Apart from a bereavement- what has been the greatest sorrow of your life?

[Insywinsy2]

I know pretty morbid but I have been reflecting on life recently now that I’m getting closer to 40.
I have experienced loss with close family passing away but the greatest sorrow in my life is only having my children 50/50 since their dad left a few years ago. It still fills me with such grief knowing that, although I do agree it is best for them to spend time with us both.

My best, closest friend becoming addicted to heroin (initially smoking but then rapidly moving to injecting) and turning into an entirely different person. We were also housemates at the time and she started stealing from me and our other friends, then going out and stealing bikes/pickpocketing/even mugging, all for her next fix.

I honestly tried, we all did. She had a very poor relationship with her family so involving them wouldn't have helped. But in the end I had to get away from the situation for the sake of my own sanity and moved out. I left the door open should she ever need me but she blocked me on everything and according to my friends who were still living in the same house share she essentially cleared out everything they owned of any value and disappeared one day while they were all at work. Nobody has seen her for years now, I don't even know if she's still alive 😔

It's not small at all.

I've been through most of it... lost a parent to addiction, slowly and painfully, when young. Bankruptcy in my early twenties. Awful break ups, lifelong chronic pain, and more.

And I genuinely wholeheartedly believe if I'd never have been able to have my child, all of that would have faded into nothing compared to the grief and loss and agony of not being able to have the baby I wanted more than literally anything else ever.

I'm really sorry you've been through it. I genuinely cannot imagine. It's not small, not at all.

My son being hospitalised and diagnosed with Type one diabetes. At the time very frightening and he came close to dying, but now a year on I still feel sorrow for the difficulties he has to face.

Yes this. My two children have complex disabilities and it’s broken my heart. Knowing they’ll never be independent, always reliant on social work to take care of them (who are fucking awful to deal with), having to fight for everything, the exhaustion of being a full time carer, the loss of happy family moments such as Christmas, birthdays, Mother’s Day. I’ve also suffered bereavement (my partner) but the ongoing sorrow of my children’s lives and what they have been robbed of, is just agony. I’m just shattered as a human being, I’ll never be okay, I just can’t accept it.

Infertility (although I have the two most wonderful children as a result of IVF). Crippling health anxiety about myself and my family. The fear and dread is utterly debilitating.wasted so much of my life in worry.

Not being able to have experiences / rites of passage that happen to other people easily or automatically.

After multiple miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy I had two beautiful children.

My eldest is kind, incredibly intelligent, handsome, has lots of friends, happy, well balanced and looking forward to studying a degree in physics at hopefully (what I see as an amazing university).

My youngest is funny, incredibly beautiful and amazing. He's conquered more battles than I can count and continually proves professions wrong. Learning the extent of his disabilities was like grieving (I have lost my dad, uncle and grand father all of whom I was close to and my dad in awful circumstances) but every day is so difficult not knowing what the future holds, who will look after him when we're not here. He'll never ever be able to live alone with live in carers. It's hard to celebrate my older sons achievements and not feel (I'm not sure how to word tje emotion) over my youngest who will never know even the smallest of accomplishments. Throw on top tribunals and pre action letters with the nhs and la and sometimes it's just too much.

I underwent a period of life-altering stress and burnout a few years back.

I'd worked for a company for almost a decade, from the junior to board level. I'd run a major project which improved the lives of circa 20k people. And when I got board responsibility, I'd turned a toxic work culture and a financial cliff-edge into a thriving business which had a hugely positive culture.

Unfortunately the previous manager/business partner took offence when we started to disengage, and waged a highly personal campaign of harassment against me. In spite of proof that I was giving excessively generous exit terms, they went against me aggressively until I was signed off work. I never went back because I realised that it would be impossible for me to mentally recover whilst still working there.

My staff were really kind, and the company is thriving today without me, but I was being lined up to replace the CEO.

I put so much into turning the company around but didn't get to enjoy it.

Hmm apart from saying goodbye to our beloved dog which absolutely broke me, the discovery of my husband's (now ex) double life was frigging awful. Everything I believed in gone before my very eyes.. took me a while to absorb that! Made me stronger though.

My DH didn’t have Dementia but caring for his physical problems, and then having to agree to end-of-life care for him ripped the heart out of me.

Nothing else has even come close.☹️

Poor mental health of my child. I will never recover hearing how much she wanted to die over and over again.

Having my DC put on the at risk register after an obsessive specialist nurse lied about my care of DC2. I went to a large meeting on the understanding that we were applying for Child in Need. When they announced both my DC were At Risk I was utterly devastated. I later discovered the outcome of these meetings is fixed in advance. Our medical social worker lied to us. Child in Need was never on the cards

I now understand when people say they heard screaming and it took a second to realise it was them screaming.

What saved me was my insistence that from then on DC2 had a different specialist nurse.

The new nurse worked with me - I kept a food/medication diary - and soon established that DC2 was having frequent hospital admissions because his diabetes was hugely unstable, not because I was negligent. The report she wrote for the next meeting was glowing. I'm officially an "excellent mother" :)

So it all worked out, but the terror and horror I felt has never really left me. It was like being stabbed with ice.

My DM told me any nurse prepared to lie about a parent would do it again and she'd get caught. A few years later I was told by someone from the l nurse had been obliged to leave the profession and now worked as a pharmaceutical rep.

My DH’s affair. I’m broken. His family blamed me for it also and now I’m no contact with them.

The effect it’s had on my children and my family. It’s so completely selfish. It will haunt me forever.

Going NC with my mother. It was like grieving after a death but she hadn't died, I just had to acknowledge that she doesn't care or isn't capable of caring. Now I'm out of the other side I realise it was the best thing I could have done. I'll never know why she couldn't love me, maybe her own relationship with her mother is partly to blame. but it's her loss and I will break the cycle with my child.

I know you said not bereavement but this sorrow isn't so much about a specific bereavement but my emotional reaction to hearing about friends passing. On average I've lost at least two a year since I was late teens. Nearly all suicide, drugs or alcohol related. Unfortunately very prevalent in my friendship circle.

My sorrow is that when I'm told of yet another death I'm almost so desensitised that I barely feel anything but a fleeting sadness and I hate that. These are real friends, real people, and my initial (unspoken!) gut reaction is 'Oh, another one gone. What was it this time, drugs, alcohol or suicide?'. I think it's got worse recently - in the last 12 months, I've been to seven funerals. Obviously I am as supportive and caring to partners/family etc as I can be, always offer practical help and a shoulder to cry on etc, but it just feels like I don't have the emotional reserves any more 😔

My daughter’s physical disability. If I could swop places with her I would in a heartbeat

She is so strong and brave, we muddle through ❤️

MH issues with my child, finding out she was missing at 1am and my husband having to go and look in the harbour. Thankfully she's great right now.

Falling in love with someone else; it's changed me utterly and forever.

The cold hard realisation that as an only child with no children of my own, one day I will be in the pitiful category of 'elder orphan' with no family and will face the horrors of old age entirely on my own.

That my ex h was not the man I thought he was. Has taken advantage of me in ways too painful to verbalise and that he was never as good a dad as I thought he was.

I am shocked that came to mind rather then the fact my parents abandoned me as a tiny child.

Being bullied for 20 years by my sister. I have no idea why she hates me so much but my self esteem is in tatters because of her. It was a slow burn and I didn't realise how bad it was until I went NC last year. Of course now I have no immediate family in my life. And she's trying to alienate me from my wider family. It hurts everyday.

@Galoop Surely you can not kick someone when they’re down, when they’ve what’s hurt them deeply, on a thread about sorrow.

Sympathies @PurpleChrayn and to everyone else on the thread.

💐💐❤️❤️

Agreed

I am sorry for what everyone here has experienced, I don't pretend that mine is a patch on what others have gone though, but mine is having a premie NICU baby. Though the nurses were phenomenal it was horrible to go through and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Suddely a tiny baby tubed up, every day at the start wondering if they would call with awful news, if we would turn up to things being worse, being physically separated, going home to an empty house full of baby items, a first christmas without being pregnant or having a baby at home. Those weeks truly broke me.

What do you mean ‘educate’ her?