I am not one of these people. Now I want to clarify something very important here. If I honestly counted how many times a day I see or hear a trigger that reminds me that I lost my babies, some days the number could easily reach 100. I've written about this before but just to reiterate... I am surrounded. Social media, television, movies, commercials, stores, work... even in my own home there are triggers. Sometimes I have a hard time even walking by the office-that-should-have-been-a-nursery. I am an introvert, but an extremely observant introvert. I am constantly aware of my surroundings, so if there is a pregnant woman sitting 5 tables to the left in the restaurant... there's no point in try to block my view, Mom, I saw her as soon as we walked in. There's no point in abruptly changing the channel, I already saw the first 3 seconds of the baby lotion commercial, you might as well let it finish. There's no point in quickly shuffling the mail so I don't see the thousandth coupon sent to me from the Maternity Clothes store, I already saw the corner of it and recognized the font. The truth is, I withstand hundreds of little triggers at a constant rate on a daily basis. And honestly, they just feel like little nicks in the wall I've built up around my heart. But the problem is, the little nicks add up and cause the wall to start cracking. And eventually it gets to the point that a light breeze can cause the whole wall to crumble to pieces.
Metaphors aside - I don't believe grief is a process that has a beginning and end point, at least mine does not. When I eventually crack from the triggers and something has brought me back to feeling just as devastated as I did in the beginning, I do not have the ability to just "think about something else." I just do not work that way. Sure I can talk about other things and attempt to distract myself with work or conversation or TV, but it's still there in the back of my mind. The pain is still there, nagging at me. I can physically feel it, it's a weight in my chest that cannot be ignored. It demands to be felt. Maybe it's not healthy to dwell on negative feelings but at the same time I think it's unhealthy to ignore them altogether. But maybe that's just what works for some people, and who am I to judge?