Therapy Helps
My heart was just lying on the floor for months, and I walked over it every day. My pain was so deep that I couldn’t pick it up. I felt empty, devastated, and helpless. It was tough because although I was feeling all these things, I couldn’t show my baby girl, Avianna, that. So, eventually, I realized I couldn’t pour from an empty cup. I decided to at least try to start a journey to healing. My fiancé and loved ones held me up, but I knew I had to help myself as well and stand on my feet.
I always wanted to engage in therapy. I just hadn’t experienced a crisis that pushed me to, so I never did – until now of course. At that moment, I felt like I had no choice, and I was desperate to find something that would ease the pain, even if it was just a little. I had a feeling therapy would aid me on my path to healing. When I started the journey, it took a couple of months to find a therapist because I wanted a female therapist of color who had experience dealing with grief. After some research and persistence, I found the right therapist for me, and she was the complete package. I mean, finding a therapist is like swiping through prospects on one of those dating apps; you want to make sure they have everything you want, or else you'll end up wasting your time.
It was tough initially – facing all my thoughts and fears, pouring out all my emotions, and breaking down those hard to deal with raw emotions. I learned about the five stages of grief developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. As a therapist/social worker, I had learned about it before and even taught others about it. However, everything I knew about the five stages went out the window when I experienced grief to this level for myself. The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. As I reflected, I realized I definitely experienced all five stages. I definitely experienced the denial stage when I felt numb and when life made no sense. I wondered how I could go on and what my future would look like. I experienced the anger stage when I found myself so angry at God. Although it was hard to feel my anger, this was a necessary stage in the healing process. I definitely asked myself countless times, “Where was God? Did he not hear my prayers? Why didn’t he save my baby as I begged him to?” I felt deserted, abandoned, and unloved. I distanced myself from God, and I even stopped speaking highly of him; instead, I questioned him a lot. Fortunately, when my anger began to dwindle, I pursued my relationship with God again.
Therapy helped walk me through these thoughts and stages. To read more about the 5 stages of grief, read my blog post titled “The 5 Stages of Grief and How to Cope.” I’m currently still in therapy and plan to be for a while as it has been very accommodating, supportive, and insightful. I’m not sure what state of mind I would be in without it. It is a nonjudgmental, open, and free space where you’re free to learn, cry, laugh, vent, express your anger, and experience every other raw emotion that may come up. Please do not be afraid to seek this type of mental and emotional support because we all need it and can benefit from it. Though my heart is heavy, I’m glad therapy assisted me in the decision to pick it up off the floor.
