What's Next?

Soul trauma can make the future seem overwhelming, but here are ways to build your resiliency

Trauma that reaches deep into our very being is so life-shattering we may find thoughts about the future completely overwhelming. There are many forms of soul trauma, but I am speaking specifically of the death of a loved one and the grief which follows that loss.

In the first days of grief, this overwhelm is natural. If this is your immediate situation, you may feel numb, disoriented, exhausted, barely able to make a good decision. In the earliest stage of grief, you need to give yourself permission simply to live hour by hour, day to day. It will be important to your movement forward to have (or maintain) a defined rhythm in your life: get up at the same time each morning, tend to your morning bathroom routine, tidy up your sleeping space, make yourself eat something healthy (experts say most of us get too little protein first thing in the morning), rest as you are able, fill yourself (as hard as it may be) with the presence of others (virtually or in reality), address work-related issues as you are able, spend time winding down in the evening and put yourself to bed on a consistent schedule. Your goal is the first days of grief — to make it through the day and awaken the following morning.

There will come a time — you will have to judge for yourself — when you will need to add to your rhythm. I learned to call this my “(at least) one hard thing a day.” There are many difficult tasks to attend to in the early stages of grief: making memorial service plans, signing paperwork regarding the disposition of your loved one’s remains, being in communication with distant friends and relatives, changing house/property titles, updating checking accounts and financial records, the list goes on. With each “hard thing” accomplished, you are building resiliency. Your goal in these days of grief — helping yourself heal by tending to important tasks, as difficult as they are.

As you build your resiliency, you will need to return to your (now changed) life. Timing may be dictated by workplace bereavement policies or other life expectations that do not necessarily accord with your healing process. Most employers and others in our lives have compassion and understand we may not “be at our best.” It is important, though, to embrace life once again, even while we are in the midst of our own gut-wrenching trauma. Unlike some traumas (like cancerous cells) which can be surgically excised from our bodies, soul trauma cannot be sliced away with surgical precision. I am discovering with my own trauma that a helpful approach is to add healthy practices and life-giving opportunities: the trauma still exists, but it no longer takes a primary role in my life. I suppose you would say this is kind of a displacement approach, recognizing the pain that remains while adding life-sustaining possibilities. Your goal at this stage — recognize your continuing pain, but displace it with good, solid, positive actions and people.

And, friends, this is about where I am in my grief process, so I can’t say much more with any kind of credibility. It may be that at some point my soul trauma will resolve, or at the least fade into the background, but I do not yet know that. As I live into my next chapter, I will continue to provide updates on my changing life in the hope that it will help other grievers.

What I do know already is this: from my first days of grief to today (about four months), my biggest nagging question continues to be: “What’s next?” My traumatized heart and mind (they are not quite the same things, you know) can become caught up in the centripetal force of my losses¹ so that I dread tomorrow. The mind says, “If something this bad happened yesterday, I wonder if something even worse will happen tomorrow?” The soul says, “If God allowed this to happen to me at this point in my life, can I trust anything about the future?”

In my morning prayer time, today’s order included this meditation from George MacDonald:

What God may hereafter require of you,

you must not give yourself the least trouble about.

Everything He gives you to do,

you must do as well as you ever can.

That is the best possible preparation

for what He may want you to do next.

If people would but do what they have to do,

they would find themselves ready for what came next.²

So this is where I am as I live into my next chapter of life. I’m continuing to build resiliency day by day by nurturing a life-sustaining rhythm, I’m embracing each new day with the goal of learning to live with my soul trauma, I’m trusting that Love surrounds me so that whatever “tomorrow” brings, I will be prepared for it when that time comes.

When my mind begins to wander into tomorrow’s territory with its anxieties and worries, I have to remind myself, sometimes audibly: “All you need to do is to live today. Tomorrow is not here yet, and when it arrives it will be your new today. Live today, trust that tomorrow will take care of itself.”

Once upon a time, long ago, I first heard these words of Jesus: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). It’s only been in the past four months, though, that it truly makes sense in this, my existential moment. I don’t know what’s next, but I’m leaning into Love, and most days it seems, that is enough.

1. I intentionally say “losses,” because death creates an arena with multiple losses: there is the primary loss (the death of my life companion) and there are corollary losses, as well (my “way in the world” as a newly single person, the changed relationships with my children and grandchildren, for example). I may explore this idea of multiple losses in a future Substack post.

2. Morning Prayer at www.northumbriacommunity.org