18) Triggered

Today I was triggered. It doesn’t happen often; most days, weeks, months, I go about my everyday life and go to work and love my kids and husband and talk with my friends and survive every day by focusing on the positives in my life. But today, in the most unlikely of places, I was confronted with a story about a little girl and her dad who were hit by a car; the little girl is currently in PICU with some pretty significant injuries. And in an instant, it sent me straight back to walking into a hospital on what should have been an everyday kind of day getting ready to face the most life-changing and traumatic event of my life.

The strange thing about grief is that even when you think it’s gone, when you think you’ve overcome it and dealt with it and accepted it, it rains over you with such intensity that you feel like you are unchanged from the moment you acquired it. You immediately feel the unbearable weight that comes along with it and the panicked thoughts of a mind hoping to make it disappear. Luckily, it’s a momentary paralysis. You regain your strength, your toughness, your breath more quickly as time goes on, but every time it happens, it’s still shocking the power it holds over you.

I know the grief will always be there, just as Weston’s memory will be too; to lose the grief would mean that Weston’s memory would have to go as well, so grief is the price you pay.  Weston and his story have given me more strength than I ever thought possible, more courage to stand up for what I believe in, and more focus on the beautiful pieces of life. Just as there are situations that trigger me right back into the trauma, there are also many that heal my heart. Seeing the kindness of others, of strangers, when a person is in need, when a person is sitting in PICU with their baby and people rally around them to provide strength when they have none and guidance when they feel lost is a beautiful thing, it’s a comforting thing, and I’m grateful that I was triggered enough to notice it.