Will you suffer withdrawal, or will you surrender?
Grief will always give you the choice.
I continued to pace my bedroom, my footsteps short and stuttered. My head bent down, staring at the black screen on my phone. The other hand with my thumb lodged in between my teeth–biting, as hard as I could stand.
My heart kept rhythm with my feet.
The room was dark, barely lit. Music playing through the speakers hung over my bed. The kids were in their beds, sleeping, or at least I assumed.
I was suffering withdrawal.
Withdrawal from Ariana.
From love.
From connection.
From purpose.
From identity.
I was suffering.
I didn’t know what to do. How to survive.
I wasn’t even sure I knew who I was anymore.
Hours crept on, and my feet didn’t stop. Not until the early hours of the morning when my body was so overcome with exhaustion I was forced to sleep.
There is an unquenchable thirst for recovery of the loss you have suffered. It consumes your mind as a fire consumes a forest. It is unstoppable. Incomprehensible and unexplainable.
You spend your nights searching for any cheap imitation—anything to make it subside for even a minute.
The ashes give rise to shame and guilt, which ignite a fire within your chest. And before long, you are brought to nothing.
How long this takes is a personal journey. But the moment the raging fire fully consumes you is the moment you get to choose your next step:
Surrender or fight.
And while fighting might seem like the right choice in the moment, surrender is the strongest step toward quenching the thirst and smothering the flame.
I fought. For years. My grief.
I was determined it would have no power over me until I was brought to nothing.
Ashes. A pile of rubble.
It was only when I surrendered that true transformation began to take hold of me.
How about you? Did you choose surrender or fight?
With Love,
CJ
P.S. My grief group, “Steady Hands,” is launching. If you want to move forward in your grief to a new future, join today. I am also taking 1:1 clients for a short time.