This Analogy Compares Shock & Grief To Ice

If you read anything today, let this be it. Analogy by Teal Swan

When I heard this analogy by Teal Swan I instantly got goosebumps. It’s not every day that something so powerful gives you the ol’ chicken skin.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer late last year, and it was the very same time we were planning on trying for baby number two. We moved to France from Australia three months earlier, we had a toddler, and we were going to add to our family. I was 32, and you could say I was in the prime of my life.

Beautiful right?

BOOM!

A bomb went off inside my veins, the blood rushed towards my extremities, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t escape, I could only be.

I run. Maybe not run away (well, maybe), but I move on, and fast. I move on to the next thing. When there are setbacks, obstacles, or failures, I move, and fast. I’m resilient, and it’s a strong characteristic of mine, but what comes up must come down.

I started documenting my breast cancer journey from the day I found the lump, and I currently have written over 80,000 words. I will make it into a hard copy dedicated to my daughter, Eloise. She was only 1 when I was diagnosed.

I have written in my journal, at length about feeling the need to ‘stop,’ to just ‘be.’ I needed space, I needed the time to process this news. And that shit takes time. This wasn’t a breakup, and I shouldn’t be “keeping busy” to pass the time. Regardless of what I was told by the French, to live your life as normal, I didn’t.

I stopped my French school, I wrote in my journal, I cried, I talked to my friends, I went on walks, I practised yoga.

I was lucky that I had this option. Many do not.

Enjoy the excerpt below:

“Shock and grief are interesting in that you can compare them almost to ice.

And if you think about your conscious presence, it’s almost like you're focusing the intensity of a light beam on ice.

It’s not going to immediately melt, right?

So there’s not going to be much movement.

It’s you sitting and sitting and sitting and sitting, and being with, and being with, and being with, and being with not trying to do anything to that ice.

And as you do that, it starts to drip.

It’s a very slow process. I’m going to warn you, okay? Don’t expect it to be fast.

When you have this intense, unresisted presence with shock and grief, it is a very slow process of that melting, and by melting, what I’m saying is changing.

So there will be a point, and it could be days sitting with it. It could be hours and sitting with it. It could even be for some people in some cases months of sitting with it, in order for all of a sudden, it starts to feel like there’s a readiness or a wanting.

It’s going to feel almost like “This isn’t doing anything for me anymore sitting here,” and so there will be an internal initiation towards some kind of resolve.”

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Michelle