"The Myth of Getting Over It."

"When will I (She) get over this?"
"How do I get over this?"

These questions I am sure people ask themselves about me all the time, "when will she get over it and move on?"

I can tell you that I don't get over it. "Getting over it is an inappropriate goal. An unreasonable hope. The loss of a child changes you. It changes your marriage. It changes the way birds sing. It changes the way the sun rises and sets. You are forever different." It changes the "core" of who you are, it changed the core of who I thought I was, and make me start looking for what I lost.

I don't want to get over it. "Don't act surprised. As awful a burden as grief is, I know intuitively that it matters, that it is profoundly important to be grieving. My grief plays a crucial part in staying connected to my children's life. To give up my grief would mean losing my children all over again. If someone had the power to take my grief away, I would fight them to keep it. My grief is awful, but it is also holy. And somewhere inside of me, I know that.

The goal is not to get over it. The goal is to get on with it."

I meet with the man who had to give advise on the topic grief, Steven Kalas, and talked in length about my journey of "Getting over it" and what he had to say applied to me in so many "events" that have happened to me in my life, from the abuse, to infertility, to burring my children;

"Profound grief is like being in a stage play wherein suddenly the stagehands push a huge grand piano into the middle of the set. The piano paralyzes the play. It dominates the stage. No matter where you move, it impedes your sight lines, your blocking, your ability to interact with the other players. You keep banging into it, surprised each time that it's still there. It takes all your concentration to work around it, this at a time when you have little ability or desire to concentrate on anything.
The piano changes everything. The entire play must be rewritten around it.
But over time the piano is pushed to stage left. Then to upper stage left. You are the playwright, and slowly, surely, you begin to find the impetus and wherewithal to stop reacting to the intrusive piano. Instead, you engage it. Instead of writing every scene around the piano, you begin to write the piano into each scene, into the story of your life.
You learn to play that piano. You're surprised to find that you want to play, that it's meaningful, even peaceful to play it. At first your songs are filled with pain, bitterness, even despair. But later you find your songs contain beauty, peace, a greater capacity for love and compassion. You and grief -- together -- begin to compose hope. Who'da thought?
Your grief becomes an intimate treasure, though the spaces between the grief lengthen. You no longer need to play the piano every day, or even every month. But later, when you're 84, staring out your kitchen window on a random Tuesday morning, you welcome the sigh, the tears, the wistful pain that moves through your heart and reminds you that your child's life mattered.
You wipe the dust off the piano and sit down to play."

For me I am to the point in my life, where I don't need to or even think of playing the piano when it comes to the abuse, but the infertility (the fact that I can never have another child or even try) and then the loss of my children, now I still play this piano, its not center stage anymore, but I still play it.
So will I "get over it" any of it? I can tell you "HELL NO!" But I am learning to move forward, embracing this "new normal" and learning to live a new dream.