Lisa Overman, A Healed Heart

One year ago this month my love relationship ended. I felt like my heart was ripped out and shredded, it happened suddenly, painfully and with virtually no warning. What made it even more painful was that just sixteen days before it ended, the man I loved finally told me he loved me. He said he loved me and couldn’t imagine his life without me. For one amazing week I felt so loved, so treasured. He touched me differently, looked at me more lovingly. 

Life was so beautiful, I felt like I’d been given  such a gift, my heart overflowed with absolute joy, with love. Just looking at him brought me the most intense pleasure and brought my deepest feelings of love to the surface. I felt so blessed, so happy.  Within a week I could feel his fear. I believe it was fear over what I’d expect, now knowing he loved me. I just wanted to bask in his love, to share my heart and soul with him and treasure every single second of our life.

Sixteen days after telling me he loved me, he abruptly ended our relationship. I was devestated, shocked and stunned. We’d been through so much in fourteen months. We’d  faced much together; a tremendous family crisis, health issues, his son’s hospitalizations. There had been much good. There had been many sweet, tender, exquisite moments and some really dark, painful, challenging moments. His fears and concerns had surfaced over and over in the fourteen months,  making him break away for several days at a time, deciding if he wanted to be a part of my life. I’d had more than enough of the indecision. I thought at last with his admission of loving me, we had  moved beyond the fears, beyond the uncertainty. I thought we were on our way to a life together. In no way did I ever imagine he would freak out in fear and end our relationship.

He called me on the phone, I could tell you exactly what I was doing, where I was standing, when he told me he’d decided to end it. He’d told me a few days before he was uncertain and wanted time to think about us. All of this after he told me he loved me and couldn’t imagine his life without me. I was shattered, it was a miracle I could pull myself out of bed everyday and function. I loved him so deeply, so completely. It had been a long time since I’d allowed myself to open my heart so completely. To have it end and to end in such a fashion was shattering.

We sat down a couple days later and talked.  He told me his reasons, which I learned later were lies. I hate to say that, because even today I think this man is a good man and great father. He told me he wanted to end it because he didn’t want to be in a relationship, he wanted to be alone and spend more time with his kids. It was devestating, yet I believed him. I could see his fear. I didn’t understand any of it. The entire time we’d shared our lives I’d bent over backwards to be inclusive to his two wonderful children, who I came to love and to his mother who became my friend.

Being a step child myself, I understood completely that his children  needed to have time alone with him and time to just be dad and son or dad and daughter. I knew how much I’d needed that in my own life with my father after he remarried and I worked  hard to make certain Rob  had the time alone to spend with his kids, without my presence.

If anyone had asked me to take bets on what happened next I wouldn’t have called any of it in a million years. Of course knowing this man as I did, maybe I should have realized by his fly by the seat of his pants way of living and spur of the moment decisions that he was one to do things no one could ever expect.

Within 35 days of ending our relationship he met someone, on Mother’s Day weekend. Fabulous for me, since my mom’s birthday and mother’ day are all on the same weekend and are a painful reminder of her passing. When he called me and told me he wanted to see me the Monday after Mother’s Day I wasn’t exactly in the most receptive mood to talk to him given the fact he hadn’t bothered to text or call me to say he gave a crap about the fact that it was a rough weekend for me. When we met and talked he told me about the woman he’d met and that he was going to start dating her. I felt like I’d been blindsided. What about the fact that he wanted to be alone? What about the fact he wanted more time with his kids? What about the fact he’d told me he loved me just weeks ago? I wanted to rip his face off. Miss Kindness and gentleness lost it, I called him every awful thing that came to my mind. It wasn’t one of my finest moments. So the reality wasn’t that he left me to be alone and spend more time with his kids. The reality was something quite different.

Part One of a series on Healing With Time.

Dad and I before I was three years old.

As I watched My Sister’s Keeper I was touched by the raw pain of Kate’s own struggle to make sense of the changes her family faced through her illness and the devestation  of her loss as they watched her die. At one point in the movie Kate’s sister asked the judge how it felt when her daughter died. I could answer immediately, having faced the loss of my daughter and my parents as well as others near and dear to me in the last decade.

For me their loss feels like life has ended. It feels like all the blood has drained from my heart; I’m standing, breathing, yet feel empty and dead. It feels like my life is over.

I was touched by the honesty of what this family faced and how they each handled it so differently, yet in the end when Kate passed they found a way to honor her memory with a yearly family vacation to a place she loved; the wide open spaces of Montana.  For each of us how we bear our grief and find our way through our pain differs. Yet honestly no matter who we are, what we do for a living or where we live we each feel the depth of our losses deep in our soul. No matter if we reach out or go within we must take steps, baby steps forward toward our healing.

Yes, our life as we knew it is over; the life we desired blown to bits and we’re left to take one tiny step at a time into a future  we really don’t understand or care for. Our loss is deep and lasting. With time and effort our healing will begin. I heard Nate Burkus say on Oprah recently that after his partners death he didn’t want to do much of anything for four months, that he was living but felt dead. He often thought, “what’s the point of it all.” He would often stay in bed grieving.

It’s true, in the depth of our loss many of us have those times , I certainly had them. I had days when dying felt easier than living, when my mother’s loss felt like the end of my life. How do we move beyond the loss that devestates us? We take small steps. We find support whether it be a therapist, our family or friends or a healthy combination of all three. Maybe we talk to a minister or we take comfort in silent prayer. The important thing is to take a step. Each small step will lead to a bigger step when we’re ready, until we reach a place where we can take a breath again without feeling pain.

With many small steps we will reach a day when we wake up and feel a smile cross our face; when for so long there was nothing to smile about. There is no magic that will heal us. Somehow, with time after living in our pain we realize we can honor the memory and love of the one’s we’ve lost better by living joyfully. As many, myself included can attest, when a loved one is dying they usually express their desire for us to live fully. They want our happiness. They don’t want us living daily in pain or living empty lives, wishing for them. For me the best way to honor my loved ones is to touch other lives and show people through my example that there’s a way through the pain and loss.

My life looks different than I expected. I’m actually laughing as I write that statement. It’s as if a bulldozer destroyed my life and one block at a time, through a sea of tears I began to rebuild it. Did I want this life? Not so much really, but clearly God did. I now focus my life on writing, maintaining a website that supports and inspires others in grief or loss and I treasure those I love deeply. I’ve learned life is short, pain is very real and we are best served living life with as much joy as our hearts can hold. It happens one step at a time. Take that first step with me.

The process of grieving and saying goodbye to loved ones is as individual as our very personalities. How we approach closure is not as important as actually having closure. We all need time and our personal beliefs to allow for closure in a loved ones passing. For some of us, myself included a service with a few personal mementos, a video slide show and selected photos is a lovely part of closure. A service allows me to focus my attention and heart on all I treasured about the person in my life and to hear bits of humor, love and memories that other people treasured as well. It allows me time for tears, for laughter and for honoring all the special traits I loved about the person passing.

The memorial is presented as a final goodbye, a final honoring of the soul passing, but the reality is that it’s only the beginning of a long goodbye. There are many stages and emotions in our grieving procress. At first we may be so shell shocked we are simply numb, for others there is anger at the unfairness of the passing, still others may bury their emotion along side the loved one, refusing to deal with the emotional pain they feel, instead remaining stoic.

There is no right or wrong way to grieve, but there is a process and no matter how we deny it, or refuse to face it, the process will go on and we will find ourselves overcome with tears, sadness or anger at odd times when we are under great stress. We may break down when something touches our heart and reminds us of our loved one. I can remember many moments when my grief has overcome me and I’ve cried unexpectedly. A few years ago as I wandered through Hallmark around my mom’s birthday, which is also Mother’s Day I was overcome with emotion as I looked at figurines, which my mom had collected. As I looked around and turned a corner my eyes lit on a fairy/angel figurine and in that moment I felt my mom watching over me. She was showing me through that tiny angel that she is there, watching, caring and loving me. It was a sweet moment of spiritual comfort. That fairy angel figurine now graces my dresser and makes me smile when I look at her.

For some the photos and belongings are a treasured reminder, for others they are too painful. Everyone honors their loved ones in different ways. I have photos and mementos all over my home as sweet reminders of those I love. My dad’s brother Theron, said to me once when visiting that its too hard for him to have all the photos around, that it’s a painful reminder. Instead he enjoys some of my dad’s furniture and belongings treasuring them in his home as a part of honoring my dad’s memory.

There will always be significant days and moments that are a struggle years after a passing. For each person the days will be different. If we can share these moments with someone we love the grief feels less and we feel more supported. This is something we must be vocal about in order to be supported in our painful moments. Many people don’t understand and need clear directives of what helps us in honoring our loved ones. Only when others understand can they step up and support us in our need.

Time truly does heal; we always hear that statement, yet I’ve found it to be true in my own grieving process. With time, years and treasured memories our hearts find peace and a way to go on, while still honoring those whose prescence we miss in our lives.

Giving ourselves time and allowing others time to grieve in their own way is critical. For some therapy helps or journaling or just having time in prayer. We are all very different souls facing loss and grief and we each need very personal ways to release our pain and move into feeling peaceful over a passing.

It’s important to reach out and share with others in our grief. Sharing our pain and burden eases it, and allows us a measure of peace. If you know someone grieving reach out to them, make them laugh, take time to talk, share and listen to their memories and pain. Your love and support in dark moments will mean the world and will be remembered.

We all love and we all feel loss, so finding ways to honor our loss, release it and feel peace again is essential. Friends, loved ones, therapists, nature, prayer and time are all a piece of the process. May you each feel supported and loved through your own healing process.
Namaste

Photo Credit: Lisa Overman

We all have moments, weeks and years in our lives when pain, grief and loss overcome us. We move through our losses at the pace our hearts allow. For some healing comes more quickly than for others, there is no right or wrong when a heart is healing. The statement “Time Heals” was on my mom’s nurse tee shirt and I have found that to be true in my own life, with my own losses.

At times there is nothing we can to do help another heal besides offer our love and support. At times our love and support will be turned away, as our friends or loved ones grapple with their pain, loss and scars in their own way. I can attest that it is frustrating beyond belief to watch someone you love turn away from your love and your support because they are in pain and can’t open their hearts fully. 

In those times there is nothing more to do than step back and allow God to touch their life and help them to heal. There is only so much any of us can offer and if we are turned away then we release them, knowing we did everything we could. We gave our support and our love freely and there is nothing more to be done. In their deepest pain only God can guide our friends and loved ones who need to heal.

Healing takes place as each person is ready for it. For some it’s a dark, scary, painful, path. I know, I’ve walked that path several times over in losing my parents, my daughter and so many friends and relatives to death. I walked it as my marriage ended. There is no easy way down that path, it is a path that we walk with God, without even knowing it. We are supported and loved even in our darkest pain and deepest grief, even when we don’t feel it, and long for support. The hardest part of having walked that path is knowing I can’t take away another’s pain or fear. Those are things that have to happen within each of us, we have to willingly open our heart again and take a chance to love, even when we feel our lives have been destroyed by the pain love caused.

There is no easy path through the pain of watching your marriage end, watching the one you love walk away and go to another. I know, I watched it happen in my own life. I watched my husband walk away six months after our daughter died, moving in with another woman. In that same time period my grandfather whom I adored died and just months later my aunt was killed by a drunk driver.
It was truly the year from hell. I don’t know how my family and I made it through that darkness; but we did.

I went on to love again, to love more deeply and to love more passionately because then I understood how quickly loss can come and how precious each day with those we love is. Life can end in a instant and goodbyes don’t always come. I know that first hand. So now I live generously, with passion and with a grateful heart for everyone in my life. It isn’t always easy and sometimes I get slapped with pain and loss again, but I know God is always there and I will always be supported and guided.

There is nothing we can do but share our hearts with love, with those we treasure. When those we love walk away, as they sometimes do we can only pray that if they are meant to be a part of our lives that God will heal their hearts and heal ours too. Healing comes as we are ready to accept it. Sometimes we fight it, we struggle in every way to go against it because we are so deeply in pain and fear. In those darkest times, I pray that God’s support will be felt by those I love, and by those you love too. All we can do is pray that healing comes on angels wings and those we love find joy, peace and love again. There is nothing more we can ask. Love heals

I think most of us can relate to the idea that holidays are filled with moments of deep love, challenge, emotion and a wide variety of expectations. For me it starts with the commercials filled with happy families gathering around to share a meal, opening gifts or sharing their day together. That is the beautiful side of family and committed relationships. The flip side is that most of us have experienced the loss of people that we truly love and treasure and enjoying the holidays without them is never an easy experience. We learn to accept our loss, to move forward, to heal; but somewhere in side, at least for me is a place of sadness that I can no longer share the significance of special days with my parents and with others I’ve lost.

Holidays seem to be filled with a mixture of joy for those we can be with, pleasure for the special moments when we can hold those dear to us and filled with tinges of sadness for what can never be again with those we’ve lost. Even with those we love still near to us on the earth plane the holidays can be a roller coaster of emotion. Families squabble, they have different views on life and they certainly have different priorities and wishes. Talk to anyone in my extended family and you will get a variety of versions of what a holiday should be. Some prefer the holiday with their immediate family, others enjoy the extended family. Some prefer a sit down meal, others enjoy a pot luck so based on my own family I can only imagine that there is an abundance of roller coaster experiences out there for many during the holidays. When I turned on the Today Show this morning, they were discussing strategies to use to handle relatives and emotional situations during the holidays.

For me it’s best to keep it simple by spending time with those I treasure as well as making sure there is private time for reflection and prayer to remember those I miss, who remain close in my heart. Loss and grief are never easy to handle and the added pressure of holiday expections adds another dimension to the pain. My suggestion, detatch from any family drama, focus only on those things that bring you joy and release the expectation of being able to do it all.