Broken in the Mourning

My heart hurts. My chest feels heavy. I open my eyes and see pieces of my past. Broken, bruised, scared, and ashamed.  How come I feel so much pain when I feel so numb? I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of my emotions.

I have tried so hard to keep myself wrapped up in a very neat bundle, but now it feels like I am broken and my whole world is in fragments. I can’t seem find any words, just silence. It feels like Hell has grabbed me from the inside out and is trying to smother me with its dark, massively powerful strength. I can literally feel the life force being crushed out of me. My chest hurts, my heart is racing, my legs are shaking and I can’t breath.

I don’t think I can go through with this. I want my walls back! I feel raw and vulnerable. I had refused to cry for so long it was like a dam that shut down my emotions. Now the dam has burst and I am in a dangerous flood of emotions. Emotional flooding is a state in which your brain has decided you are in danger and needs to be ready to fight or run away. It’s your brains way of protecting you from harm. (Nicole Schawarz, MS,LMFT)

Was the Good Shepherd really going to help me? How was I ever going to survive this? I didn’t want to fight, I wanted to turn and run away as fast as I could. How was I going to take care of my husband and children feeling like this? How am I supposed to be a wife and a mother and face this pain all at the same time?  Can keep trusting the few people I let in  to get through this?

Sometimes the pain was too much for me to bear. Everyday I felt like the past stalked me and it never left my side. Sometimes I would cut myself or drink to try and ease the pain. I would try really hard to concentrate on my beautiful children and my husband, but most of the time I felt I failed and that added more guilt and shame to my pile of broken emotions. My children were growing up without a mother and sometimes all I could do was sit there and watch. My body was there, but my mind was broken and I couldn’t take care of them sometimes.

Mourning my past required a lot of patience and self-compassion from me, and that was not easy since I am a self-hater and didn’t have a lot of patience with myself. I would get so frustrated for not being “whole” fast enough. For not being able to handle things and reach acceptance with lightening speed. I would beat myself up on a regular basis even though

I was told it would take some time and I could not rush the healing of deep wounds.

My innocence was already gone; it was in the past and I couldn’t undo it. I felt helpless because I couldn’t do anything about my loss. Mourning helped me acknowledging my pain and facing my past was probably one of the scariest and traumatic things I would ever do.

I have know survivors that cannot complete this part of the healing process. They just can’t take the dreadful pain again. And the thought of having to share their most vulnerable part of themselves with others was too much. It wasn’t easy for me either, but I HAD to try. I knew that if I didn’t try I would literally die. I had already tried to end my life on two separate occasions.I started discovering that when sharing my most vulnerable parts with others I started turning my fear into trust.

We can never be truly “whole” without facing the demons of our past.

Mourning was never meant to be permanent. Mourning helps us start to lay down our pain and free us to have the new life the Good Shepherd wants for us.  Come to the Good Shepherd and weep over that which is broken or lost. The Good Shepherd has promised us He will comfort us when we mourn.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Matthew 5:4 (ESV)

When you go through deep waters, I will be with you.

When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.

When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up;

the flames will not consume you.

Isaiah 43:2 (NLT)

The loss of a childhood can torment you for as long as your allow it….