Building A New Life From Grief
August 5, 2009 by Anna Farmery
Filed under Grief
If you were building a house you wouldn’t just sit and look at a piece of ground and hope that a house appeared! So if we want to build a new life we need to think like an architect of our own life. Grief means that we need to rebuild our life.
Design – What kind of life do you want? Design the life that you want to build so that you can have a picture which you can build towards.
Foundations – All life’s – and houses – are built on solid foundations. Grief causes your life to be turned upside down and can shake you to your core. To build for the future you need to come to terms with who you are, what you stand for and what is important in your life. Death may make you feel that your life has ended…but it is only a chapter. The core of your happiness might not be there but in the end what creates happiness is being happy with you.
Building – Once you have the foundation of being happy with you, then you can start laying the bricks to your new life. Brick by brick, step by step….do something that is towards that dream life.
Decorating – Once the structure of your life is solid I like to think of decorating it. This can be finding new companions or new love. You wouldn’t or couldn’t decorate a house until the structure was strong. It is the same during the bereavement process. If you are happy living with just you, in a life that you want then you will find that visitors to your life will start to decorate your world.
Building a house is hard, building a new life after bereavement is hard. There will be set backs, there will be repairs needed! But if you keep building then eventually that new life will form
Anna, truer words were never spoken. Rebuilding your life can be more difficult than designing and building a house but it must be done. It takes everything I have to move forward, to make plans and follow through but it must be done. Your words today apply to every widow and widower out there. I love the idea of comparing rebuilding one’s life to building a house. The brick by brick analogy is a wonderful one. Now every time I take a step forward I will tell myself that this is another brick in the home that will become my new life. September will be a big building block for me as I move into my new condo. This will be a big step towards my new life and while this next six weeks will be very difficult, downsizing from my home of 32 years to a condo, it is definitely a step I must take. Life is what you make it and I intend to make mine the best it can be. Once I am happy within myself I can begin the decorating. Who knows what life holds.
My wish is that every widow and widower out there will begin to build that new foundation and come to a point where they can start the decorating.
Anna and Leslie,
I love this analogy, too. At the beginning, I wanted to rush through my grief and put it behind me as quickly as possible. At that point, my house was built from twigs. Whenever the wind of emotion blew through, my house collapsed around me. It’s been only recently that I’ve been able to start the renovation of my real home. The idea of changing anything seemed like I was trying to forget my marriage and my previous life with Michael. Now it feels like I’m actively pursuing change instead of reacting to the loss. When you think of building brick by brick, designing a new life is not so overwhelming.
Mary, I never thought of it before but I always felt guilty for some reason when I started to move forward with my life. When I started to feel happy or get enthusiastic about something I was accomplishing I’d then feel this tug at my heart like I shouldn’t feel this way. When I read your comments tonight I realized that I was feeling like I was forgetting my marriage and Rick. Understanding why I felt so guilty really helps me to make further strides in my journey through my life. Thanks, Mary.
We had something of a reverse situation here – as soon as we knew we were dealing with a terminal pancreatic cancer we had anything and everything renovated in the house we bought. There was nothing more to do than for Don to enjoy the home for the final year and for me to deal with all of the other related situations. We had just moved and we had to re-establish connections with old friends and all of the medical community. All of that was done and now it’s over a year later.
I am grateful that we had built on the foundation early and now there are more things to be done with our home, and that is almost a gift since it keeps me moving in the direction of making things better in so many ways. Whether it is the home, my health, the community, the church or the family – there are always ways to be an influence in improving lives along with one’s own situation. Positive steps rather than stagnancy.