Being a Nerd is Helpful When Grieving
I get my eyebrows microbladed every year. There, now you know something weird and random about me. If you know nothing about eyebrow microblading, I will tell you that it’s an easy process when you’re getting it done, but the week afterwards kind of sucks. You basically have to become a hermit because your eyebrows get really, really dark and then start to scab and flake off.
It sounds totally gross, I know, but when it’s all over I have perfectly shaped eyebrows. It’s totally worth it.
My kids make fun of me every year and inevitably pull out this dog meme, saying that I resemble this little fella:
Which is 100% true. But why in the hell am I talking about getting my eyebrows done on my blog about grief? Well, because this year my self-imposed seclusion has been really, really productive. I’ve had a ton of time to read, and work on my websites, and plan content calendars, and edit videos, and basically keep myself insanely busy so that I can avoid crying all day.
Amidst this flurry of activity I took a test that one of my grief books recommended. The VIA Survey of Character Strengths tells what your top character strengths are (in case you couldn’t figure that out from the name, haha). It takes less than 15 minutes and is free, so that’s pretty awesome. Here’s the link if you want to try it: https://viacharacter.org/
My top quality wasn’t really a surprise: “Your top strength is Love of Learning, which means you have a passion for learning for its own sake. It is most present when you are mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge. When you learn, you take your initial curiosity and interest in a topic to ever-deepening levels.”
My drug of choice when grieving.
People’s reactions to grief vary widely depending on many factors, but one of them is personality. I am most definitely a nerd. (A nerd who gets her eyebrows microbladed.) I think that being a nerd has helped me walk this horrible road a little bit easier than most. Researching and learning everything I can about grief in order to help and teach others (which is how I approach everything – something else that’s just in my nature after being a teacher for 20 years) has taught me some invaluable things:
There is no “right” or “wrong” way to grieve.
Ups and downs are normal.
Feeling like you’re crazy is normal.
Coping skills are absolutely necessary.
Resilience can be learned.
Grief is a process that takes WORK and EFFORT.
Losing a child is a special kind of hell that takes even more work.
Because I’ve learned these things, I know what to expect along my journey. I know which coping skills are healthy, and which aren’t. (I talk about some that help me in THIS video.)
I look at my grief as a companion. I know it’s never going to go away, and that I am a different person now than before I lost Libby. But I have also learned that there is hope that I can create a life that feels worth living, and maybe even throw some joy in for good measure.
Sometimes it pays to be a nerd. So if you are a fellow griever reading this, I urge you to learn all that you can about the grieving process. I’m going to do my best to help you along the way.
