Day 18: Release
I considered skipping this one. It's just so personal. But then that defeats the entire point of spreading awareness and understanding, not to mention how healing this project has been for me. I've made it this far; I can't stop here. This isn't SUPPOSED to be *easy*.
This photo was taken six months after Elias passed away, and I was still very much in raw grief mode. Today, I... think about how many things I've worked on since then, how much I've "released" what was weighing so heavily on my heart in this picture. Like so many balloons into the sky, I've let go of most of my anger, guilt, and "what-ifs" (I think I'm entitled to still have my moments).
But I've still got some work to do. What I'm struggling with most at this point in time is letting go of my anger, hurt, and disappointment with people I thought would be there for me beyond the first month or so after our loss. The past two and a half years have shown me so much about the people around me, and I've lost friends I thought would never leave my side, people I was there for during the traumatic losses of their friends and parents, people who said I should be over it already while the grief was still very fresh, people who judged my parenting in my grief, people I opened up to who used my sincerity against me, people I considered "forever friends" who simply stopped talking to me altogether as if I had some contagious disease, people who said they were giving me "privacy" to justify their absence only to never return.
I am in the middle of the process of not only letting go of those friendships but letting go of the toxic elements those people have leaked into my mind and my heart. Letting go of people is one thing, undoing the damage they've done is another. What has helped me is focusing on the friends I've grown closer to these past two and a half years, new friendships I've forged, and how lucky I am to have had some people by my side this entire time.
But that's a post for another day.
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I considered skipping this one. It's just so personal. But then that defeats the entire point of spreading awareness and understanding, not to mention how healing this project has been for me. I've made it this far; I can't stop here. This isn't SUPPOSED to be *easy*.
This photo was taken six months after Elias passed away, and I was still very much in raw grief mode. Today, I... think about how many things I've worked on since then, how much I've "released" what was weighing so heavily on my heart in this picture. Like so many balloons into the sky, I've let go of most of my anger, guilt, and "what-ifs" (I think I'm entitled to still have my moments).
But I've still got some work to do. What I'm struggling with most at this point in time is letting go of my anger, hurt, and disappointment with people I thought would be there for me beyond the first month or so after our loss. The past two and a half years have shown me so much about the people around me, and I've lost friends I thought would never leave my side, people I was there for during the traumatic losses of their friends and parents, people who said I should be over it already while the grief was still very fresh, people who judged my parenting in my grief, people I opened up to who used my sincerity against me, people I considered "forever friends" who simply stopped talking to me altogether as if I had some contagious disease, people who said they were giving me "privacy" to justify their absence only to never return.
I am in the middle of the process of not only letting go of those friendships but letting go of the toxic elements those people have leaked into my mind and my heart. Letting go of people is one thing, undoing the damage they've done is another. What has helped me is focusing on the friends I've grown closer to these past two and a half years, new friendships I've forged, and how lucky I am to have had some people by my side this entire time.
But that's a post for another day.
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