On Self-Loss and Grief

When people disappear from our lives, it’s considered normal to grieve. Perhaps not for as long as we need, and perhaps not as intensely as we sometimes do, but we accept that with the loss of a person – whatever shape that loss takes – comes grief.

Less normalized or talked about is the grief we experience when losing ourselves. Sometimes we consciously upgrade who we are, yet in the process, we ignore that not everything about the old us was that bad. We throw away the baby with the bathwater and then wonder why we miss something to care for. 

When my perfect storm hit and blew my way of being to the ground, I realized that while building the life I wanted to lead, I had unlearned how to rest. In search of something bigger, better, different, and more fulfilling, I had left a crucial part of myself behind.

Unable to carry on without it, I dove into the past to find a Sofie who didn’t need to accomplish things 24/7. A Sofie who spent hours with her nose tucked between the pages of a book. Who would stop studying when she was done because she was done, even when she had time left to review exam materials. This Sofie felt no need to be productive. No need to stay busy.

In this case, the self-loss had happened gradually, unconsciously, even. But its effects were impossible to ignore. Without my charging cable, I ran my nervous system’s battery close to zero percent, and my body’s power-saving mode was anything but a gentle dimming of the screen light.

I could not work anymore.
I could no longer attend cultural events.
I could not have conversations with more than one person at a time.
I could not walk along busy roads without tensing up, or go to the supermarket without getting completely overwhelmed.

The only thing I managed to continue doing was dance, albeit in a much more limited way than before. Grateful that my anxiety was rarely visible, that my tears only came out at home, it was the one thing that provided some joy during the darkest time of my life so far.

My body had said “Enough!” and there was no debating it.

A reset was needed, and who I thought I was, I could no longer be.

This type of self-loss is brutal. It forces us to peel off the layers we mistakenly took on as our identity. To question years of developed beliefs, behaviors, and trauma.

So that’s what I did. And as I shed layer after layer, I also slowly learned to let go of the pressure and expectations that came with them. It’s a work in progress, I’ll be honest. And I don’t know if it’ll ever be completed. But I’m on my way.

I learned to ask for help (This was a big one).
I learned that my true friends loved me regardless of my achievements.
I learned that I carry light and joy inside of me and that I want to share those things with others.

But for every positive realization, a void was left. Or maybe more so: a question.

When you no longer derive your value from your achievements, then where do you want it to come from?
When you stop trying to be productive all the time, how do you teach your body that it’s safe to rest?
When your health becomes your #1 priority and focus, how does that impact the business you run and the way you view entrepreneurship?

And when you realize that you can’t be top at friendships, relationships, business, sports, financial management, travel, self-development, and day-to-day life maintenance all at once, what do you choose to truly invest in going forward?

When your capacity is limited to 10%, what do you spend it on?

These are questions you can only start to answer once you accept that you can no longer be who you were. Accepting that is hard. It’s scary. It means letting go of your modus operandi to make space for a new way of being without knowing what that will look like. 

And that doesn’t happen overnight. You expect – no, you hope – to need just a few months but you can’t rewire decades of programming in a season. 

So you build slowly. You try new ways. You increase your capacity for life again. From 10% to 15%. Then to 30% but all of a sudden back to 20%, because healing is not linear. It’s messy. It’s often frustrating and demotivating. You never know how much your system will be able to manage in a day. 

And so you do your best to figure out what really matters to you. What brings you joy. What helps you feel safe. And you learn to listen to your body and your intuition.

Your intuition, and not your fear. Your fear tries to keep you small. It tries to keep you stuck in your old but known ways. And it tries to stop you from accepting because acceptance means letting go. Accepting means grieving that the person you spent so much time and energy becoming, is no longer serving you, and it’s time to become you all over again.