142. Lonely Grief

 Hello. Hello, my amazing, beautiful listeners. Thank you for joining me. How are you today? For those of you that have been listening and heard the episode that I did with a q and A around grief I mentioned in there, in that q and a session with everybody that oftentimes, months, weeks, and even days, there tends to be a theme, a a theme around a certain topic or principle that is associated with healing.

And grief has definitely come up a lot more than I would say usual, whether it's anniversaries, we've got Mother's Day graduation, life changes and shifts. it seems like grief is a little bit more present Also as I too have been feeling more grief in my life, I think I am also more attuned to it.

So we have had a few more episodes around grief than usual, there's so many different aspects and pieces around grief that I feel like every single one of these episodes touch on something that perhaps. Some of you, even if just one of you, I hope that it validates your experience of grief and lets you know more than anything that you are not alone in it.

However, that is what I'm talking about today is the lonely grief, the kind of grief that you truly do experience alone, that in your world. You might have me validating this for you, and you might even have a support group, a therapist, a coach, that can validate and maybe even relate. Yet perhaps you in your world, the people around you, in your day-to-day, you might be the only one that is experiencing grief around certain things that other people would never even understand or comprehend what this kind of grief is.

Lonely grief, the unseen side of divorce and parenting alone, especially those of you that are doing parallel parenting. This episode also is a little bit more personal than usual. I really am wanting to validate the idea that so many of you will be experiencing lonely grief, and there are so many things to grieve alone in this process.

Like I said, there might be a lot of well-meaning friends and family that try to understand and yet they can't. And as much as they might try to say that they get it or attempt to share their grief that they think matches your somehow, and sometimes it can often feel more invalidating than validating.

There are certain experiences that unless you've been through it, you just might not get it. I remember one time being at a church event and afterwards I was in the foyer talking to some of the women and slowly one after another's husband came into the conversation circle and before I knew it. They were talking about how they were going to get some dinner and the conversation turned into more of we and I slowly, I slowly started to get boxed out of the circle I don't think they meant it, but I was not a we and I was just an I single the grief that I'm not a couple doing couple things.

Was impossible for any of them to understand or attune towards because they didn't know what that was like. I don't think they meant it, but they couldn't know, that was lonely grief. Or when you're raising your children, and even if your children go to the other parent's house, more than likely you have a different set of rules.

You have different set of values and different ways of parenting and teaching. And so when you are parenting your children and your space, your home, it's, it's hard, they aren't listening and they've locked themselves in their room and they won't come out and you sit alone in the hallway crying because.

You're exhausted from life. You're exhausted from long days of work. Long day of work, you're exhausted because you have a pile of laundry also sitting in the middle of the hall. And you just want your child to do the freaking dishes on their chores. And you are alone. Alone in enforcing rules, alone in holding consequences alone in waiting in the hall for them to come out.

Alone in teaching, alone in getting the silent treatment, you are alone in grief. Many times during the hardest years of raising teens, when the worry of them learning how to drive or wiping their tears from heartbreak, feeling the pain of their life learning decisions, I'd find myself in my closet crying, my own tears sobbing over them, about them, for them and for myself, because I was alone that I was the parent.

Who was alone in raising them and even loving them in the way that I love, hoping for them to have better than what they were shown, even by example from the other parent. it didn't even matter that for a few years I had a wonderful, healthy partner who was with me and who loved them, but it Wasn't their dad. I was alone in grief. My baby is graduating high school this week and I have been feeling the ping of this grief rising in my body a little more every day

since the month of April, each day it's been telling me you're one day closer to the stage of life being over. You're one day close, closer to him not needing you in these ways. You are one day closer to him, leaving for good. You're one day closer to being done raising children. At this adolescent stage of life alone in grief, this new stage in my life is so unknown as he is the baby, and I will have no more.

Of my own little children to raise. My brain doesn't like the unknown like many of your brains, but the lonely in my grief is still at the forefront. Even my husband who is still raising 13, 11, and 10 year olds who's right in the thick of needing to get All three kids to three different places and three different activities all at the same time. I will be watching my son walk across the stage praying. He doesn't say a swear word when he takes his diploma and then this stage of mothering is over. I may have Scott sitting next to me, but I will be grieving alone.

Now, of course I'm thrilled for my child and I'm so proud of him, and all of the joys are not unseen or lost in my heart. My point in sharing this today is to validate that you are not the only one grieving alone and experiencing that lonely kind of grief. This is a part of divorce that no one talks about, at least not that I've heard.

When I see social media posts that show two divorced parents hugging each other or posing for family pictures together, or one even helping their ex set up for their next wedding, that's not my story, and I know it's not many of yours. I have the ex that pops in for the big events sometimes for the updated profile picture that will soon be added to the dating profile and then back out of their life.

He goes. I also wanna validate that even if you have someone else in your life, a blended family or the potential of one, you are still going to be alone in your parenting on some level. No one will love your baby, is like you do, and the loss of the idea that the other parent would somehow share that that's gone.

They may show up, like I said, for the Disneyland fund, and they may even send the monthly check. If they're not sharing the same values and morals and teaching and concern, it's going to feel very lonely. Or if they remarried and making the children call them mom, and you are now slowly feeling pushed out of your children's lives, you're feeling a lonely kind of grief.

let's not forget the anniversaries. The would have been milestones that sneak up on us and steam

the day that used to be. Your wedding anniversary still shows up on the calendar, even though no one else remembers, and it still hurts, not because you want them back, because that day once meant something sacred and now it's silent unseen lonely grief. Or when everyone else is posting family photos and matching pajamas, and you're just trying to hold it together and pray that the kids don't count the presents under the tree ' cause they won't get very far or trying to make it special for your kids while your heart is quietly breaking.

You might be watching fireworks alone Sitting in church on Easter or Christmas with the empty seat beside you. It is not just the absence of a partner It's the absence of being understood in those moments. That's lonely grief too.

Or you're the only one who's remembering all of the details, the allergies, the teacher's name,

this kind of grief can hurt so much it's not often going to be validated. It is going to be unseen. It's layered with feelings of invisibility or rejection, loss of what you imagined life at this stage would be.

even if you are with another partner, it doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna go away because that part of you still parents, your children is still going to feel alone in that part of parenting.

So what can you do? What can you do with this kind of lonely grief? You name it. Because unnamed grief becomes shame or resentment. You feel it, even if it's just for a few minutes at a time in the car, in the closet or in the hallway, and then you tell the truth about it. Journal it. Tell a therapist, , not for fixing, but for witnessing, then create a sacred ritual, for example. I'm writing myself a letter, congratulating myself on raising four children alone for doing it alone, for braving it alone, for carrying the weight of all of it alone, for holding space for their tears, their heartbreak for

trying to keep my eyes open. As long as I can't, waiting for them to come home from a party, being exhausted the next morning, having to work

or having to get up early for work, but sitting in the bed of my child who is crying over a heartbreak and listening to them. into the early hours of the morning, knowing that I'm only going to get a couple hours of sleep before a 19 hour day,

I'm going to validate all of the ways that succeeded in raising my children alone.

Don't forget to celebrate. Celebrate the moments that were successful. Celebrate the moments where you never thought that you could make it, but you did. You never thought that you could get through, but here you are,

then let grief teach you something. Your love is deeper than any of these circumstances that you may feel alone in, that your grief is a reflection of your fierce devotion to keep going, to keep healing and to keep moving forward.

As my youngest walks the stage this week, I'm gonna be sitting there in that moment with so much joy and with grief, and both are going to be welcomed. Maybe I'll feel it alone, but I'll also know that there are women all over the world doing the same thing, grieving the parts that no one sees, and that makes me feel a little less alone, and I hope it does for you too.

I know this isn't everyone's story in all of these ways, but for those of you who feel you are grieving alone, you are not ignored. I hear you. I see you I am sorry. I'm grateful that I have done this three other times to know that they still need me and want me in their life. It's different and in many ways better as with any grief and as I've talked about before, when we really see it and feel it and allow it, it can validate all of the beauty behind it, and it can help us create hope in front of it.

  Because even in our lonely grief, we still are the chooser in our life. And we can create the life that we want no matter what, because we can take care everybody.