Why Not Me First
Mac told me that he could not get past the loss of his daughter. It had been four years since her death and he said it still felt like it was just yesterday. He has gone to two different grief groups and had some private one-on-one counseling but none of it seemed to help.
“He said his world did not make sense anymore. His belief had always been that parents died before their children.”
He said his world did not make sense anymore. His belief had always been that parents died before their children. Mac wanted his world to remain the same, even though it had radically changed. A perfectly normal desire for anyone to want, but if he was to get back to living his life (which included a wife and two other children) he needed to accept that his old world view no longer worked.
It took some time for him to come to a place where he could recognize the loss of his world view and then to be open to work on the loss of his daughter. Both losses needed to be grieved. Mac had been focusing so much on the loss of the way he saw the world that he had not done his grief work for his daughter.
Once Mac could accept that some children do die before their parents, he could then focus his energy and work on the loss of his daughter.
Tools
Accept that our world view sometimes needs to be changed
Recognize that our time line for working our our grief may be much different from someone else’s but that does not mean that we are not working on our own grief.
