Overcome or Become

When tragedy strikes, we have two choices: we can become or we can overcome. There is no gray area, no middle ground, no limbo that we can live in once loss has happened. Any choice but to grow from the experience is a choice to become the sadness, the pain, the loss, the tragedy. Maybe that sounds harsh - maybe you'll say "well she never experienced the loss that I did, so she cannot understand" - and maybe you would be right. But I did experience a loss of my own - the deepest pain I have felt to date and the hardest hit I have taken in life - so I'm somewhat versed in the loss department.  So maybe, it sounds harsh - the idea that we choose to stay in sadness or to move past it. And I'd say - yes it is pretty harsh.

But you've already experienced the worst. You've already been hit. You've already been broken. You've already felt the worst of the pain, the first blow, the initial hit, the loss of consciousness - so why stay down? The choice is yours to get up, to collect the pieces, and to find shelter from the storm while making sense of the loss. Why stay in the middle of the field to be trampled, walked on, crushed into dust? Does that sound extreme? That's what you're doing when you make the choice to become the pain, to strap the loss to your back and to carry that heavy thing everywhere for the rest of the foreseeable future. You make a choice to get hit again, to be knocked down, when you choose to become your pain.

Because when you choose not to overcome, you become the pain - mentally, physically. You know the shape that a person takes when they are given the task of greeting friends and family at the foot of the casket of their beloved at a funeral or a viewing? Their shoulders are curled in and their eyes are hollow, and their hips curve back in the shape of the letter C, and their face may seem pale and sunken in? This is the physical shape of loss. This is what loss looks like - regardless of what form the loss came in: job loss, health loss, love loss, home loss, money loss, life loss, hope loss. This is the body's natural reaction to loss - it is protecting the heart, the organs, the vulnerable physical spaces of itself. The body curls inward to protect. We cannot help this initial physical reaction if we tried. It is normal. Fast forward 2 years and many times that same person looks the same. Their body has taken the permanent shape of loss. They don't even need to tell you that they lost their most loved-one years ago, you already know. You can see it, you can sense it, you can feel it. 

It is who they have become.

But it does not have to be that way. It may not feel like a real choice - to become or overcome. But eventually, regardless of your loss, you are given the choice to break away from the becoming, and begin the overcoming. Sure, we all become our loss for some time. It would be impossible not to. We all get hit and bear the scars, the physical shape, the mental state. That is natural. But we ALL have the choice to overcome, eventually. If you aren't sure how to begin the overcoming - that's pretty normal. There is no manual, no guide. Facebook isn't splattered with a news feed full of the low-points in life, so we end up thinking we are alone in our grief. But you're not. That's why you're here. There are a lot of us walking the path of overcoming, and we're always looking for more company on this road.

So, welcome. 

Know that this journey is mind and it is body. It is mental and it is physical. You cannot work on one part of yourself and hope to improve. No, this overcoming thing is a full body thing. We have to physically move the body in some way to signal to the brain that we want to over come. We have to bend and twist and move a bit to shake off the physical shape of loss. And we have to exercise the brain a bit as well. You'll find all that here if you're ready to commit to the overcoming. If you've made the decision that you don't want to BE your loss anymore,

then you're in the right place.

The good news: it's not always so harsh, it's not always so hard. Some days, deciding to overcome instead of become means looking at a cute picture of a puppy instead of wallowing to a sad song. Other times, it's nourishing the soul through food or drink that you make with your hands. (I've always found food to be soothing - and I accept that that may be why I don't have abs). And often, choosing to overcome simply means taking care of yourself in the form of a massage or a pedicure, or a walk in the woods. You'll find all that here, and more.

Overcoming is a daily choice and it's ok to have a day of becoming in between the overcoming, from time to time. As long as the overcoming, outweighs the becoming - you're on the right track.

P.S. - Deciding to overcome is not forgetting about the person or the thing that you have lost. It is a graceful way of honoring the loss and what it means, picking up the pieces of the old and using them to create a new picture of peace.