Losing a child affects us in ways that we never possibly could have imagined. We are quite honestly not the same people who we were before experiencing this profound loss. When today’s guest, Lisa, lost her 19-year-old amazing, talented daughter, Kate, to a rare, aggressive cancer a few months ago, she truly felt lost. She said that she lost confidence in herself. She felt like she couldn’t do anything even to the point that she started feeling like a bad cook and a bad driver.
The guilt and all of the ‘what ifs’ became consuming for Lisa. She found herself focusing on many past decisions. What if they had taken her daughter’s ovary the first time when she had a simple benign cyst? What if they had gone to a different doctor? What if they had done surgeries at different times? Would her daughter still be alive today?
These ‘what if’ questions haunt so many of us, don’t they? They plagued me throughout my grief just as they affect Lisa today. How do we learn to let go of those doubts and questions? There are no easy answers. Others tell us again and again that we did the best we could do and that there is nothing we could have done differently, but learning to accept and believe in ourselves is much more difficult.
I learned from Gwen many years ago that feelings don’t have to be rational to be real. And these feelings, as irrational as they may be, are important to acknowledge. Only by experiencing all of our emotions can we truly begin to heal. We need to slowly and gently go through our irrational feelings and challenge them ourselves. Therapists and support groups can help us along our journey as well.
Through hard work and perseverance grieving parents can and do heal. I have seen it in myself and so many others through these past six years. I can tell a funny story about Andy now without overflowing tears. The grief is still there, certainly, but it is no longer all-consuming and I experience more moments of peace. I know, too, that someday when Lisa thinks about Kate, the first thing that will come to her mind will be her amazing smile and personality and not the doubts that flood her mind today.
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