Sometimes I need to borrow the words of others who can speak for me more eloquently than I can for myself. This is one of those times.

Second Firsts

This letter is for you if you are all alone at night when you come home.

This letter is for you if you no longer have someone who loves you without any conditions. Someone who has seen you grow old and knows about all your scars and all your changes.

I know you miss being loved.

I know you feel like nobody cares about you.

I know this is not easy.

And, as I am sitting here trying to think about how I can make it all better, I realize that I can’t.

But what I can do is tell you that you are not losing your mind, your feelings are all normal.

That yes, this feels like this.

It is time to start saying how you feel about the evenings and weekends out loud.

To speak the words . . . I miss my person, I miss my best friend.

It is one of the most difficult experiences for a human being.

You didn’t just lose the person you love, you lost your support system.

You lost the person who reflected your image, your words and your identity.

And because of not having that person witnessing you any more you no longer know who you are. In a very small way it is like there are no mirrors in your house anymore.

You can’t see what you look like.

This is much more important than people realize.

And the loss of your person is more than just a broken heart.

It is about a broken identity, a broken present and a broken future.

I want you to start looking for people who can see you again.

And I don’t mean going out for coffee seeing someone. I mean talk to someone who knows you, and gets you and sees you.

We have to consciously seek to be seen now that the person who was here with us every day is no longer here.

This is beyond the basic understanding of grief.

Beyond a broken heart. Beyond mourning.

It is about losing yourself so much, so that the loss of your identify can last even longer than any other loss, unless we look for those mirrors in our lives.

Unless we look for those people who have the capacity to witness our new identity.

The longer we are not seen, the harder it is to leave the waiting room.

The harder it is to want to be seen.

So don’t wait with this. Seek out people in your life who can be that mirror.

Christina Rasmussen http://www.secondfirsts.com #secondfirsts #grief #loss