world (even though her circle of family and friends extended far and wide!). I would miss her terribly, yet quickly realized that the friendship and love we shared would always live in me. It was also, quite frankly, a relief to know that she was no longer suffering.
Future losses would soon come on the heels of this one. A failed first IVF cycle and then, in our second round, finding out that none of our embryos were healthy enough to implant. A gut wrenching decision, after a huge investment of time/energy/effort, to call the whole process quits because the extra hormones I was injecting into my body could have been fueling or exacerbating the cancer. And then - quietly grieving that I would never experience pregnancy or bearing my own children.
In the two years that followed that we also lost both of our senior dogs and it became abundantly clear that the retreat center in Hawaii we’d been planning to build was not going to happen. Huge permitting issues and resistance from the local government that we may have been able to ride out if we’d had limitless funds to keep going (but we didn’t).
As I look back on the loss of our first dog, Trek, on Mother’s Day weekend in 2017 I can see now that it unleashed a deep well of emotions I’d been feeling about all of these challenges and losses. While losing him indeed felt devastating and deeply painful, I look back in hindsight and see how his death also opened me up to feel the incredible sadness of losing my health and not being able to have a child.
The year or two that followed invited me to do some tough and transformative inner work. Regular sessions with my therapist, regular energy work from skillful healers, and learning to welcome all the feelings that I experienced in my grief.
Tears flowed with regularity. Sadness seemed to be the easiest emotion for me to welcome. Anger was by far the most difficult. I could feel a raging fire of it growing inside my belly but after years of suppression it almost felt too big and scary to unleash. I began with writing about it and then realized I needed to do something physical to help express and move it.
I ended up buying some cheap plates at the thrift store and when I’d feel the anger intensify I would take a Sharpie and write down everything I was feeling on those plates and then go down in our basement and smash them up against the wall. The relief I felt was palpable. It worked beautifully!
As time went on I began to see more clearly the lessons that these losses had taught, and were teaching me. They weren’t huge “aha”s but rather, as my good friend Julie says, “duh-piphanies.” Lessons I knew, on some level, but they were coming around in new forms to teach me yet again. I’m sharing them with you in the hope that they may help guide you on your own journey of moving through a difficult time.
The lessons were…
Listen with a keen ear to your inner guidance. It will not steer you wrong.
It took me three years to get on board with IVF. For a long time I was petrified to do it because of how hard previous infertility treatments I’d done had been on my body and the havoc they’d wreaked on my emotions. But then the day came, in late summer of 2015, when I heard a voice that said “Do it. You’re ready.” And I was. I’m still not sure what exactly shifted, but at that point I felt 100% on board and I’ll never ever look back and regret the choice to do it. But if I’d done it before then I know I wouldn’t have been ready. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pushed my inner voice of wisdom down and not listened, though. It’s caused me a world of pain and heartache when I’ve ignored it and even when I do listen and heed its wisdom… it’s not always easy. But what I’ve learned, time and time again, is that living a life true to myself means getting quiet, listening to that “inner GPS” I have and allowing it to steer me.
People and pets may leave their bodies but the love you shared with them never goes away.
Here I am, five years later, and I feel my friend Myra’s presence with me all the time. Her favorite song often comes on the radio or starts playing in a restaurant or a store I’m in. I talk to her sometimes when I’m alone on hikes or walks. She’s become one of my sprit guides on the other side and I never doubt that we’re still strongly connected. I feel this with the grandmother I grew up with as well. Her unconditional love and quiet strength has buoyed me through some times when I needed it. I don’t need to have her in physical form to draw upon the powerful love she brought to my life. And my two older dogs who have passed? Their love and the connection I shared with each of them is frequently a guide as I work on several projects, including a book, that will support others who have lost a beloved pet. I keep Ellie’s ashes near my desk and Trek’s collar sits right near her ashes. Tangible reminders of the immense joy they each brought to my life.
Saying “no” is an important form of self-care.
This has been one of my biggest life lessons. Learning to say “yes” to myself and what I need even if it means disappointing others. Last year alone it meant choosing not to attend a dear friend’s wedding several states away and my 30thhigh school reunion, and backing out of a bucket list trip to Africa because it felt like too much for my body to handle. Saying yes to ourselves and honoring our needs often means that others may not understand and/or may be upset or disappointed by our choices. And as a recovering “people pleaser” who grew up in very codependent family system I can tell you that this has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn.
You are the expert when it comes to your body. After I was diagnosed with cancer, I wanted to make sure I was supporting my body’s healing as much as possible. I kept doing all the things I’d been doing (massage, energy work, chiropractic, regular exercise, eating healthy, etc) and I started reading voraciously. All kinds of books like this oneand this onethat helped me understand what would support my healing. I have two oncologists and a naturopath who specializes in oncology. And then another naturopath I saw when I was in Hawaii. It was a LOT of input from many sources. And while I remain grateful for all the professional allies and support I had, I also got overwhelmed at time by all of their suggestions. I had to get quiet, tune into my body, and listen deeply. Listen to what it was telling me and honor it. Which sometimes meant not taking all of the suggestions or recommendations from my team of practitioners. At the end of the day it’s my body and I’m the one who will have to live with the decisions I make. So far it’s turning out okay. I went into remission last July after four months of being in quarantine with little to no outside support.
Grieving takes… as long as it takes.
There is no set timeline for grieving the loss of a human or pet you loved, or for grieving more ambiguous losses such as the loss of a dream or the social disconnection so many of us are feeling during this pandemic. So often we want a formulaic “follow these three steps” kind of process to follow and we think this is what will heal us. Certainly there are things you can do to help facilitate the grieving process, but at the end of the day no one can say how long it will take before you reach a place of acceptance and feel ready to move on. I can tell you that it took me close to six months when we lost our first dog and then when we lost our second older dog I felt a sense of peace and acceptance around her death within just a couple months.
Gratitude is always possible. Always. Even when your life feels like one big shitshow – and especially during those times – I found that there were always reasons to be grateful. For me some of the constants these last few years have been the support of my partner and my family and friends, the joy of spending time with my dogs, healing time in Nature and the practitioners who have skillfully supported me and honored the decisions I made as I went through IVF and two years of treatment for the lymphoma.
This year has brought about so many losses for all of us. No matter who you are, your life has been impacted in some way by this pandemic. One of the biggest losses I hear of from clients and loved ones is that of social connection and not being able to gather in the ways we normally do due to concerns about our health and the health of those we love. Not to mention loved ones and pets we’ve lost in 2020 or financial stressors due to loss of income related to the pandemic.
As you reflect on 2020 so far, and any losses you’ve experienced, ask yourself the questions today:
What are these losses teaching me?
How will I use the lessons I’m learning to inform how I live my life moving forward?
Feel free to share your answers in the comments below. We all have so much to learn from one another and perhaps what you’ve learned, or how you are coping with grief and loss, may be exactly what someone else needs to hear today.