H E A L I N G
Share
It has been a minute since I last posted a blog. I have been so busy living life again I haven’t really had time to sit and put into words what phase of this journey we are in until now! I guess that is a good thing right?
When you lose someone there is a secondary grief that comes along with it. The grief you feel of the life you lost. Not the physical one but the one you thought you were going to have. The grief you feel of losing the person you are or your spouse is. Change is hard. Losing yourself during change is scary. It sounds weird to say but anyone who has gone through this journey will understand, trying to find yourself again in this big world after having your entire life and everything you’ve known crumble in front of you with the public watching you is overwhelming. At least it felt that way.
When people ask about Cooper I often find myself responding with “I am sure you heard about it in the news” and usually people say they haven’t and I don’t know if they are just being nice or if they really haven’t heard of our story because it was on every news station from here to London. But I have always said that as a defense mechanism because I am fearful of how they may respond to how our child died. Not that it should matter because as parents we would never purposely put our child in harms way & we know that & God knows that but for some reason I have always felt like I had to prove that to everyone else too. Which is where my downfall began.
If you knew me prior to losing Cooper then you watched the demise of me as a person last year. The struggle I was having in my head was way louder than anyone could see on the outside but my anger showed through the most. I was a very angry person for over a year. I guess that is part of the stages of grief, the anger. I wasn’t angry that we had lost our child so to say but I was angry that I felt like everyone expected me to just move on. That people treated me the same as they did prior even though that is exactly what I wanted and asked for. I was angry that I couldn’t mentally handle the same plate as I did before. I had lost these parts of myself & it felt like I had no control over my life & if you know anything about me, I have to be driving the bus or we’re in for a scary ride.
I spent a lot of time in my anger phase. I hated life. I hated who I was becoming, who my husband was becoming. I hated people talking about Cooper but I so desperately wanted to shout his name from the top of the mountain. I wanted to be able to relate to the people around me and their struggles with motherhood but I couldn’t because their children has surpassed the phases that Cooper & I did. Their children continued to grow while I was still left without mine. I loved hearing about their kids & the struggles & the highs & the lows but it hurt too. And, it fueled my anger at the time. I spent hours picking apart my husband who was just trying to find his way through this journey as well. Everything he did was wrong. No matter how hard he tried it was wrong but it wasn’t him I was upset with, I felt like I was losing control & it scared me.
My husband has always been a safe space for me. He has wiped my tears and picked me up off the ground at 4 am when I can’t get my brain to shut off. He has always fixed things when they break. He has always been the reasoning voice in my head when something goes wrong. He has held my hand through some of the roughest waters we have faced but losing Cooper really rocked our foundation. We both changed so much after that but I was stuck in trying to resume the life we had previously lived, I hadn’t yet accepted that we would never be those people again. We would never live that life again. There is a lot of big feelings when it comes to death in general and the love you share with your children exacerbates those feelings. I was never angry at my husband for what happened but I was really effing angry at the world for what I was going through.
I lost myself in the anger phase of this journey. I lost who I was. I faked a really good smile most of the time but everyone could see I was a bubbling volcano. It became harder and harder to try and put on a tough face. I started to spiral after Christmas in 2021 and I stopped caring about myself. I gave up on trying to get ready, trying to do things. I stopped showing up for anyone in my life. I know I have talked about this before but, it is an important part of this story. I truly did not recognize who I was when I looked in the mirror & I H A T E D the girl I was becoming. I was angry, snappy, mean, depressed. I didn’t care about anyone or anything, or so I felt that way inside. I loved being at home in my bed with my snacks, my iPad, my phone on do not disturb & my favorite TV shows. Life was silent there. I felt safe from the world there.
I still don’t know why I had such a delayed reaction to losing Cooper or why I spiraled when I did. I still don’t know why I put so much pressure on myself to live this perfect life after losing our son but I did. I made myself so fearful of someone else seeing me be vulnerable that I just wanted to hide all the time.
Have you ever read that viral post on Facebook that talks about letting people say and do what they want? If they don’t like you who cares kind of post. If you haven’t it is called “Let Them” & you should read it. The one I read was really more focused around relationships with significant others but one line that always stuck out to me was “if they want to misunderstand or judge you, let them”. I have always worried about what everyone else around me is thinking about me. My decisions. My weight. My looks. My cars. My house. My family. And when Cooper died I then worried about peoples judgement on how our child died. I read every comment made on social media about our parenting and the things we deserved & for some reason those were what stuck in my head. I feared the negative things people would say so much that I was on the defense everyday. I was ready to fight with anyone who had anything negative to say, to anyone who looked at me wrong, talked to me in a weird way. I literally created things in my head and pushed people away because I believed that everyone was against me. I know I sound crazy but if you have ever been through this, you will understand what I mean. If not, be thankful. The truth was I was just trying to regain control of my life & who I was. I struggled to clean my house, pick up groceries, do the laundry. All things that were previously part of my daily routine. I spent months basically self sabotaging because I was scared to let anyone see the yucky side of grief & depression. I could feel myself failing and I was scared to let anyone know I was hurting or let anyone know that they could hurt me. I have always stood on my own two feet & held my own, when the truth is I get hurt very easily. I just don’t show when I am hurt which is a downfall of mine. I turned this into anger and that anger almost ruined me.
My sister in law sent me a video last summer of my nephew learning to wake board & I sobbed alone. I cried because I was so damn proud of him but I was absolutely heart broken that I missed it. Granted they went on a family vacation & left me here to suffer all alone for 2 weeks without them. Rude I know & were still recovering from it ;) But it absolutely hit me like a ton of bricks that I had allowed the fear of judgement in this journey & the anger I felt about what I was missing to overshadow what should be important now. It was that moment that I made a promise to myself to be present & really do the work to get better. Not only because my family didn’t deserve what I was doing to them, but I didn’t deserve the self sabotage I was putting myself through.
I can’t really give you a specific outline of what I have had to do to get to where I am. I didn’t go back to counseling or change my medications. I can tell you, I prayed & I continue to pray. A lot. I had a lot of hard conversations with myself and the people around me. I apologized for hurting people along the way. I took accountability for my actions and my role in hurting other people. The most healing comes when I blast worship music in my car or my house & I talk to God. I had a lot of seriously emotional conversations with God about him working in my life & my marriage (I promise a blog is coming on this soon but I have to be ready to share that stuff). I can remember begging God to fix me & getting so frustrated to a point that I was angry that God wasn’t fixing it, little did I know he was. It just wasn’t in my time or the way I expected it to get fixed. As my relationship with God got stronger, my happiness & will to live started to come back. I truly believe that God needed me to fall apart so he could put me back together again in certain ways. To teach me that it is okay to be vulnerable, it is okay to not be the people pleaser. It is okay to have feelings and emotions and if people don’t like that it isn’t my problem to fix. I believe that he had a bigger plan and part of that plan was my growth as a person in my own head.
I live by the motto “let them” now. If you have been around me lately you know I say it all the time. Don’t like me? too bad. They think I am too loud? Let them. They want to take about my parenting? Let them. They want to gossip about the way I look? Let them. They want to talk about my marriage? Let them. I realized that no matter how Cooper died or how much I do or don’t talk about him, how perfect I make my marriage out be, what size my jeans are, how much or how little make up I wear, how much money we make or how nice our cars or how nice our house is, there will always be someone that has something to say…and let them. Let them talk. Let them gossip. Let them judge. They aren’t in control of our happiness unless we allow them to be.
The difference I feel this year vs last year is crazy. I look back at some of the notes I wrote last year and I don’t even recognize the girl I was. Overall, I am just here to say let yourself heal. It is okay to be happy again and if anyone has anything to say about it, them talk babes. Let them have their mean girl moment. When you are able to find peace in yourself then you no longer feel then need or want to talk or judge others. When you heal from your trauma you no longer feel the need to respond to people who try to bring you down or trigger you. If I am being totally honest, at 32 years old I shouldn’t be worrying about this stuff but I think we all do to a point. Just don’t allow it to change you. Don’t hide from the fear, don’t dull your sparkle to please someone else.
The smile you see me wearing now is a real smile. The laugh you hear now is a genuine laugh. The z snapping attitude, the over the top, loud, talkative girl you meet who asks too many questions and shares too many details, that is the best version of me. Take it or leave it. I don’t really care. All I know is I no longer feel like I am drowning in my anger or fear. I no longer feel like I am hiding out of fear of judgement. I am living because I know now that the only person that can change how I feel is me. It is not my responsibility to fix someone else’s feelings nor is it theirs to fix mine. I can’t control what others think, nor do I want to. I am just here to have a good time for as long as I can. So if you see me out and about and I am dancing down the aisle’s of stores when a good song comes on or I am in my bathing suit at the pool or the river or the boat or you come over and watch me force my husband dance in the kitchen with me before bed (just kidding we are still working on this because he hates dancing) or get the pleasure of listening to me horribly sing made up songs all day long because it makes me happy & laugh or get to be present when I share my stories of Cooper, just know you are getting the best healed version of me & I am proud of who I am. I fought really hard to find her.
Keep your heads up, pray when you need to, rest when you need to, but most of all learn to love yourself again and eff what anyone else has to say. You deserve it.
-For The Love of Coop
When you lose someone there is a secondary grief that comes along with it. The grief you feel of the life you lost. Not the physical one but the one you thought you were going to have. The grief you feel of losing the person you are or your spouse is. Change is hard. Losing yourself during change is scary. It sounds weird to say but anyone who has gone through this journey will understand, trying to find yourself again in this big world after having your entire life and everything you’ve known crumble in front of you with the public watching you is overwhelming. At least it felt that way.
When people ask about Cooper I often find myself responding with “I am sure you heard about it in the news” and usually people say they haven’t and I don’t know if they are just being nice or if they really haven’t heard of our story because it was on every news station from here to London. But I have always said that as a defense mechanism because I am fearful of how they may respond to how our child died. Not that it should matter because as parents we would never purposely put our child in harms way & we know that & God knows that but for some reason I have always felt like I had to prove that to everyone else too. Which is where my downfall began.
If you knew me prior to losing Cooper then you watched the demise of me as a person last year. The struggle I was having in my head was way louder than anyone could see on the outside but my anger showed through the most. I was a very angry person for over a year. I guess that is part of the stages of grief, the anger. I wasn’t angry that we had lost our child so to say but I was angry that I felt like everyone expected me to just move on. That people treated me the same as they did prior even though that is exactly what I wanted and asked for. I was angry that I couldn’t mentally handle the same plate as I did before. I had lost these parts of myself & it felt like I had no control over my life & if you know anything about me, I have to be driving the bus or we’re in for a scary ride.
I spent a lot of time in my anger phase. I hated life. I hated who I was becoming, who my husband was becoming. I hated people talking about Cooper but I so desperately wanted to shout his name from the top of the mountain. I wanted to be able to relate to the people around me and their struggles with motherhood but I couldn’t because their children has surpassed the phases that Cooper & I did. Their children continued to grow while I was still left without mine. I loved hearing about their kids & the struggles & the highs & the lows but it hurt too. And, it fueled my anger at the time. I spent hours picking apart my husband who was just trying to find his way through this journey as well. Everything he did was wrong. No matter how hard he tried it was wrong but it wasn’t him I was upset with, I felt like I was losing control & it scared me.
My husband has always been a safe space for me. He has wiped my tears and picked me up off the ground at 4 am when I can’t get my brain to shut off. He has always fixed things when they break. He has always been the reasoning voice in my head when something goes wrong. He has held my hand through some of the roughest waters we have faced but losing Cooper really rocked our foundation. We both changed so much after that but I was stuck in trying to resume the life we had previously lived, I hadn’t yet accepted that we would never be those people again. We would never live that life again. There is a lot of big feelings when it comes to death in general and the love you share with your children exacerbates those feelings. I was never angry at my husband for what happened but I was really effing angry at the world for what I was going through.
I lost myself in the anger phase of this journey. I lost who I was. I faked a really good smile most of the time but everyone could see I was a bubbling volcano. It became harder and harder to try and put on a tough face. I started to spiral after Christmas in 2021 and I stopped caring about myself. I gave up on trying to get ready, trying to do things. I stopped showing up for anyone in my life. I know I have talked about this before but, it is an important part of this story. I truly did not recognize who I was when I looked in the mirror & I H A T E D the girl I was becoming. I was angry, snappy, mean, depressed. I didn’t care about anyone or anything, or so I felt that way inside. I loved being at home in my bed with my snacks, my iPad, my phone on do not disturb & my favorite TV shows. Life was silent there. I felt safe from the world there.
I still don’t know why I had such a delayed reaction to losing Cooper or why I spiraled when I did. I still don’t know why I put so much pressure on myself to live this perfect life after losing our son but I did. I made myself so fearful of someone else seeing me be vulnerable that I just wanted to hide all the time.
Have you ever read that viral post on Facebook that talks about letting people say and do what they want? If they don’t like you who cares kind of post. If you haven’t it is called “Let Them” & you should read it. The one I read was really more focused around relationships with significant others but one line that always stuck out to me was “if they want to misunderstand or judge you, let them”. I have always worried about what everyone else around me is thinking about me. My decisions. My weight. My looks. My cars. My house. My family. And when Cooper died I then worried about peoples judgement on how our child died. I read every comment made on social media about our parenting and the things we deserved & for some reason those were what stuck in my head. I feared the negative things people would say so much that I was on the defense everyday. I was ready to fight with anyone who had anything negative to say, to anyone who looked at me wrong, talked to me in a weird way. I literally created things in my head and pushed people away because I believed that everyone was against me. I know I sound crazy but if you have ever been through this, you will understand what I mean. If not, be thankful. The truth was I was just trying to regain control of my life & who I was. I struggled to clean my house, pick up groceries, do the laundry. All things that were previously part of my daily routine. I spent months basically self sabotaging because I was scared to let anyone see the yucky side of grief & depression. I could feel myself failing and I was scared to let anyone know I was hurting or let anyone know that they could hurt me. I have always stood on my own two feet & held my own, when the truth is I get hurt very easily. I just don’t show when I am hurt which is a downfall of mine. I turned this into anger and that anger almost ruined me.
My sister in law sent me a video last summer of my nephew learning to wake board & I sobbed alone. I cried because I was so damn proud of him but I was absolutely heart broken that I missed it. Granted they went on a family vacation & left me here to suffer all alone for 2 weeks without them. Rude I know & were still recovering from it ;) But it absolutely hit me like a ton of bricks that I had allowed the fear of judgement in this journey & the anger I felt about what I was missing to overshadow what should be important now. It was that moment that I made a promise to myself to be present & really do the work to get better. Not only because my family didn’t deserve what I was doing to them, but I didn’t deserve the self sabotage I was putting myself through.
I can’t really give you a specific outline of what I have had to do to get to where I am. I didn’t go back to counseling or change my medications. I can tell you, I prayed & I continue to pray. A lot. I had a lot of hard conversations with myself and the people around me. I apologized for hurting people along the way. I took accountability for my actions and my role in hurting other people. The most healing comes when I blast worship music in my car or my house & I talk to God. I had a lot of seriously emotional conversations with God about him working in my life & my marriage (I promise a blog is coming on this soon but I have to be ready to share that stuff). I can remember begging God to fix me & getting so frustrated to a point that I was angry that God wasn’t fixing it, little did I know he was. It just wasn’t in my time or the way I expected it to get fixed. As my relationship with God got stronger, my happiness & will to live started to come back. I truly believe that God needed me to fall apart so he could put me back together again in certain ways. To teach me that it is okay to be vulnerable, it is okay to not be the people pleaser. It is okay to have feelings and emotions and if people don’t like that it isn’t my problem to fix. I believe that he had a bigger plan and part of that plan was my growth as a person in my own head.
I live by the motto “let them” now. If you have been around me lately you know I say it all the time. Don’t like me? too bad. They think I am too loud? Let them. They want to take about my parenting? Let them. They want to gossip about the way I look? Let them. They want to talk about my marriage? Let them. I realized that no matter how Cooper died or how much I do or don’t talk about him, how perfect I make my marriage out be, what size my jeans are, how much or how little make up I wear, how much money we make or how nice our cars or how nice our house is, there will always be someone that has something to say…and let them. Let them talk. Let them gossip. Let them judge. They aren’t in control of our happiness unless we allow them to be.
The difference I feel this year vs last year is crazy. I look back at some of the notes I wrote last year and I don’t even recognize the girl I was. Overall, I am just here to say let yourself heal. It is okay to be happy again and if anyone has anything to say about it, them talk babes. Let them have their mean girl moment. When you are able to find peace in yourself then you no longer feel then need or want to talk or judge others. When you heal from your trauma you no longer feel the need to respond to people who try to bring you down or trigger you. If I am being totally honest, at 32 years old I shouldn’t be worrying about this stuff but I think we all do to a point. Just don’t allow it to change you. Don’t hide from the fear, don’t dull your sparkle to please someone else.
The smile you see me wearing now is a real smile. The laugh you hear now is a genuine laugh. The z snapping attitude, the over the top, loud, talkative girl you meet who asks too many questions and shares too many details, that is the best version of me. Take it or leave it. I don’t really care. All I know is I no longer feel like I am drowning in my anger or fear. I no longer feel like I am hiding out of fear of judgement. I am living because I know now that the only person that can change how I feel is me. It is not my responsibility to fix someone else’s feelings nor is it theirs to fix mine. I can’t control what others think, nor do I want to. I am just here to have a good time for as long as I can. So if you see me out and about and I am dancing down the aisle’s of stores when a good song comes on or I am in my bathing suit at the pool or the river or the boat or you come over and watch me force my husband dance in the kitchen with me before bed (just kidding we are still working on this because he hates dancing) or get the pleasure of listening to me horribly sing made up songs all day long because it makes me happy & laugh or get to be present when I share my stories of Cooper, just know you are getting the best healed version of me & I am proud of who I am. I fought really hard to find her.
Keep your heads up, pray when you need to, rest when you need to, but most of all learn to love yourself again and eff what anyone else has to say. You deserve it.
-For The Love of Coop