A story of healing
When I lost my mother in 2019, I had little hope to ever recover from the loss. The more I read about others’ experience, the more I was convinced all I could do was learn how to live with the painful reality. However, there was a problem with this solution; Although acceptance, and the determination for moving forward in life is a super power, if the acceptance does not come from a place deep within, it would only be a forceful attempt of fitting into a mold that’s not crafted for you. A mold that could eventually crush you.
My purpose of writing this article is to tell you that you can heal from your pain of grief. Yes you will still miss her at times, or cry over her memories but you won’t be knowingly, or unknowingly devastated to a level that saying a sentence or two about your mother would clog your throat. You won’t have to carry acceptance as a burden on your shoulders, acceptance will grow within you. You won’t feel you are separated by a vast ocean, you will feel her close to your heart.
Loss of a mother, a whirlpool of pain
With the loss of my mother, I lost my connection to the life source. The grief over the loss of a mother is of a different nature compared to other types of grief; it can hit you hard, uproot you abruptly, and leave you numb for a long long time regardless of how strong and resilient you are. When my mother passed away, the pain was much bigger, and more unfathomable than I could swallow without severe discomfort. While I appeared as functioning and unchanged, inside I had changed; parts of me were shattered into pieces.
Grief is a beast. It can drain you silently and yet leave you baffled about the source of your energy leak. We would think we have left the grief behind gracefully enough, while it could still be living in the depth of our subconscious mind like a silent yet destructive virus. We might think a strong reaction to loss means weeks or months of depression, lack of sleep, or withdrawal from life while unprocessed grief can have a big impact on us quietly like a slow release poison pill that contaminates the bloodstream without getting noticed right away.
As part of my grief process, a variety of emotions bubbled up and surfaced. Random outbursts of anger were the most surprising of all given it was not something I would normally experience. Hopeless yearning was also quite overwhelming; I missed my mother but couldn’t reach her, as if there was an insurmountable, bottomless, and dark abyss separating us. She was gone and I felt like a child suddenly abandoned in the middle of nowhere with no refuge, left in void dangling from nothing. My mother was not there to constantly think about me and my wellbeing. I did not feel her mountain of support and love energetically. I was truly on my own, and this was what made this loss so difficult.
Seeking help for unresolved grief
I stopped seeing my therapist right after I lost my mother. I could not continue any form of somatic psychotherapy back then. Dropping into my body put me in touch with an excruciating amount of pain in my chest to a degree that I thought I had contracted a lung disease realizing later that this seemingly physical pain was indeed all emotional.
Despite avoiding therapy, I still did my best to process the pain on my own, grieving at every possible opportunity to let my pain out, or writing about my fleeting emotions as a way to relieve myself. However, when the world went into a crisis due to the pandemic, I consciously decided to set my grief aside to make space for dealing with the chaos that was going on around me. It was then when my headaches started. They happened at every possible opportunity without a clear cause leaving me drained. I was unaware of the deep seated feeling of sadness within me, which manifested through those headaches.
It was two years after the loss of my mother, when I finally decided to see a therapist for an unrelated matter. I was well aware that I could not do any deep dive into anything that could possibly connect me to my mother, and talk therapy was all I could handle.
Happening so close to my mother’s anniversary, our conversation organically included talking about her. Not surprisingly, saying her name was enough to make me burst into tears. “You don’t seem to have fully processed your grief!”, said the therapist. It was then that I realized, I was there to just hear that one sentence. I needed someone to tell me bursting into tears by briefly talking about my deceased mother was a sign that I was still haunted by her loss, and I had to finally take care of this whole mess boiling inside me quietly.
Thanks to this revelation, after two years of avoidance, I dared to look inside again and notice there was a part of me which didn’t want to live anymore. There was a part which thought joining my mother was the only way to travel the distance that was between us after her passing away. There was a part that wanted to hold on to grief as the last thread that connected me to her. There was a part that associated happiness with guilt, thinking true love meant mourning forever, and any attempt of shedding sorrow was equivalent to betrayal to my mother’s memory. Knowing that these were all natural thoughts and tendencies after a big loss was surely relieving but putting all these shattered pieces together did not seem anything straightforward.
The more I researched, the more I was convinced I had to learn how to live with the loss. I had to accept I was never going to be the same; I was susceptible to being hit by unexpected waves of grief that could come at any time for years over and over, and over.
The energy leak, a ghost in the machine
Life continued for another year but I still felt exhausted and drained all the time. I had a busy work schedule that consumed a lot of my energy but my energy leak seemed too severe to be only related to work. There was no amount of rest which could give my vitality back. The pain of grief was so stuck in my body that one morning I woke up to an intense feeling of pain moving up my chest. It then got stuck in my throat having no way out. Tears started running down my face to bring some relief but my throat was clogged slowing down the energy movement. Just like a mother who is unable to give birth to an oversized baby by releasing him naturally, I was not able to release the pain fully. It seemingly subsided at some point but the heaviness and discomfort after this experience lasted for hours that day. Yes, this was the energy of unresolved grief, the trauma that was stuck and stored in my body.
Brainspotting and the miracle of healing
The first time I found courage to directly work on my mother’s loss was through Brainspotting, a non-intrusive modality for processing trauma. We had just learned about the Body Resource setup as part of a training session, a setup that instead of focusing on your pain for the sake of processing it, asks you to focus on your inner calmness, and peacefulness. A few minutes into the session my pupils started to dilate and contract nonstop for minutes. Then there was a river of tears trickling down my eyes with no words; It was all silent processing without a single word.
When the 45-minute practice session ended, things shifted dramatically. I felt my mother not out of reach and separate but present in my heart in the form of a deep feeling of love. She was so close that I didn’t miss her anymore. She was with me right there and then. I was reborn . A huge burden was removed from my shoulders. Looking back at my old self I felt a lot of empathy. I burst into tears thinking of all that I’d gone through. I saw the image of my old self bending under the heaviness of grief, suffering silently in sadness, and drowning in sorrow not knowing the severity of what was going on. There was a huge sense of relief, peace, and tranquility that replaced my inner turmoil.
After the second session of Brainspotting on the same topic, I was free of the pain of grief. Feeling a lot more whole as I’d taken my missing piece back. I was awed by the power of this sacred tool.
Conclusion
If you are struggling to live with the pain of losing your mother, do not underestimate its effect on your mental and physical health in the long run. Get help to process your pain, as this unresolved grief can drain your energy quietly.
After the loss of my mother in 2019, I sought help in different ways but Brainspotting was what eventually helped me with fully processing the grief. My grief morphed into love, and the huge distance I felt between me and mother vanished as I could feel her close to my heart, where her true place is.
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