An e-mail from my
mother encouraged these words to spill out of me, and I decided to share
them...
I don't know if I
could have performed after recovery from my hand surgeries, but I could have
given private flute lessons... getting sick changed that... teaching - which I
loved - along with a number of other large goals, now seems unlikely...
I love the sound of
the flute, and I don't want to stop playing, but I desperately miss picking up
sheet music and playing, particularly with other musicians...
I will always be a
mom, but my daughters are growing up and will find their own way - as they
should - and need me less... I love them, I'm proud of them, but still I want it
to be otherwise, because *I* am not moving on as I envisioned... and in
reality, I can talk with them, but am very limited in terms of what I can DO
with them...
I'm also very limited
in what I can DO with my husband...
This is all very
painful.... I don't feel bitter - that word just doesn't fit - but I DO feel
angry and incredibly sad...
I hope with every
fiber of my being that doing artistic stuff will not only help, but be satisfying
- not just a time filler.... there's nothing I do that feels good that takes a
great deal of time... due to pacing, it can't...
When my current
therapist first said to me "getting sick was life altering for
you..." I'd never heard that before... since then I've thought,
"yeah, yeah, let's move on... I don't want to go there..." but it's
TRUE...
I don't want false
promises about what I'll be able to do... getting sick was a devastating
blow... I KNOW I need to create some kind of life... but I ALSO need to feel -
even on meds, and CBT - the depth of my
loss.....
Ours is a disenfranchised grief. Other people, including doctors, family and friends, minimise our experiences - they say things like "at least it's nothing serious" or "stop being negative". They make us feel shame and guilt for reflecting upon or mourning our losses. They don't even see them as losses, especially the intangible ones like the career and/or family we couldn't have because of our ill health. So we learn to hide our feelings. But they don't go away: they simply fester and eat away at our spirit and our soul.
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