How has showing vulnerability shifted a difficult situation?

This sounds familiar, Maeve. I’m wondering if you may be bottling your negative emotions up until they overflow. I know I and people around me have at times “bottled” as a way of coping. We just want to be “done” with our pain or stress and move on because it feels like there is nothing else we can do. Bottling feels right at the time. I have had outbursts, too, when I was holding too much in. But your grief and sadness are legitimate. You have every right for your feelings to come out, spontaneously or otherwise. We can’t just hide it. It won’t go away just because we want it to. Wouldn’t life be easy if we could just wish hard feelings away!

This is just a hunch, but I think you need to find some expression for your feelings in order to come to peace with them. Some folk find it helpful to make art of their feelings. It isn’t important that it is “good” art or that anyone sees it, though sometimes people do wish to share. You want specifics, I have a friend who’s had a lot of trauma, but the thing that most gets to her is that her only child won’t speak to her and hasn’t for years. She raised him on her own without any support or partner. I remember her showing me an art “series” she was doing to express her feelings she had that her son now has nothing to do with her. They were collages she had also drawn on, painted, altered, etc. Very dark. One was a heart, ripped apart. One was a heart, ripped, but crudely sewn together again. One was bleeding. And there were several others. It was impossible not to be moved by the tenderness of them. This expression worked for her, and let her talk about it.

My dad dealt with the loss of his daughter (my sister), differently. He created funds for a medical library, for medical students at a university that might be having trouble affording their textbooks. My sister had been a nurse.

The mother who lost her son to drunk driving, started the organization MADD… Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

You don’t always have to be strong all the time, Maeve. You’re allowed to be “messy” too, or angry, or sad, or whatever you are feeling. Sometimes we just need to hear this. You don’t have to be cheery for us, or your coworkers, or your church, or for friends or family, or even for yourself. It’s okay. We still like you. 😉

If I’m off the mark, I apologize. I might be reading too much of my past self into this. I was moved by your vulnerability today. I hope the rest of your day is lovely.