The Hidden Grief of Reinvention and Why Finding Yourself Again Can Feel Like Loss
Written by Julie Farnsworth, Trauma-Informed Grief Coach
Julie Farnsworth has spent her life helping others to live better lives. After 30 years working as a social worker, she founded "One Free Soul Grief Journey, LLC" in honor of her sister, Erica, who lost her life to cancer at the age of 40.
I was recently accepted into a doctoral-level program but feel like I am having a bit of an existential crisis over this. Why would something as exciting and important as this be layered with different emotions like self-doubt, sadness, and regret? It feels confusing to me. After thinking about it over the last couple of days, I realize that grief and loss can hit you at strange times and do not need to be attached to the loss of a person. They can be attached to the loss of a life that you thought you would have, or a loss of the person you once were or have been struggling to find, or maybe a loss of identity if yours was strongly connected to a person that you were in a past relationship with.
I have concluded that we don’t need to pretend that these feelings aren’t there, rather, we need to acknowledge where they are coming from and why they are getting in the way of our current happiness. I am going to go as far as to say that we need to treat these feelings of loss and grief the same way that we would if we were grieving the loss of a loved one. I believe that this essential loss of ourselves is indeed a valid loss.
So, one of the questions becomes, “How do we lose ourselves?” If we all take a moment to think back to childhood and try to remember what made us happy or what we enjoyed doing, we can start to see that we all had something that we were drawn to. Maybe it was a sport or something like writing, reading, drawing, or dancing. Whatever the case might be, if we try hard enough, we can usually see ourselves in a different light than the people we are today. Somewhere during the time between childhood and adulthood, most of us have lost that spark or energy to try new things and do things simply because they make us happy. We are too busy working, caring for children or parents or both, and doing all the things required of us.
Back to the question that I posed about how we lose ourselves. If I brainstorm some answers to this, I can uncover some of the mixed emotions that tie into my acceptance into the doctorate program. I can think back to a time when I felt free to choose my path in life. I was young and in college, discovering who I was and what I enjoyed doing. I had things that I knew I wanted to accomplish during these years. One of them was to study abroad in Spain. I had visited Spain when I was in high school with the Spanish club, and I was determined to go back. So, I set my sights on accomplishing this. Back in the early 1990s, there was no such thing as Googling and having instant access to things. I remember sending away for brochures and information on study abroad programs through various schools since my college did not offer a study abroad program to Spain. After receiving many exciting pieces of actual mail, on paper, in envelopes to open, in the mailbox, I chose my destination for my study abroad experience based on some pictures of the beach and town that the college was in. I did not do much other research, I just made my decision, and I went (with the help of my parents financially). Despite my lack of research and not knowing that I was staying in a place where there was a lot of political unrest, I had an amazing experience that I will never forget. I graduated after that semester with a minor in Spanish and a major in Psychology. This is around the time that I started to lose myself.
After graduating from college, like many of us, I thought that my life was supposed to go a certain way. I needed to find the traditional 9-to-5 job, get married, and settle down. I had learned somewhere along the way that this is what my life should look like. Getting married at the young age of 23 essentially put an end to me asking myself what I wanted to do. I was married now, with my first “real” job, and I needed to be a good wife, a good employee, a good daughter, a good granddaughter, a good sister, the list goes on and on. I see now that I was at the beginning stages of living a life to please everyone else. A lot of this was at my expense. One of the goals that I had at that time was to get my Master’s degree. Sadly, I did not follow through on that because my goals had gotten lost in the goals of others. I thought that being a good wife and a good person meant keeping the peace, even if it meant sacrificing things that I wanted to do. This mindset lends itself well to helping others and being a good partner, however, it is harmful, as you can easily fall into the trap of being a people pleaser. This is exactly what I did. The majority of my adult life was spent trying to make everyone around me happy. By the time my 25-year marriage was ending and my daughters were leaving for college, I was having a full-blown identity crisis. Luckily, I had made up my mind when I was in my 40s to, once and for all, go back to school for my Master’s degree. This led me to have other job opportunities, but sadly, I had really missed my opportunity to do more with my career by not going when I was in my 20s.
To come full circle, the takeaway and deeper lesson is this, all loss is loss. Loss does not always have to be about someone dying. Loss can be related to your own life that you thought you would have, or losing yourself because you were so busy trying to please others. It can be the loss of a relationship and the identity that you had while in the relationship. All these losses cause grief and complicated, complex emotions.
It has only recently occurred to me that most of my life, I held myself back from doing things for fear of causing any kind of disruption to anyone. I had to go back to my earlier years and rediscover who I am as a person, not who everyone else thinks I should be. It turns out that the girl who sent away for brochures and decided to go to Spain based on pictures of a beach, not knowing a single person, is still in there. That girl is brave and bold. That girl is me. So, here is the answer to the mixed emotions stemming from starting classes in my new doctorate program. It is sadness and regret for the years that I didn’t honor my feelings and do things for myself. It is nervousness and self-doubt that I’m too old to start this process. However, it is also pride and self-love that I am not letting my past dictate who I am anymore. It is a newfound freedom to not worry about pleasing anyone but myself. I don’t need anyone else’s approval. I don’t need anyone else to be proud of me. In the end, maybe I had to lose myself to find myself again and embrace everything that I still want. I am not going to let anything stop me now. I have a lot of missed years to catch up on. My future title of doctor is waiting for me to claim it.
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Julie Farnsworth, Trauma-Informed Grief Coach
Julie Farnsworth is a Certified Trauma-Informed Grief Coach, Neuro-Change and Mind-Body Medicine Practitioner, Social Worker, and Mental Health Therapist. Since the age of 12, as a volunteer with the Red Cross, Julie has been called to help as many people as she can. She is the founder of "One Free Soul Grief Journey," which provides 1:1 healing journeys for anyone who needs help navigating the intricacies of grief and loss. Julie brings her years of experience walking alongside fellow grievers, as well as her own personal experience with grief and loss, to ignite her passion to help others to go from surviving to thriving.
