6 Months of Grief Project: Day 14

Insomnia

This is Day 14 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

One of the many terrible side effects of deep grief is insomnia. My body and soul are completely exhausted, but when I lay down to sleep, my mind starts racing with anxiety, fear and worry. How can I survive in a world where husbands can suddenly die with no warning? What's going to happen to me? How do I re-discover my center of gravity when the entire world has turned upside down? Today's photo was taken at 4 am this morning. I've gotten a total of about 5 hours of sleep in the last three days. This does terrible things to my brain. I'm even more emotional and run down, because my body and mind are not getting the rest they so desperately need. It's hard enough living with grief, only to have every emotion emphasized with lack of sleep. I pray for rest. I pray for calm. I pray for peace.

I am very aware that this project can bring up a lot around yours or other's grief and loss, I will always follow every post with some online grief support resources that have helped me. Please feel free to let me know of online support that you have found healing in your grief, as well:

Art with Grief:

• Photographer [Sarah Treanor] Takes Moving Self-Portraits to Cope with Her Fiance's Death by Jillian Wong
• Self-Portraits: Expressing Emotion Through Art on What's Your Grief?
• The Hard Romance of Grief by Mark Liebenow
• The poetry of John O’Donohue

Resources for Widows:

• Camp Widow
• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• Grief Bibliography on Grief Healing
• Teresa “TL” Bruce's What to Say When Someone Dies
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
• Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief
• The Geography of Sorrow: Francis Weller on Navigating Our Loses, interviewed by Tim McKee in Sun Magazine
• How to Be a Friend in Deed by Bruce Feiler in the New York Times
• 12 Things to Know About the First Year of Grieving Someone You Can’t Live Without by Laurie Costanza in Elephant Magazine

Thank you, and see you tomorrow.