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Reply To: My father’s passing

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Home Forums Loss of a loved one My father’s passing Reply To: My father’s passing

#20147
VM-Mancha1
Participant

Hi Leila,

Thank you so much for sharing, your story has hit quite close to home for me. My father passed away when I was 25, after I had travelled overseas and hadn’t seen him for 7 years. We never got on, I always felt he didn’t like me, and only learned after his passing that wasn’t true. So, to some degree at least, I can share and understand your feelings of guilt. It can be a hard burden we place on ourselves, especially as we’re punishing the current ‘us’ for the younger ‘us’ not understanding how to navigate really complicated relationships. I think it is so normal to feel this, even for those who have a good relationship with their parents.

I can feel the pain in your post, and I’m really glad that you are finding your way to help and to some relief through expressing your feelings. I too took the ‘bury it and get back to work’ approach. As @VM – OnAJourney says, pushing away your feelings can sometimes just make them harder to deal with at a later stage, and I’m so glad to hear that you’re working through some of them now.

It can be so empowering to come to somewhere like GriefLine and to share your story, how have you found things since you last post? I’d really like to know how you’re coping, so please come back and tell us. You’ll find a really supportive community here.

There are some really helpful resources on this site, one of them that might help you is about finding your strengths, and using these to help you to cope. You can find that here: https://griefline.org.au/resources/grief-recovery-part-1-in-search-of-lost-strengths/

It’s also really important that you stay strong from day to day, and there are some amazing tools that help with that. In my case when my loss hit me full blast, I did everything wrong (lots of junk food, late nights and TV, poor sleep and no exercise). Which made coping like trying to win a race with one leg tied behind my back. This article (https://griefline.org.au/resources/east-toolkit/) talks about how you can give yourself more strength and support through the basics – eating, activity, sleeping, and allowing time.

I hope these help, and please do come back and tell us how you’re going. We’re listening.

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