Grief Recovery

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Hi All,

 

I've been desperate for answers and how to heal. I went to my public library yesterday and spent 3 hours reading a grief recovery book. In my case, a lot of pain comes from no closure or emotional completeness. I didn't get to say everything I wanted to say, do everything I wanted to do, for example I never got to live the future I had dreamed with her. Because of that incompleteness, I am hurting.

 

I've taken some steps to make that incompleteness and try to make it complete. This is where they say closure comes from within. I wrote a letter in which was one of the steps to overcoming grief in this format:

 

Dear ____,

 

I want to apologize for ...

I forgive you for ...

I wanted to let you know ..

 

Love You Always,

 

Basically you keep writing and writing until you can't think of anything else. I never cried so hard in my life. As soon as I wrote Love You Always, my heart broke. I just couldn't stop the tears. Rereading what I wrote and burned it after, I feel a little okay today. Still hurting, but not as bad as yesterday. This whole healing process is tedious and consuming. My heart hurts, but it's healing. I only pray that I will be happy and be moving on one day.

[yankeefan74]

You should continue to cry if that's what you feel like doing. Keep doing what you've been doing. It's all good stuff. I wrote my ex at least 5 letters that never made their way anywhere but the trash bin on my desktop. It definitely helps.

 

I've had the chance to say a lot of the things i wrote in those letters directly to my ex, and writing them out helped a lot more.

 

You will be happy, and you will move on one day. You're taking positive steps to do so. Awesome.

[Robert013]

Grief letters are good they help you feel the emotions. I wrote one a couple of weeks after we broke up. Pretty intense.

[lady00]

Closure definitely comes from within. Nothing you or the other person can do in relation to the other can bring about closure. The letter sounds like a really good idea.

[keefy1972]

Once you get beyond the stage of idealizing the ex, and the relationship, that's when the healing process gets moving faster. Your life will cease to be consumed with the misery of what once was.

 

In a state of grief, due to a break up, we human beings have a very strange way of remembering the past. The issues that caused the break up, the reasons behind nit-picky fights, and all of the ex's annoying little habits become lost on us. We start to think about, miss, and long for the good times we shared with that one person. Those thoughts, in turn, convince us that the one person is THE ONLY person we can have good times with. This is, of course, totally untrue. Convincing ourselves of that fact, however, is no easy task.

 

Writing and burning a closure letter is a decent way of dealing with your pain. Another way is to come to terms with the fact that you are inflicting a lot of that pain yourself - by staying trapped in your own head. You need to figure out what is wrong with your ex. She may seem perfect but she's not. Your perfect partner would never hurt you. Figure out some of the negatives of the relationship, dwell on those, and be grateful it's over. Now you can move on and find the one person you are really meant to be with.

 

This experience is just one of the steps you needed to take to be able to handle the right relationship when it comes along. Keep your chin up.