Tossing The House

DISCLAIMER: Audios from this account are intended for those who are grieving the loss of a loved one, particularly the loss of a child or grandchild. As a result, tracks may make reference to death, dying, and/or the departed. While the tracks are intended to help and support those who are grieving, they are not a replacement for professional help. If you are struggling with your mental health as a result of a loss and don't know where to turn, call or text 988 to be connected with a crisis counselor and other resources.

How do we cope with a difficult loss? Sometimes we find comfort in creating controlled chaos so we can re-order it again. As life keeps going on like normal, while we feel such a dramatic rift, we may find ourselves trying to re-order our brain by re-ordering our surroundings. Let's reflect together on our processes for coping with our grief.

Transcript

Hi there this is Rita Morton with Sacred Sorrows and I'm really grateful that you're here.

Thank you so much for being here with me.

I've been wondering if or when I'm going to stop rearranging the furniture in my house because I've been like literally tossing my house.

It's becoming a little bit maddening and I'm questioning my sanity and I think I might be testing my friend Dawn's sanity too because she and her kindness keeps helping me rehang the artwork on the walls and rearrange the stuff on the shelves and put some kind of order back into the disorder that I am continually creating.

Thank goodness for friends like Dawn because the truth is that my son Chad died in June of 2019 and I am for some reason constantly moving stuff around in my house and then it gets sort of put back or re-put back and then I dismantle it all over again.

I know what I'm doing.

I'm creating chaos,

Reordering it and then creating it again.

I'm trying really hard not to do this but something inside of me is compelling me.

Just telling you about it causes me a little bit of anxiety and it kind of makes my head feel weird.

The way your head might feel when you put on reading glasses and then you accidentally wear them while you're driving like whoa or the way you might feel when you wake up far too early and you don't go back to sleep and then around 8 or 9 a.

M.

You get that nauseous feeling like whoa.

That's the kind of feeling I get when I talk to you about this.

My office is the perfect example of this tossing the house thing.

This grieving mother gone almost but not quite berserk.

It's probably been rearranged at least six times during the last two years.

Twice in the last three months.

Let me tell you I'm getting to be an expert at untangling and making nice all the computer and internet cords and then there's the contraption I bought a few years ago to sit on top of the desk so I can stand while I'm working.

That thing has really wreaked some havoc because when I decide to move that around or take it off the desk the artwork hanging on the wall behind it gets all jacked up in the decorating scheme of things and to think that I care but I actually do.

This also messes with the fact that sometimes I think that I don't need to stand at my desk anymore.

That my hips aren't torqued and my neck isn't twisted from working on a computer all day or wait from stress.

Stress?

What stress?

Oh yeah that's right.

I lost my son and everything around me stayed the same except me.

Life kept going on in an alternate reality that isn't my reality anymore.

But let me continue.

I decide yet again to move the make-your-desk-into-a-stand-up desk contraption which is a huge process by the way not to mention it's heavy and I put it under the bed in the guest room and I sit in front of my computer on a normal chair and I'm pleased as punch for a few weeks until I realized that maybe the problems I've been having with my body that I'm blaming on my first COVID shot could possibly be due to the fact that I'm sitting at a computer all day.

Imagine that.

Imagine me thinking something clearly.

But I think you and I know what's really happening here.

I'm trying to reorder some things in my brain and in my soul.

I'm trying to reshuffle because I just can't really believe that my son Chad is really gone.

Goodbye.

Gone.

Gone for good now for the rest of my life here on this earth.

I just can't grasp that yet.

So I keep subconsciously trying to make order out of disorder and somehow somewhere some part of me thinks that by tossing rooms and rearranging them and then tossing them again a few weeks later that somehow things will get better.

That things will maybe get okay.

But things aren't going to get better or okay by creating chaos in my house and then reordering it.

Or maybe they will.

Maybe they really will.

I wonder if this is part of the process or if I am somehow stuck in this.

I don't know.

In any case it's part of my process and my process is the only process that works for me.

Just like your process is the only process that works for you.

And I honor that.

And I hope that you also honor your process.

Whatever you're doing to get through this it's the right way for you.

Unless of course that you're going down the bottle or doing other things that could be harmful for you.

And if that's the case please don't do those things.

Now back to the furniture.

The blessed and damned furniture.

I can report that I am making progress with my rearranging and reshuffling issue.

I finally stopped tossing the living room.

Dawn,

That dear friend I mentioned earlier,

Lovingly arranged again everything back on the shelves and took away the crazy junk I thought would go with things but didn't.

And helped me decide on a neutral palette for the pillows and the throw blankets and we fixed it all up.

And I promised myself I wouldn't change anything for a long time.

I mean so what if it looks like eternal springtime in my living room complete with fake pink tulips and a vase on the coffee table?

Hope springs eternal right?

Things could be a lot worse than a living room that looks like eternal springtime.

You know that and I know that.

So I'll keep the living room that way for a while till the holidays and then all the red stuff can come out.

Maybe by then I'll have it all figured out.

In the meantime I'm going to hope for that.

I'm going to hope for that and for a whole lot of other things.

I mean I have to believe that it can't get worse.

I mean really.

But let's say it does.

I know I can handle it.

I can handle anything now.

Unfortunately.

Now that I've handled the loss of my son Chad,

Now that I'm handling this,

This life afterwards,

I can do this.

I can get really good at untangling computer and internet cords and along with that untangling the matching mess in my brain.

And so can you.

So the question is when or if you create chaos and reorder it and create more chaos,

Does it help?

And if so,

How?

Tell us your thoughts.