I feel like ive done this more than once on my journey through my son's death, I look back in my journaling and I think its where I journaled I felt like I was going crazy...my internal identity changed several times, now things are integrated that the outer is starting to match the inner, it feels good for my Self, but relationships, my career and my marriage don't feel coherent, a lot of big decisions, but I take it day by day, I HAVE to live in Grounded Trust from my rooted truth, or I really would be "going crazy" for lack of a better term...Thank-you always for your writing ♥️
Thank you for always sharing so honestly! Grief, especially the loss of a child, doesn’t move in a straight line, and it often asks us to become different versions of ourselves just to survive what we’re carrying. That can feel disorienting but it’s also a very real part of how the nervous system and psyche try to reorganize after something so profound.
Integration rarely happens all at once. It unfolds slowly, and sometimes unevenly, while relationships, roles, and decisions find their own pace alongside it.
Taking it day by day, sounds like you’re listening closely to yourself as you move through it.
I’m really grateful my writing has been able to sit with you in some way!
It would seem like after experiencing such a disrupture to your identity there would be no choice but for your psyche to reorganize, it seems my husband has become more rigid and closed off, I dont understand, ive changed and grown so much, its hard for me to understand this.
That’s really hard to experience! I feel like we see this a lot in men and women. Not always, of course but, men will usually get a bit more rigid and go into a protective shell after experiencing something like that.
For some people, the psyche reorganizes by becoming more flexible and it helps them grow; for others, it tightens into structure and protection because the change or loss was overwhelming.
So what looks like resistance to growth can actually be an attempt to feel safe again. Two people can go through the same event and adapt in completely different ways — which can make the distance between them feel even more confusing.
There’s a lot of depth in how you frame contradiction as a necessary phase of transition rather than a flaw to fix. The way I read it, growth seems to require staying steady through the overlap—letting parts of the old dissolve (not everything, just what no longer serves), resisting the urge to define the new too quickly, and trusting that identity will reorganize in its own time.
We can see it in moments like leaving a long career or relationship, or even building a new habit like daily exercise—when there’s a stretch of disorientation before the new sense of self stabilizes through repetition and aligned choices. It’s a perspective that makes change feel less like chaos and more like recalibration.
I feel like ive done this more than once on my journey through my son's death, I look back in my journaling and I think its where I journaled I felt like I was going crazy...my internal identity changed several times, now things are integrated that the outer is starting to match the inner, it feels good for my Self, but relationships, my career and my marriage don't feel coherent, a lot of big decisions, but I take it day by day, I HAVE to live in Grounded Trust from my rooted truth, or I really would be "going crazy" for lack of a better term...Thank-you always for your writing ♥️
Thank you for always sharing so honestly! Grief, especially the loss of a child, doesn’t move in a straight line, and it often asks us to become different versions of ourselves just to survive what we’re carrying. That can feel disorienting but it’s also a very real part of how the nervous system and psyche try to reorganize after something so profound.
Integration rarely happens all at once. It unfolds slowly, and sometimes unevenly, while relationships, roles, and decisions find their own pace alongside it.
Taking it day by day, sounds like you’re listening closely to yourself as you move through it.
I’m really grateful my writing has been able to sit with you in some way!
It would seem like after experiencing such a disrupture to your identity there would be no choice but for your psyche to reorganize, it seems my husband has become more rigid and closed off, I dont understand, ive changed and grown so much, its hard for me to understand this.
That’s really hard to experience! I feel like we see this a lot in men and women. Not always, of course but, men will usually get a bit more rigid and go into a protective shell after experiencing something like that.
For some people, the psyche reorganizes by becoming more flexible and it helps them grow; for others, it tightens into structure and protection because the change or loss was overwhelming.
So what looks like resistance to growth can actually be an attempt to feel safe again. Two people can go through the same event and adapt in completely different ways — which can make the distance between them feel even more confusing.
There’s a lot of depth in how you frame contradiction as a necessary phase of transition rather than a flaw to fix. The way I read it, growth seems to require staying steady through the overlap—letting parts of the old dissolve (not everything, just what no longer serves), resisting the urge to define the new too quickly, and trusting that identity will reorganize in its own time.
We can see it in moments like leaving a long career or relationship, or even building a new habit like daily exercise—when there’s a stretch of disorientation before the new sense of self stabilizes through repetition and aligned choices. It’s a perspective that makes change feel less like chaos and more like recalibration.