From Surviving to Thriving: Embracing Grief and Finding Joy After Loss

Grief
Written By Krystle Hall

Bonnie, Charlie, Dean, Nancy, Morley. My close cousin, my mom’s fiancé, my dad, my grandma, my grandpa, respectively. I lost these five near and dear people to me in 7 years, so, I am well-versed in grief and experiencing close losses.

While I never want to take away from any of my losses, because they are all painful in different ways, the one that affected me tremendously was the loss of my dad, so this is the one I will be talking about for the rest of the article because it is the one that has had the biggest impact on me. I already experienced anxiety before his death, but after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I lost myself completely and went from being a happy, bubbly person to a broken, scared, depressed, ball of anxiety who was barely functioning, stuck on autopilot, just going through the motions every day. To make things even more complicated, I found out about his diagnosis when my second born was 13 days old, so I was also grappling with postpartum hormones and learning how to be a mom to two small children, while also taking in that my dad was going to die soon. It was the most difficult time in my life, and I was struggling badly. It took every ounce of energy for me to get through my days and to just survive, truthfully. I was just going through the motions and looked forward to the end of every day when I could go to sleep and forget about the pain that was a large part of my life.

One day, a little over two years after my dad’s death, my husband sat me down and said he would never leave me while I got help and he would be there to support me, but that he couldn’t continue living a life in which he had to take on all responsibilities in the household, from bathing our kids to making dinner to taking our kids to birthday parties and to the park, basically being a single dad because I was too exhausted and broken to even be present. While he had tried to have these conversations with me in the past, I dismissed them because there was nothing wrong with me. I was just tired from having two small kids and I would be fine. But this conversation hit me differently. I looked at him and started bawling and said that I couldn’t keep doing this either and that was the first time I really acknowledged how badly my life had been affected by loss and how I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I reached out to a therapist right away and started going to therapy the following week.

Going to therapy was AWFUL for the first few months. I did nothing but cry and hated going because being vulnerable was so scary, but I continued showing up to my weekly appointments and slowly, I began finding myself again. We did a lot of work on some of my childhood traumas, my anxiety triggers, and grief work. A lot of people in my generation were raised to sweep all our problems under the rug and pretend life was always perfect. We were people-pleasers and had a hard time admitting when things were not going well because we had an image to maintain. When I started experiencing close losses in my life for the first time, I shoved my grief down and did not work through it, which in turn already caused my untreated anxiety to become way worse.

During therapy, I learned that to heal, I must feel my feelings and not fight them and talk about things. I learned that grief and joy can both coexist. I learned that it is okay to be happy, that it was unfair for me to continue living a life full of sadness and grief, and that I should experience joy. I learned that being present and living in the moment is one of the most important things I can do – by feeling the sunshine on my skin, tasting the delicious flavors of the food I am eating, feeling the cool breeze blowing in my hair, and laughing whenever possible. I learned that I was not a victim and that I needed to take back my power. I learned that my grief will always be a part of my life, intertwined in everything I do, but that it doesn’t have to consume my life any longer. I learned to stop carrying the weight of the grief on my shoulders. Most importantly, I learned how to live again, like truly live, not just go through the motions every day.

One thing that will always stick with me is an analogy that my therapist told me in one of my first sessions. She said to imagine my grief or traumas as a bad cut on my arm. After the cut, I just slapped a bandage on it and expected it to heal properly, without cleansing the wound or giving it the proper treatment. By doing this, the wound will never heal and will continue ripping open until I face it and get it fixed. Once I decide it is time to face the wound, I go to the doctor and they scrape out the infection and clean the wound from the inside out, so it can heal properly. Once it is healed, the scar will always remain, because it was a bad cut and a nasty infection. But over time, the scar will fade and get lighter and lighter, yet it will always remain as an imperfection on my skin. Like the grief in my life, it will be there forever but will continue getting lighter with time, as I continue facing it and working through it.

Grief is painful, messy, terrifying, fearful, (insert any awful word that would sum it up). It will never be “fair” that we lose people we love so much. But it is also a natural part of life and we are bound to experience significant losses at one point or another in our lives. It is about how we learn to navigate the grief that allows us to heal and grow through it and get back to living our “new normal” because let’s face it, life will never be “normal” again.

I have grown tremendously over the years since my dad died in 2016. It was not easy, and it took a combination of time and self-work to get to the place I am today, in the acceptance phase of grief. I feel like I am thriving and not merely surviving. But it is important to note that this does not mean that I am “cured” of my grief. My grief journey will be lifelong because I will never get over the loss of my dad. There is not one day that he doesn’t pop up in my mind multiple times. I am constantly reminded of him and wish he were here, but I have accepted that he will never be here with me physically again. But this does not mean that he is not with me in my heart, coming alongside me in the rest of my life’s adventures, there to cheer me on and encourage me. He will be with me during all of life’s peaks and valleys and I couldn’t be more grateful to have someone to love so much that the loss will hurt for the rest of my life.

ABOUT KRYSTLE HALL:

Hi! My name is Krystle Hall, and I am from Denver, Colorado. I have been married to my husband, Jeff, since 2012 and we have two beautiful daughters and three dogs. Our family enjoys doing anything outdoors, being active, and experiencing new things. We enjoy traveling to different places and go on an annual trip to Lake Leelanau, Michigan every summer to spend time at the lake and with our extended family. We also love watching hockey together and attend a lot of University of Denver, Colorado Eagles, and Colorado Avalanche games. Another favorite pastime of ours is spending time at our family farm, where I grew up. You can follow me on my Instagram page @growthroughyourgrief where I acknowledge the tough parts of grief, talk about finding your purpose after loss, and how to grow through your grief.

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Krystle Hall
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