One of my favorite movies is “What about Bob?” This movie is about a man who has so many problems that he cannot function in normal everyday society. Bob is overly needy when it comes to being helped that he is constantly being rejected by every psychiatrist that he sees. Bob’s latest psychiatrist is going on vacation and Bob does not know how he will survive without his doctor nearby. The psychiatrist writes Bob a prescription for him to “take a vacation from his problems.” Bob takes the advice, and the movie is funny because of his antics. However, one cannot take a permanent vacation from their problems. For this break to be effective it needs to be short enough where you can recover from the anguish and despair of your current problem.
Taking time for rest has been ingrained in us from the very beginning. Every night we need to sleep to recover from the day and to energize us for the next day. The seventh day of every week is set aside for church and family; it is a day to recover from the previous week so we can be ready for the upcoming week. Most work environments schedule times for breaks, days off, sick leave and vacation time. It is recognized that being rested and healthy promotes productivity. If you have ever seen any parent with newborns, someone who is required to do overtime at work, or a person cramming for school, their ability to function becomes limited. I know this because I have experienced it. Not being rested prevents our body and mind’s ability to be resilient from the stresses of the world.
If rest is so great, why are we not resting all of the time? If we get too much rest, then our ability to function diminishes as well. If we do not use our muscles consistently then they begin to atrophy. A good example of this is a person who has a cast on one of their limbs. When their cast is removed there is one limb that is bigger than the other. It is not so much that useful limb has become bigger, the limb that was in the cast has atrophied and become much smaller. There is the cliché “use it or lose it.” Except for the savants of the world, we must work at getting smarter, stronger and better. If we do not use our talents then we will lose them, as with the parable of the ten talents—the one who didn’t use their talents, lost their talents.
Dealing with grief and problems is the same. This last year, Heidi and I have written about our experiences with enduring to the end and coping with the loss of our son. We began writing almost every day, but that lasted about a month, then it became once a week from the both of us; now Heidi and I post on alternating weeks where there is one post per week on the blog. December came around and because it is the anniversary of Archer’s passing and funeral, which is comingled with all the family gatherings we needed a break from writing about our loss. Even though this was only a short break, it has helped me.
The habit Heidi and I did while were with Archer in the hospital was to take a break from the hospital. Each of us wanted to be with Archer all the time, but we also needed to have time for ourselves and recover mentally, emotionally, and physically from the stresses of having a child in the NICU. We each had our own break where we were alone for half of one day each week, this helped our resiliency for the next week and helped us deal with the stressors. During that time, I would zone out by watching TV or playing video games. It helped me for a small moment in time to forget where I was at, and why I was there. If you ask, how could I forget that I had a child in the NICU? The answer is this, I did not forget, I just set the problem to the side for a short period and thought and did other things. Once the rest time was completed, Archer and all the issues of being in the NICU resumed being my focus.
After Heidi and I lost our second chance to adopt due to a failed adoption we were devastated. With each adoption try, we had the child for four days and on the fifth day he had to give up our rights to adopt. It was difficult to comprehend and process what had happened. We were exhausted in all aspects. We decided it would be good to go talk to a psychologist. Besides the psychologist giving us great tools to help us process our grief, we were also taught about self-care. This is taking time for us individually, to give ourselves a moment to forget all our problems and the world. Our grief didn’t go away, but our ability to cope with it improved. This is something that we took with us to Stanford, and it helped us during our time there. It has also helped us with dealing with our grief since Archer’s passing. These are the moments that we take a break from our problems, but then we go back and deal with them. This is what makes us stronger.
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