Need Comfort

[luise.volta]

I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to have to try to get past that kind of trauma. Sending love...

[Pooh]

Me either.  It takes courage and strength.

[Ruth]

C I just wanted to let you know I'm thinking of you today.  I got up this morning and re read your posts and just had to send you another note.  I hope this will be such a comforting and healing place for you, as it has been for me.  I also read the notes between you and Luise and it touched me deeply.  I very much understand and identify with the feelings here expressed about a sense of not belonging and isolation.  Pain and loss change people. 

A few years ago I was in such a bad state that I honestly thought I could not go on.  I felt that I was a pressure cooker inside and ready to blow, the tumultuous emotions inside me were becoming unmanageable and I knew I was going over the edge.  I had become just a repository of guilt and remorse, blaming myself and hating myself for all that had happened with my son and for the bad choices I'd made.  I decided to attend a womens' Bible study at my church, thinking it could become a place of healing for me.   I never felt lonelier or more  isolated than I did in that group and I never went back.  They were polite, but they were obviously very uncomfortable and unwilling to reach out to another woman in pain, I think that if I had been widowed, they would have been very supportive and welcoming, but because I think they judged my situation as 'of my own doing', they had no sympathy toward me.  I believe this was also the case with some of my FOO (sisters).

Over time as I've healed, I have seemed to become more of  magnet now for others who have been through the mill as far as life is concerned, and have participated in their own pain and also growth through it.  I've learned we must be very careful casting judgments on others, because until you've lived in the skin of another person, you don't know jack, as they say!  That is the first lesson Christ taught us, to love and not to judge.  But I tell you, it can be a cruel place when you can find no where to go with your pain and loss. 

There is so much comfort for you, C, here and also understanding as you work through your grief and loss.  Every woman here has her own loss and need, and we have found the important key here to healing and recovering from loss - its by reaching out to others and focusing on being a comfort and source of help.  It just works!