Passanando Fam: The Purpose of Denial

Monday, January 20, 2014

The Purpose of Denial

**WARNING** This post is going to be filled with platitudes but please don't shy away. This post is really about growing from the experiences of pain and sorrow and moving towards acceptance and peace.

The other day I was reading some training material for volunteers working in hospice. Something that caught my eye was The Purpose of Denial. The purpose? To "give ourselves time to adjust to a new reality."

WOW! Profound! So profound to me that it made me stop and think. I thought about our move, my theme for this year, my fury friend's passing, pretty much EVERYTHING that has gone on in the past five years...

And I thought about the way I handle it all, the way I push things and thoughts out of my mind in hopes of moving past the situation. But it never works for me! Now I understand why...

I never did this^ I would push past the pain, past the grief so I could hurry on to peace.

I know you must be thinking "but you said you liked moving!" I did! But there was a lot of grief with the move as well. I left my home, my family, my friends. There was stuff (literal stuff) that we had to leave behind because it wouldn't fit in our truck and we only had time and resources for one trip. Leaving behind that stuff was just made worse because of all the other stuff I had to leave. The move was good but it was hard, too!

You may think "well, it's been almost five years. shouldn't you be over all the things that almost happened?" My response to that: NOPE! For some the grieving process is short, for me it's longer. And although there was no actual death, there was certainly deaths of other sorts.

Then there's the cat. "But Blythe, it was just a cat!" If you know me at all you know I have a huge soft spot for animals (and if you don't know me, well then, just hush! :-P ) You may know that I don't deal with Death very well.

Putting all that aside, the heart of the matter has been I never had to adjust to a New Reality before! My life and my situations seemed to stay the same. Nothing ever really changed. Sure, I had lots of things happen to me but the situations and outcomes seemed to always be the same...and then we moved.

The problem with pausing for thought and giving myself Time is that it opens my mind and thoughts to all the other times I didn't do this for myself. Thus the long post...