Living in the Space Between Hope and Fear

There is a kind of grief that begins long before loss.

In this episode, Marilyn shares the emotional reality of loving someone who is struggling, and what it feels like to live in the space between hope and fear.

This is the space where you find yourself waiting…
 waiting for the phone to ring…
 waiting for things to change…
 and carrying a quiet fear that never fully goes away.

Through her personal experience as a mother and her professional understanding of grief, Marilyn gently explores anticipatory grief, the emotional toll of living in uncertainty, and the weight of feeling responsible for someone you love.

If you are loving someone through addiction or walking through this kind of grief, you are not alone.

Thank you for listening to Hope After Loss: Conversations on Grief.

If this episode spoke to you, please consider sharing it with someone who may need support. 

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health treatment. 

If you have a question or a topic that you would like me to gently explore,
 you’re welcome to email me at [your email].

While I’m not able to provide individual counseling through email,
 I would be honored to hold your question and possibly share it in a future episode
 so others may feel less alone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning and welcome back to Hope After Loss. I'm Marilyn. This is episode three, Living in the Space Between Hope and Fear. Today I want to talk about a kind of grief that doesn't always get talked about. Sometimes we don't even realize that we're in it. Because we're fighting so hard to try to save someone. It's a kind of grief that begins before we actually lose someone. And if you've ever lived in that space, you know how heavy it can feel. I've touched on this before, I think mostly in episode one, about that hope and that grief before an actual death, but today I want to slow it down a little bit. That space that we live in when someone is not well, and they don't have a sign that they're near death, but you know they aren't well, that space is a space that's going to really bring us down. It's going to wear us out. I remember the times when I would look into my son Chris' eyes. Christopher died in 2007 from opiate addiction, and I wouldn't find him. And I would try to have conversations with him about things that I knew he was connected with, things that I knew he loved, but he didn't respond in the same way. I could tell he wasn't connected with me, with the meaning of his life as it once was. And this was where all my real heavy grief would sit. One time when I was talking to Chris, trying to understand, like, why is it that as a counselor I can't help my kid? I couldn't understand it. Like I knew all of the things to do, I knew how to approach it, so on and so forth. But I was totally losing myself in trying to figure out what's it gonna take, what's it gonna take to save my boy? And once we had a conversation, and his level of functioning was a little better at the time, and he said, I don't know how to explain it. Now, he had been without drugs for a little while when we were talking, and he was trying to educate me, I guess, and and he said that once he's in this like heart of addiction, that the devil has him, and he believes that. And he used to explain to me that when he would look out of his eyes, he would see me, he would see his dog ginger, he would look at the things that that he once really loved, like his girlfriend as an example, but he just couldn't get there, he couldn't bridge a gap because of the fact that in his mind the devil had him, and he had no way of grabbing a different hand to pull himself out. And I realized how serious all of that must be for them when they're in the heartbeat of their addictions. I can't even imagine. But as a caretaker, as someone who's trying to save someone that they love so desperately, we're kind of in the same spot. It's almost like that addiction belongs to them, but we're in it as well. And that's what makes it so difficult because we don't know how to get out of it. We're desperately looking for them to help us. We're trying to grab their hand, and there is no hand that is extended, so it's just real complicated and very layered. I was waiting to see him at some point in time, thinking, well, today he'll show up. I'll see him. He'll be back because he hasn't been in this for too long, and I believed that I'd get him back because he loved life so much. But I remember once, you know, I was frustrated. We were both frustrated with each other when we should have been frustrated with drugs and what they do to our loved ones. But I was waiting for him to go to church. He loved to go to church, and he didn't come down the steps that day, and I left without. And it was just not a very pleasant thing. I felt like I hurt him more when I pulled in that driveway after I attended mass than anything he could have done to hurt himself. We live with that kind of grief and shame and guilt, thinking that we can somehow, some day, some minute, some hour, change the whole thing. But that's just an illusion. What we're waiting for, really, if we really get honest and we go deep, is we're waiting for that call that we've lost them. And this constant fear that we live in is the kind of grief that we need to address. Because we can't expect our addicts, alcoholics, gamblers to know what they can do to help us. They're lost. And they're actually drowning and what they have to do to get through a day to just keep themselves out of any kind of withdrawal. So we have to really look at the fact that this fear that we live in is something that we better address. And the sooner that we start to focus on that and a little less on grab my hand, grab my hand, grab my hand, let me pull you out of this, we're gonna start to feel a little better. This is the emotional center that we need to really be more focused in. When we extend an arm, when we go to save the day, and it's not working, there are things we need to do to save ourselves in that moment because the damage is being done and it's happening fast. Those cortisol levels that we live with, those high cortisol levels, are impacting everything. Our sleep, our concentration, our movements, our ability to accomplish things today, to remember things, to even have the motivation to do anything. I mean, we're going down the drain, and we think we're gonna save someone else. That's the irony in the whole thing. The emotional brain is always on. We talked about the emotional brain in episode two, and the emotional brain is always on, it's always on, which means that it's vigilant, which means that it's gathering, it's gathering all sorts of detail and drawing negative conclusions. Everything's a danger, everything has the potential to destroy us or the person we love or both. But you know, surprisingly, we're not thinking about us. But yet, we are facing consequences, and we're not focused on that. We're focused on them. Our bodies aren't resting properly, our mind never rests, our digestive system is probably suffering. I know mine did. And anything I ate just went out the other end, and it was just a constant battle with just trying to keep energy level to a point where I could do what I had to do for myself and continue to hold that arm up, waiting for Chris to grab my hand, like it was really gonna work. We all want to save the people that we love. And we also want to believe that we can. And so there's always that guilt and grief, okay, that is coming from what else can I do? And you know, I don't know if you notice it, but I sure did. There was a lot of madness in it. I was doing the same thing over and over again, thinking that, well, it was going to work this time. Well, it didn't work the last 15 times, and why I thought it might work this time was just me in my craziness. So this is something that you really have to take a look at when someone around you is trying to tell you, you've already done that, it didn't work. You know, you've already said that, but we won't stop. We'll keep on repeating patterns. And if you ever really look at them when you're repeating a pattern, they've clocked out, they're not listening, they're they're not even aware that you're probably in the room. But this is our madness, this is what we do. And I had to, in order to really heal after my son did pass away, you know, I I had to remind myself that as I looked back, of course I was critiquing myself, but as I looked back, you know, I know I was as perfect as I could be in every moment, but I was sick. I was sick, just as sick as my boy was in the moment. And probably worse because it wasn't just I was fighting, you know, trying to save someone from a demon, a devil, as he called it, but I had work to do. You know, I had a center to run, I was a director of a center, and I had a lot of work to do, a full-time caseload, and you know, I would see evidence of I wasn't keeping up. And that was just a difficult thing for me, especially, considering I love my work and I love my clients, and I just didn't want anyone to get just a slice of me. But I gave everything I could give, and we're all as perfect as we could be in that moment. And the most loving thing that we can do is to forgive ourselves. I remember when Christopher, at the very end of his life, when he turned around, I kicked him out, and he turned around and said, Mom, I'm so proud of you. You should have done this a long time ago. And I I felt like I was forgiven by a priest for all my sins. It was an incredible moment for both of us. We have to begin to understand and accept that we're losing ourselves. And, you know, if we can stay better focused on that, we might be able to, sure, I mean, you know, we're never going to give up on them, but we might be able to give a little more in terms of just trying to sit in that space as uncomfortable as it is. That space is so static, it feels so dark, but we're in it. And because we can't care for ourselves properly, because we're not focusing on that, it's hard to sit in that space, and that's our space. That's our space, knowing that someone around us is very ill, and we can get that call at any point in time. And so we need to care for ourselves in that space. Like little things that we could do to help ourselves, just making sure that we get some nutrition and that we maybe do something bilateral, go for a walk, try to watch a movie. I know I found reading to be difficult, but some of my clients say that they just couldn't stop reading. But I had a hard time concentrating on words. It was easier to watch a movie. But I know that many of you are living in this space right now, and I would love for you to just ask yourself, what am I carrying right now that I may need help putting down? And just notice what comes up. This grief is real that you're living with, and no one has died, okay, and that's that's just the incredible miracle of the whole thing, but you're still in grief, and you're in that space, and there's no getting out of it, but you're not alone. I can assure you, you're not alone. This is hope after loss, and I'm so glad you're here.