"I've been pressing the snooze button on many stresses in my life - for my whole life."
"I've accepted shame and toxic opinions on my life for over 10 years and yet told myself it's all part of my job. No complaining."
These are Caroline Flack's words....these were sentiments felt by the Love Island presenter who tragically ended her life by suicide on February 15th this year.
There has been so much public outpouring of grief since the devastating news and so many of those who have been affected by her death didn't actually meet her YET they genuinely feel shocked, sickened, heartbroken, devastated.
"Why do so many people have so much feeling about someone they never knew? The answer is: They did know her, they just never met her." The Grief Recovery Method
We can all have emotional relationships with people we look up to and admire and when they die, we can be left with some undelivered emotional communications. The devastating death of Diana, Princess of Wales in August 1997, brought about an unprecedented amount of public outpouring of grief; So many people were touched by elements that connected her to 'them' - whether that was because of her childhood, her parent's divorce, her marriage, the upbringing of her children, her life after the divorce, her public profile -with little or no privacy, her struggles with mental health etc . So may people felt 'connected' with Diana as her worries, fears, sadness resonated strongly with 'them' on a personal level. The same may be said of Caroline Flack.
Social media can be a platform for sharing pain and that's when we can feel the 'connection' - we may have struggled too with relationships, body image, toxic comments, self-destructive behaviour, mental health issues etc and feel 'closer to them' because of the shared life 'experiences' we read about on the celebrity's Instagram, or Twitter- on our phones, on our tablets all accessible 24hours/day. We may have seen her as a bubbly, capable young woman and the real truth behind the smile is too difficult to comprehend. Some may have empathised with her as they too found nowhere to hide, Social Media being the complex friend and foe that it is .
Whatever the reason is that you feel devastated, it's real to you and go with it. You feel the way you feel naturally. The mind cannot instruct the heart to feel sadness. The heart just naturally feels it.
Grief is LOVE and Caroline Flack was obviously a much loved person by so many. Her tragic death has utterly devastated her family and close friends and there are many people who never met her shedding a tear for her too. Be Kind X