Fear is not in failing, fear is in succeeding.

Fear is not in failing, fear is in succeeding.  I took a giant step and started my website and my blog posts only to fall into mental cement.  What am I afraid of? It started off so well but then I lost my motivation.  It’s not that it wasn’t important to me because I thought about writing every day.  But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Maybe it is the grief? Or maybe I don’t think I deserve to be happy and doing things I enjoy. After all, my son is not alive to enjoy his life anymore. Every day I say I feel “overwhelmed,” but I am not sure what that really means anymore. Is it just an excuse to not do anything? A copout to stop trying? A soft landing in case I really do fail.   

I feel like a rock in the middle of a river surrounded by water. Emotions can surround a person. Just as the rock “sees” all the water flowing by, I can see life just flowing past me most days. Grief makes people feel stuck, unable to move, unwilling to move, not wanting to let go, to move on, to find the “new normal.”  How tragic is it that it feels safer to feel sad than to allow yourself to feel happy again.

Grief is like fog. Some days it lifts a little and I can begin to see that something beautiful is underneath it. This scares me.  

Overwhelming feelings are like fog because they make me feel completely submerged. It hides the beauty that is life.

How do you choose to live and let the fog lift?  I ask myself this question every day.  Most days, I feel safer hidden beneath the fog that is grief. Is it really a choice or just part of the healing process? There can be enough guilt when someone you love dies, maybe blaming myself for my sadness is part of the reason I feel so stuck?

I keep telling myself to let the fog lift and feel the sunshine on my face again. I know my dad and my son would want that for me.