Alexandra Chauran - Getting Through It: Reclaim & Rebuild Your Life After Adversity, Change, or Trauma

Introduction

L earning that you have a serious life upheaval will come with a great deal of grief. You will need to grieve the future that you could have had if you did not have to rebuild your life from scratch. You may need to grieve even more things. For example, I lost my breasts and my ovaries in the fight against breast cancer, and I had to grieve those losses as well as the fallout in my social and romantic life that resulted from those losses. Since life marches on regardless of whether or not youre mired in a problem, you may also find yourself grieving the loss of a home, a job, a friend, or a marriage. This book is organized in the famous Kbler-Ross model of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Each of these stages applies to losses you may be experiencing at the beginning of each section. I used Kbler-Ross because this model is so pervasive in our culture that I, and many of my cancer peers, have found ourselves worrying and wondering how we fit into the model and whether were progressing through it somehow in the right way. I also found that others around me were aware of the popular model for grief and expected the stages to come from me in a certain order and then for me to just get over it.

The Kbler-Ross model of the stages of grief may not be scientifically accurate, but many do experience a spiraling through the emotions associated with the model, gaining a new perspective each time they go through them. As you feel the emotions associated with your illness, you dont have to work through the book in order. Flip to the section of the book that deals with the feelings youre experiencing right now, or flip to the section on tools for healing from your losses or finding your new normal when youre in the right headspace to move forward with practical solutions. Keep a journal of what youve done and what you have yet to do. Dont be tricked by your own mind into thinking that you havent had some of these feelings if you know that youre the type who typically stuffs feelings down deep inside. For example, I often ignore my own sadness, preferring to distract myself with something else. Unfortunately, ignoring the blues does not allow me to process through them and move beyond the problem that has been plaguing me.

In the latter half of the book, some important issues to warriors surviving all sorts of life challenges, from single parenting to surviving cancer, are explored. Yes, this book is about keeping positive in the face of something bleak and horrible, but you also will need many coping mechanisms for when positivity simply cannot be constant. A section on recovering your strength of body, mind, spirit, or all three if they are available to you is included. Im, of course, not qualified to diagnose or treat any disease, so I hope that youre already working with a qualified medical team if physical healing is your goal. Well explore both traditional and alternative methods of emotional, spiritual, or physical healing, which I believe can coexist and complement one another, from whatever neutron bomb hit your life.

Finally, this book will end with a discussion on finding your new normal. Things may never be able to return to what they were before, but starting right now you can begin building a future that can include the infinite joys of a moment spent in the here and now.