Postby rkrato » Thu Jun 02, 2005 12:10 pm

I was at a PTA meeting at my daughter’s school and the speaker was talking about how children learn in different ways. Some need to hear things to remember them others need to say them and still others do best when they write things down.

I’m sure that grieving is similar and that different people heal better by doing things differently. Some go to the cemetery and cry, others go to the cemetery and talk. Some get release through talking with others, and others need to write things down in journals.

I know that after Cindy died there was an unconscious urge to write. It’s called hypergraphia and there is a book (of course) called The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain written by by Alice Weaver Flaherty that describes it. Based on the midnight writers here I think that there may be a few people on Widownet that suffer from some variation on this. I didn’t understand what I was doing at the time but I was writing stuff all the time in the days and weeks after Cindy died.

It wasn’t until I found Widownet and started participating in the Roll Calls that I began the long process of healing the wound of that day. Somehow describing the day of the accident to my friends here on Widownet gave me the ability to go back to work and the everyday world and not continually break down. Each time I told the story and finished the accompanied crying and emotional release I became more able to tell it again. It may have desensitized me, or perhaps just prepared me so I could anticipate the emotions and control them better.

There was another aspect to the Roll Calls that I think was very therapeutic. Listening to others tell their stories. Acknowledging that I wasn’t unique and that we all had similar feelings and emotions. It also allowed me to cry for others while I was crying myself. It helped me to be able to listen to others talk about sadness without breaking down.

Maybe what I’m saying is the experiences I had writing my story on the Roll Calls, and listening to others tell their story, prepared me in some way for dealing with the Grief Monster. It allowed me to anticipate situations where it might strike and prepare for the onslaught. It allowed me to fight the monster on my terms rather than continually being blindsided by it.

Thanks to all for letting me tell my story, and to all whose stories I read.

Rod