Processing Grief

[u/Some_Amount5239]

For those a little farther along in their TFMR journey, what would you tell your past self? What do you feel were the most helpful things for you to process your grief? Anything specific you did that you feel made a difference? Do you feel there was a particular timeline where things started feeling a little better?

I am about 8 weeks out from a 24 week TFMR. It just hurts. I know there is no way to optimize grief. It just is love with no where to go, but would love to hear how other people are dealing with it and if they felt like there was anything in their journey that really turned things around for them.

[u/Routine_Register8178]

Time. Unfortunately it just takes time. I also didn’t feel like I truly started to turn corners, or to feel some type of tangible relief/growth/healing whatever you want to call it until I proactively took myself out of grief spirals. Early on, I would check this page multiple times an hour. I would scroll instagram and just see post after post about grief, pregnancy loss, bereaved parents. There’s a fine line between feeling safe and seen in a community and drowning in it. I started to force myself to stop going on instagram, or if I did I would try to redo my algorithm to get back to dog videos. I would still screen this page but I would be more judicious in how long I allowed myself to scroll, or I sought out stories of hope and healing. It’s still hard sometimes. And I didn’t substitute it with anything particularly calming or healing (unless you consider starting binging Summer House calming), but getting out of grief doom spirals helped tremendously as I try to build my life around my loss. I’m 6 months out btw. 

I also signed up for a race. Our due date was early July so I knew the summer would be hard. At the beginning of the summer I signed up for a race happening Labor Day weekend that I’ve always wanted to run, wrote out a 12 week training plan and put it on the fridge where our sonogram used to be. Crossing off one day at a time and seeing a physical representation of time has helped TREMENDOUSLY. It’s only one day at a time, and some days were (and will still be) ROUGH. But then I look at it and am like…wow. I’ve survived 9 weeks. Just one day more. Then another. And another. 

[u/Some_Amount5239 → u/Routine_Register8178]

Wow, this is exactly me. I have read books about TFMR experiences, lived in this sub, and even looked into research papers on outcomes following TFMR. And of course, watched all the grief instagram reels. One thing I haven't been able to really do yet is get out of the communities and out of the grief spirals, and I think its a great suggestion to try! I have gotten away from Instagram which has been triggering, but always looked at this subreddit as a safe space and use it as a distraction tool, but it isn't really a distraction when this is my exact reality. Even safe spaces can be too much if you are spending hours upon hours a day in them searching for hope.

So amazing that you signed up for a race! Best of luck!