Author: Dan Loeffler

Children’s Grief

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Over the past twenty years that have elapsed since our daughter, Leah died, I have had the privilege to work with children who have experienced loss. Children’s grief can be simple or complicated like much of the grief that adults feel. Children have not accumulated the experience that adults have. Therefore, it can be overwhelmingly difficult for them to understand loss and come to terms with grief.

Soon after Leah died, I volunteered in a program that was sponsored by the Frederick County Hospice in Maryland. The program was called Camp Jamie and it drew children from the county who had experienced the death of a parent, grandparent of sibling. At the time, I didn’t have any experience working in this kind of program but the idea appealed to me as a way of giving back and helping someone else in their suffering.

The program paired adult volunteers with children who were then grouped according to age. The camp was held at a local youth summer camp and the facilities were ideal since it had the ballfields, games and activities that allowed the kids to burn off their excess energy after the group had a chance to do some process work.

Each night registered counselors reviewed the days activities. The adult debrief provided the adult volunteers with suggestions on ways to allow the child to open up about what they were feeling and discussed methods for engaging the kids There was craft projects and plenty of time to do group activities focused around the kids.

The adults modeled talking about the losses that they had experienced to encourage the kids to tell their story.

Another program was Comfort Zone Camp held in North Carolina at a YMCA summer camp. Comfort Zone Camp provided pre-screening and adult training of what to expect during the camp weekend. Again, the volunteers were matched to an age related group of kids. These kids had also had lost parents, siblings and grandparents. Adult volunteers or Big Buddies worked in various group process sessions with Little Buddies. The program ran from about age 4-5 up to late teens. weekend had a full itinerary that included a variety of sports, fun group activities and being outdoors.

What distinguished these programs were the individual camp atmosphere and the process work that each group was provided. In both programs, as the children were dropped off by their parents or guardians; you could visibly see that they carried the heavy weight of their loss. Seeing other kids who had experienced loss helped each child understand that they were not alone. Group team building, process work in small groups and personal storytelling by the volunteers helped break the ice and make the kids feel comfortable talking about their loved ones.

Of course there were meals together, camp songs and in the case of Comfort Zone Camp, a very formal night vigil with lighted luminaire that the kids had decorated in memory of their family member. Each activity contributed to making the weekend memorable. Each night the adults reviewed the days progress.

Each program had a very positive impact on the attendees and the heavy weight they carried on Friday was all but removed by Sunday afternoon. To see the difference that this time away provided was to see the burden lifted, allowing the kids to be kids again. It was very rewarding. A program like this is always looking for volunteers and age is not a barrier to providing a helping hand to a kid who needs a compassionate ear. I’ll talk more about kids grief and the Grief Recovery Method in another post.

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August 8, 2021
More Insights on Men’s Grief in Marriage

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I promised more on the idea of sharing grief in your marriage. How is this type of grief a different case from learning to handle loss and pain when an individual experiences a tragedy? Vulnerability plays an important role in this situation. When it is your own pain there are many ways of dealing with it. Some are good and some are not so good.

With any type of shared emotion, women have the advantage when it comes to grief. In general women are more empathetic. Women are also more practiced in developing a network of support to help sustain them through difficult and rough times. There is generally support of one another over their shared experiences.

As I mentioned in a previous post, men have been conditioned by society and their father’s to follow a rather fixed set of rules. These rules held to a certain stereotype that believed that men should grieve alone and if you get hurt, you just walk it off. If you stuff your feelings long enough and often enough then you’ll never have to feel them.

“You never saw John Wayne cry, don’t be a baby.” Sound familiar?

Hypertension, heart issues, overeating, alcohol/drug abuse are some of the health issues that men have face from chronic stuffing of emotion. As the Grief Recovery Method states, we are not meant to be pressure cookers. Contrary to what happens in the kitchen when you pressure cook meat, It doesn’t make us tender. it doesn’t work that way with humans. Our blood pressure soars, we lash out in aggressive behavior, in short we fail ourselves and our marriages suffer.

I did this. I thought I knew how to handle the grief that broke my heart when my daughter died. I was too quick to return to work, attempting to shoulder my burden and try to pick up the pieces of my life. I couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to anyone and my wife was grieving her daughter.

That’s the thing, I had come to rely on my wife, Nancy to share my pain. I didn’t have anyone else. When she was deep in her own grief, it was hard for me to try to open up. I did what I knew how to do, I compartmentalized and stuffed the grief in a box to be dealt with later. Meanwhile, I tried to deflect the pain I was feeling by over drinking and zoning out on television. Attempting to “get through” each day only to pick up again and do it all over again. It worked for a while, until it didn’t. I could see the marriage getting stuck and before it broke apart I knew I had to act.

That is where vulnerability comes in. I had to break open the stubborn lessons I was taught and share my pain with Nancy. One of the hardest things I have done was to admit that I needed help and that I couldn’t do this on my own. I had help from several sources, a therapist and the Grief Recovery Method. But it wasn’t until, I could open up to my wife tell her the brokenness that I felt that my healing truly began. More on this in future reflections.

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August 7, 2021
Working with Grief

When I am asked, Why do you do this work?” or “How can you work with people in grief?” My initial answer is that I am honoring my daughter’s memory as I go about this important work. Leah was and remains a bright light in our lives. In doing this work, I hope to bring that light to people who need to see that light in the shadow of grief that they are under.

We wanted to give back to others, something of the lessons that we have learned along the way.

We chose to do this work based upon our experience of working through our own despair and grief. Our company name comes from where we found ourselves at the time; “being with grief”. These 3 simple words hold so much. The act of being that describes your awareness of your present state, and “with grief” as we found ourselves steeped in the turmoil of loss and pain. All our unmet expectations of her life that were cut short never to be realized.

So that our grief work comes from our hearts to others with hearts broke open.

Sometimes it seems like we are all “Beings” with grief, because we continue, throughout our lives to have grief visited upon us. Some grief, we barely recognize; the traffic jams on the way to work or the annoyance of standing in line for something we need. Then there is the larger grief, that slam us to the ground and grinds us down. It is deciding whether to pick ourself up and carry on that can seem like an unsurmountable challenge. It it brutally illustrates the reason why this work is important.

It isn’t easy to open up to each other and make the effort to expose the wounded individual that struggles with the pain of loss. It can be especially difficult for a man to share the pain with anyone. Men often choose isolation because we are taught that we should grieve alone. If you ever stumbled as a child and were told to walk it off, you were conditioned to accept what happened, deny the feeling and make the best of it.

This perpetuates the myth of self-protection from our own feelings and emotions. That showing our vulnerability somehow makes us weaker. That we are somehow protected by not showing our feelings. That it is safer to stuff your feelings than to share them with your mate or a friend that can listen without making a judgement. Not being aware of our feelings numbs us to our pain but also numbs us to any other feeling. Apathy can be the result, you can quit caring and that is not a path that a marriage or a relationship can survive.

I believe that allowing our vulnerability to show makes us stronger. Why are we afraid of being in a position to be judged as human? We all have our list of strengths frailties and flaws. Particularly in marriage, our flaws are on showcase for our partner who sees all of them and loves us no less. It is a lesson that I learned and that I share even when it feels like I am shouting into the wilderness. I’ll be sharing more about husbands and wives in future posts. I would like to hear your comments or contact me on our website.

August 6, 2021
Husband & Wife Grief

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A topic that has become the subject of a few of our recent podcasts deals with the grief that a husband and wife go through regarding the loss of a child. If you checked out our web page (www.beingwithgrief.com) then you are familiar with the story of our daughter and our loss. Nothing can prepare you for the loss of a child or the grief that follows an event like this.

It is a particularly wrenching moment for a marriage.

In addition to the overwhelming sadness that you feel; you are also shown all the chinks and flaws in your marriage at a time when you are weak, confused and grieving. Simply put, men and women grieve differently. This can contribute to the divide that can grow out of a horrible loss and destroy a marriage or relationship. My experience in dealing with the aftermath of loss taught me a few things about the differences that I would like to share.

No surprise that women are nurturers.

Regardless of the role you might play in society, women carry the nurturing aspect of human behavior far better than men. It is not only the physiology but the conditioning of society and family expectations that contribute to what separates male from female. In our case, my wife and daughter had a relationship that many moms and daughters have experienced. From the struggle with selecting what to wear, the many shopping excursions and the struggles over boyfriends, habits, and chores, the mom-daughter relationship goes on a series of wave crests and troughs. It contributes to general stress and the experience of watching the up-down struggle that each test takes, can make your day or break your heart. Yet, through all the teenage angst, the mom-daughter relationship somehow remains strong regardless of the teenage willfulness or a mother’s concern.

I think that this is because women, and especially moms and daughters connect with each other face to face. They enter intentionally into their mash-up of ideas, desires, goals with the idea that eventually it will all resolve itself. They will pick up the pieces, mend and clean-up whatever mess was made and carry on, together.

It has been said, that men connect shoulder to shoulder.

Fathers and sons approach a task whether it is doing chores, teaching/learning a new skill (like woodworking) or playing a video game side by side and shoulder to shoulder. Facing the issue from the side can give the impression that they are a team. This may lead to a false sense of unity and create expectations that are not followed through on.

The resolution of the lesson or chore may not result in the same type of personal connection and creates a different type of bond. Think of a football match, when all your team is aligned against another opposing force. Your team may have the same goal but the intent is the man or team that faces you is the opponent and it is a win-lose situation.

The moral is that, once the lesson is taught and skill is learned, you are expected to execute the task on your own. Go, cut the grass, wash the car, kill the deer, win the game or paint the house. In other words, “Perform and produce while I attend to other things.” Isolated from others with an expectations that hangs over you contributing to whether you, “Play nice or rebel.”

When it comes to grief, men have an inherent idea that “you are on your own.” How you respond depends on how you were taught and what you observed. As a society we do not teach grief in theory or in practice. We are left “to our own devices” which in many cases means we, as men, stumble, trip and fall. I’ll be looking into this more closely in another post later this month.

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August 5, 2021
Early Grief

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In talking about early grief, I consider it as two separate categories. The first can be called a “life-defining” grief, in my case, the grief I felt soon after our daughter, Leah died. The second is the grief you accumulate early in your life.

For me, this early life grief was a series of incidents that I dug up during my sessions with the grief recovery method or (GRM). Part of the GRM process is to look back at your life to recall all of the moments when a loss occurred. For example, my little league baseball career was not the brightest spot in my childhood. I believe that on my team, I had the most walks of any of my team mates. Not a single hit in two consecutive seasons of play between years 7 and 8.

That was my baseball story, until the championship game of my second year. With one out, at the top of the 9th inning, I got up to bat. I was nervous, and closing my eyes, I swung at and hit my first fair ball. I got a single. I was elated! It might make the difference on how the season ended. However, the next 2 batters couldn’t connect, the game ended. Championship lost!

My team didn’t go to Dog and Suds for the celebratory ice cream treat.

Seems like an insignificant loss, however, when you are 8, it was crushing. It wasn’t until I looked back at this seemly small loss that I realized I had never let go of the feelings that went along with not having my contribution count towards the success of the team. It didn’t affect the outcome of my life and certainly wasn’t a life-defining loss. Yet, it factored into how I had accumulated an unnecessary burden.

The story of the death of a pet is a similar story of loss. A loss associated with the death of a beloved pet teaches you a life lesson. It doesn’t hurt any less and as a child it was traumatic. I was not taught how to complete the feelings and say a proper goodbye and so the emotions lingered. Whether it is a pet gold fish, a turtle a beloved dog or cat loss is hard for a kid. Parents have a teaching opportunity but often deflect and minimize the loss because they don’t want to see their child suffer.

How many losses are you aware of that you still carry?

The early grief associated with Leah’s death was entirely different. The impact of the loss affected every part of me physical, mentally and spiritually. I have spoken about the disconnect I felt and the numbness that came once I felt that I had been unmoored from anything that resembled my past. Nancy and I talk of the uncharted territory of grief and it is a very strange land indeed. Nothing is familiar and the weight of the sadness and the pain of the loss was too much to bear at times. I had to retreat to a place that gave me some relief. I had a hard time concentrating and decisions were difficult. I had lost a daughter and with it nothing seemed familiar.

I didn’t feel comfortable in my body. Everything hurt. Spiritually, I felt disconnected from anything resembling what I grew up believing. How could God take my daughter? I felt abandoned. Even our Church community shocked us. There was initial sympathy and support from a few friends, but when we attended church there was a barrier because the congregation as a whole didn’t have the words or the skill to bridge the chasm that separated us from what was normal and comfortable. We were an anomaly. The feeling of being alienated because no one knew how to respond to a couple who had lost a daughter felt surreal.

Be mindful if and when there was grief associated with any loss.

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August 4, 2021
Men’s Grief

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Men’s grief is distinctly different type of grief that I would like to talk about. When you are asked how are you? What is your response? If you are like me, I usually say, “I’m fine.” What that translates to for me is:

F – Feelings

I – Internalized

N – Not

E – Expressed

Men suffer from Y-Chromosome conditioning. From a young age we are told, not to cry, to walk it off and to toughen up. In other words, to stuff our emotions and don’t let on to anyone how you feel. If you do this long enough you lose touch with any feeling except for maybe the basic five.

The basic five are Sad, Mad, Glad, Fear and Shame. When I first heard of the basic five I balked, but over time I realized that I functioned at this level most of the time early in my grief. Not that I functioned particularly well but when you are overwhelmed by grief, these basic feelings kind of make sense.

You know when you are angry, and it is easy to lash out when you are in the middle of your grief. You know what passes for glad and sad, you feel sad all the time in grief and you know that you can never be happy again. So, glad becomes a compromise that you give to other people as in, “I’m glad for you.” Fear and shame are something you can’t admit but you know them when you feel it. You can’t show either of these feelings because of the myth of “being strong in times of trouble.”

The myth of “being strong in times of trouble.”

We are conditioned to be the rugged individual and an independent contractor that has been romanticized in movies and on television. The hero never shows his broken nature. If you think of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood it is easy to picture this type of hero. Lately, we have had flawed characters like Batman but even then he takes a beating and lives through it. This stereotype of “strong and silent” keeps men isolated and incapable of leaning on each other.

Never speaking of feelings because you feel ashamed by them and uncomfortable is the unfortunate norm. Fear of being vulnerable of admitting that you can’t do it on your own is unthinkable. Less than 5-10% of all men who experience life defining grief will seek professional support. Another 5-10% of men have or will find male support either through small group, mens support networks or faith based church groups These examples are supportive and not addiction based groups like AL-Anon or Nar-Anon that focus on specific areas of support.

That still leaves 75% or 3 out of 4 men who are unsupported and are in a slow spiral that can rob you of the possibility of health, success and happiness. I have seen men on the job site in obvious pain who struggle, suffer and enter into despair, ruining their lives, health and happiness. Drinking too much, eating unhealthy and taking their frustrations out on others. What possible good can happen when you are alone and suffering?

I’ll explore this in more detail in another posting.

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August 3, 2021
Grief Recovery Method

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In my first blog, I mentioned that I am a Grief Recovery Method – Advanced Specialist. For clarity, I want to explain what that role is and why I became certified in this method.

Our daughter, Leah died of massive head trauma caused by a single car accident on the way to school. She was hospitalized in early November 2000, just weeks before Thanksgiving. She lay in a coma for 5 days before being declared brain dead. We were then faced with the question of removing her from life support so that she could be an organ donor in accordance with her wishes.

After our daughter’s death I struggled with my life. It became difficult to complete many of my normal day to day tasks. I felt numb and had trouble concentrating. What once was important to me, my job, keeping the yard in shape and paying attention to my relationships became hard to relate to and harder to deal with because I wasn’t dealing with my grief.

I went through much of the day’s routine on autopilot. If I had to make a decision, it was made with effort and out of necessity. I didn’t always make the best choice. Had I been able to make clearer decisions; mistakes probably wouldn’t have been made. When I lost my daughter, the combination of numbness, zoning out on television and video games and loosing interest in everything became too much to bear.

I put my feelings on the top shelf in my mind’s closet marked “TO BE DEALT WITH LATER.”

I saw that my wife, Nancy was making progress on her own path towards healing the brokenness that we both were feeling. It took me a long time to figure out that I had to do something even if it was uncomfortable. I had no reference to compare these feelings with and I felt like I was drifting. I wasn’t myself and I didn’t know how to feel. I realized that I had stuffed all my feelings not just the sadness of loss but every feeling into a cardboard box, duct taped it closed and put it on the top shelf in my mind’s closet marked “TO BE DEALT WITH LATER.”

So I could remain numb to the grief that was breaking my heart.

I would have another beer or a glass of wine and stuff the feelings so I could remain numb to the grief that was breaking my heart. As I stumbled along, those emotions in the box let me know that I couldn’t ignore the work that was ahead. I sought a referral from a friend who recommended a therapist. The therapist helped me with being able to talk about compartmentalizing my feelings. I could choose to give myself permission to open the box and deal with what was inside, if I wanted to begin healing. That was a breakthrough.

This began my own path to healing on a journey that I never wanted to take. That first step was important but I realized that I did not have the tools or skill set to continue the work on my own. In searching for grief support on the internet, I came across the Grief Recovery Institutes website. There, I found that the Institute had started over 35 years ago, by John James, an engineer who had found himself in a situation similar to mine. He had lost an infant daughter. At the time, there wasn’t many resources, so he created a method that allowed him to examine the occurrences of grief in his life. The method also developed the tools the program uses to heal the pain associated with all the uncommunicated feelings and emotions of his loss.

This really appealed to me and I enrolled to learn the method and to take the certification so that I could educate people like me who needed help. That overwhelming tidal wave of feelings hits you when you life changes so completely, so suddenly. Our culture does a poor job preparing you for this situation and if I could help another man or another couple learn ways to heal then I felt called to step up.

I took the training in 2015 and in 2020 due in part to COVID 19, the Grief Recovery Method Institute offered a series of courses that allowed the licensees to conduct the method via a virtual classroom. Today I offer both in person and virtual classes in a 6 or 8 week format to heal the grief associated with loss. It saved my marriage and did a world of good for me in dealing with the pain and I am grateful that I can now help others.

Recovery is possible

Dan

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August 2, 2021
Grief Work

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I have spent a lot of time thinking about and working with grief including the pain, doubt, fear and shame that accompanies this human condition. While I have come to understand that grief is a normal and natural condition, I now also understand that grief as an emotion is different from living with the feeling of grief.

Grief is complicated, wrapped in misunderstanding and worthy of a closer look.

As an Advanced Grief Recovery Specialist, we are shown that grief occurs whenever a familiar pattern of behavior changes. What does that mean? This idea may or may not be familiar to you; I struggled to understand the concept until I thought of the following examples from my life:

The loss of a relationship is an obvious example of a pattern that changes. Whether it is a first love or a love that has lasted a lifetime, when a relationship ends it can be devastating. When there isn’t an answer to you calling their name, the pattern has changed and grief enters. Many examples of this type of loss is common and I’ll re-visit some of them in later writings.

Loss of a job is another example that most people will understand. When you have gotten into the rhythm of a job and the job is no longer available, you can experience grief. Whether it is because the job is over or there was a layoff, when you no longer have to punch a clock or show up as scheduled it can affect your sense of worth and put your life and finances upside down. COVID-19 caused us to miss the relationships that develop in a work environment. This is another example of feeling grief associated with virtual work and a significant pattern change.

Loss of a pet, whether it is missing the daily walk or the couch cuddles is a loss of pattern that can leave you raw. Especially, the unconditional love they give us when that love is no longer there. Pets offer us many examples of living in the moment whether it is scratching at the door for the urgent nature call or the plaintive meows when it is dinner and the bowl is empty.

These living in the moment patterns impact our routines.

If you are like me, I love my morning routine of a morning cup of coffee and a silent prayer at the start of the day. Routines offer consistency and are comforting. You know what to expect. When the unexpected happens and the pattern changes we can be thrown into chaos and struggle with those doubts, fears and shame.

You can bet that at some point in your life, you will be faced with a major change in your routine.

Whether it is one of the situations that I mention above or perhaps one that came to you as you read this post. What we do when our patterns change, how we adjust, what we shed, what we keep and how we pick ourselves up will be covered as I delve into tackling the challenging subject of men’s grief and begin to peal back the layers on my story.

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August 1, 2021
Grief

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I have spent a lot of time thinking about and working with grief including the pain, doubt, fear and shame that accompanies this human condition. While I have come to understand that grief is a normal and natural condition, I now also understand that grief as an emotion is different from living with the feeling of grief.

Grief is complicated, wrapped in misunderstanding and worthy of a closer look.

As an Advanced Grief Recovery Specialist, we are shown that grief occurs whenever a familiar pattern of behavior changes. What does that mean? This idea may or may not be familiar to you; I struggled to understand the concept until I thought of the following examples from my life:

The loss of a relationship is an obvious example of a pattern that changes. Whether it is a first love or a love that has lasted a lifetime, when a relationship ends it can be devastating. When there isn’t an answer to you calling their name, the pattern has changed and grief enters. Many examples of this type of loss is common and I’ll re-visit some of them in later writings.

Loss of a job is another example that most people will understand. When you have gotten into the rhythm of a job and the job is no longer available, you can experience grief. Whether it is because the job is over or there was a layoff, when you no longer have to punch a clock or show up as scheduled it can affect your sense of worth and put your life and finances upside down. COVID-19 caused us to miss the relationships that develop in a work environment. This is another example of feeling grief associated with virtual work and a significant pattern change.

Loss of a pet, whether it is missing the daily walk or the couch cuddles is a loss of pattern that can leave you raw. Especially, the unconditional love they give us when that love is no longer there. Pets offer us many examples of living in the moment whether it is scratching at the door for the urgent nature call or the plaintive meows when it is dinner and the bowl is empty.

These living in the moment patterns impact our routines.

If you are like me, I love my morning routine of a morning cup of coffee and a silent prayer at the start of the day. Routines offer consistency and are comforting. You know what to expect. When the unexpected happens and the pattern changes we can be thrown into chaos and struggle with those doubts, fears and shame.

You can bet that at some point in your life, you will be faced with a major change in your routine.

Whether it is one of the situations that I mention above or perhaps one that came to you as you read this post. What we do when our patterns change, how we adjust, what we shed, what we keep and how we pick ourselves up will be covered as I delve into tackling the challenging subject of men’s grief and begin to peal back the layers on my story.

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I have spent a lot of time thinking about and working with grief including the pain, doubt, fear and shame that accompanies this human condition. While I have come to understand that grief is a normal and natural condition, I now also understand that grief as an emotion is different from living with the feeling of grief.

Grief is complicated, wrapped in misunderstanding and worthy of a closer look.

As an Advanced Grief Recovery Specialist, we are shown that grief occurs whenever a familiar pattern of behavior changes. What does that mean? This idea may or may not be familiar to you; I struggled to understand the concept until I thought of the following examples from my life:

The loss of a relationship is an obvious example of a pattern that changes. Whether it is a first love or a love that has lasted a lifetime, when a relationship ends it can be devastating. When there isn’t an answer to you calling their name, the pattern has changed and grief enters. Many examples of this type of loss is common and I’ll re-visit some of them in later writings.

Loss of a job is another example that most people will understand. When you have gotten into the rhythm of a job and the job is no longer available, you can experience grief. Whether it is because the job is over or there was a layoff, when you no longer have to punch a clock or show up as scheduled it can affect your sense of worth and put your life and finances upside down. COVID-19 caused us to miss the relationships that develop in a work environment. This is another example of feeling grief associated with virtual work and a significant pattern change.

Loss of a pet, whether it is missing the daily walk or the couch cuddles is a loss of pattern that can leave you raw. Especially, the unconditional love they give us when that love is no longer there. Pets offer us many examples of living in the moment whether it is scratching at the door for the urgent nature call or the plaintive meows when it is dinner and the bowl is empty.

These living in the moment patterns impact our routines.

If you are like me, I love my morning routine of a morning cup of coffee and a silent prayer at the start of the day. Routines offer consistency and are comforting. You know what to expect. When the unexpected happens and the pattern changes we can be thrown into chaos and struggle with those doubts, fears and shame.

You can bet that at some point in your life, you will be faced with a major change in your routine.

Whether it is one of the situations that I mention above or perhaps one that came to you as you read this post. What we do when our patterns change, how we adjust, what we shed, what we keep and how we pick ourselves up will be covered as I delve into tackling the challenging subject of men’s grief and begin to peal back the layers on my story.

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August 1, 2021
How Grief Changes Holidays

While visiting our son this month, I had another moment when the gift of being present revealed itself. In our work, the subject of death and dying is common. When we think of our own demise, it always seems like a lifetime removed from our daily concerns. I had one of those moments of clarity that put life into perspective for me.

As summer turned to fall and fall to winter, I found myself reflecting on coming into the winter of my years. The average age of death for a US citizen is about 80 years old so, for me, the math is simple. 80 years divided by 4 seasons is roughly 20 years per season. With my 62nd birthday just past, I am coming into the last season of my life. While I recoil from the bindings of age upon my body, my mind has to accept that I can’t change time. The number of years, slowly and inexorably, releases those granular events we call memory.

I am still making memories even as I take pleasure in the remembrances of long ago. For example, Nancy and I find joy in growing a garden and canning preserves. We spent most of a weekend creating and processing salsa verde. This, along with all the experiences I have collected through my life, help shape the person I have become. The big and the small events of life are the building blocks that form our personalities. It is slogging through a tedious work week and enjoying weekends, vacations, and times spent with friends. It is every time we have laughed, cried, became infuriated, or felt depressed. It is our responses to the occasions of winning and losing, getting a gift, losing a job, making a baby smile, or learning something new. It is these day-to-day experiences, as well as the big events like births and deaths that, if we are lucky, we realize make us who we are.

For me, recognizing these moments and being open to the experiences that life provides helps me during the holidays. Not all life experiences are positive, but each experience is meant for you. Grief is like that and when it shows up during the holidays consider these thoughts:

Grieving is natural and normal.

You are in a real situation and experiencing a real human process. You are trying to figure out what steps to take next.

Rushing yourself is not helpful.

Take your time. Feel what you feel on your own timeline.

Other people may minimize your experience because they perceive it as an insignificant loss or not a loss at all. Be aware of this in others.

Recognize phrases that are inherently shaming your grief.

Phrases such as: ”Negative thoughts are bad” or “Change your thoughts, change your life” are oversimplifications of complex philosophical ideas. These phrases often come off as oppressive.

Recognize that grief felt at a holiday may feel familiar because it has echoes of other older griefs that we may have experienced. Old grief can be triggered through the physical experiences of new grief situations.

Remember there is a diversity of meaning and experience in each person’s grief.

Those who are grieving are not necessarily grieving the same way as their family or their friends. Do not assume you know what someone is feeling. Exercise curiosity.

If you are feeling grief, don’t forget to tend to your feelings and care for yourself.

When you can’t control what is happening, challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what is happening. That is where your power lies.

Dan

December 17, 2016