The End of Counselling
What can I tell you after two years of counselling? Well, in the first place, I had never had counselling and I was afraid to start talking to a stranger about anything. I was fearful about saying something that might open a can of worms and get me thinking about my childhood or reflecting on trauma that had happened in my life, that frankly, I didn’t want to be thinking about.
When Ben died, I found myself heading rapidly into the darkest places in my mind, in the darkest hours and it felt lonely and desperate. Yet, in the daylight hours, I could see how my life with our unit, our newly changed, still family of five, looked. We were all clinging on to each other metaphorically for dear life. This explosion had gone off in our family and detonated our present and future, rocked our foundations and left the landscape obliterated in front of us.
The strange thing about experiencing cancer, from the point of view of a family watching their son and brother actually going through it, is that from the moment of diagnosis, you are thrust into this shocking reality that this is actually happening. You never think it’s going to happen to you and we were no different.
From the day I became a mum, I felt like a protective lioness, guarding her family with her life. When you’re chasing your children round the garden as they toddle, running along, nappy falling off, in the brilliant summer sunshine, laughing until their sides hurt, you don’t ever think about any possibility of life becoming irrevocably changed at some point in the future. Your children are happy, healthy and you are there, as their parent, loving and guiding them, supporting them and making life as magical as you can.
Then a few years on, you notice the eating still isn’t improving and the exhaustion is becoming a little more prevalent. Then there’s the frustration issues and the school that thinks it must be time to call in a psychiatrist. Oh, to have known then all I know now.
It wasn’t cancer at the time of the psychiatrist conversation; it was Lyme disease. A tick borne, often mis-diagnosed, nightmare of a disease that eats into the nervous and neurological system, if left to thrive in the body. One day, I might pluck up the courage to write to said school and explain that not every child has a mental issue because they don’t like school. They might actually be trying to fight off a dreadfully nasty bacteria that is affecting their behaviour and sensitivity. Once Ben was diagnosed with Lyme disease, his sensitivities diminished.
I didn’t want to have counselling, but I needed to have counselling.
In the first few weeks, I visited the hospice that had offered to support our family, after Ben had died. I didn’t want to go there, where the Butterfly Room was, where Ben had laid peacefully, but I did. For the first few weeks, that anguish was gently supported by a wonderful counsellor, who, when the pandemic hit, continued to speak to me every week as I walked the dogs. Walking and talking is wonderful therapy. When you are moving, you are moving your energy, changing your outlook, clearing your mind and soothing your heart. When you move, you are giving yourself permission to release all that doesn’t serve you. For one hour a week, I was able to be myself, speak about anything I needed to.
For the two years I have had counselling, there have been times where I have spent that hour sobbing into the phone, as my counsellor listened without judgement. Sometimes, those conversations have led to the depths of childhood and opened a small can of worms, but I have always felt in control and at the end of each session, have felt like a tiny weight has shifted from my shoulders.
With regards to Ben and the gaping void of his absence in our family, I have cried, talked, wailed, sobbed, howled, got frustrated and finally dragged myself to this reluctant acceptance of the fact that this is the way it is now. I have finally realised and understood that whether it is something that is written, or just a random run of incredibly bad luck, there are some things in this life I will never truly understand; and will always have questions that I will never fully have answered.
We talked about the way that people speak with the bereaved and how it feels, because when you haven’t experienced the actual moment of watching a child die in front of you, how could you truly know and understand that loss? It’s no-one’s fault, but it is something that you could never and would never be expected to understand unless you had lived it. We discussed things that have been said to me over the last couple of years about Ben being ‘in a better place’ or ‘at least you still have your girls,’ and how much that has devastated my heart.
When we live in fear, we project those fears onto others; and it can be devastating for the person on the receiving end. When it comes to cancer and bereavement, the art is to listen, without judgement or comments like, ‘it’s like when I lost my parent / pet / job’ … it’s not.
We talked about belief and what it means and how we are all different, experiencing grief very uniquely to someone else. Even in losing a child, all of us who are bereaved parents, know that another family who has lost a child, perhaps to the same cancer as our own, will not have had the same experience of loss. Yet, when we know a parent who is bereaved, there are no words necessary, for the invisible bond that connects us is greater than words. We have the bond of a broken heart.
The other day, I had a review of my counselling and in that moment, I felt like the time had come to continue my path without that support. I told my counsellor that I could hear the words ‘take the leap’ in my head. In the two years, I have been supported in this way, I have found my courage and felt heard, really listened to and seen. It’s not often I can say that.
As I approach the end of counselling now, I put aside my fear that I had over speaking up and realise that the importance of being heard as a bereaved parent is so crucial to being able to have the strength to keep going every day.
It might not be for everyone, but actually, if you find the right person to speak with, you will find the path to reluctant acceptance a little more gentle on your feet in the new shoes of grief you never thought you’d be wearing.
Counselling has helped me to see the joy in staying in the present moment for my children and has prevented me from losing myself completely to the overwhelming and relentless ache of loss.
My children need me. They all do and it’s such a joy and privilege to be a mum. Even in grief, I continue to trust that my son is around us all when he needs to be; and so I hold him tight in my heart, as I hold my girls tight to my heart in our lives together. And we move alongside our grief, never defined by cancer, but living and loving our lives in the present as much as we can.
Some useful links of charities who can help …
Sending love to all those who need it xxx
Reluctant Acceptance