Welcome Whitelillys i agree with Sandra it is really hard for people who have not been in this position to understand that this is so much more than missing some-one but changes our entire lives.
On top of that society has some expectations born of both tradition ( the victorian official year of mourning) and convenience - (the demands of the factory system that we "get over it and work" - whether that is literal or whether it refers too how others think we should function generally.
For me i think the term acceptance is not accepting they are gone then "move on" as many people believe - its about acceptance of grief as a state of being.
If you broke your legs you would have to go through certain stages before you could run again,and people would be more patient, more symapthetic, they can see your your plaster casts and crutches,they promote physio, they tell you not to do too much and you accept yourself that you cant rush the healing process etc etc You might try and get out of bed and fall over - you will get sick of trying, and sick of being stuck in bed or on the crutches, and while you are on them you get painful blisters all over your hands and so the pain enters different areas that you may not have expected it too -
but with grief no one can see the injury, no-one can explain how it will affect you because we are all different - sympathy is soon in short supply - there is no physio - yet you still get impatient with the length of your recovery, still fall over a lot still get pain you hadnt anticipated - but people dont accept that like they do with the brocken legs -
And just as with them,over time the pain will become more chronic than acute, but there will still be bad days,you will fall over and you will find ways in which pain appears where you didnt expect it too -
but you will find a painkiller that helps a little Not in a bottle from the chemists but maybe in better memorys of them, maybe in seeing the natural world, or feeling the sun on your back - you will find more comfortable positions to sit in, but you will always have an ache that is worse on rainy days - and you will always have a limp, but you will start to live with those things and you will find a way to climb that mountain.
Meanwhile be kind too yourself dont let others tell you what you should be feeling,and what you should be doing,sometimes people will move away from you and when they do that is their inability to cope with your grief, it isnt because there is something wrong with you - sometimes they will move back towards you as well and others will come into your life - just as when we make any other changes in life even the lesser ones like going to different schools, moving to different places, growing up at a different pace - all those changes have ripples - new friends coming into our lives and loss of old some old ones i think with grief, recognising even that comes under the acceptance heading.
Come back write, chat, we will be here as long as you need us.
