With all that has gone on with the passing of my son I find my anxiety has resurfaced in all it’s glory.  So the other day I went to see my doctor, she told me that she is concerned that I am depressed.  She gave me a prescription for some medication that could help and might make the pain less, of course in the beginning it could make my anxiety worse.  I thought about it, first I am not depressed, I am grieving the  loss of my son.  I am too optimistic even with all that has happened.  Second I don’t know that I want to numb or lessen the pain, I mean it sounds great, but I feel like I need to feel it, face it and try to find a way to deal with it.  When Robert died I buried my pain and eventually I ended up agoraphobic, I don’t want to backslide now with Robby’s death.

Well with all that in mind I did what I always do–research.  I went online, I read self help articles, personal stories, scholarly articles and Peanuts cartoons.  The last one was to lighten things up a little.  And after all that I learned that grief is not depression, grief can lead to depression.  But grief is a process that everyone does differently and there is not right or wrong way to grieve.  So after all that I feel like my original thought was right, I am a mother grieving the loss of her son.

So I did tell the doctor that I was going to try a support group for grief, she thought that was a good idea.  In all my reading online I had seen some groups, so I went back to read about them.  There was one that I kept going back to, it is only for the loss of a child and they were the only one I saw that address losing a child with special needs.  So tonight I went for the first time, I was a little anxious mostly because I wasn’t sure what to expect.  What I found there were people from varied backgrounds, but none of that mattered, what did matter is that we all share something much deeper…..we have all lost a child and are searching for a way to survive and deal with that loss.  A friend asked me what I thought and I said I was going to go again, I need to give it a chance.  Besides these people get it, they are living it.