I Swear You Will Be Fine

Dear Josh,

Grief really hits at the strangest times. When I’m busy, I can think about you and not feel the familiar heaviness of grief. But when I’m alone in my room after a full day of activities, I can come across your picture and feel the sudden smack of grief. I say smack, not breeze or any other word gentle word, because it genuinely feels like that. I’m getting slapped in the face by grief over and over, at the times I least expect it. I can look at a picture of you smiling with the dogs and suddenly feel so much longing I think I might burst. I miss you so, so much.

I attended an ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) event a few days ago with Lynn. It was really engaging and I thoroughly enjoyed myself! It was so informative and I genuinely had so many takeaways from this full day workshop – I’d usually be less attentive with the horrible food they provided and the fact that we had been sitting in the same hard chair for hours, but I was surprisingly not tired at all! I could see us attending this session with Lynn and whispering our thoughts to each other. I missed you before, I missed you then, I missed you after. This event made me think a lot, as all good workshops do. I hope I get to use some of these thoughts I learnt to help others in the future. Let me share a few that really stuck with me. It might help someone else:

1.  Change is hard when you don’t know what the replacement is. There can be a couple of interpretations for this line, but I think the one I’ll stick with is: It’ll be much easier to change if you create smaller, achievable next steps. Breaking a big goal down into bite-sized, “chewable” pieces can help way more than just thinking, “I want to change” with no replacements in place. I personally would question myself until I know what my next step is. Easier said than done, but it’s a lot easier than just saying “I want to change” without thinking about what’s next.
2.  Man in the hole metaphor: This is a story I will remember for a long time. A man falls into a hole with a shovel and wants to get out, but doesn’t know how to. He starts digging and soon enough, he makes a room for himself and gets comfortable. Another person walks by and asks this man if he would like to get out of the hole. The man says “yes” and this person throws a ladder down the hole. Instead of using the ladder to climb out, the man will use it to dig. People do what they are used to. I like this metaphor because it can be applied to many situations. It reminds me of the rollercoaster metaphor for seeking abusive relationships – If you’ve only sat on rollercoasters, you will only want to sit on rollercoasters because of the familiarity and comfort it brings.
3.  This last one is one I’ll also personally keep in mind: Sometimes, you should do the action for the feelings to change, not wait for the feelings to change before taking action. Many people who are depressed have the tendency to wait for their feelings to go away before taking action (like going out for a movie with friends, or applying to a school of their choice). Instead of waiting for your feelings to change, take the action. Do the movie, and you might unknowingly feel better. The speaker of this event, Dr Chris McCurry, said something that I think can also be applied to grief. He said that people often say they do things to distract themselves from feelings of anxiety or depression, not realizing that the anxiety or depression is in fact distracting them from their lives. The actions they take to distract themselves, like going out for a movie, are just living. I thought this applies to grief too because we often say we do things to distract ourselves from grief. I don’t think we need to think of grief as a distraction per se. I think we can have a life with grief, such that grief becomes something we live with, and not something that takes over our life.

But again, always easier said than done. I’m aware that this letter is getting a little too long. If you’re still reading this, Josh, thank you for persisting. I hope the points were thought-provoking for you too! I wrote so much in my little notebook!

I also thought of the analogy of grief being a ball in a box. Bear with me, this is the last one, and not from the ACT workshop. I read this years ago and remembered it when I lost a friend of mine to a motorcycle accident in early 2024. It goes like this:

Picture your life as a closed box, your grief as a bouncing ball, and pain as a button inside the box. When you’re newly acquainted with grief, the bouncing ball may feel heavy and large, filling up every corner of your box. Because it’s so present, it can be hard to ignore or handle. Every little step you take causes the big bouncing ball of grief to move and hit the pain button. No matter how much you try to move slowly, or handle the box with care, it will still hit the walls of your box, your life, and that awful pain button. As time goes on, the bouncing ball of grief does not shrink, but your box of life expands. You start to go about your day, you work, you meet people, and your once-so-little box of life expands. You may have days where you smile or laugh, and think you feel much better. But, the bouncing ball of grief still resides in your box. From time-to-time, it may bounce off the walls and hit the pain button again. This could take you by surprise and you may end up moving slowly again, reminded of the ball of grief hitting the ever-present pain button. This bouncing ball of grief will never go away. This awfully painful pain button will never go away. But your box, your life, will keep expanding. Once in a while, the bouncing ball will bounce and inevitably hit the pain button and you will feel the same excruciating pain you felt all those days ago. But, it won’t occur as much as it did. Again, it doesn’t mean that the ball of grief has left or shrunk, or that the pain button has disappeared. It just means you’ve somehow found a way to live with the reality of grief.

I’m trying not to think about Valentine’s Day, but the date serves as a sorrowful reminder. Happy Valentine’s Day, Josh! I think we would have had a blast. I can’t wait to see you again. I love you more, always, and forever.

Love always,
Sha