Going Through the Motions After Loss? What Your Numbness Is Telling You

Coffee. Work. Emails. Text messages. Dinner. Try to sleep. Hit repeat.

That was my life for years after I lost my daughter Adeline and my dad. They died 6 weeks apart.

I got up every morning. I went to work. I answered emails, completed projects, fed the family, and hit the bed at night completely drained. And at the end of the day, I couldn't tell you what I did or how I got through it. The days blurred together in a fog.

I wasn't in my life. I was sleepwalking through it.

I'd wake up with the weight of another day sitting on my chest. Not a thought. A weight. I could feel it in my body before my feet hit the floor.

If you'd asked the people around me how I was doing, they would've said, "She seems fine. She's coping so well. She's back at work. She's handling it."

I looked fine.

I wasn't fine.

If you're going through the motions after loss, maybe you know exactly what I mean.

The fear underneath the fog

I held a quiet secret close to my heart, one I didn't say out loud to anyone.

I was scared this was it. That my life would feel like this forever. Foggy. Flat. Getting to the end of every day without feeling like I'd been part of it.

The grief was heavy. But the numbness scared me more.

Grief at least felt like something.

The numbness felt like the true essence of me was slowly disappearing.

What I didn't know then was that the numbness wasn't only about losing Adeline and my dad. Of course it was about them. That was always in there. But something else was stirring underneath it, and it took me a while to understand what.

Before my loss, most of my choices came from the outside in. I sold my house because a trainer said I should move closer into town. I got a master's degree because a boss said it would open doors. It did. They just weren't doors I wanted to walk through.

None of those choices were wrong. But they weren't mine.

After the loss, the "shoulds" stopped working. I had zero energy to do anything because someone said I should. If my body didn't want to go do something, it didn't happen.

But I didn't know how to live any other way. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what brought me joy. So much of my life had been shaped by what the world expected of me that I couldn't tell where the expectations ended and I began.

So I was stuck in the middle. The old way didn't work anymore. And I didn't have another one yet.

The rock in Lake Tahoe

About 4 months after we lost Adeline and my dad, my husband and I took a trip to Lake Tahoe. We'd spent the whole summer in the Texas heat and we needed cool, crisp air and some hiking trails.

One morning we accidentally started up a big hill. Hills are not my thing on a good day, and this was months after giving birth, losing my baby, losing my dad and having surgery. I struggled the whole way up. My feet were killing me.

At the top, I found a rock, sat down and looked out over the lake.

And I sobbed. Big, ugly sobs. If you've lived through a profound loss, you know that cry. That's your body letting the grief out.

Sitting on that rock, I saw it. My whole life had felt like an uphill climb. And I didn't want it to feel that way anymore.

It was the first of many moments where I saw the gap between who the world expected me to be and who I wanted to be.

When we got home, I made my very first vision board. For the first time I let myself ask what kind of life I wanted. Not what anyone else wanted for me. What I wanted.

Your life didn’t get the memo

Psychologist Robert Neimeyer describes grief as a process of rebuilding meaning after loss. When someone we love dies, or a marriage ends, or a job disappears, the beliefs we held about ourselves and the world can crack. What used to make sense doesn't anymore. What used to fit doesn't fit anymore.

That's the confusing part. Everything inside you has changed. But your outside life looks exactly the same. Beliefs I'd carried my whole life stopped being true.

And that opened up questions I’d never considered before.

Who am I now?
What matters to me now?
Is this the life I want to be living?
Is this what I came here to do?

Loss doesn't only take someone or something from you. If you let yourself feel your grief, it can show you what matters now. And what never did.

I say that with so much compassion, because feeling your feelings is hard. Most of us were never taught how. And that clarity isn't always comfortable. Your brain is wired to keep things the way they've always been. So when grief starts showing you the truth, it can feel like the ground is moving under your feet.

That’s why our therapist told us not to make any big changes for at least a year. So I went back to the same job. The same role. The same routine. The same life I had before.

I was going through the motions, which is why I looked fine. But I was a different woman standing inside my old life.

At some point I realized I was living inside a life that didn't fit me anymore, and I could feel it in my bones. Maybe that's where you are too. Grief changed you, and your life didn't get the memo.

Maybe that's where you are too. Grief changed you, and your life didn't get the memo.

Here's what I want you to hear. Noticing that your life doesn't fit isn't a command to blow it up. It's a choice. You can keep brushing it off. Or you can start paying attention.

A simple practice to feel what still fits

This takes about 10 minutes and a piece of paper.

1. Draw a line down the middle of the page. Take a deep breath and notice your body for a moment.

2. On the left side, write down what doesn't feel like it fits anymore. Places you still go. Routines you still keep. People you still spend your time with. Things you keep saying yes to. As you write each one, notice how it feels in your body.

3. On the right side, write down what feels like gold right now. What feels nourishing. What feels supportive. What matters most to you, knowing what you know now.

4. Read each side on its own. Don't analyze it. Just notice what happens in your body. Where do you tighten? Where do you soften?

If a thought pops up like, "I could never walk away from that," let it come and let it go.

You don't have to do anything with this list. You don't have to quit anything or cut anyone out. You're just letting yourself feel the difference between a life that fits and one that doesn't.

If you're afraid it'll always feel like this

If you're still reading, you might be in the thick of it. And if you're like me, you might be afraid your life is going to feel this way forever.

The sorrow is real. The numbness is real. I know them both.

But the numbness doesn't get to decide the rest of your life. It's a signal pointing to a gap. And what you do with that signal is your choice. Maybe now isn't the right time. Maybe later is better. But if you're feeling the pull, it's worth paying attention to.

There's no right or wrong here. Just awareness.

So let me ask you. When you look at your life right now, what still fits?

If you want a simple place to start noticing that gap, I made something for you. My free ebook Break Free from Autopilot walks you through small ways to notice where you're sleepwalking and what your body already knows. No big changes required.