Stages Of Grief

August 16, 2019 / rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

There can’t only be five, can there?

It is now 22 months since my sister passed away suddenly. I just woke up one morning, and went to wake her, to find that she had passed in her sleep.

What happened afterwards was this crazy mess of things that I still haven’t been able to fully make sense of. It was like one of those kids cartoons, where the character starts to make a snowball, and rolls it down a hill, where it grows and grows, until it is huge, and unstoppable.

The thing is, that that snowball needs somewhere to crash, and in this case, that somewhere was me.

People always say that you get through grief, because you have to, and that time heals. This is true. It does.

The only problem with this conciliatory piece of information, is that they seem to infer that grief is a linear thing, sort of like walking down a path, whereby you will, invariably come to the end of said path, and move on to another one.

This, my dear reader, is not true. Grief is not linear. It is not a straight line from A to B. Instead, it is an incredibly convoluted and complex mass of emotions.

Basically, imagine the biggest, twistiest fastest rollercoaster, which also has parts where there is an excruciatingly long climb before it tips you over the edge.

That is what grief is like.

People try to pigeon hole grief, and have allotted five stages to it. These are:

1. Denial and Isolation

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

We apparently spend differing amounts of time going through each stage, and until recently, if has been thought that people go through the stages in the order shown above.

I can tell you from personal experience, that this is not true. I have been through some of these. I haven’t experienced all of them yet. Sometimes I wonder if I ever will.

The truth is that these stages can be experienced out of order, in order, or simply not at all.

Sometimes, things are so difficult that these stages are blocked, and cannot be experienced, and this is completely normal, and quite common, too.

In tomorrow’s post I will look at each of these five stages of grief, and what they mean in real life terms.

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Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

Happy Birthday To My Nan

June 1, 2019June 1, 2019 / rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

She Would Have Been 91

June 1st

Today is my Nan’s Birthday. She would have been 91. Ten years ago in April, she passed away, and sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday. She always said that she was going to live to 100, but she was 18 years short of this.

Her Birthday was always sunny. It was strange… even though the weather got more and more temperamental, the sun always seemed to put his hat on for her Birthday.

We’d wake up and take her a cup of her favourite milky coffee, and sing Happy Birthday. Then, she’d have her presents and cards. Then there would be cake, and it became a tradition that we would have strawberries and meringues after dinner.

My Nan was the best! I know pretty much everyone thinks this about their grandparents, but to me, my Nan was (and still is) one of my heroes. She was my rock. She was always in my corner, and she always believed in me.

When I told her that I wanted to be a writer, she simply accepted that. She never said that I should give up and go for something more reliable. She fostered my interest by making sure that I had access to as many books as possible.

She always had my back. She was generous, and kind, and fiercely loyal. To say she had strong opinions would be a complete understatement. She was unshakeable in her opinions, and you would not have wanted to be caught in an argument with her.

She had a wicked sense of humour, and she could drink anyone under the table, and never have a hangover. She would get herself into some unbelievable scrapes, but somehow, always ended up laughing about it.

She used to keep, breed, judge, and show goats, and was very highly thought of in the British Goat Society circles. She won countless rosettes, especially with her prize winning goat, Hebe.

She was a child of the war, and as a result, all things came in two or threes. She could never just buy one of anything.

She was the best! She was amazing, and my inspiration. I miss her everyday, but there are times when that pain is just that little bit more…

Today is one of those days. I wish that she was here to celebrate with us. I wish that I could bring her strawberries and meringues like we always did.

I love you Nanny. I hope that you’re up there, the centre of attention at a party with Grandad, Hayden, Rosemary, Kiri, and all of your friends, and I hope that they’re spoiling you rotten. Don’t go too wild!

Love you always~

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Grief and the chasm it makes

January 12, 2019 / rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

Grief and the Chasm it makes

How to carry on with life when you feel like it’s over

My sister passed away 15 months ago. I thought that by now, the pain would have lessened, but it hasn’t really. I miss her so much every day. I miss her laugh and her wicked sense of humour, and I miss her hugs.

She had a lot of issues, and that’s the one thing that has made losing her a little more bearable, is the thought that she is now at peace. Those issues are no longer hers to carry, and I am so thankful for that, because it was horrible seeing her suffering.

The thing is that grief works in a strange way. For some of us, the person we’ve lost was suffering; for some of us, it was completely unexpected, and there was no warning at all.

The only thing that we know for sure about grief is that it does not discriminate. It will come for us all at one time or another, and when it does, we will need to just walk through it in whichever way is right for us.

For me, this has meant surrounding myself with good friends; people who have been there for me when I’ve been crying (ugly crying) down the phone, and when I’ve needed someone to just give me a hug. It has meant throwing myself into my creative pursuits, and really focusing on them. It has meant escaping into the made up world of my stories, and the stories of others.

That’s the thing though… this is what works for me. It may not work for you, and that’s okay. What is important to remember is that we must do whatever it is that works for us.

To some extent, we must adopt an attitude of “Whatever gets you through the day.” If we do this as many times as required, we will eventually find that we have a day when we can forget this attitude, and hopefully, as time passes, those days will become more, and the “whatever gets you through the day” days will become less, and really, that’s the only way to truly tread this path of grief if we are to ever cross that chasm and make it to the other side.