Faith and grief intertwined with my AuDHD journey — a raw and winding path where healing, resilience, and hope are slowly born.
I mentioned in my last post the surrogates I clung to in the church of our harm. Deeply I loved them. I was used to grieving the people that I loved still alive. I’d been doing this type grieving my whole life. In a toxic family system. As the outcast. Scapegoat.
I once walked by my grandmother’s house in an ice storm on a hilly two-lane road with cars careening off the shoulder in front of me. Walking in the dark with ice pelting my face another five miles felt safer than the rejection I’d face on the other side of that door.
This is a peculiar kind of grief wanting their love so bad it hurts. Phone calls that started with disappointment that you were the one on the other line. Until you stop braving the inevitable sigh and decide it hurts too much to call your grandmother so you grieve the death of her though she is still alive and resist the urges to try.
To watch your older sister be embraced with attention and gifts. Because they are two peas from the same pod. She’d get the purple leggings and you’d get brown even though you were a girly girl who loved anything bright. Wondering in your mind could this be intentional? So you pour out more love to the woman who hugs you like you are covered in something gross she can barely stand to touch. Cold. As cold as the pelting ice.
But you get so excited still as you count the speed bumps to her house knowing there would be a cold coca cola in a glass bottle waiting in the fridge washing over the sadness swirling in your gut.
Your mother’s mother and so it goes down the line. Doing everything you can to soothe the ache in your mother while telling your own cuts and scrapes inside and out, “It’s okay. You’ll be fine.” Nurturing your own aches and hiding the pain believing your mother’s wounds more important.
Your mother who watched you get excluded into your grown adult years and did nothing at all. Leaving you on the outside while going to all the family functions at her house with your sibling and her brood then calling to vent to you about the woman who iced you and yours out. Even though you still sent holiday cards to that mother’s mother telling her you love her and inviting her to your table only to receive the inevitable no. Adding to the grief inside.
Your other grandmother died before you were born. Would she have been any different you think while growing up? Nothing more can you conjure up staring at her picture on the wall.
Enter the Church at 24 with all the language wrapped in faith: Family of God. Family in Christ. Forever Family. Eternal Family. Covenant Family. Sister in Christ. Titus II Mentor. Beloved Children of God. And all the verses that talk about love, true love, Christ love that binds our hearts as one. Together we vow. I ate up ACTS.
And I attached. Too. Damn. Quickly.
Starving for the love that was preached.
I served and I people-pleased and I joined my life. Heart and soul.
And I believed literally the words that came out of their mouth syrupy sweet came from their hearts as I did mine.
I made them my surrogates. Wrapped in the Word of God. With the Promises of God.
Trusting with every fiber in me a Three-Chord was hard to break.
As the proverbial saying goes, “I put all my eggs in one basket.” Dangerously so. The fragile blown out ones you dip in dye at Easter hoping not to crack.
I loved making those eggs with my mother. Watching her put the needle carefully into each end. Handing them to me to blow the icky yolk out so we could craft. I loved crafting with my mother.
Like I said, complicated grief.
You love with your whole heart the ones who caused your deepest aches and pains.
Then spend the rest of your life looking for their surrogates completely oblivious this is what your subconscious is doing.
Only to find your surrogates are more dangerous. More destructive. Due to the trust you give. Believing them to be different because they are wrapped in different garments. Clothed with words like righteousness. Peace. Grace. Love.
Until these are tested and proven to be false.
And all your eggs you’ve been carrying with you since a small child are crushed.
To bits.
And the ones you trusted leave you to pick up all the broken pieces severing the Three Chord they kept saying was extremely hard to break.
There is no funeral procession for the living. You are simply left with a bleeding out heart. And because they claimed Jesus, a soul that can’t find the Light in utter darkness searching alone for those pieces they crushed under foot before turning to walk away from you forever.
Cutting through bone, marrow, heart, and soul. A slice farther than you ever allowed your bio family to get close.
Your neurodivergence amplifies the cells in your body carrying the grief for which you can’t explain.
And when you do it comes out like screams and hysteria and total devastation. Open heart surgery without anesthesia is the best you can explain. For which no sutures are offered. Nothing to stop the bleeding for years and years and years..
Compounded complicated grief over a lifetime. Complex PTSD.
It feels like drowning with no relief. For years in perpetual mourning. A funeral with no beginning or end. Robed in black and hard to get out of bed. No GriefShare equipped to handle. How to explain you are stuck in grief for those still walking the earth? Choosing to ghost your existence? After breaking, shattering your heart.
Complicated more by your disability to share. Ask for help. Understand your emotions only as sensations for which you have no words. Alexithymia. A disability of which you have no clue yet you even have, yet feeling very, excruciatingly disabled. Paralyzed. Wishing someone, anyone would take off the roof and lower you down to Jesus just to touch the edge of His robe you can’t reach no matter how hard you try compounding even more your grief. Not even able to talk to God. So you believe He too has abandoned. And you numb out to survive the tidal waves of sadness threatening to drown you out. Disassociated. And no longer able to feel anyone’s Presence. Including God’s.
And so all you have is toxic shame for the grief you can’t climb out of, get over, and the relationships with souls you love like they are your own let go.
Complicated Grief is known to mimic PTSD. I had both. Untreated of course.
Autistic Complicated Grief is a living nightmare. No one sees.
But God. But the God who sees. Cares. El Roi. Just because you can not feel Him, or have the words to tell Him, He is near. He has not left you. He has not abandoned you. He is with you in the storm.
Two years into my healing journey, I let go my grief. Reflecting back now, letting go in a very non-neuro typical way.
I will say many times throughout this blog neurodivergence can feel like a curse when we are in the throes of its extremes, but it is also what saves us. Thinking and healing outside of the box with all that is already in us.
Mother’s Day 2024, I brought home multi colored daisies from the store. I was grieving my mother who was ghosting me for getting sick. 15 weeks in solitary confinement my punishment for what I now know was severe Autistic Burnout. I thought to put in a vase. But then my ADHD kicked in full creative mode and I started making daisy chains I then decided to make into individual crowns. Counting eight for each woman in my biological family who had broken my heart early and all the surrogates I tried to take their place who also only abandoned.
Eight crowns is a lot.
I delicately wove each one ready to release.
Taking them to the creek praying forgiveness and grace over each one down the stream allowing God to take the living and the dead into His hands away from me. No longer inside to hurt like an open, festering wound.
Releasing them from what they could not give and myself from carrying them inside me another minute.
Watching the sun dance sparkles on the water I watched as God carried them away. My tears finally dried up. I could move on.
If you have a complicated grief story you are carrying inside you, is there a creative way to let go? Like the living memorial?
Do you need to get help? I did. I needed licensed therapy so I choked down my shame. Please friend get help. I’m praying for a neurodivergent affirming licensed therapist specializing in complex trauma and very complicated grief for you in Jesus Name.
Ask God to help and watch Him show up. Allow your own neurodivergence to lead the way. The key to healing is already inside us. You are loved. Whether you believe it or not.
I promise as you heal, you will make a vow to yourself you will never again make a crown for a living memorial again. Because you will gain the love you’ve been grieving inside. The love of your own self.
Love,
Raya
The Gentle Rise 