How do you find you? How do you start from scratch and figure out what makes you happy and makes you tick and makes you function more or less well in this world?
What steps have you taken to find your way back to you? Not the old you, but the new normal you that you can live with? How is it going?
Bonus Question: How do you find happy again?
9 comments:
I don't know the answer to that question! It seems to be going really, really, slow for me. I just don't know what makes me happy. My computer seems to be the only place I find happiness anymore. Well, that and the company or phone conversations with some friends. My home life, not too happy lately!
Hmm. I think I've told you this before, but I realized at some point that my grief was multipart -- there was mourning maddy, mourning the old me, mourning my old life, etc., ad nauseum. And I kinda deconstructed everything and realized after a point that I was kinda done mourning a few things (mourning my old body, for example, had turned the corner into "feeling sorry for myself." Which I still do, btw, but it's much different than "grieving.") and put a fork in them. Which freed me up to grieve other things.
As for the happy? I've decided there's a difference between "happy" and "joy." I didn't really try, but realized I was tasting things again. Running. Enjoying my pets. Noticing trees. And certain things now make me happy.
But over a year and a half later, I've yet to find "joy." I think that's a mindset, that comes from the ability to let go and jump off the cliff internally, and wooboy am I so not there yet.
Tiny, tiny steps, S. Don't get discouraged. Don't try. Just be. It will come.
It happens one day at a time. Find little things each day that you enjoy. It can be anything from Cool-Whip for breakfast to a song, but find something every single day. There are days this is unbelievably hard. Take a walk, or do something else physical as often as you can - it helps you sleep, and that's key. Be as nice to other people as you can, it always takes your mind off your own worries, for just a little while. Keep the lines of communication open with C at all costs, and try to find something special for the two of you to do together. Taking a walk, make dinner together, something that allows conversation for you to get to know each other again. This sounds a lot like those "all I need to know I learned in kindergarten" things I know. There is no quick or magic fix. It's hard. But you'll find yourself. As far as finding happy, I think it finds you......I don't know if any of this is helpful, or what you were looking for. I will never be who I was before IF, and I'm still working on living with who I've become. But there are now moments true happiness finds me, and it beats the hell out of what I felt like 4 months ago.
along the lines of Tash's thinking, for me it is a difference between something close to happy and contentment.
I am happy in daily things. I luv and appreciate dh, and that makes me happy. My new job, where I get to talk about my hobby and have little stress/responsibility, mostly takes me out of this dbm world.
I am certainly not happy about everything, a huge part of our life is 'on hold' and we are missing our daughter. I guess to me that means I am not **content** in life because there are unresolved issues (trying again and succeeding) and circumstances that I will never find agreeable (Serenity's death).
Also, I try to pick another word that sounds like a smaller goal, like appreciating life or dh or admiring beauty in the natural world (hard as winter approaches). Then I don't feel pressure to be 'happy'.
So far online shopping and Ben & Jerry's haven't worked, and neither has taking out crappy moods on my husband, though I've spent too much time doing all of these things.
Writing helps a little, partly because of the release and partly because I've started caring about the words I use and the part of myself that used to care passionately about language is coming back - the passion isn't always there, but I feel like it's returning.
Part of me thinks I should be returning to yoga classes soon, if only to work the aches out of my bones. (Losing Teddy seems to have physically turned me into an old woman somehow.) But when I was last in yoga I was obviously pregnant, and going back will involve answering the questions that I can't answer without crying, so it might be a while.
I wish it was easier. Thinking of you.
I don't know. I was hoping someone here had the answer. I think Tash's answers make sense. I find the beauty in the fall and and feel something like happy when I look at the different colors on the leaves. But it's not a continuous feeling. It's just a moment here and there. Most other times are just spent existing.
My Mom gave me some soul-searching type meditation CD's after one of my miscarriages that I loved:
"Follow Your North Star" by Martha Beck
And...(I can't say it enough)...acupuncture has totally helped to 'balance' me out.
you've got a lot of ideas here that make so much sense. no use trying to repeat it or say it another way, but I guess I will...
I have no good answers. there are no easy answers. there is no one answer. for me, it's truly about feeling happy in moments, rather than expecting a state of joyful bliss. not expecting too much from myself.
allow yourself to just be. accept that you feel like crap. but allow yourself to feel those tiny fleeting feelings of lightness too, if you can find them. laughter helps a lot. thinking of you, sue.
I haven't found a real "happy" yet. My therapist told me to try to make new memories. When I was going to visit my sister, hubby came out to say goodbye and we suddenly were dancing together in the street, to no music but the wind rustling the leaves of our huge birch trees. On the drive to my sister's, I remembered that moment and thought, that was happy.
For me it's like Luna said...I feel happy in moments. It sneaks in when the other feelings I always have aren't looking.
Post a Comment