:hug:To me acceptance is a double edged sword - acceptance of the loss is one thing and we have no choice over that, but to me it is also acceptance of our grief. As a society we see that as something we should not accept - we should "get over it" "move on" "put it behind us" " pull our socks up" (i,m not joking i have been told that) The victorians even put a time on it - the year of mourning - whether you were mourning or not or whether you were still mourning years later you got a year.. So because that's what is expected we try to do that - we cannot accept our grief because we are expected not too, so we see it as wrong. But when we have a physical injury they say "can i help you" "dont run before you can walk"" take it easy "you must rest" in both cases we are in pain our brains acknowledge the pain but with the physical injury we know if we leap out of bed its going to hurt and we also know that doing so can set us back or create further injury and it will take longer to heal so we dont do that as its clear what will happen - but with grief there are different messages and it isn't clear so we start to become increasingly anxious.
To put it in physical terms if you badly broke your legs then you would know more general facts about what was happening - you would know how long you would be likely to be in hospital, how long before the plaster came off, how long before you could walk with crutches, roughly how long you would need physio before you took your first steps without them and again things are clearer too us, but even with that outline knowledge and step by step goals you would still experience some of the things you do with grief perhaps anxious that it might all go wrong with an operation, and then build that to being in a state of panic where you think it might mean you wake up without your legs.
You might be angry with yourself for putting yourself in that position or angry with the person who ran you down or tripped you up, and then angry with yourself again when you couldnt do the things you things you thought you should be able too by now at the different stages and then that turns to depression.
You might feel guilty you cant work and some-one else is having to work harder to replace you - or someone who is caring for you is becoming exhausted.
You would worry that your life would take a while to get back to normal or maybe you would never get back to completely normal - you wouldn't book to run a marathon or decide to climb a mountain just yet.
You would have days when you could do more, days when you couldnt get out of bed, and you would be counting down the days until the next stage of progress and each time you reach it be happy you reached it but along the way if you pushed yourself too hard sometimes you would fall over and panic that you cant get back up or realise you had walked too far and were too tired to get back so are stuck.
But despite all that and knowing if you fall over someone will pick you up you would not give yourself as hard a time as you do with grief. You would be much kinder too yourself and recognize you need time and space to heal much more easily.
With grief you dont have those initial rough guidelines or goals, no physios lined up to push you towards them, no team to help you get back up just expectations from others and yourself that you must do so by yourself and that your pain is somehow less than that caused by a physical injury - You have less certainty and less help,There are no outward facing signs you haven't been in hospital for weeks, dont have plaster casts or crutches as indications to people that you might need help to do certain things so it isnt offered except by some of those who know you are grieving and sometimes we see accepting those offers as weakness where we never would with physical injurys..
You still have all those same negative experiences - anger, guilt, fear, anxiety, panic, depression, insomnia - so again why be less kind to yourself and less accepting of the situation with grief.
With a physical injury you would accept that to heal takes time and some people heal quicker than others, some days will be better than others,sometimes you need to rest others to move a bit further, and you may always have a limp or scar and pain from that injury that flares up from time to time and that will be something that becomes part of you and who you are as you go forward and while it may throw some hurdles at you you can eventually find ways round them and one day you find that even with those issues you can climb that mountain or run that marathon.
Grief is the same it becomes part of who you are and you learn to get round the hurdles it throws up but it also takes time. No one hands us a pair of crutches measured for us to use we have to find or make our own, - for me being here was one of those things i leaned on..
Anxiety is one of those hurdles - there are still things i cant do, but i have learned that i can find a way to get where i want to be by finding props - a camera became another crutch part because it gave me a reason to be somewhere a direction to take - or simply going a different way round eating out by myself is a no no but if i need to eat on a journey i can get takeaway or take food with me. The key is to want to be in that place or do that thing enough to find those ways around anxiety rather than do it because other people think i "ought too" even knowing it isn't something that's right for me. Tthe biggest incentives was to do something for my husband live my life for him and be his eyes on the world - go back somewhere we loved, do something we said we would but didnt get round too, or do something he would have loved and i would not have chosen to do - the scars of his loss are not all i take with me, he remains my influence and guide.