From research participants and grief scholars, I’ve come to understand this as the loss of self-familiarity. We aren’t sealed-off individuals, we’re co-created through our relationships. So when someone central to you dies, it’s not just grief. It’s the slow, disorienting unraveling of who you were in their presence...
Because what grief did to me and to other mourners wasn’t just emotional. It was embodied. It was cognitive. It was identity-shattering...
When you begin to lose yourself, you realize you are made of multiple parts. Some are intact — even strengthened — and others are still collapsing...
And here is what becoming unfamiliar with yourself does: It makes it incredibly hard to rebuild and heal. People ask you what you need and you have no clue. You don’t like what you used to. What used to bring you joy no longer does. And so, you lose trust in yourself. You become alienated from yourself and from others...
It is possible to rebuild, but let’s not pretend this is simple. It is complex, layered, and you have to start from scratch in places you thought were solid...It’s not a clean return. It’s slow. Layered. And still, somehow, holy.
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