How Do You Return to Normal After a Huge Loss
Is it Ever Possible to Return to Normal?
What is normal when life has delivered a significant blow – divorce, death, pandemic, or job loss? Is normal a place we return to? Do we even know where that is?
I can return to home, school, or a job — but I don’t know what direction to turn to begin to go back to normal.
Is normal a place or a condition? Perhaps it is a point in time like yesterday — or ‘when I was young.’
And I keep wondering if my feelings are normal. And is a return to normal something that is good, or at least better than wherever I am now?
Have you ever asked yourself if you want yesterday’s usual way of doing things?
Do we want it back, or might there be something better waiting for us?
These and other questions have challenged human beings since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden. They had to find what was customary in their new circumstances.
Given that they are prototypes of ‘the first,’ I suppose they established normal in their world.
I have heard it said that the only normal thing is change.
I am waiting for the day I can wake up with everything in my world upside down and respond with “Well, this is normal!” – and mean it. And smile.
Why is Change so Challenging?
We look for things that don’t shake up the status quo—but for whom? And when?
It is customary to rain in April, but it is a big change when it snows in June. Unless you live on the other side of the globe, where winter is in June.
We need to know the context of something before setting our expectations.
For this reason, I maintain there is no way to return to normal. There are no two people (or trees or kittens) alike, every piece of creation lives in a particular and unique context – a context that changes constantly.
For example, I have one sister, and we grew up in the same family, at the same address, and yet we didn’t live in the same family.
She was an only child for four years, whereas I began life by sharing my parents (and my room) with her.
Her normal was never mine – and that caused a lot of squabbles. Sibling rivalry is similar to rivalry in schools, churches, and society in general.
We all struggle to make what is familiar to ourselves happen in the lives of others so we can maintain a sense of continuity. We desperately want ‘normal’ in our lives, even though we can’t define it.
And Then Comes Change, Stage Left.
Life, by definition, brings change.
I used to have a plaque in my office that said, “The Absence of Change is Death.”
So how do we handle it when we experience a severe illness, loss of fortune, or the death of a loved one or a dream?
And if we lose all of these at the same time? Heavens!
Psychologists and pharmacists tackle the angst that results from such unresolved grief. Their goal is to restore us to a status quo, or at least what we consider a return to normal.
But there is no universal definition for the state of being we call normal. There are benchmarks for what most people feel or do in a situation, but I, for one, am not looking to be like most people.
I only want to feel better.
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit
the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
― Maya Angelou
When Maya Angelou penned these words, it was out of a life full of challenges, detours, and brick walls. She had left a ‘normal’ childhood, to enter a world without speech as a result of trauma.
Later Angelou moved on from the experiences of her younger years and became a force for change in the world through her poetry.
She is one of my favorite poets, shaping and bending words and then tossing them like arrows into a complacent world. Sometimes what is ‘not normal’ gives birth to great things.
Therein lies the secret of getting back to normal after catastrophic events like wars, pandemics, or trauma.
We don’t. We move on.
Like a chrysalis for a caterpillar, these events wrap themselves around us. But instead of protection, they smother the lifeblood from our veins.
Some people don’t make it. But because you are reading this right now, I know you are not one of them.
The question for us is also the same as it is for a butterfly.
I mean, imagine spending all that time in stillness and darkness and then struggling to emerge into the light of chaos with all creation before you.
Birthing into a whole new world comes with some terrifying propositions.
The butterfly must fly with new, untested wings against winds and rain and people chasing her with nets. And she must find something sweet in her new world or die of starvation.
Do you wonder if the butterfly ever yearns for “the good old days” when she was crawling up the stem of a leaf to nibble from its abundance?
When we emerge from a catastrophic life event, we wonder if life will ever return to ‘normal’ again.
It won’t. It’s better.
Each day when I get up, I take a few minutes in awe that nothing is ‘normal’.
Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow isn’t here. And the only thing I can count on is change.
I allow a wave of sadness to wash over my heart as I remember “the way life was” and prepare for the next wave — a tsunami of excitement over “what will be” that creates a celebration mindset every morning.
Minus a cake and candles! But why not? I’ll have to consider that.
CONCLUSION
Our yearning to return to normal is understandable and has its roots at the beginning of human existence.
Yet, the only thing that is consistent and has been around as long as humanity – is change.
When we can embrace change like a butterfly out of the chrysalis, we, too, will be able to lift our wings and fly.
We will find sweetness in places we didn’t know existed, and we will impact the world by creating tiny little currents of beauty and joy.
[PHOTO CREDITS from UNSPLASH: Normal sign by Kajetan Sumila; Change by Ross-Findon; butterfly on flowers by Calvin Mano; Cocoon Bankim-Desai; Caterpillar-Erik Karits; butterfly-wings by Sean-Stratton]
ANOTHER ARTICLE FROM THE REFLECTIVE PEN YOU MAY ENJOY
