Marie0010j

Thank you for the articles. I do see the situation as me trying to replace therapy for her. We have a father who was an alcoholic most of his life, and although I loved my mother and father, it made for difficult situations in the household and I took the role of the protective sister although i'm the youngest. I really wanted this to work though, I wanted for us to be be able to share and help each other through this but I'm not finding what I need in our conversations. The problem is I'm not finding an ear, wherever I look. My sister went back to work and she had people coming to her and talk to her telling her that they went through the same thing and it is hard but they got through it. I didn't have that because i stayed to take care of my father. And I tried talking to friends, but they are not comfortable with the subject so they talk but not often and mostly avoid talking about what I'm going through. Getting something from them is like pulling teeth out of children's mouth so to speak. I'm going trough therapy but it's hard to get an appointment, my next one is friday. I'm feeling crippled by fear and overwhelming feelings, mostly I'm scared of not doing enough for my father, he has health issues on top of grief so it's ofent hard to tell if he's having problems because he's grieving or his health and I'm scared of getting too overwehlmed to take care of him. I keep a journal everyday, I read a lot. I'm trying to take care of my health, to take care of me but it's hard. I'M not hungry but i force myself to eat, I take vitamins, I try to sleep enough but it's hard as I wake up several times.

thank you photoguy and kay for your answers. We've talked again tonight and I think I've figured out the problem. My sister suffers from anxiety and as a result I've always been reassuring with her whenever something happened. And what happened of course made her anxiety worst. And she does take medication for it but don't seek counseling for it not that I haven't tried , and my mother had tried to. But she's scared of therapy, to her going into therapy would be saying that something is "wrong" with her. I've tried to make her see that it doesn't mean that she's broken, that I do counseling right now and it helps me but she's hard set on not going and she said just talking about it makes her feel more anxious. So right now, I have begun having anxiety issues too and whenever we talk , I try to reassure her but inside my own anxiety flares up by what she's saying. I can't tell her that because I know it will make things worst for her but everytime we talk, I feel drained afterwards. I write a lot,began journaling everyday and it does help getting things out. I really wish that I could talk to my sister, but it's so complicated and right now I'm watching out for my dad , I can't keep on holding on the fort for everybody, I need to rest too. I know that I need to take care of myself to be able to take care of others and since the sleeping thing isn't settling nicely, I feel tired a lot.

Me and my sister have lost our mother suddenly at the beginning of february. I've written about it in another topic but now I have another important question. I thought that since we are feeling the same way which is lost and overwhelmed that talking to each other would help us out in the end. I'm surprise to say that it makes me feel worst to the point where I almost had a panic attack tonight. It's hearing her say outloud things that I'm feeling and fears that I also have, it makes me feel like she's validating them and although I'm trying to confort her afterwards, inside I'm suddenly overwhelmed. The first time we talked about it , I was having a more normal feeling day, after our talk in the evening i felt a big downer coming on me. And well tonight was the second time we talked about it and that brought like a panic attack afterwards. I have a very calming tea that helps me a lot and after taking it, I was calmer. I don't understand what's wrong ? I've read it's supposed to help to talk about it , why does it do the complete opposite everytime I discuss it with her ? I'm coming to the point where I want to completely avoid talking about it with her because I'm afraid of what it might stir up inside me.

I find I'm not good at the grieving thing, not that anyone is I'm sure but my head is often a mess and I don't know how to sort it out. I feel a lack of support around me, people already went back to their things and life and I'm still at the beginning of it. The people I could have talked to in my family are gone, in my family the women passed away before the husbands so I'm left surrounded by men, not that I don't love them but they don't talk about emotions. I tried talking to my sister but since she's as much a mess as I am, it seems we're not able to comfort each other, we're too close to it. My friends seems to be wanting to talk about ordinary things rather than what's eating me up, and I can't seem to be interested in little everyday things. I'm supporting my father through this , I don't even know if I'm doing enough. But for sure, he never talks about my mom cause it's too painful for him. In his family, they were 9 boys and 1 girl, they don't talk or share feelings. He lost a lot of people, only has 2 brothers left but he never talked about his losses , never shared anything so I don't think he'll start now. I work in a school, a new job I started 6 months ago. Before I lost my mother, I had come to the conclusion that I didn't like my job or the people in it. My mother told me to find something that would make me happy. I used to work in an hospital and I've reached out to my old boss to see if there would be a position for me, she told me to contact her if I ever wanted to get back in the health sector. It's not that I don't want to work as I think it would help me, it did a lot of good to my sister but feeling like I do now I don't want to go back to a job I didn't like and people that I never was able to get a little bit close to in 6 months... Usually my mom would be the one helping sort out the work thing, but for the first time she's not there. I've asked her to guide me but I don't know if she'll do it. Right now, I have a leave of absence until march 21 but everything is so all over the place , getting used to that new life that I didn't ask for, that I would just want to know where I'm going at least in one sphere of my life.

I wanted to thank you both. I've read lots of the discussions that happened here before my registration was complete and you help so many people in so many ways. You remind me of the group of women i grew up with in my extended family, I was surrounded by warm, strong and insightful women who always gave me hope and good advice. I miss my mom everyday, I grieve her absence everyday, although I'm still convinced that she's there and helping me through it like she always did, that's why I write to her every night. Some moments are very hard, but I don't want it to be just about hard moments, I want to remember things we shared that make me smile still and I want to continue doing things that meant a lot to each other. Her passing is so hard to understand and accept and I hope that at one point, i can come to simply stop wondering and trying to explain and just be at peace a little... Thank you again, so very much...

Greetings, My mother died suddenly and very unexpectedly of a heart attack on february 8, 2021 (worst night of my life). It was so sudden and heartbreaking, and I felt so lost that I tried to help myself out, I read books on grieving, I contacted a counselor to help me (I've had one session so far and it went good) and I've joined two facebook support groups. At first, some of the posts seemed to help me, I found people who were going through the same thing I was but tonight I started to feel differently. Suddenly all I saw were sad posts about good people as heartbroken as me and some were saying it's been over a year and still no improvement in their moods or spirit . Tonight, I've also had a discussion with my older sister, we don't talk about it much since it happened but tonight we did and I thought it would make me feel better to share things , to hear her going through the same feelings as I was but to be truthful today was the first day since it happened that I felt more normal, not totally broken and completely anxious and talking to her and reading the posts on facebook brought it all back and all the "almost good" I was feeling went away... I didn't show it to my sister because I wanted to support her but it brought me down. We were so close to our mother, she was our best friend, our best supporter, we saw her everyday, talked to her on the phone, went for coffee and just discussed everything with her, loosing her was not only loosing our mother but also our best friend, the anchor of our family. i joined the support groups because I was looking for hope, I wanted somebody to come and say "well it's been over a year , the road was rough, I'm not over it as it's not something we get over but I'm doing better and you'll see over time so will you and also here's what made me feel better... " So far, only one person ever wrote that. Should i continue being part of those groups if I don't feel like it's helping me ? When I read books about grieving, I'm left with the impression that in order to feel better and get over the worst part, I have to sit and cry and be depressed so as to go "through the grieving process..." , is that really it ? My mother was the most optimistic and cheerful person in the world , always seeing the bright side of things, always trying to help people get through things. I don't think she would want me to be sad from morning to sundown, feeling like my heart has been cut open. Not that I don't cry, I write her letters every night and when I do , I cry because i realize everytime how much I miss her. But i also want to honor her by doing something that we both felt strongly about like volunteering at an animal shelter. I used to volunteer at one and me and my mother would fantasize one day about opening our very own animal shelter, we felt so strongly about providing a safe place for animals. I've been taking care of my father since it happened, they were together 50 years so of course he's in shock, he was the one with health issues so he always thought he'd go first. The situation left him completely distraught, I took a leave of absence from work to be there for him and even though it hurts me seeing him like this, I wouldn't want to be far away from him. And I'm also helping my mom's best friend in some other way. I like taking care of people , always have and my mother was so good at it, she had such a generous heart like my grandparents. I guess what I'm asking is , how do we know how to grieve the right way ? If I decide to do something like volunteering, is that a good thing or would it be considered avoiding the grief and by doing so it will hit me like a ton of bricks later on ? Is it bad to want to do something to feel better ? And is it normal that being among other grievers in a support group or talking to my sister, makes me feel worst instead of better ? I'm sorry about the long post, I feel lost, I don't know what I'm supposed to do and my mother is the one to whom I always turned to... thank you for listening...