{"id":1111,"date":"2009-10-08T10:07:25","date_gmt":"2009-10-08T10:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/theirbadmother\/2009\/10\/the-church-of-the-troubled-mind.html"},"modified":"2009-10-08T10:07:25","modified_gmt":"2009-10-08T10:07:25","slug":"the-church-of-the-troubled-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2009\/10\/the-church-of-the-troubled-mind.html","title":{"rendered":"The Church Of The Troubled Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

I keep trying to write about how my dad’s death<\/a> has affected my feelings about God and religion and worship and faith<\/a>. I keep trying, and failing.<\/p>\n

I’m failing, in part, because it’s still so raw. The pain still keeps me up at night. But I’m failing, too, because I’m just that confused<\/a>. And it feels as though there’s a cost to that confusion, that in remaining confused, I’m missing some vital ingredient in a recipe for coping with grief. That if I could just sort this out, I’d feel better.<\/p>\n

Part of the issue is this: I still have my dad’s cremated remains. I’d had a plan for those remains, but I’m now doubting that plan, in part because of a lingering attachment to and faith in Catholic ritual. I just don’t know to what extent I should allow the hangover from my Catholic upbringing affect my decisions here. And I don’t know that because I don’t know whether that hangover is just a hangover, or lingering sincere belief.<\/p>\n

I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t know how to write about this, because I’m not sure, exactly, that I want to write about this, because every time I make the attempt, I can feel my anxiety rise.<\/p>\n

But I need to sort this out. I do. The need presses on me like a physical weight.<\/p>\n

This, all of this, is, some days, too hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep trying to write about how my dad’s death has affected my feelings about God and religion and worship and faith. I keep trying, and failing. I’m failing, in part, because it’s still so raw. The pain still keeps me up at night. But I’m failing, too, because I’m just that confused. 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