Moving past the WAW to a stronger me Pt. 2

[Davide]

Maika,

Thanks man! I always appreciate your voice of reason.

I believe his point is that you have to lean in into your pain. Yes, that will involve thinking about your W, but your focus shouldn't be on dwelling on her. Instead you need to seek out the areas you believe you fell short in the MR and work on that. So, leaning into the pain is about processing and understanding it.

I don't think feeling happy is living in denial. I think living in denial is saying that the pain doesn't exist and that there is no grief. We can't live completely happy or sad. We live in a balance of those emotions. When the happy and joyful moments outbalance the negative emotions, then you're reaching equilibrium. You won't be able to completely let go of the negative emotions and that's okay.

You don't have to summon tears. Let them come. If you lean into your pain, you will have the tears and the emotional fatigue that comes with it. The key is not to live in it, but process it and know that it's there. It is to recognize it when it comes and knowing that you can manage it. It will slowly ebb away, trust me.

Trust me when I say that I am well aware of the aspects of the MR where I fell short. I get them and have been working on them as much as I can. Identifying my own failings has always come easy to me!

When you talk about it ebbing away, honestly that is what I felt was already starting to happen with the time and distance that my trip provided. The good moments were beginning to outweight the negative. Of course the negative was still there, but it wasnt the oppressive weight that it had been in the past. That is why I felt like I was making progress.