Make the Road Your Friend

Just one of those weeks. I was a wobbly wreck for days and useless to everyone. So I did what I have to do at times like this, I took care of myself- time off work, wrote, cycled, ran, slept, cried, talked. I had to treat myself to things I enjoy and things that I know help. This is a necessity for my recovery.

I was thinking again about the nature of grief and how we have evolved this useful mechanism to help us cope with such adversity. The emotions I experience and will continue to experience are there to help my mind get through its trauma and to enable it to make some sense of this loss. My experiences are not "natural" in the sense that it is unnatural for a child to die before their parent although, of course, what can be more natural than death? But I know from professional experience working in mental health that humans can cope with the most amazingly stressful situations and trauma.

The idea of grief existing in a set of clean cut chronological phases has virtually no acceptance in modern counselling. It is instead a truly personal process with no linear route. There is no "right" and "wrong" way to feel or way of doing things. Some people find this lack of prescriptive method initially difficult to fathom - they might need direction and identified emotions to feel- but, in the end, it essentially means we can all make our lives what we want them to be.
My process of recovering has been on one major condition that I have had to follow which is that I have had to respect my grief and know that I have to go through it- it will ultimately be a help not a hindrance. There has been no point fighting against it because it will bite me in the end and, by then, the distress and damage will have increased. Like trees bent over in the wind I have had to be akin to my grief, to be flexible.
A cyclist friend once told me to make the road my friend when I am on those long runs and I find the going hard. This is exactly what has helped me a great deal- I haven't fought that long road, I have tried to make it my friend, tried to understand it, tried to ride with it and trust it will take me to where I need to go. Even if the journey will throw unexpected challenges in my path, even if it is rocky and I have to slow down and walk for parts of it, even if it is misty and the road is winding and I feel like I might career off the edge at any point, it is still MY road and I trust it to take me where I need to go. And now fifteen months down the line the road is a little straighter, I can see a little further ahead, it winds a little less sharply round the bends. There will always be potholes such as my early week "meltdown" recently but I know they are temporary and that the road is still there, relentless, dependable, my friend.
At times when there has been emptiness and no visible escape there is always the road under me.