Grief comes in all size shapes and forms. Some forms of grief are ‘minor’, meaning that if you don’t get the chocolate that you wanted you might be sad, but your world won’t be altered for every. That’s not the point of the discussion here, but rather those events that bring into your life a new normal! A new normal! I first heard this term back in the 1990’s. As I recall it was on a talk show. It was when someone had lost a child. The thing all parents fear. The person having the discussion told the woman that she now had ‘a new normal’.
A new normal is at the heart of grief. It’s when something has so taken place in your life that it can not possibly ever be the same. It’s one of those events that mark your life forever and ever and you have to learn to live with that event. For example, finding out that you have a physical disorder such as cancer rushes into your life a new normal. It means that you are going to have to learn to live with things being different from that point forward. Everything from loss of hair to how you now have to eat has ‘suddenly’ changed. That’s your new normal. It’s what you now have to face every day of your life for the rest of your life!
It means that you’re going to have to grieve all those things that you now have to face. With cancer, it can be the loss of your hair. Every week when you have a treatment you may be concerned if you’re hair is going to fall out more and more. You may also for the first time become concerned if your children are going to have to face cancer in the future. What are you going to eat? Will you be alive to see your children grow up? These are some of the things that you have to address with your new normal. And yes, part of addressing these issues is grief. The grief of the loss of not having to worry about what you’re going to feel like in the morning. And if your diagnosis is terminal, the grief of all the events you’re going to be missing out on!
Another new normal can occur if you have the sudden loss of a loved one. This is especially true if you have lost a child, as discussed in the movie Courageous! The daughter was killed by a drunk driver and the family had to learn how to survive without their youngest child. The loss of a child is a gut wrenching pain that far too many people have had to experience. And of those far too many have tried to walk that loss by themselves. The murder of Adam Walsh, shows us a different type of loss. The young boy Adam was murdered caused the parents to split. Only they know all the particulars, but it was clear that they weren’t able to handle the new normal of a child being murdered. Something that only those that have lost a child in this brutal way can even begin to empathise with!
Sometimes if it’s a new normal that’s too big for you to handle yourself, consider that you can reach out and get help from a professional counselor. This can mean anything from a pastor to a psychiatrist. This type of pain can be so overwhelmingly debilitating that they only way you can make it through it, is by going to a skilled professional. It’s not that you can’t do it yourself, it’s just some time with the bigger things, it’s nice to have someone that can help you through it with the skill of a trained professional.
If you’re facing a new normal, get help if you need it. It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s actually a sign of strength to know when you’ve reached the boundaries of what you know how to do and how to handle things.