A list of things I've learned, on the two year anniversary of my brother’s death
A non-exhaustive list, in no particular order
My brother died two years ago today on September 8th, 2021. But we didn’t find out until over 24 hours later — on September 9th — because contact info for next of kin were hard to find for some reason.
I’ve learned so much in the past 730 days about life, loss, and grief.
This list is a story for me. Of all the ways I’ve let life, and loss, teach me the past two years. What I’ve gotten out of it all.
I know it wont resonate for everyone, maybe only a little bit for others, maybe a whole lot. I don’t know.
But it all feels very true for me at this point in time on this planet.
I feel like I need to put a disclaimer before this list: I am in no way a mental health professional of any sort. This is just me sharing a list of what I find to be true for myself at this moment in time, two years after a traumatic and unexpected loss. And some of it is phrased as advice. Take what resonates, leave the rest.
Also, if the title of this piece and everything up to this point wasn’t enough, here is your trigger warning.
The past few years have been the most difficult years of my life. Losing a loved one so unexpectedly and so suddenly is by far, the hardest thing I have ever gone through in my 30 years on this planet.
Grief and loss can be a important teacher, if you allow them to be or want them to be.
Grief and loss get easier with time…but only if you actually face it and process it. You have to feel it to move through it. If you don’t actually face it and instead you: run away from your feelings, push them aside, shove them down deep, numb them or distract yourself — it doesn’t mean that those things aren’t still there.
It’s not going to get better until you put effort into facing it, sitting with it, and processing it.
Grief really does come in waves. And they get easier to manage with time. But those stages of grief by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross? They do not go in order, not even in the slightest. They are all jumbled, can happen all at once, out of order, none at once, etc.
I feel as though the first half of my life, before my brother died, I was in a deep sleep. I often feel like I was snapped awake with that phone call on September 9th, 2021. Like the first 28 years of my life were some half-awake dream.
Therapy is so so valuable. A good therapist is absolutely worth it. When dealing with difficult stuff, you need someone to help walk with you through it all. I absolutely love my therapist and continue to see her. I would not be where I am without her help and I am eternally grateful for the guidance and support.
Get yourself a good therapist that you connect with. And my tip for this, that is not new info and I’m definitely regurgitating what I was told while looking for one:
Finding a therapist is like dating — you have to connect with several before you find one that is right for you. Have patience. Like everything else, it takes time.
Every single thing I have watched over the past two years has overlapped so closely with my life and loss. I couldn’t tell you where I originally read that this is a common feeling/finding after traumatic loss, but I have found it to be undeniably true. And maybe that is just because fentanyl overdoses have reached such an astronomical level in our country that it has managed to seep into everything, but I think it’s much more than that. Everything is a mirror.
This scene from Stranger Things
My brother’s name was Nicholas — Nick for short. Every character’s name in movies, shows, books is Nick. I swear this is true. Ok, not EVERY, obviously. But that name is apparently, popular. (I just looked it up — it was #6 most popular in 1995 for baby boys so I guess it just kind of makes sense that it’s everywhere.)
Everything, Everywhere, All At Once is a really important movie and I think everyone should watch it.
Euphoria, for obvious reasons
I could go on and on and on but that’s all I care to list here.
Grief and loss have made me a kinder, softer, more compassionate person.
I’ve had a lot of weirdly intimate, beautiful moments with strangers over the past 730 days. During which my grief comes bursting out of me in vulnerable moments of tears and sharing.
I’ve cried at Costco in front of cashiers, who kindly let me use an expired membership card with my brother’s photo on the back. I explained my brother had just died and I didn’t have mine on me and it was also expired. I’m pretty sure I did get an eye-roll from someone during this interaction but they were busy and I was holding up the line with my grief during a new year’s eve rush.
I’ve cried at the dry-cleaners getting a beloved stuffed Spongebob of my brother’s cleaned, the owner admiring the quality of the almost 30-year old kid’s toy while sharing that her nephew also passed from a fentanyl overdose.
I’ve shared tears with a dental assistant during a consultation for braces, in which I explained to her that I was in their office due to TMJ caused by loss and stress. At which she told me her father passed recently. We cried for a brief moment together, sat in our losses while overlooking a busy construction site.
There are many more of these moments, but these are the few that stick out most in my mind. And I can’t help but find all of them incredibly beautiful—strangers sitting in our shared humanity.
I think if we could just all be a bit more vulnerable and soft with each other, the world would be a better place.
Death is complicated and expensive. Or rather, death is simple, but the aftermath can be complicated and expensive. The mess we can leave behind when we’re not expecting to go can be a lot for loved ones to clean up.
That being said…
Everyone needs a will, I don’t care how healthy or young you are.
(I feel I need to tell on myself and say: I need to take my own advice here — I have been meaning to do this but have not yet gotten to it because it is big and scary.)
Another note on that: include information for accounts, your phone, all the things that are pertinent to your life in a place that is easy for your loved ones to access.
But edit your digital footprint. Do you know what weird things you have hanging out on old hard drives from middle school, high school, college, and on and on?
Figuring out what to do with a loved ones belongings after they have passed is a long and difficult process.
There is a whole other list of things I have thought a lot about the past two years regarding the aftermath of death, but that feel too dark to list here.
I have found they are better communicated through poetry. Maybe I will share that in this space in the future.
My brother’s obituary was the most difficult thing I have ever had to write. I think it’s safe to say that obituaries are the most difficult things for anyone to have to write, ever.
Just because you face death and loss, doesn’t mean it gets any less scary. I thought I would feel some sort of ultimate acceptance with death and leaving this world, but that hasn’t happened yet.
I feel many different ways about it at different times. Sometimes I feel acceptance and ready for whenever the time comes. Other times I feel more afraid of it than I have ever been in the past. All can be true.
For me, loss brought up every single thing in my life that I was not facing, that I was running away from and didn’t want to deal with feeling. It all became glaringly obvious just how much I had chosen to shove deep down inside, and how it was all creating so many other problems in my life. Mainly health problems.
It is true what they say — if you don’t deal with your mental ailments, they will manifest as physical ailments at some point in time.
It took a lot of time to untangle it all and I am still at it, and probably always will be. Such is life.
Self-sabotage can be hard to recognize. It’s easier to stay in a victim mindset than own up to the ways you are getting in your own way.
I get angry at the younger versions of myself frequently because the version of me that knows better has been left to clean up the mess. I have to remind myself all the time and rehash it in therapy:
She was doing the best she could with what she knew at the time. She got us here alive, in the best way she knew how.
Take a breath, drop your shoulders, and unclench your jaw…
…and learn how to deal with stress and every other painful thing in your life. You do not want to deal with TMJ. You do not want to deal with your face collapsing on you. You do not want to have to deal with fixing a shifting face for 2+ years of your life. It is not a fun or easy process to fix it, trust me on this one.
It will become apparent very quickly who has dealt with loss before, and who has not. Interactions are just different. Behavior is just different. I have felt much more seen by those who have lost than those who haven’t. That’s just how it is.
The tricky part is to try to hold compassion for those who have not yet and those that end up saying something stupid like, “they’re in a better place now” or any other crap like that. There are many moments I’ve had where it has been hard to respond in a way that is kind.
They will know this pain one day, though.
It honestly breaks my heart that we all have to go through loss and grief. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.
I have little tolerance for drama or dramatic people or situations. For fake people. For negative people. For manipulative people.
Miss me with that shit. Life’s too damn short.
Psilocybin and micro-dosing have saved my life.
Walks and movement are so so important. I’ve found this to be true:
moving the body helps you move the emotion
Ice water on wrists has saved me from several panic attacks the past two years, or at least helped calm me a bit. My therapist gave me this trick a few months into therapy.
Try it the next time you’re upset. Go to the nearest sink, turn the water on the coldest you can, stick your wrists and hands under the stream. Then just breath and focus on the temperature of the water.
It is difficult and complicated to feel angry at someone who is dead.
For me, anger has always been the most difficult emotion for me to let myself feel. Currently working through that at the moment, and it is a fun lil’ rollercoaster, let me tell ya. 🎢👌🏻
A list of books that changed my life and made me think differently the past two years:
101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think (or really, any of Brianna Weist’s books)
Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
The Creative Act: A Way of Being
The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully
Alcohol is poison.
I think it disrupts and gets in the way of so many important things.
I could go on and on but this is a long-ish list and why exhaust something so many people already know.
Working for other people is bullshit. Capitalism is toxic and is not the way any of us are supposed to live. See the last sentence of #32.
Disassociation and being in survival mode is really hard to come out of. Last summer I found I was disconnected from my body — I was numb to everything. I’m not sure I had actually been living in my body for most of my life, to be really honest.
I had been stuck in a state of fawn, or freeze — for what feels like decades. It was really hard to crawl out of and I find myself still slipping back in from time to time. It takes a lot of effort to keep my brain in my body, so to speak.
But, actually living in a body is really difficult too. Coming back into the body is a bizarre sensation. Actually being able to interpret what different sensations in the body are is difficult, and in my experience, can be terrifying. More on this in a future post.
It’s hard to stay in a state of nervous system regulation. But it has gotten easier, over time.
I have found that a lot of trauma stored itself in my hips. I am forever grateful for stumbling upon The Workout Witch’s TikTok last summer. Unlocking my hips was a massive part of coming back into my body and it was a really sudden jolt of a thing for me. A revelation.
All to say: Our bodies are wildly intelligent. We need to listen to them more.
Listening to my body and intuition when making decisions has made my life so much better. I think we are conditioned to ignore the signals from our bodies and it’s not doing us any favors. I think we would all be in a better place if everyone stopped and listened to what their body is saying more often.
Listening to yourself and trusting yourself is so important. Letting go of others expectations of you is necessary to live a life that feels like yours. This is something I still have a hard time with and am still working on.
Relationships take work. Hard work. Forgiveness. Trust. Humility. Patience. Honesty.
I am forever grateful for my relationship with Ladd.
We have gone through so much life together. So many really difficult moments. And we’ve stood by each other’s side throughout all of it. I think the easy thing is to cut and run. The hard work is to stay and fight and work on things. But it is worth it.
Some relationships and friendships are not forever, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some people you outgrow. Some were just for a period of your life. And some people you just have to let go of because the relationship was never for you in the first place.
Embracing my femininity has been a big revelation for me. I pushed so hard against it for the first 27 years of my life, only to find that the imbalance within myself actually caused a lot of health issues.
I am grateful for all the woman I have learned from and have helped me heal the past couple of years.
Mary. Natalie. Jess. Chani. Marlee. Anna. Mandy. Lacy. Lindsay. Krista. Nicole. Liz. Vic. Molly. Karlye. I could go on and on.
Women are healers. I wish we had the opposite power dynamic in the world, or just a balanced one.
Social media is a form of brainwashing. And we are all sick because of its influence in this world. And it sucks that we pretty much have to partake in it as business owners, creatives, etc. in order to make it and survive. I hope that paradigm can shift in the coming years.
Creativity and art are valid forms of therapy. We should all be making more art and embracing our creativity in all shapes and forms.
Being vulnerable is scary, but it does get easier with practice.
Writing and journaling have brought so much clarity into my life.
Put pen to paper every morning and I promise you will see positive changes happen in your life at a much faster pace. I’m paraphrasing from The Artist’s Way here — it’s impossible to keep writing something down day after day and not do something about it.
Writing every day has helped me become more eloquent and thoughtful in the way I communicate with others.
Alone time is important. For self-reflection and thinking of all sorts.
But not too much. Too much isolation can be really detrimental.
Take it from me: I felt like an alien that had just landed on a strange planet when first returning to the land of the living after locking myself at home for over a year.
The pandemic kind of did this to all of us, I know I’m not alone here.
There is something really healing about working with your hands. Doing repetitive movement. Something about bilateral stimulation, I’m sure.
Everyone is going through something difficult, almost all the time. End stage capitalism, a planet that is literally up in flames, and increasing divisions among people is enough on its own — let alone all the other life stuff a person can go through. Be kind.
Actually sitting in your own bullshit and digging into past trauma is really fucking hard, but absolutely necessary if you want to live a better life.
Healing often feels like two steps forward, and three steps back. It can feel like crawling on your hands and knees in the mud up a steep hill.
It is slow. It takes time. It isn’t easy.
Everything takes so much longer than we think it will. Patience is really important to practice and get better at. I have to remind myself of this everyday. The instant gratification of convenience in our society has ruined everyone’s capacity for patience, to our own detriment.
Sadness and joy and all other feelings can exist simultaneously.
We are all connected in ways that are so much deeper than we have physical proof of. More about this one in the future.
Everything, and I mean everything, in our lives is connected. Everything is a mirror. We can face it or run away from it.
There is so much we can learn about ourselves and what to do in the future by looking back at our past. I’ve come to so many funny, and “duh!” realizations the past two years by digging into the rest of my life. These realizations have helped me own up to my shit and make so many positive changes in my life.
This is everyone’s first rodeo. No one knows what the fuck they’re doing. Life is weird and hard and beautiful and I think humans have made a huge mess and overcomplicated existence on this Earth.
But there are still moments within life that give me joy, happiness, and hope.
All of it can, and does exist, at the same time. And isn’t that beautiful?
This was originally a list of 30 and I was going to do one of those “30 things I know on my 30th” type of things and then May came and went and the list doubled to 60 and I didn’t really start this thing until August 1st. Things take so much time.
So thanks for being a trooper if you’ve made it to the end of this - wow! Cool. Vulnerable. Thanks so making me feel ~so seen~.
Of course, I will never know either way and that is fine. We’re all just shouting into the void, together, aren’t we?
I’m off to take a train ride through the mountains, eat Mexican food, and celebrate my brother’s life on this early fall day.
I hope you have some restful and beautiful plans this weekend.
See ya next time,
dins
Poignant, profound, practical. The sticky notes from Nick gutted me. Thank you for reminding us of his humanness. It's easy to forget someone's aliveness when grappling with their death. This brought me right back to who he must have been.
Yes. All of the above. I’m new to navigating life after loss & I feel all of this so deeply. Thank you for putting it here & articulating it so plainly and so well 🤍✨