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Navigating losses and gains

Tino is lying down beside me as I start my tapping/counselling session and I feel a pang of pain and loss. Oscar didn’t get to do this with me. I feel it in my chest and throat. I didn’t know what we’d talk about this session, but now I know where we can go…


navigating-losses-oscar

Oscar – our beautiful rescue who left too young…


I’ve had a fantastic session on the guilt and remorse of what I couldn’t give Oscar in his last few years. I’ve felt so much better about it since. But now this is a slightly different area that’s just popped up – it’s more on the loss.

Oscar and losses

The tears run down my cheeks and I whisper the words after Debra so that I can get through the rounds of tapping. The sadness, the wishing and what I can’t get back. ‘I wish I could have been who I am now back then for Oscar‘ – yes that’s so true. Realisation. I wasn’t though. The Kali then was doing her best to survive this rudderless journey. No plan and no surety of a destination. My main goal to stay sane and make it through the day.

Yes he did spend hours on his mat alone, me in bed. And yes I could have had him in my bed with me, but my decisions weren’t sound and I didn’t know we only had him for another year. He was meant to stick around with us until I was 40, us watching him getting grey and old and slow. How could I know, I was only doing my best.

I feel the high emotions start to resolve and let go and now I can follow after Debra. She brings it around so that I get a clearer understanding while freeing myself of the trauma. We check in and I’m lighter inside…but now there’s more about other losses. Not just of Oscar and my time with him, his last days, but the losses I’ve experienced because of this fistula.

My blue jeans…


Debra has a way with words and they ring true. I think of the jeans I always wore. My uniform was jeans. Now I can’t wear them because they hurt my bum. I love them. Always felt comfortable and attractive in them (when I wasn’t being hard on myself), and she explains how this is actually part of my identity. And part of any chronic condition is re-figuring out our identity. Not that it defines us, but life has to change and adapt and then you have to figure out this new identity.

It may all sound silly, and I felt silly even talking to Debra about it, but it’s how it feels. Little things go here and there. Compromises. Small deaths…big deaths. And we have to keep re-finding ourselves through it all.

Exploring losses and gains

After diving even deeper into the healing journey and my beliefs around deserving and ability to heal, I felt a lot calmer and ready to let go of a whole bunch of tied up emotion. My homework now is to write a list of losses through this fistula journey. Then gains. Then I need to look at some of the losses that have been recuperated, or changed for something even better suited to me now. And also look at some of the ‘losses’ and figure out ways to bring them back into my life in some way or form. Debra says I’ll be pleasantly surprised 🙂

So this is where I’m off to now. To journey this journey and find wholeness no matter what it is I feel like I’ve lost and found…

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