Grieving ideas?

[InIndia]

I'm curious if anyone has any specific practices for grieving that they would share. It's hard for me to let the feelings in, so I've found in the past that practices, rituals, can help open the door for me.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Kwamina]

Hi InIndia,

We have a thread on the Coping & Healing Board that you might also find helpful. It's about grieving our losses and many members have participated:

Grieving Our Losses

What is your greatest source of grief at the moment? Is it your daughter or perhaps (also) something else?

Take care and I hope that thread will help you deal with your feelings

The Board Parrot

[Lollypop]

Hi InIndia

I grieved so hard for my lost son, a son that will never turn out to be as I'd hoped he'd be, a son that may never have a fulfilling long term relationship or actually ever be drug free as he self medicates.  My grief lasted many years as did my attempts to change him and "help".

I think I just got tired. I can't pinpoint when my grief stopped but I know it was sometime in my early acceptance stage.

As I write this I can guess the point: my BPDs26 asked to see his photograph box. He'd never been able to look at his childhood photos and one day about 10 months ago we went through it together sharing.  This had followed an intense period of learning about BPD and being on this forum. My BPDs covered his wall with these photos and I asked on the forum what was going on. LBJ explained my BPDs was redefining his childhood and was basically demonstrating he was feeling the love we were giving him in our change in approach to him.

I'm sad that he has BPD and I accept that I can't change that fact. I'm finding a way to live despite the problems.

What I wanted to say is that I now realise that my BPDs26 was also grieving. It's something I'd never considered as I didn't know he had BPD and felt he was either behaving like he did because he chose to or it was because of the drugs. His grief must have been as intense as mine and I can see now that I completely missed that.

I think that sometimes he still does grieve as he hasn't taken full responsibility for himself by seeking treatment. Until this happens I don't think he fully accepts it.

Grief is Lessened in the sharing.

L

[InIndia]

That sounds like an amazing, beautiful insight that the BPD is also grieving... .In a maybe continual process. I'm curious that you're saying L that your grieving has stopped.

Helpful reading the various posts.

Board Parrot, insightful of you to guess I'm also grieving other things right now. I was just writing a grief letter as someone had mentioned, and there's quite a bit in my life I'm grieving right now, and even came to wonder if I even know what it means to grieve for my uBPDD19. Maybe I should say foster here for the purposes of this site as it is a huge factor in what it means having her in our lives, though we don't have a real definition for the relationship. Nothing official, us just opening our lives to her. So I saw in writing that I may most be mourning my own disappointment in my ideals for myself, who I've wanted to be in the place we've put ourselves. I'm doing all those things and yet nothing looks pretty. And I know what's in my heart, all the resentment, fear, sense of superiority, etc. So I've seen opening to all these things in me by grieving let's me be more genuinely present to others in their imperfection, which is the beauty I want to bring to the world, and that gives me joy. If anyone, including our D19 gets more opportunity for living fully from that... .That part isn't my job. I can see mourning what has happened as evidence of who she is, how hard it is for her to accept herself, but I don't know that that means I need to mourn yet what hasn't happened.

I don't know if that makes sense. I'd already been struggling with what I believe hope is from years ago... .Now it has a more personal layer. I don't hope for anything specific but I believe in some kind of bigger picture beauty that we can be a part of through offering our authenticity, pain, presence... .

Thanks for being here, and hope its okay I'm putting all this theoretical stuff out there... .It's amazing sensing you understand.

[Lollypop]

Hi inindia

My own emotional growth has allowed me to move on.  This has been directly from me looking outwards, not inwards.  I didn't specifically try to help myself stop grieving.  What I did do was to start to take care of myself, spending time doing things I enjoy, investing in myself.  To live my own life. I'm a mature student now doing a fine art degree. It has opened up my life.

What better way to show our adult children that it's never too late. We are all changing, all of the time. Our lives matter. By this approach, we are demonstrating to them how to live, how to grow.

Take care

L

[Kwamina]

Thanks for being here, and hope its okay I'm putting all this theoretical stuff out there... .It's amazing sensing you understand.

Yeah it's okay, I was in Analytic Parrot mode anyway so I am ready to go!

Board Parrot, insightful of you to guess I'm also grieving other things right now.

Guess it was my Parrot Sense!

I was just writing a grief letter as someone had mentioned, and there's quite a bit in my life I'm grieving right now, and even came to wonder if I even know what it means to grieve for my uBPDD19.
... .
So I saw in writing that I may most be mourning my own disappointment in my ideals for myself, who I've wanted to be in the place we've put ourselves.
... .
I can see mourning what has happened as evidence of who she is, how hard it is for her to accept herself, but I don't know that that means I need to mourn yet what hasn't happened.
... .
I'd already been struggling with what I believe hope is from years ago... .Now it has a more personal layer.

To me grieving or mourning and acceptance are very much related, one could even say two sides of the same coin. To be able to accept the reality of our past and current life and the reality of the possibilities for our future life, requires us to mourn the loss of the life we never had or no longer have and also mourn the loss of the future life we wanted to have. Accepting reality means letting go of the fantasy, a fantasy we might hold very dear which can make it very difficult and painful to let go.

When it comes to your daughter, acceptance would be letting go of the life you might have envisioned for (and with) her and accepting the reality of her BPD and the consequences this has for her (and your life). This however doesn't mean that you have to let go of all hope, just that your hope from now on will be based on your experiences and the reality of what you know about BPD and the (potential) consequences this has. There still remains hope for the future, just a perhaps more realistic hope than before, adjusted to the reality of BPD.

Leading by example is something I always encourage and if you are able to accept yourself as you are and not as you would have liked to be, or how you feel you should be, or how you had planned to be etc., that would be a huge step forward. Acceptance is hard though, but progress is definitely possible. In that other thread Dr. Marsha Linehan is mentioned who has written about the concept of radical acceptance. She says that to accept radically means to accept reality as it is, to accept that everything has a cause (we might not know the cause, but everything still has a cause) and to accept that life can still be worth living even with really painful events in it. It's important to note that with radical acceptance is not meant to just take everything as it is and do nothing about it, but what is meant is a radical acknowledgment of reality as it is for only by acknowledging reality as it is, can we be able to change anything. If we do not acknowledge reality as it is, there is nothing for us to change. We can only change the things we acknowledge.

If you want to read more about this, we have a great article which actually is a transcript of a talk Dr. Linehan gave: Practicing Reality Acceptance