In the past two weeks, I spent dozens of hours switching between old episodes of Housewives of Potomac and podcasts which analyze each episode. I would rather immerse myself in the carefully constructed drama of wealthy narcissists than examine whatever it is I feel whenever I remember the new layers of grief I felt this week. I am in a feeling that takes my breath away and the familiarity worries me because I know where it leads. I do not like this pathway. How was I just in a reality where this was not present? I had the giggles on Thanksgiving for the first time since I can remember and now I am here? It feels like it will always be this way, grief showing up like a nosy neighbor, a confrontation by all the weight of losing you.

On Tuesday, a colleague brought a case involving a young widow client to our consultation group. As she processed, I could feel all Parts of me show up at once. The Widow. The Therapist. The Griever. The Colleague. The Trauma Survivor. The One who wants to feel anything but all of this. As The Widow began discussing what this client might be feeling based on my own experience, The Therapist saw looks on my colleagues faces, looks of people who got a peak into the enormous complexity of my grief. The Colleague realized parts of this last year people do not know, the parts The Griever has not written. The Widow spent a lot of time this year wondering if you tried to die, if you completed suicide. The Widow, The Griever, and the Therapist saw a look on one colleague’s face that made me question if my peers realized the hole The Griever keeps trying to crawl out of. The client is in month two of their new hell. In my January of this year. Without knowing them, The Widower knows where this client is and it is very dark there. It is unfeeling and numb. It is one hour at a time. It is surviving.

While I can make space for the parts of the client story that were so different, for the unique ways different bodies process traumatic loss, The Young Widow knows a version of a story most people, including my colleagues, will hopefully never know. This complexity is alone. The Therapist, the Trauma Survivor, and the Widow know clinical intervention for this client is only to make space until the client’s body shows signs it needs more support. Their body will know because the body always knows. It will panic, become depressed, anxious, and show signs of distress. Until then, the therapist should create safe attachment, make space, and validate. There is no therapy in the first year of traumatic loss. There is only containment and, as needed, education on why the body is reacting the way it does with interventions to help support the reaction. The Colleague and Therapist felt deeply aware of how triggered I must have looked to my peers. I cannot do anything about what they saw. What they saw was raw and honest. This is who I am now, the amalgamation of all these fucked up Parts. They are wounded and they have knowledge. The One who wants to feel anything but all of this cannot process it all. It is too much. I am kaleidoscopic.

When I close my eyes, I see trying to heal from this grief as attempting to reconstruct a wishing flower. I can feel the texture of the dandelion seed, that soft, delicate prickle. The breeze is Time taking each seed away from me. I will never have all the seeds back. If grief has a timeline, I feel like I am in the few seconds after opening my eyes having made the wish. I did not wish for this. The panic of the task at hand and how long it will take overwhelms me. It is a nightmare. It took me a year to get here and every seed I manage to capture is another painful piece. There is still so much work to do. I am surviving.

After that consultation group where all my Parts came, I had seven client sessions. By the end of Tuesday, I was exhausted, inhuman. As I ate dinner on the couch, I let my mind wander and began to sink into the reality the consultation group even happened. I am a person with all these parts. I opened my phone and another clip from When Harry Met Sally came up, the infamous diner scene. We watched When Harry Met Sally on our New Years Eves together. You were shocked when I told you I had not seen it. My memory tells me you loved the movie because of your mother, because it was her favorite. I feel apprehensive about my remembering around this detail and worry I am dishonoring your mother and your loved ones by disclosing it. For me, the movie is you. It is surreal to have the tragic death of a Hollywood celebrity trigger the capturing of a new seed of my loss of you. I put my phone down. I watched more adult women fight with each other. I went to bed. Tomorrow we will start again.