You can’t compare your pain to someone else’s and you can’t measure it like you can blood pressure or your shoe size. You can quickly forget exactly what it was like after surgery, an accident, or childbirth. But you know when you feel it.
No one wants it, and most dread it. However, there is no avoiding it, crawling away, or getting out from underneath it without feeling it first. Although people try. Numbing it with drugs, alcohol, food, gambling or any other avoidance strategy means it will snap back at some point like a boomerang on steroids or leak out in ugly and unexpected ways–like anger and bitterness.
Pain refuses to be suppressed and begs to be felt
We humans silo pain into two groups– ’emotional pain’ and ‘physical pain.’
To your brain, however, it’s all cake batter. In other words, there is no distinction. Your brain doesn’t pass judgment but sends signals when there is pain no matter what the source.
Often when someone struggles with pain associated with anxiety or a breakup, for example, it’s labeled as “all in your head” or psychosomatic– implying it’s not real. But no matter where the pain comes from, it is real. The only difference in knowing where it comes from is how you treat it.
The trick is to accept some level of pain and set an expectation
While you can’t make the pain go away, you can manage it. And by doing so, you can lessen your suffering.
I recall when I broke the olecranon in my elbow–the pointy part on the end. I shattered it into 18 little pieces by falling off a ladder onto concrete. It would take two weeks for the swelling to subside enough for them to do surgery and when they did I was not well educated on what to expect in terms of pain.
For hours I was so nauseous and out of breath from the surgical trauma that I could not even stand. And I have a very high pain tolerance.
A month later, they discovered I had two deadly infections. And I had to have that same elbow surgery again to scrape it clean and remove the metal that had attracted the deadly bacteria.
This time, I knew the pain and nausea lasted 6 hours. Simply knowing that the worst of it would only be over in 6 hours really helped. I could set the expectation that it wouldn’t last forever. There was an end.
The acute pain lasted 6 hours, another level of pain for a few days, and then intermittent pain and then none. It was a path to healing. The accident left scars but the elbow healed.
Nine months later I would remember all that when my son, Charles, took his life. What did this matter? When my husband and I collapsed to the floor an hour after getting the devastating news, I told myself, “As bad as it hurts now, and I know it’s brutal, it will never be as bad as getting the news. That part is over and it will never hurt that bad again.”
Just like that surgery, the worst was right after. The rest wasn’t easy but I could tolerate it by telling myself I was through the worst. And if I’d made it through that, I could make it through the rest.
I didn’t know how I would move forward after my son’s death or what grief after the loss of a child was like. The abject fear of not knowing how long that pain would last or what it would be like had my stomach knotted up like a tightly wrung washcloth. I was terrified. But after a broken neck at age 15 and multiple brain surgeries due to a tumor, I knew pain always came in waves. No feeling is ever permanent. And the trick was to let it in but grab the moment when it lifts and then distract from it.
The pain I felt from grief was not fake
I had no idea there was so much physical pain related to loss–the leaded limbs, joint pain, back pain, headaches, and an achy chest. There were far more symptoms but you get the idea. Those of you who have experienced devastating loss know what I mean.
The pain from losing my son lasted years. It ebbed and flowed and at first, it was sharp, jagged, and unbearable. I felt the feelings, and because I did the work, time removed its fangs. It left scars on my heart and an ache I can’t quite name but I can carry it now.
People often don’t want to share their pain, deciding instead to bear it alone. I would say, don’t rob someone else of the profound privilege of supporting you when you are hurting. While you’ll always carry the heaviest pieces, it’s too much to carry alone, and sharing the burden lightens your load.
With grief pain as with other ongoing pain, I integrated it into my life and learned to live with it, move with it, and come to it when it calls which is less often now. The pain from losing my son has softened and evolved and is no longer an enemy. Because that pain represents my love.
AnneMoss Rogers is a leading wellness and suicide education expert and one of the top mental health speakers and suicide prevention speakers. Known for her powerful, motivational keynotes, AnneMoss combines her personal story of loss with proven strategies to help organizations build a wellness culture that drives results and saves lives. She speaks at conferences, workplaces, K-12 schools, and universities, delivering impactful presentations that inspire change and promote mental health awareness.
AnneMoss does this work in memory of her son, Charles, who struggled with anxiety, depression, and addiction, and died by suicide at age 20 in 2015.
It’s been 3 years since Jason died and my stillborn Samuel would be 30. The pain never goes away and sometimes something triggers those feelings and I find myself crying and drowning in the sorrow and foreverness of their empty chairs.
I try to channel these feelings in helping others and being Mom and Mimi to my 3 and their 6. I have a wealth of great kids I work with as we gear up for 21 years with The Right Path, our community coalition, and I am grateful for all the wonderful people, you are one, Miss Anne, that God has put in my path.
Thank you for sharing that, Cathy. I love that you allow those tears. They are important.
You are correct. Pain is pain. No matter where it comes from but losing my son killed my soul. There’s just no normal or coming back from the pain in my case. He was my everything. I love your words and I truly process them. It’s just so hard. Life is so hard now.
You come back a different person. And that person is evolving now. This process is painful with moments of beauty but mostly pain. It truly is a metamorphosis.
You have endured trauma. I have too. I never thought I would laugh again or enjoy myself again. I cared about nothing. The fear of what the process would be and how long it would last consumed me at times. I had to seek a support group and today I co-run one.
It’s natural to feel how you feel right now. I am so sorry that you do and that you have lost a son too.
Lean into the pain ! Love is what it represents! I love this thanks for your insight on child loss I always learn from this journey reading your e mails we are heading in to year 9 and I’m so scared how time is flying by
My dreams of my son keep my going for sure , hope your 2024 year is wonderful! Thanks again
Deven Charles 7/7/15 ❤️🩹
I find it unbelievable that I am almost at 9 years. Thank you so much for commenting Wendy. My love to Devin. And my Charles died one month before your son which I think we talked about before.
Again,you are spot on. For nearly 18 months I experienced a lot of pain. I remember one day walking into work and nearly collapsing from the pain. It was getting so bad that I saw my doctor as I thought I had maybe developed cancer and this was causing the pain, A GP years ago said that cancer does not cause pain but I suppose I thought that it was advanced, hence the pain. My back hurt, I felt a lot of pain throughout my body, and I felt nauseous a lot of the time. These symptoms have slowly subsided. Your suggestion about sharing about the pain with others was (still is) something that I would not do, When people make a fuss over me, I feel extremely vulnerable and vulnerability causes me to feel that others will take advantage of me (these feelings are tied up with childhood issues).
This is such an excellent topic that you have raised.
As always, I appreciate your perspective, Heath. And the nausea! That one was bad for me, too.
Hi Anne. I always read your emails and posts. I have listened to your books on Audible. Diary of a broken mind is especially poignant to me.
I lost my son to suicide in April 2020. Right in the middle of lockdown. I found my son and I’m the only one in my family that witnessed my poor boy like that (he hung himself) My life is also the ‘before’ and ‘after’.
I have struggled so much with losing him. I’ve got PTSD, I’m sad all the time. When I look at photos it seems incomprehensible that my child is no longer here. I yearn to have him back. I wish I had been a better mother, I wish I had known just how low he was, I wish I could have saved him. I know you have had all of these feelings too.
I feel like I am broken and I can’t be fixed. The desolation I feel has changed me so much I don’t even recognise myself anymore. I did fall into the depths of despair and attempted to take my own life six months after Dean died. Somehow I am still here, and I hope that one day it won’t hurt so much. I’m trying to cope, to keep busy, but my mind is like a stuck record reliving that night over and over. I’m not sure how to stop the rumination to be honest. I just try to fill my mind with other things.
Things that used to be important to me no longer are. For example I used to wear makeup everyday, now I don’t care what I look like. Housework is not important, like it used to be. My younger sons bedroom being a mess doesn’t bother me like it used to. I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore.
So many things you say are so relatable, I have a feeling that every mother who has lost a child, especially to suicide, has the same feelings, even though every person’s grief is as unique as the person grieving, the similarities in feelings are so much the same. I have got to know other mothers in groups on Facebook, from around the world. I don’t know any of them personally, but they understand me, and I understand them, more than the people we actually do know. It is definitely a club none of us wanted or want to be in, but we hold each other up. This brutal grief is so very lonely.
Thank you for all your words of wisdom. Much love to you and your family.
It is the hardest thing I have ever done. And what you said about “sweating the small stuff?” I feel the same. I’m so sorry you struggled so much with suicide yourself. That is more common than people discuss but in my group in January we did discuss it. Finding the body is so traumatic. The loss itself is trauma. Are you getting any help with the PTSD? I do know that EMDR is effective for that. But I’m curious what you have tried. Because what you have been through is a lot to come back from. Thank you for commenting–being so honest.
Thanks AnneMoss … I really needed this today and I always enjoy your perspective! Hope 2024 is a good year for you and your family… think of you often
Your words hit the mark about pain and especially the physical pain of loss … I never really knew about it until March 1,2014 with the loss of Dawson, and then I understood the visual of mothers beating their chests when learning about their children dying…
It’s so good to hear from you Laurie. Thank you for commenting. I learned a lot from you early about grief from losing a child.