Three years ago, I experienced the most excruciating losses of my liife. All within a few months of each other, I lost my mother, my stepfather of 40 years, and my best friend through death. And my relationship with the most significant person I’d ever known ended.

Although I was in pain, I seemed to be able to accept the deaths as beyond their control. My greatest anguish was with the person who chose to leave. But the combination of all of them was more than I thought I could handle.

 For the first few weeks, my focus was on how I had been wronged by him. It was easy to recognize his character flaws and how he left me in my time of greatest need. I already suffer from abandonment syndrome but this phase of my life took me to the deepest level I’d ever known. The reality was that I really was abandoned…by everybody.

Then I discovered a book called The Grief Recovery Handbook by John James and Russell Friedman. I have never taken their workshop but I followed every step of their program as suggested in their book. It is absolutely far and away the best thing I ever did for myself to get through the grief.

Among the steps I took (all clearly explained in the book), I made a graph of all the losses in my life. I evaluated which of these losses were still causing me grief and of which I had been unable to let go. I then made a graph of the primary one which was still causing me deep anguish. Of course, in my case, it was my most significant relationship. The process led me to recognize our happy times as well as the times of turmoil between us.

At the guidance of the book authors, I then isolated the actions that were still causing me anguish. They helped me to understand that it was not the incident itself but my attachment to the painful memory of that moment in time that was keeping me from full recovery. Looking closely at those most painful times between us, I began to look at it from his perspective. I asked myself what could I have done to make this moment have a different outcome. Once I began to put aside the blaming and to look at the part I played in contributing to what went wrong, everything began to change for me. (BTW, this is the entire point of this website. It doesn’t matter if my part is .0001 percent or if my part is 99.999 percent or anywhere in between. What matters is that I am finally able to see through his eyes and understand what caused him to leave.) When I looked at each situation, I considered how either of us might have behaved differently in order to create an outcome that we would both have been able to accept. Finally, in the end (this process took me weeks), I wrote him a letter (which was never sent) asking for forgiveness for my parts of our breakup and offering him forgiveness for what I considered to be his parts.

That was the turning point. Once I took that significant step, my pain began to dissipate. Today, although I still miss him, I am no longer in anguish over our breakup. I still love him and keep him daily in my prayers. The difference is that I have found peace within myself.

 If you are experiencing the loss of someone through death or breakup, I strongl recommend their book http://www.studentnow.com/publications/griefrecovery.html or workshop http://www.grief-recovery.com/.  Check it out. I think you wil find it truly helpful.