Feelings

Yes, the song has lost something over the years, though the lyrics remain poignant.

Corey wrote about anger and resentment and it's place in our lives as parents of traumatized, challenged or otherwise impaired children. Lastmom wrote about the need to keep hope alive while raising our children. Both positions are valid because, as the song reiterates, it all boils down to feelings.

Most women openly admit that their feelings vary from day to day, even hour by hour. Men suffer from the same emotionality, they just express it in different ways. No one expresses feelings better than our children, especially children that come out of trauma with attachment issues. The important thing to remember, as my therapist has pointed out many times in the last two years, is that though feelings have a reason and a source, they change. Thank God.

So I bring to the table, a brief account of grief stages which includes but is not limited to bouts of optimism and anger. There is room for both, it seems. And lest we be fools, let us not forget that with loss, grief never seems to subside, it only lessens. For many, the process of grief repeats itself many times over. For many more, they get stuck somewhere in the process and the overwhelming pain forces them to resort to vices they would not have otherwise chosen if they were in a rational state. Wiki reports a study in which 10-15% of persons in grief never recover. [1] In those instances, the sufferer may have already had a preexisting condition of depression or at the very least, a genetic predisposition.

Bottom line? All of us are in a different place emotionally with our lives. All of us are justified in our emotions. All of us will report different feelings tomorrow. For today, let us be kind and accept where our comrades are emotionally in the fight against RAD. It is the kindest thing we can offer one another: the freedom to feel and not be judged for those feelings.

For those of you that are in a rough patch or want more information, I invite you to visit this website that has links to other emotional challenges you might be suffering as well. Grief from webmd site.

And because Corey mentioned it in the blog post I linked above, here is the link to the Layers of Loss post I wrote in March.

I'll conclude with Shakespeare's thoughts as they pertain to this matter. A most profound individual even if some scholars argue that there was no way the volume of his work can be attributed to just one man. [2]

1. Listen to many, speak to a few
2. Give thy thoughts no tongue
3. This above all, to thine own self be true
4. The mind is troubled like a fountain stirred; and I myself see not the bottom of it
5. A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.
6. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
7. Love and reason keep little company together
8. Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind
9. Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
10. Go girl, seek happy nights to happy days.
11. The course of true love never did run smooth.
12. There's place and means for every man alive.
13. In time we hate that which we often fear
14. Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.
15. There is a history in all men's lives
16. A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
17. Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
18. To be wise and love exceeds man's might.
19. Do not plunge thyself too far in anger.
20. Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.
To read more quotes by Shakespeare, Click here




[1]wiki search on grief. Please scroll to the subsection titled: "Risks" for citation source.

[2]Did Shakespeare really write all those plays? All hail my alma mater: We are ... Penn State!