Mourning Losses

God uses a variety of things in our lives to speak to us. One of the ways He frequently speaks to me is through movies. He has used several of them as part of the process of my healing. I was reminded of that again this weekend.

From what I have read, in a time of intense pain or loss, the mind will actually numb itself emotionally for a period of time (this is usually the case). This is because to feel the total loss all at once would be completely overwhelming and very destructive. What seems to occur is that as the numbing goes away, we are confronted with actually allowing ourselves to feel the pain or dismiss it as non existent because it wasn't completely felt when the event happened. The mistake I have made in the past has been to interpret my numbness as a lack of feeling and then dismiss any pain that occurs in the short term future from the event as ridiculous because the loss has already been "mourned" with what little emotion I had at the time.

It seems that my behavior has been very destructive to my own healing. The pain is there, the emotion is there, but it has no place to go. I suspect it starts eating the individual up inside, manifesting itself in other ways. What I am having to do, in some cases by choice and others by accident, is to allow myself to feel and mourn losses that I haven't allowed myself to feel in the past. It is acknowledging that a loss or pain matters, and matters in the deepest parts of the heart. And then allow the heart to gush in pain as it is rinsed clean through tears.

What is my point here? Allow yourself time and emotion to mourn losses and pain in your life. You may not feel the loss immediately, but it is there, is real, and will need to be felt when the time comes. Completely. Otherwise, you might be watching a movie 2.5 years after the fact and burst into tears.

Update (11-30): That being said, such a thing is good, because pain needs to be felt. It seems that feeling pain is not wishful thinking about bringing the person back. Allowing the pain to be felt is simply acknowledging that the loss mattered (as stated above). I think this is a very important thing to remember. By feeling, in whatever way that manifests itself, I am admitting that the loss of the person (through death or separation) hurts me because I loved them. The pain will not bring them back. But that is not why it is being felt. And by attempting to deny the pain, all I do is lie to myself.