Stitched Up Hearts

After the recent death of my father I was nervous to go back to work. I know lots of grievers feel this way. I was especially nervous because at my job I talk to people about death all day!

I became a grief therapist because my mom died by suicide when I was 23. I have lots of experience with being reminded of my own grief in professional settings, but it felt different to return with a loss so fresh. 

My dad was in hospice care for three months before he died from complications of Alzheimer’s and skin cancer. The two years of my dad’s decline had taken a major toll on me. My nervous system had been hijacked by the never ending disasters after we took over his care. I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing that when it did, I would be an orphan.

I had lots of time to prepare my clients for my absence and my supervisor was extremely supportive when I told her I wanted to take two weeks off after my dad’s death. I spent my time off taking care of myself. I travelled to be with my siblings, I went to yoga as often as I could, I played with my kids and I slept.

I was ready as I could be to go back to work. And I was pretty freaked out. 

What if I wouldn’t be able stop thinking about my own stuff with my clients? What if I could no longer hold space for other grievers because I was so maxed out? And, an even deeper fear, what if this loss, this trauma, was the last straw, the one that would finally break me?

I’ve been back to work now for a little over a month. And good news, I didn’t break!

I’ve sat with clients processing new and old losses. 

And, in a major surprise to me, work has actually been the most comforting place to be. 

This is definitely not my first loss and I know the drill. In the beginning people reach out to check in on you and then after a couple weeks everyone goes back to their lives. They adopt the “don’t ask them about their grief because they look like they’re doing well so if I talk about their dead dad they’ll get upset” thinking and you never hear another thing until you awkwardly bring it up at dinner some times and everyone looks at you like your some sort of sad puppy with three legs so you make a joke to lighten the mood and everyone feels relieved to go back to talking about summer camps for their kids. Oh is that just me?

I digress. What I mean to say is that, at work, at least I don’t have to do any of that.

Although I don’t often share about my personal losses with my clients we get to drop all of the small talk at the door. When they feel their losses deeply in my presence and they slowly, slowly begin to recover, I do, too. When they share about the ways their hearts have been cracked open, smashed and put back together I feel the gold filled cracks in my heart alongside them.

My heart is most comfortable being deep in the depths. My comfort there is a gift that comes from living with a clinically depressed and addicted mom (but that’s a story for another time). I know that, one day, hopefully many years from now, when my peers begin to experience the deaths of their parents I’ll be able to show up for them and sit in the depths with them. For now, I’ll sit with my grievers; holding space for them and piecing my heart back together again, one stitch at a time.