To Stuff or Not to Stuff

 My therapist told me one day in a conversation- You must be a stuffer. 

 Do you know what a stuffer is? Or are you scratching your head? Emotionally. Do you let the tears flow and the feelings feel or do you stuff them back down?  Shoving, punching, pushing them back, covering them up with a pasted-on smile, or numbing them away with novels, shopping, movies, or food? My way of getting through hard things as always been to block stuff out or to just straight up convince myself it wouldn't or would happen. Believe me, you would probably smile at what I've all convinced my brain/heart about. These days I often just try to numb it away with things I listed above. 

 My hand is raised. I am a stuffer. Largely by my own make-up and partly because I have 2 sensitive little women I am raising who suffer when I openly suffer. It's a balance I haven't learned, how to grieve in front of your children healthily. I think it can be okay and in some cases only polite to hold back on your emotions but it should not be normal. Our society has taught us that it is normal but it is not. It should not be this way. 

 Today is December 27, 2 days past Christmas. I've been stuffing down sad, lonely, anxious feelings and grief for about 5 days now. I know I can only do that for so long before the volcano of hot, never stopping tears erupt. I can actually feel it building up sometimes, and I'll tell someone- I feel a big cry moving in. It's building up and then it just dumps. Sometimes it just hits like an wave, boom crash and I'm down. This weekend wasn't like that though. I physically felt it building up. 

 Back to my girls, both but especially the oldest one is so keen to sadness. She picks up on the slightest sniffle from me and needs to know if I'm okay. Her heart is often broken too from missing her Grammy so I feel like I can't always let my deep grief show because I don't want it dragging her down. Trust me, she definitely sees me sad, I just didn't want to be sad over Christmas, if I could help it. 

 I have trouble stopping my mind when I'm in this space. it goes and goes and keeps me awake at night, add on to that a toddler who has been waking 4+ times at night the last week. This isn't a pity party, its facts. It's grief. It's anxiety. 

 So today I haven't done much. I've done a lot of resting, took a nap, my girls have had more screen time than normal, I've cried whenever I have felt the tears welling up. And I've grieved the fact that my girls won't get Christmas gifts from Grammy this year. I've grieved that I can't facetime her to show her their gifts we bought them. I've grieved her not being here, earth side for another Christmas. I just miss her and if you know, you know. 

 If the tears are there friends, just let them fall. Tears, like the rain in thunder clouds, need to be let out. I hope reading this made you feel less alone and if not then I hope it gave you a new learned empathy for grieving, hurting hearts.