While Booyah's post had certain truths and merits, I know that for my own self as well as my fWW'S sake that the grieving aspect of this trauma and loss is NOT to be just pushed past en route to a higher, better plane as though it's just a mere obstacle or thorn in one's side.
My own wife entirely bypassed her grieving instincts when our baby girl died in the womb prior to my wife's full labor and delivery of her.
She was raised to always, "be strong" and to basically " never let 'em see you sweat" and while I grieved openly, she internalized her grief and exchanged it for anger and disgust. This internalizing brought her to despising ME and my grief and saw me as weak and unmanly, and when another fellow from her past popped into her world unannounced, she took to him like a fly to a pile of fresh bullshit.
Aside from what that did to me, her lover-picker was INCREDIBLY nuked and that guy was soooooo loser that it has boggled my mind (and even hers a bit) for YEARS as to what she saw in him behind the scales and fangs that were clear enough to her peers and myself as well.
This bypassing of grief, IMO, is also largely what compelled her in part to make other numerous self-destructive choices during our early married years, and I think largely what resulted in her having anxiety/panic attacks and other serious issues that arose later.
The anger aspects will come in due time and in fact ALREADY are making their rounds within her heart and mind--as we can see on her more recent posts. But grief and sorrow have their place. Maybe not logically where the loss of such a monster is concerned, but psychologically where such a trauma, deep betrayal, broken dreams & hopes, and personal connection and a veritable bankruptcy of a very real sort has occurred.
When you are feeling stronger and maybe up for a good cry or deep look at the value of sorrow and grief, I strongly recommend that you watch the 2015 movie "Inside Out". I think it makes this case very well, in fact, and it's a Disney animated family film but of course it's very likely to hurt some since EVERYTHING hurts when you're a serious burn victim.
Still...even burn victims have to go thru some controlled, constructive-intended, pain processing during abrading of compromised-but-still-"living" tissue. You just have to face the pain sometimes to get thru to the better, healthier side, it seems.
I'll send a trailer or clip of the film along, so you get a look before you leap.
(I couldn't find the kind of clip I was looking for initially, but this overly analytical, science-minded " review" and synopsis of the movie did come up in my search, so I guess I'll send it song. The film is much more watchable than this clip I'm sending shots likely suggest, however.)
Inside Out: Emotional Theory Comes Alive--https://youtu.be/xXYhua4IwoE
[This message edited by Cephastion at 9:00 AM, April 28th (Saturday)]