Long term grief

[Jayne05]

I lost my mum to cancer 21 years ago when she was 56 and I was 29. It was the worst thing ever and I dealt with it as best as I could. Recently though, the grief has become overwhelming as I think of all the things she never had or experienced. I miss her so much that it hurts and the thought of never seeing her again is like a punch to my stomach. Surely I should be over this after all this time? Yet it feels like yesterday that she went. My poor mum was my best friend and one of the kindest people you could ever know. Does this ever get easier?

In my experience the only way to get through grief and to have some sort of life the other side of it is to accept that you need to go through it. If you try to go round it, it comes back and whacks you in the face when you're not expecting it.

You did the best you could when your mum died, but you're older now and you have more resources available to draw on. If you can gently accept your grief and use those resources to deal with it then it's more likely to settle into something manageable. It might help to find a someone to help you with this. If you do Facebook you could have a look at https://www.facebook.com/groups/291412866732844 which is free to join and run by the highly respected grief therapist Julia Samuel.

Good luck, it can get better if you face up to it I promise.

Thank you for replying. I have definitely buried the grief and agree I need to work through. Thank you for the Facebook recommendation, I have requested to join the group x