it’s complicated

Grief - you arsehole motherfucker. Pardon my French.

This wasn’t the piece I had envisioned writing. But it’s been a hell of a weekend.

Yoga opens us up - creates room for emotions to bubble up and surface. Over the past few weeks I’ve had three people come to me and confide in me their most recent experiences with death, and the rippling effects of grief. 

Some of you might be lucky enough to never have had death caress you closely. Others may have been tenderly touched by death more times than one. It’s never easy - I don’t care what you say.

I was 22 when death first entered my world. If only I could go back and hug that 22yr old version of myself so tight knowing how much this wildly intense experience would shape the rest of her life so greatly.
It’s human nature to wonder and ask questions.
Who was it that died? It was my dad.
“And how did he die?” you ask.
Now this is something i’ve always felt so ashamed of naming, and admitting. It was a suicide, a hanging if you must. 

Recent time in therapy has taught me that shame is something that you place on yourself. However when you are ashamed, this is the feeling of shame that others place on you. Perhaps that seems wildly insignificant to you, but for me this understanding of shame vs ashamed was incredibly helpful. Another lens to see the multitude of swinging emotions through. 

I’ve never climbed Mt Everest, but it’s actually something i’d really love to do. But here’s the thing i’d rather attempt to summit the big old gal with my hands tied behind my back and completely nude than try to navigate the loss and grief of a loved one via suicide.
Truth. 

My life is constantly echoed by thoughts of:
‘Was I not enough to stay for?’
‘Could I have made a difference? Helped more?’
It’s exhausting at the best of times. Constant self work, yoga and CBT (Cognitive behaviour therapy) have sure as shit helped. 

I’m now 34, so this death touched me, what has just gone 12 years.
Some of you might think ‘Shouldn’t you be over it by now?’
LOL - let me assure you, over the years I have asked myself this more times than I’d like to admit. 

Grief. Is. A. Mother fucker.
Plain and simple.
There’s no specific time line or path to follow and we all cope (or don’t cope) with it in a spectrum of ways. 

I’ve recently learned (again through working with an excellent therapist) that I am experiencing a type of delayed grief. Woo - that’s sarcasm for those playing along at home.
Remember when Facebook used to have that option for your relationship status: ‘It’s complicated’?
That’s how i’d mark my relationship with grief for the world to see.
Well it turns out complicated grief is really a thing, and it’s what I carry. Double yay! 

So what is it? Well, to be blunt - it’s complicated. *sigh*

When a traumatic event happens leaving long lasting effects on our emotions, perceptions of the world and ourselves, as well as our behaviour this is an indication of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Losing a loved one, without warning, and in a traumatic way causes similar effects. 

2023 is a different landscape for mental health. The plethora of information and help available at our fingertips in regards to supporting ourselves and those we love is vast and far reaching. I’m not saying a suicide is any easier to handle at this time. But it was a fuck tonne more challenging 12 years ago, and with respect probably even more so for those in earlier times. 

Before you jump down my throat about this - let me share with you my experience in dealing with a suicide in such close proximity. People said some pretty whack things to me at the time.
Things like:
1. ‘People who suicide don’t go to heaven.’
Let me clarify, I’m not a religious person in anyway, however at a time when I was clinging to any scrap of hope this was not helpful. 

2. ‘He chose this, so you shouldn’t be too upset.’
Sorry. What? I’m not allowed to be ‘too upset.’ What a load of shit.

3. ‘No one’s going to feel sorry for you, so just get over it.’
I can most definitely say this was one of the most negatively impactful statements.  

4. ‘It’s not as sad as losing someone to an accident or sickness.’
Actually mental health and depression is a sickness. So let’s clear that one up now. 

There were so many other little comments made here and there that were in no way helpful. But the worst thing I experienced was the radio silence. We as a society don’t quite know how to approach the subject of death. Let alone the subject of suicide. And I get it, we’re not given some little manual on the correct things to say in awkward or uncomfortable situations such as death but completely ignoring the topic and the experiences that I detailed above just led me to feel alien. Like I was tainted. It was entirely isolating and all consuming at once.

In the months that passed after my dad’s death I didn’t shed a tear in front of anyone. I was terrified of the judgement and stuffed that grief sooo tight, deep, deep down inside so that I could continue life.
Grieving didn’t seem appropriate.
Grieving simply wasn’t an option.
Grieving was for the weak, right?
Fuck! I didn’t know, I was 22! Navigating this foreign world of wild emotions and very grown up new feelings.

My family unit had been blown apart in the most horrific of ways. At the time I felt like an outsider, a voyeur peering in. My brother was rocked with the task of finding my dad. Something that to this very day, given the chance I would take on for him.
Why? Because that’s what big sisters do, right?
There’s literally nothing I wouldn’t give to clear that for him so that he wouldn’t have to carry the lifelong trauma of that eventful afternoon.

At that time my mother spent so much time focusing on my brother and her own grief that I was left to my own devices.
So I continued life, to the best of my ability - albeit seemingly invisible.
And while I floated through dissociated and numb, I felt forever on the outside peering in. 

I remember I would wait for moments to be alone, in the hope I would be able to relieve some of the tightness of that big ball of grief that I had been carrying and lugging around. There would be nights where I would wait for my boyfriend at the time to go to work, so that I could wail like a banshee on the floor in my living room hoping that the sadness and pain might lessen. 

Most of the time I’d wear myself out from the hysterical crying and pitter patter upstairs to bed, my face drenched from tears and chest sore from the hyperventilating. I’d hope that I could muster my way through another sweaty, nightmare filled night before resuming my invisible life the following day. 

Let’s rewind a little. The day I received the call to notify me of my father’s death was an afternoon that reeked of intuition. The depths and complexity of that afternoon’s intuition is probably fuel for another piece but all I can say is: I felt it coming. 

Upon receiving the call I believe I went into shock. There’s really no preparing anyone for that call, not even a little.
I don’t think I spoke a word. I definitely didn’t shed a tear. Nothing. 

I changed my clothes, slid into my trainers and I took off out the door. I went running. Zooming through the back lanes and busy streets of Camperdown in the Inner west where I was living at the time. Soon enough the weaving through the streets, the people and cars became too intense and too much to navigate. 

I ran to my nearest oval where it could be simple. Lap after lap, I ran. Just like a mouse on a wheel, I just kept going. 

I must have run for hours. I’m not kidding. I ran until it was dark. I ran until my body hurt and my feet were bleeding. 

Honestly, I hoped I could just keep running forever. Never face what was waiting at home. Just start again somewhere else.

That’s the thing about running - metaphorical, not physical running. We like to think we can just keep moving and avoid the problems. Staying one step ahead. Sliding into new places. New shoes. New identities to skirt those icky problems.

The next few months following the death were weirrrrrrrrd. A sort of no-man's land. Awake and going through the motions, but not actually present, nor conscious. 

I can’t actually tell you much of this time. The funeral, the aftermath - no idea. I was there, but not really. 

The human brain is incredible; it has this innate ability to protect when things are intense. This is technically termed shock, in some ways it’s great it’s just like being on autopilot. But zero emotion or connection. You might call it ‘robot mode’.

But then one day, the fog lifts, autopilot turns off and grief comes knocking and asks to stay for an undetermined amount of time. 

And once that grief had settled in my body, my home, and my bones I still wasn’t ready to confront the pain, nor the complexities that came with it.

So I kept stuffing it down, or rather running from it. Running became my medicine. I didn’t know it at the time but it was my way of dealing with the trauma of it all. I would run morning and night. Kilometre after kilometre. Each day pushing myself further and further. 

On the outside it must have looked like I was succeeding and embracing my recent experience. I’d lost some weight, I was the fittest I’d ever been, I was making new friends at the gym, I was working and studying. I had quite the mask going.
But underneath I was sad and sick. I took my running to extremes. I was running marathons and considering 100km ultramarathons, anything to stop that grief in it’s tracks, hey?

I was 45kg at one point, the bones in my chest prominent and visible. Did I mention I was drinking and dabbling in drugs as well? I picked up food phobias and a severely distorted view of myself resulting in an eating disorder. Hello bulimia! 
It was brutal. Soon my body gave out. I was riddled with injuries from over training. But that didn’t stop me from running from my grief. I took on new distractions.
Introducing … yoga, overworking, shopping, toxic relationships, taking residence overseas for a year, more drugs.

I dabbled in healing. I embraced radical acceptance, I even confronted death and could talk about it very objectively. But grieving … hmm it seemed I had completely side stepped it.
It was … Amazing!

Until it wasn’t amazing. 

Grief isn’t linear. We often think that those big holiday moments and milestones will be the hardest days. And while I can’t deny their significance or pain. I’ve always found the heart wrenching grief seeping in at the most odd times. Grief hits hardest on random Tuesdays.

When you go to pick up the phone to call them and then realise you can’t - because they’re no longer here. It hits when someone new is giving you their phone number and you realise it’s one digit away from theirs. Grief stings when you realise you’ve missed the anniversary of their death for the third year in a row - am I even meant to remember that fucking date?! - asking for a friend. 

All of those times when grief came roaring through I did my usual thing. I dissociated or side stepped it. Busying myself to stupid levels to avoid. 

P.S I’m still really good at that.
I acknowledge this because I did that exact thing this morning. I felt triggered. I felt sad. Grief was sneaking in, it had been all week. I was in denial of it. My anxiety at record highs and my ability to slip into dark mental states? En pointe. 

So this morning waking up to that incessant mental noise I did my thing. I rolled out of bed, grabbed my dog and we got moving. Two hours later, we returned home. I fed her and off I went to the gym. I fought my way through the start of my workout battling tears, doing rep after rep of tight high chest breathing, until I zoned out. Lifting weights until my hands were raw and calloused. When that didn’t feel enough I jumped on the air bike. And if ya know, ya know. Those bikes are brutal. I completely annihilated myself. Gasping for breath I left and returned home. For some reason I felt strangely compelled to get this out of my head and onto paper. Something my therapist has encouraged me to do for way too long.
And my driving force behind this? Surely my experience is not solitary. SURELY someone else is battling grief in a similar way. Maybe in my manic state these words might help someone else? 

It’s estimated about 7% of people suffer complicated grief. We unfortunately weren’t graced with the support to handle our loss effectively. We became tangled in the grief, this silent protest forever embedded in us as we try to numb and avoid reminders and those hideous emotions associated with the death. We fear wallowing in grief may illicit harsh criticisms from those around us, so we lock it up. 

We get stuck on the ‘what if’s?’ and ruminating is something we tend to excel at. 

For those with complicated grief you’ll understand catastrophising and how easy it is to go to the worst case scenario because your loved one is no longer here.
It’s a melting pot of anger, guilt, sadness, bitterness, depression, anxiety and overwhelm. Sometimes we’re really great at wrapping those with humour ;)

It’s not the end. But some days i’ll be honest, it feels like it could be. Complicated grievers have a higher level of suicidal thoughts which can be cause for concern which is why seeking support and help is imperative. 

Embracing my grief is something i’m still working on. Perhaps it will be a piece of me I carry with me forever? I have healthier coping mechanisms, and check myself in for therapy when needed.

If i’m honest, the biggest struggle for me was the two-fold side of loss. When someone chooses to take their life, a part of you may be understanding that they did it because they were hurting. But learning to accept and understand that takes time before you can even consider the concept of grieving. I had to understand just how truly unwell and defeated my dad was to even contemplate moving forward.

This experience has left positive impacts on me too - I am wildly present with people now as I just never know when it will be the last moment I have with them and I have a new love and appreciation for life, that I wouldn't have otherwise. 

Today I wanted to remind you that it’s okay to not be okay. Perfection is an illusion, that none of us will ever master. It’s not weak to ask for help.
If you’re struggling please reach out and tell a friend or family member, or to one of the following services.

Lifeline
https://www.lifeline.org.au/
13 11 14

Beyond Blue 
https://www.beyondblue.org.au/

1800 Respect
https://www.1800respect.org.au/
1800 737 732

You are so very important to this world. And even if i’ve never met you, please know that you matter to me. 

We shouldn’t be scared to talk about mental health. It matters that we talk about it. 

If we are going to shift the stigma around it, we need to get comfortable talking about it. You my beautiful friend, are so very loved in this world. You matter. And i’m so incredibly proud that you are here. Please don’t be scared to share your story. People need to hear it. We need you.
And I for one, would love to hear it.

All my love,
Dani xo
You can email me direct at hello@nunuyoga.com