Ways of Grieving

Sorry, very cheesy title.  Paddy and I saw the psychologist at the Royal a couple of weeks ago.  She asked what we would like to talk about and my main areas of turmoil were the circumstances of the day leading up to Paige's death and also our plans for the future.  She seemed to feel that I was jumping too much ahead of myself and said I should be using this time to concentrate on grieving for Paige.  She explained it with a picture of a bridge and said that I want to get to the future but I can't get there without passing over the bridge (signifying the grieving process).  A book I read recently (can't find it now to quote it properly!) had the picture of a person chasing the setting sun and said that it is better to plunge yourself into darkness and catch the sun when it is rising.  I actually find this really hard.  In recent years I suffered a bout of depression and had cognitive behaviour therapy and I learnt a lot about making myself feel better and solving problems, etc so it is really hard to choose to not make yourself feel better and to allow yourself to be consumed by sadness.  The fact of the matter is though, I think with grief you don't actually have any choice!  You can try to run from it but it always catches you one way or another.  After this appointment I decided to try and take her advice and allow myself to express my feelings about the care I received on the day Paige was born both to my husband, my GP and the bereavement midwife at our local hospital (not the Royal).  At first I felt like I was completely losing control and that I could not possibly ever come to terms with the fact that had my treatment been different, Paige might have lived.  Actually though having ranted about it as much as I want I haven't thought about it as much this week so I guess maybe the theory is right.  I noticed on one of the bereavement sites a mum saying she went to a befrienders group and felt awful the next day and someone replied saying that it was like that for them but then they felt much better. 

I happened to mention to my GP how the psychologist had said about me jumping ahead of myself and he looked kind of confused and said that everyone has their own way of grieving which I thought was very sensible.  So on the one hand, I think it's important to be in the moment about my grief for Paige, I think that thinking forward is very much part of the recovery and I'm not going to feel guilty about that.