Compassion Magazine Winter 2022

Winter 2022 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 27 The important thing to remember is that it doesn't matter. There are no rules. In the bigger picture, the only thing that matters, surely, is that we find a coping strategy that gets each of us through this time and out the other side. Most of us have done it before and will do it again. But what advice would I give those for whom this is the first time? I remember my first Christmas. The pain was tangible and I found that I could barely breathe. I hadn't yet found The Compassionate Friends and looking back on it, (what I can remember, for it is a bit of a blur really) I was quite literally lost. I remember thinking that I should try. That people would expect things from me. So I did. I went to a shopping centre - and broke down sobbing in a department store. I might not remember much about that first Christmas, but I certainly remember the assistant trying to help me in that shop and how painful the whole experience was for me and must have been for her too. Why did I put myself through it? To comply. That can be the only explanation for what I was doing. Placing myself in a busy shopping centre buying gifts for people when all I wanted to do was scream. Why? Who needed a gift that badly, for pity's sake? But, I wanted to be what everyone expected me to be and I was hurting myself in the process. I still can't explain why I thought I could achieve such a mammoth task. I guess it was because I didn't give myself the freedom to ‘do what's right for me'. I didn't give myself permission to ‘do it differently’ and I certainly wasn't ‘being gentle on myself’ because no-one had told me I could or should. I resolved then that things needed to be put into perspective. That I needed to find a way to balance the needs of others against my needs and to be proportionate. That's one piece of advice. The other is the one I live by the most. Don't be quick to take offence. Remember, the non-bereaved speak a different language to us and a lot of what they say can get lost in translation. They also don't have the same knowledge as we do, so they don't really know what to do for the best. So, for what it's worth, my advice is to take deep breaths and shrug your shoulders. I'll give you an example. We used to get hundreds of Christmas cards before. Then, the year that James died we got six; one of those said, ‘chin up’ and another said, ‘We hope that you are feeling better now’. As if we were recovering from a cold!