When people ask what I do I say “I have a community website that helps women refind their light, joy and identity after grief or trauma.”
It took me a long time to come up with that. I used launch into a 12 minute description of Muchness and the history of the word and what I do and blah blah blah blah. I needed to make it quicker. easier to understand and share over cocktails at a Bar Mitzvah. I’m pretty happy with that description but I have one issue. It’s that word “After.”
Because it’s not really “after”, is it?
I know when I started my Original Muchness Challenge, I wasn’t anywhere near “after”- I was smack dab in the middle of my grief and trauma. And frankly, as far as I can tell, grief and trauma don’t exactly have an “after.”
I’ve tried changing it to “I have a community website that helps women refind their light, joy and identity despite grief or trauma.” but that didn’t exactly work either. That just sounds dismissive of the grief or trauma and like I try to candy coat sadness with sparkles and and bullshit. But that’s not what I do either…. at least not most of the time. (For the record, sparkles and bullshit do do a brilliant job of temporarily distracting a person from some amount of sadness, but that’s not really what I want to put on my calling card, ya know?)
If you’ve been reading a while, you know I do this because I want to help women begin to feel like themselves again. To remember what it is that shines inside them, and to celebrate that- their joys, blessings, quirkiness and creativity. I do it because I love bringing smiles to women who want to smile but may have temporarily forgotten how. I do it because grief and trauma can knock you down so hard that sometimes you feel like you may never be able to get up. I’ve been there. I know. But you can get back up, and you will. When you are ready. When the pain of staying in pain becomes more painful than the fear and discomfort of refinding joy.
Listen, there is no “after.” You don’t wake up one morning and say “Well, now that I put that behind me, let’s move on.”
No.
You wake up every morning and say “Today is a new day and today I’ll find joy.” and then that’s what you do. And some days it works and some days it doesn’t.
Maybe I’ll change it to “I have a community website that helps women who’ve experienced grief or trauma refind their light, joy and identity… when they’re ready.”
Are you ready?
Yes… There is no After. I think I am discovering this too. I wrote a book which I started 2 weeks after Finley died. I called it After Finley. I later wrote an update to the end of that book, and at that point I realised there was no After. At no point was I going to be done with this grieving. But just because I was forever going to miss my son, didn’t mean that I was forever going to be grey. I wish other people would realise that this is never going to be over and done with. I will never forget him.
Hi Mel, Thanks for your comment. There really is no after but I guess when the reality sets in and life ultimately starts moving again at the pace of the rest of the world, that’s when our “after” starts. It’s like using the word “heal”… that is never completed…