“And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.”
Anne Lamott: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
In our experience, it is hugely important to respect – and offer kindness to – the need of someone in grief to lie in the mud with their arms wrapped around themselves – for as long as it takes. And culturally we tend not to get this.
Palace Gate Counselling Service, Exeter
Counselling Exeter since 1994
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