A Total Life Meltdown - exploring the embodiment of grief

This post shares as personal story of life falling apart in 2019. In writing I'm aware of what a visceral, embodied and physical thing grieving is, and how it's not something we easily embrace.

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“Water Water!” shouts Ruth’s Dad who is installing a new upstairs bathroom for us at home in Frome. He comes crashing down the stairs asking for a hoover to capture the water (!?). Later that evening we are cramped in our building-site-come-living-room hosting Ruth’s parents, if I remember correctly it’s her Dad’s birthday. Around this stressful family situation, my life is falling apart.

A relatively successful life-coaching practice is in tatters and I’m feeling totally disillusioned with the industry I’ve invested so much in. Ruth’s income has generally been insubstantial and so we are in a financial pickle. On top of this we are part way through a third (and probably final) round of IVF (In-vitro Fertilisation). While the in-laws are with us we receive the news that there have been zero successful fertilisations and our dreams of parenthood are over. I retreat from the chaotic, squashed, over-people livingroom-come-building-site and sit on the loo in our downstairs toilet, head in hands and palms in my eyes. I let the wracking sobs move my body trying to be as quiet as possible to not worry Ruth’s parents.

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Two weeks ago I polled you (the readers of these posts) and received a definitive 100% ‘Yes!’ to sharing the story of my Total Life Meltdown from 2019. If you’re new to these posts this one may seem slightly self-indulgent. Feel free to ignore this post or skip to the ‘lessons learned’ at the bottom.

p.s. Yay! We reached over 100 subscribers in about 4 weeks. I’m really happy that you’re here reading these posts.

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It seemed, at times like this, things just couldn’t get any worse. IVF is a grueling experience whatever the outcome, we were in the 80% of couples whose attempts fail. And it hurt. Badly…

This comical family nightmare occurred in February 2019. In April we took a trip to the French Alps to try to rescue our troubled relationship. During that time it became clear(-ish) to Ruth that our marriage was over and she wanted to separate. I wanted to at least try to rescue what we had built; and so began a painful six month journey of uncoupling, and then trying to heal, being between both polarities, and trying to do all this with love, respect and care for each other.

The stress, overwhelm, and deep uncertainty of our separation at the end of a long struggle with infertility was too much for my system and prompted something of a burnout. I coped by entering a manic episode. 

Partly self-induced (there were 2x big psilocybin trips and late night parties), but mostly an unconscious coping strategy; I went a little mad. This occurred from May to June 2019.

My mania looked like creativity and exuberance; lots of new ideas and new connections being made, lots of energy and doing and chatting and being on social media and anything else that would help me avoid the painful reality of a broken marriage and a life in free fall. 

I’m not sure if you have any experience of mania but it’s an intense and powerful experience, and one that I was completely subject to - there was zero self-awareness or capacity to observe my behaviour. I was in it and, I guess, in some way protecting myself from the ashes my life had turned into.

And it felt pretty good; it was fun. The positive buzzy energy I exuded created an illusion around me that how I was being was OK. In some ways, it was. I now feel a real sense of self-compassion for this coping strategy. Yet at the time there was some real unconscious avoidance that could have been dealt with in a better way. Things came to a head when I arrived 6 hours late for a friend’s wedding in Italy walking into the marque at 10.30pm having got lost (/distracted) on the way there.

Going to bed that night I felt terrified. I was beginning to have an initial sense of the madness that had taken hold of me these past weeks. Waking in a gorgeous AirBnB with my besties Simon and Holly and their two kids was the safest space for me to be in at this strange moment of seeing. 

I was all over the place the following day when Oshi (Simon and Holly’s 6 year old son who I’ve the privilege of being God-Father to) asked me if I wanted to have a nap with him. This is not a frequent occurrence. I believe he could sense my internal exhaustion and sadness. Did I want a nap?

Yes, I did. Holy crap did I need a nap.

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I needed rest and sweetness and cuddles in my life at that moment of vertigo. Oshi and I napped together and somehow the magic of his calm little body and breath and heart helped crack the spell the mania had had over me. This was a crucial turning point and initiated a long and slow descent from the peaks of mania to a less avoidant chapter. I am forever grateful to Oshi for the invitation to nap together (something that’s happened about twice since this moment much to my disappointment!)

From these heady peaks of mania I came down, and down, somehow, seeming to meltdown into even more of a molten goop that I thought possible. My mental health collapsed and my physiology bounced back from all that energy expenditure. I dipped really, really low. It was horrible to confront the ashes my life has become and I fell into depression (August to September 2019).

Divorce, infertility, work falling apart, going (slightly) mad; I’d fallen off the tentatively balanced sand castle I’d been building. 

I used the analogy that my life felt like a rusty old car with me desperately holding things together by a huge force of will and constant effort. The rusty car had finally fallen in on itself.

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I wake up to gentle birdsong filtering in from the garden. The soft duvet wrapped tightly around me. I am straight into tears and grief, unable to do anything but honour this deep well of sadness. On my side in the foetal position, fingers in my hair, I am flailing, falling, crying and sobbing, my body totally overwhelmed with sorrow and loss. 

And in this depth, at the bottom of my dark well of grief, I experience a moment of grace, a gift of objective awareness, a moment of noticing myself in this state, and laughing a little to myself, smiling at the internal narrative and the spooky depths I’d arrived at.

“God, Chrissy, you’re really really in this! Bless you, well done for letting yourself go here… But also, chill out a bit, all this crying is kind of full on and pretty extreme, I mean, I know you’re getting divorced and everything’s in meltdown, but it’s not as if anybody has died or anything.

I mean, you’re crying like a little boy who’s lost his Mum.

Oh.

wait.

You’re Crying Like a Little Boy Who’s Lost His Mum”

Many things happened at the same time in this moment of seeing.

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A deep sadness welled up as I connected with the underlying truth that a large part of this sadness at things ending with Ruth was also me processing the grief of my childhood loss (I lost my Mum aged 12). I also felt compassion and a loving adult presence, a self-holding, what’s called ‘self-parenting’ in psychotherapy. I held that little twelve year old close to my heart and let him cry his little heart out. And there was also relief, deep relief in the letting go of my soul into this as yet untouched depth of sadness; that it was a gift seems strange but as we know, gifts come in strange wrapping.

Around this grief and holding and relief I felt joy. That there was joy may also seem strange, but it was clear to me; joy in being able to finally cry the tears I’d had inside me all this time.

Joy, relief, self-holding and grief. 

Though it was mid-morning I’m pretty sure I needed another nap after all this!

In hindsight this moment formed something of a ‘rock-bottom’ experience. It wasn’t as if everything from then on started to get better and things unfolded easily. Far from it. It feels like 4 years later life is only just about getting back on (a very different) track.

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Alrighty, and what about the lesson(s)?

And so, where does this leave us? What lessons might we glean? I’d like to suggest a lesson about acceptance and surrender'; that I gracefully accepted life’s circumstances and found myself in this deep moment of healing through some kind of personal intent or deep trust on my part.

That wouldn’t be true.

I fought this meltdown all. the. way. I was desperately clinging onto the images and ideas I had about myself that felt so painful to let go of.

There are, however, two golden nuggets I’d like to share with you. 

Lesson #1 - holding on to belief in your worthiness of love and belonging

One came from a talk Brenné Brown gave that Ruth shared with me (which was on Youtube and now seems to have been taken down sadly). In the talk Brenné shares the story of some research she was conducting; she’s looking into what makes the difference between those of us who get taken down by life (which is all of us at some point),  and once taken down spiral down and seem to remain knocked down, and those of us who get taken down by life and somehow seem to ‘rise stronger’ from the experience.

The story, and she’s a great story teller, is that they were doing tonnes of qualitative interviews and looking for a pattern of something within the data that would help identify this important human trait.

Nothing was presenting itself. Until she discovered a single pattern that held across everybody who’d risen stronger. And it was this…

That these people, even in the depth of their misery and right at the bottom of their well of grief, never let go of their belief that they are worthy of love and belonging.

That’s never letting go of the belief that we, you, I am worthy of love and belonging.

It might not feel like you’re very loved in this moment, or that you belong, that’s not important, what’s important is that you never let go of the belief that you are worthy of that love and belonging.

This. was. a. Godsend.

I clung to this tiny little nugget of wisdom which I placed in the middle of my heart. And in those times of extreme grief and loss and total disillusion and confusion this felt like the ONE thing that seemed lasting. A fraction of holding to a tiny idea that I’m still worthy of love and belonging.. Like a golden nugget nestled in the nest of your heart…

Lesson #2 - the relief of hitting rock-bottom

A kind friend sent me this quote from J.K. Rowling..

“And then rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

There was, strangely, something comforting about hitting rock bottom. It was a new ground, a new level of security. Beneath the rickety old rusty car and wobbly sand castle was firm ground.

Feeling insecure and anxious about holding together a life that didn’t quite fit, was replaced by feeling held and supported by a new foundation, a new sense of ground.

In ‘Consolations’ David Whyte shares the following…

“Ground… is a state of recognition, the place or the circumstances to which we belong, whether we wish it or not…

To come to ground is to find home in circumstances… to find the support and foundation that has been beneath our feet all along: a place to step onto, a place on which to stand, and a place from which to step.”

At rock bottom I found myself with a place to stand on. This new foundation was a gift; I was still alive, still had friends, was still relatively healthy. Yup, I could rebuild from here. 

Things would be different, but that was a good thing right?

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I feel stories of life (and mental health) meltdowns are too few and far between. In general our life paths don’t go in a straight line, though often it can seem as if everybody else’s is! I hope this story adds a little diversity into the mix. 

To be clear, it’s not that I now always remember my worthyness, or that since building on a new set of foundations everything has gone to plan, that’s not the case, but this past meltdown has helped form who I am today.

It’s a gift for me to share this story with you. Thank you for reading. 

What’s your meltdown story? I bet it’s in there somewhere…

Please feel free to leave a comment on what’s resonant for you from reading this.