Leaning in....

Have you ever heard the phrases, “Lean into the wind”, or Lean into the turn?” I hadn’t realized that “lean into….” had become a rather popular phrase until I recently did a Google search on it. The reason I did was because in our grief group we were told to “lean into our grief.” What exactly did they mean by that?

Here are some definitions and quotes I came across in my search-

Definition of "lean into...":

-be assertive, go aggressively and fearlessly, be proactive etc.

-go with it, don’t fight it or avoid it.

What would you want- If it were you?

At the time of Benji's transplant and soon after, we began talking about when we'd be able to let the donor's family know how extremely grateful we were for their gift and what a perfect match the lungs had been for Benji.

(In case you don't know or recall, the surgeon told us after transplant that the lungs were the perfect size for Benji's chest cavity- sometimes they're a little small and sometimes they have to be cut back because they're too large.  Benji's fit perfectly!  Additionally, one of Benji's bronchi was larger than the other and the new lungs were identical- they were also a perfect match! The surgeon said, "It was meant to be.")

We couldn't wait to tell the donors family about it, of course however, only if they wanted to hear from us.  It was our understanding that we'd have to wait at least 6 months before we attempt to communicate with the family; that was fine by me because I wanted to be able to wait till after I could give them examples of the things Benji could do with his new lungs that he couldn't do before. 

Secondary Losses

In my last blog I spoke about the void that Benji’s death has left, beyond losing him personally. The loss of other things in our lives connected with our loved ones are not things we often think of needing to grieve, but they are. We have learned these are called secondary losses. If someone loses a spouse it may mean they also lost a companion, a cook, a lover , a provider, a maintenance man, etc. These are all secondary losses. We have been encouraged to identify and name each of those losses and I have found it helpful to do so.

One of those for me is the loss of my “other life”.  Since 2004 Benji and I together really did live two separate lives.  At times the two lives intersected, but they were basically independent from each other.  When we were at the hospital (nearly always at Riley-up until the last 5 months of his life), we had a whole new community.  Aside from family, the majority of our time there we didn’t have connections with or see many people from home.  In fact, there were a couple times we were down there for several weeks (for routine tune-ups) that Allen and the boys weren’t even able to come down.  Benji wouldn’t see his school friends while there and we would often miss church for weeks on end without much contact with church people.  Of course, we did have visitors- during certain times more than other times- but the majority of the time we were alone in our other life.