Deconstructing

I just saw this lovely tiktok about comparing the grief from leaving high-demand religion to a riptide. This creator is one of my favorites finds on tiktok (and I recently realized she looks familiar because she's also an admin in my fb postmo mixed-faith marriage group?? 😅), she used to be Mormon and she's spent a lot of time studying and reflecting on the psychological aspects of leaving the church. Wow, it was validating.

(DeconstructionTherapist, @deconstructiontherapy on tiktok by the way. She's really, REALLY great.)

First off, it's lonely. I was lucky enough to find exmos on Twitter, and my sister left the church years ago, but I kept it a secret from most of the people in my life. (I thought I was ready to stop hiding it from my parents so I could feel authentic, but then my mom had a stroke and... I don't see a reason to stress her brain out anymore than it is 😭)

Anyway, aside from being isolating, she points out that all the tools we had learned to cope with grief have been thrown out the window (for many of us, we turn to atheism, for me bc this was supposed to be the ONE TRUE CHURCH, so my trust in prophets is shattered) - prayer, going to church/temple, "giving" it to Jesus, reading scriptures etc. So not only isolated, but maybe lost? All this grief and no tools to cope. So like a riptide, we try and let it carry us away until it's not as strong and then we can slowly find a way out. 

Such a great analogy. 🥲 I feel like I've been swept away by grief, and most of the time I feel like I'm past the initial pull, but I still have to make my way back to the shore. It's exhausting and I have to do things slowly, because I'm not in a riptide necessarily, but I'm still in the ocean. 

Anyway, it was so lovely, I wanted to spend some time thinking about it. My views on grief (and emotions!) have definitely changed, I'm trying to let them all carry me around to an extent. (But wait, have I been resisting grief for my mom? I haven't lost her but she's had a medical emergency and life won't be the same, at least for a long time, and I can grieve that, right??) 

Something my friends recommended is trying to feel where I'm carrying my emotions in my body, just as a way to connect to myself. Right now I think it's stress, or maybe grief, and it's my neck/upper chest. Maybe like my esophagus. My jaw is tight, my calves are achey but I believe that's unrelated. Mostly what I'm feeling right now is in my throat. I used to think it was mostly anxiety... Maybe it's a lot of things. Or maybe my anxiety is flaring.

But I'm going to honor my body, my emotions, and my mind as I go through the rest of my life. Because what else do I truly have? ❤️