I was reflecting on my labor experience with Eli a couple of days ago and I had some thoughts. I thought that grief can feel like labor at times. (Only the contractions start out pretty bad and seem to lessen with time instead of the other way around). You have a lot of contractions when you are in labor and they cause varying amounts of pain. You have a lot of "contractions" when you are grieving and they cause you varying amounts of pain. There was a time for me, when I didn't feel a great deal of joy or happiness; hardly any. I would have a terrible contraction and think I was going to die. Sometimes this would last a day or a few days or a week. Then, without a reason, it would subside and I could breath a little. I was feeling a relief from the intense pain, but I wouldn't say I was feeling relief in general, because I was tired and drained from the contraction. I also knew another one was coming.
The breaks in between contractions got longer and the contractions have gotten more manageable. I know they won't last forever and I know they won't kill me; which is 2 things I did not know at the beginning. I can have some joy and happiness in between them now, where I was too tired to feel that before. I know that pain will come again, but I don't dread it as much as I used to. I let my highs be high. I let the light in. I don't anticipate the darkness like I did before. But, it is easier to do that now because the dark isn't nearly as dark.
So, it may have been better to ask someone in the early stages of grief... "How much pain are you in today?" Kind of like they do at the hospital with the pain scale. I felt constant and terrible pain at the beginning which made it almost impossible to see or think about anything else. My close friends and family can vouch for that. When you are having a contraction during labor, you are just focused on breathing through it. You can't answer stupid questions (and there is a such thing as a stupid question), and you can't think about much else until the contraction stops. No one really has a problem with this when you are in labor.
This is easy to understand in a labor context, but harder to understand when it comes to grief. I felt I needed a coach to sit with me and help me breath through contractions and then encourage me and stay with me while I geared up for the next one. When I am in labor, I don't usually do a good job at caring for those around me and meeting their needs. Labor doesn't usually last more than a day, so no one has a big problem with this. Grief last a long time and some of that pain is much more intense than a labor pain. It is more difficult to bear and I had a rather good labor to compare it to.
