Grief and Control

I had my second session with my therapist on Monday, and again, it was a good time, where she helped me to identify some of the things that are going on in my head, and gave some advice on how to move through it all. She also gave me some 'homework' that is proving to be very difficult to grapple with.

One of the things that my therapist has helped me to realise is that I am actually grieving in duplicate, or in tandem... There is the grief of the knowledge of Mum's health condition- that she has cancer that will eventually kill her, and the various uncertainties of how that will go, and walking the path of chemotherapy, scans, doctors' visits etc until this happens. In addition to this, I am also grieving the loss of a particular relationship, which I was hoping and expecting to be a source of support and nurture for me during Mum's declining health and eventual death. But it seems that this is now not to be. I discovered today that, in addition to all the other things I am feeling about the loss of this relationship, I am also quite angry about the sucky timing of it all (although I'm still not quite sure if I'm angry at God, or the person concerned, about the sucky timing... maybe it's both).

In the midst of all of this emotional turmoil, I have felt quite strongly the need to take, or regain, control of a number of things in my life. These things are not all necessarily connected to the emotional issues I'm facing, (although some are, in an oblique kind of way) but I think the emotional stuff has acted as a trigger for me to make some changes that I really need to make in my life.

One of these is to reclaim control over my home. Those of you who know me, will know that I am not a tidy person (so much so, that my mother often questions whether we really ARE related, or if I was switched with her real child at birth). I am not good at doing housework, or keeping my house tidy, so I am enlisting the aid of one of my lovely parishioners, who made the mistake of offering to help me around the house, to do a bit of a blitz, to clear all the debris from the floor, and every other horizontal surface in my house, to clean the house, get rid of all the cobwebs (in more ways than one) and make my living space functional (especially in the study!), clear of clutter, and a welcoming and hospitable space for me and others to be in.

I have also decided to take my health more seriously, and lose some weight. This will have two-pronged benefits, in that I know that losing weight will be good for my general health, my blood pressure, cholesterol, and my knees, but it will also help me to feel better about myself in how I look, which will help the whole self-esteem thing that is part of my emotional struggle at the moment.

When I was at Theological College, I embarked on the Tony Ferguson weightloss plan, and lost close to 20kg in just over a year. But when I moved to Myrtleford, and so many other routines in my life changed, I went off the program (always promising that I'd get back on it eventually, but never quite did), and put on all of the weight I had lost, and then some. As my GP has struggled to keep my blood pressure under control in recent months, changing my meds, and of course weighing me to calculate BMI... I noted with great sadness how much 'interest' I had accumulated in my weight... 

So, I am getting back on track. Yesterday I weighed myself at home, to give a starting baseline, and was rather surprised (and a little delighted) to discover that my current weight is only 2kg more than my original starting weight the last time I went on the Tony Ferguson program. This means I must have already lost a few kg in recent weeks, when I was in Sydney with Mum, so I guess that's a good start.

I'm writing all this, because I know that if I'm going to actually extract the digit and do something about this, I need to be accountable to someone. I hate the whole 'personal consultant' thing that many of these weightloss programs have (they always seem so smarmy and sickly sweet about everything, which makes me want to just smack them), so I much rather do my own thing and follow the program in the privacy of my own home. It's just a matter of getting to the point of being bloody-minded enough to JUST DO IT. I think I'm at that point now, so put this out to you, as my friends who can help me to be accountable for what I have said I will do.

So here I go...