Love hurts

I’ve been struggling for sometime now with joint pain. At first, I thought I was just getting older, until the flareups made it hard to climb out of bed in the morning. I visited a rheumatologist who assured me it was nothing more than osteoarthritis. But “nothing more than” hurts like hell. There are days where I can’t close my hands all the way. Days where it’s hard to climb out of my car. But I keep going.

I also found out that stress can bring on an immune response in your body creating inflammation. And what could be more stressful than grief?

I don’t say all this for attention or sympathy. I know what I need to do now. I need to move more, I need to find low impact exercise that will keep my joints loose. I need to buy a new mattress that will support my body more comfortably.

And I need to learn how to cope better with my grief. It may look like I’m doing well on the outside, but looks can be deceiving.

Have you been dealing with physical pain brought on by your grief? I’d love to hear how you cope with it.

I know I’m not the first person to ever grieve, and certainly not the first person to have physical pain from it. But that’s the bitch about grief. Everybody wants to sweep it under the rug. Nobody really wants to talk about it. So the sadness just builds and manifests itself in the strangest ways.

I know I have to let it hurt. Let it bleed, let it take me right down to my knees. I have to let love do its work. Afterall, grief is the price we pay for love, and that love has no place to go.