E19: Grieving While the World Keeps On Moving

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Years ago, when I was a hospital chaplain intern, I was called to support a family after a death in the emergency room.
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While I was still carrying the weight of that moment, another call came in.
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Another family needed support because their loved one had died in a different building.
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So I left one bereavement and started walking to the next.
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And between these two buildings, I passed a restaurant.
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It was full of people laughing, eating, talking, and having a good time.
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And I remember feeling disturbed.
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Not because they were doing anything wrong, they had no idea what had just happened.
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They had no reason to know that only a short distance away, two families had their lives completely changed by death.
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But something about that moment felt heavy to me.
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I remember thinking, this is wrong.
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How can one family be devastated while the world right next to them seems to not care?
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How can someone's life fall apart while everyone else keeps having a good time?
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That is what I'm going to talk about today.
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That strange and painful feeling that the world is moving on around you while you are carrying grief that no one else can see.
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I'm Kelly Jean-Philippe.
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I'm speaking primarily to dads who feel like life just keeps on going without them since their loss.
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But if you're someone supporting a bereaved father, stay with me too, because there's something in it for you.
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Understanding how losing your baby immediately changes you, and the way you experience time may help you respond with more patience with yourself in moments that feel hard to handle.
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One of the things I've talked about is how we first experience our babies as dads.
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It's a concept I often come back to, the womb of the imagination.
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What that means is something in us wakes up when we first find out we're going to be dads.
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The baby we're anticipating influences how we start thinking about our current and future life and self.
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Some of us fall back in fear.
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Some of us step up feeling empowered.
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But we all feel a mixture of both during the wait.
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And whether you are ready for it or it happened unexpectedly, when the loss happened, you came to the end of a reality that now left you feeling empty and incomplete.
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Speaking from my experience, I felt emotionally numb and flat after hearing the OB say she couldn't find a heartbeat for a second time.
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At that moment, everything felt so strange and familiar at the same time.
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My world felt different, even though everything still looked the same.
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This time, unlike the first time I heard those words, I had been struggling with guilt and shame on top of the pain of another miscarriage.
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And I felt empty and incomplete.
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The worst part was walking out of the ultrasound room carrying all of that and someone saying to me and my wife, Congratulations, have a good day.
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Now your experience may be different than what I'm describing.
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You may have felt like you were having an out-of-body experience when your loss happened.
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Maybe your nervous system's autopilot switched on because you just needed to do what needed to be done.
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Maybe that moment felt like you had entered the twilight zone and nothing felt normal or real.
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And maybe that's the feeling that brought you to this episode today.
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Because as you're experiencing the worst day of your life, something or someone made you realize that the world hasn't stopped because you're grieving.
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That right there is what dissociative detachment feels like.
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And it's one of the many things we experience after baby loss.
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If your experience is reflected in what I've said so far, and you know you can benefit from specialized support to help you cope better, I strongly recommend you speak with your primary doctor or licensed mental health professional.
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You can find a list of resources at datalways.com slash therapy to help get you started.
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So what is dissociative detachment?
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Let me say that if you had that experience, it doesn't mean that something is wrong with you.
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For me, it's helpful to think of it as occupying two realities at the same time.
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Reality number one, you've just lost your baby.
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You're feeling things you've never felt before and maybe can't find the words for yet.
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You're free-falling, whether you show it or not.
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And the world you envisioned because of your baby will never be.
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Reality number two, everyone around you is operating like business as usual.
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Everyone's life feels unchanged, undisturbed, and untouched by what's happened to you.
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The same people wake up at the same time to travel the same way, to go to the same place, to do the same thing, and the next day to do it all over again.
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And life keeps its forward momentum.
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A friend of mine put it this way when he told me about getting the phone call that his grandmother had died.
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His grandmother was the center of gravity in his world.
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And when he learned she passed away, gravity stopped for him.
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Because at that exact moment, the mailman dropped some envelopes through his door.
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He said he felt so angry that the mailman could be so irreverent and callous.
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And that's the tension.
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The tension I felt passing by the restaurant that night as a chaplain intern.
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And the tension I felt walking out of that ultrasound room.
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How could people be having a good time so close to people who are grieving so deeply?
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And how could that person say congratulations and have a nice day when I was having the worst day of my life again?
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These pockets of time, when you're acutely aware of how far apart what you're living through is from the reality of people around you, can generate some big and sometimes explosive emotions.
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When I supported bereaved parents at the pediatric hospital where I worked, one of the first things I'd often prepare them for was anticipating those pockets of time, especially when they were close to leaving the controlled hospital environment.
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I encouraged them to be mindful that unless they told people, the outside world had no reason to know that their child had died.
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I wasn't implying that they needed to tell everyone.
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And also, it wasn't their burden to not let people know because it might make people feel uncomfortable.
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And that's what I want you to know and understand about what we're talking about.
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As a bereaved dad, someone else's discomfort with the loss of your baby is not your burden to carry.
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It's already hard enough living in a world without your baby.
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And how other people may feel about that can't turn you into a prisoner inside of your own reality.
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What can you do in those moments?
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The most important thing you can do is use your judgment.
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It's up to you whether people find out about your loss.
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You also have a say in how they find out.
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What I'm asking you to seriously consider, though, is that there's a huge imbalance if you only prioritize someone else's temporary discomfort about a loss you will always carry with you.
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Another thing you can do is join a support community where you can connect with other dads who know what those moments feel like.
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And I'll say more on that in a moment.
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One last thing you can do, which I said a little while ago, is talking to your primary care doctor or your mental health provider if these moments start to take too much out of you.
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Especially if you're having thoughts of harming yourself or someone else, or you're feeling crippled by guilt and shame.
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Pairing with a licensed mental health professional can give you the right tools to navigate what you're going through.
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Remember, this doesn't mean you're broken.
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And if you're supporting a grieving dad, don't assume he doesn't want to know about the exciting things happening in your life.
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And also don't assume that he does want to know.
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The most important question you can ask yourself is does he need to know this right now?
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And if the answer is no, don't try to force it in to liven the moment up.
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Respect the moment and wait for a more appropriate time.
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And if he has some level of investment and what you have to share, you can say, I want to tell you something before you hear it from somebody else, but I don't need you to respond in any particular way.
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If he's open to what you have to say, then say it without over-explaining.
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And don't make him reassure you.
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It's important for you to stay away from saying things like, Oh my God, I feel so bad for telling you this, or please don't be upset with me.
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Those statements can make him feel like he has to reassure you now.
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I want you to tug this in your back pocket as I land the plane.
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As dads, there's nothing we wouldn't do for our children, no matter how hard it is.
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And it takes an incredible amount of hard work to rediscover your place in the world after losing your baby.
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Whether they're with us physically or we keep them in our heart, that shouldn't sway us from doing the hard thing for them.
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So as I come to a close, let me know what handling these difficult moments have been like for you.
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And email me at Kelly at dadalways.com.
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Also, tell me which part of today's episode reflects what you might be going through right now at the time that you're listening.
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And if you want to connect with me virtually, go to dadalways.com, click on learn more, and schedule a 30-minute check-in on my calendar.
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And I promise you there are no strings attached.
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I also host a monthly peer support group called Black Dads in Loss in collaboration with Postpartum Support International or PSI, which you can sign up for on my website or at postpartum.net.
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I'm also working on perhaps hosting an additional group for all dads.
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So I'll keep you posted on that in a future episode.
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I want you to remember as you leave this episode that part of learning to live with grief is learning how to use the right tools to get you through the moments when it feels like the world is unaware of the heavy mix of grief and isolation you're carrying.
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So, help others discover this podcast by writing a review and don't forget to follow wherever you stream it so you don't miss uh whenever uh whenever a new episode drops.
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Also, don't be shy about sharing this with someone who might need it.
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Until next time, remember that your connection to your baby is what makes you his or her dad.
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Always.