All at once everything is different. It can happen in an instant or a day. The world goes dark, stark, violent. An accident an assault, a murder, a suicide, a heart attack, a terminal diagnosis, a national disaster, a fire, hurricane, or a betrayal, a revelation, even an offhanded remark.
When the unexpected devastates you, there is a before and there is the now. Many may share the event. But sometimes nobody knows. You may have lost your home or health, your livelihood, your partner or your child. You may have been betrayed by the person you thought you could trust the most. Whatever it is, nothing is the same, yet the world outside goes on.
And you are still you.
For a survivor, sudden, immediate grief can pile on top of unfinished business: cleaning up after the incident, incomplete justice, or false narratives and the inability to do anything about them. A new event can bring back all the old patterns of survival. Dissociation, addiction, or acting out did not serve you before, but seem to bring the illusion of release from the pain. So they surface again when there seems no way back to push you further down the rabbit hole.
It is important to understand the past and its impact on the present. There is a younger part inside that originally had few resources to survive. This old program of survival was embedded so you could self destruct before there was any more trauma. Though it is essential to give it its due, it is so important to remember with some empathy that this is your profoundly outdated "coping" strategy to keep you out of the anguish of pain.
So how do you find a way to help, to solve, to live through it? How do you meet the moment with integrity, or fight with resolve—or come to terms with what is? How does one face the losses and new realities, and recognize what is possible even in the face of this?
There is so little to be added about solutions or wisdom when it comes to a sudden turn of events that you have not heard before. There may be no words, nor can there be. At first the abyss of grief may be your only survival strategy.
But even when/if the unspeakable happens, there can be tendrils of light. Remember that you are and have been a survivor of so much already. You have held more inside of you beyond the chaos of darkness that came from what you suffered. Otherwise, you would not be reading this.
So you stare into space and hold this grief with some respect, even a quiet and profound kindness. Perhaps there is respite in the wordless silence.
But you may have to reach out to break the trance. Utilize the community, real friendship, and all the ways you have benefitted and shared from living beings. And at the core, pay close attention to the ground of wisdom you hold inside that has seen you through thick and thin.
Seize it. Then, open your eyes once more.
Life can hold more than one possibility. No matter how sudden the grief or turn of events, there is another memory, earlier still—that calls to you, not only to survive but to bring you back to the undeniable life-force of light that brought you here in the first place.
Honor it and listen.