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Author: Nancy Loeffler

  • Staying and Leaving

    Staying and Leaving

    All my life I had been fearful of endings.

    Endings meant I would have to change the way I did things.

    Endings were uncomfortable. I did everything I could to hold on to things for as long as I could.

    And then Leah died, and I experienced an ending that I couldn’t undo.

    It was an ending I hadn’t prepared for. It was my most profound lesson as my grief journey progressed; learning how to say good-bye to people, places, and things that were no longer a part of my life, or that I had outgrown.

    My grief journey opened me up to what was possible when I welcomed the initiation that I wrote about in an earlier blog, and in chapter 8 of my book. It was not a lesson that I learned easily, or that I wanted to learn. It was so much easier for me to hold on to the thing than to face the feelings, and then do the work necessary to say good-bye to things that no longer served me.

    Everywhere I lived I had boxes and boxes of stuff that I couldn’t get let go.

    Everywhere I lived was cluttered as I delayed decisions to go through the piles to release old stuff.

    Saying the ultimate good-bye to my daughter caused me to come face to face with my fear of endings.

    I was called to leave a job that was no longer in alignment with who I was becoming, or the life I was meant to live. I had to take a stand for myself and risk my perception of what may happen if I left that job.

    Our perceptions of what may happen can keep us stuck for a long time. Mine sure did.

    Saying yes to the initiation of Leah’s death was not an easy task. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. And it came with huge rewards.

    During our last move I let go of Leah’s school papers and report cards. I let go of wedding dresses, and baby clothes, and so much more. As I opened all of the boxes, all of the emotions that I hadn’t faced came pouring out. The good news is I now know how to meet those emotions.

    I gained a new understanding of endings. I felt lighter when I wasn’t carrying around years and years of old outdated stuff. I found that I had made space for new and wonderful things to enter my life, and that I had more energy for them.

    Endings are sad, even if they are welcome.

    It’s in learning to honor what we are letting go of that we receive the grace necessary to move forward and open our heart and lives for what is coming next.

    Imagine the image of a closed fist. If someone handed you a beautiful gift, when your fist was closed, you wouldn’t be able to receive it.  What if you opened your hand ready to receive the gift?

    My fear of endings was similar to having a closed fist. I spent so much time with my fists clenched and my body closed in around itself that I didn’t even see what was being offered. Now I can see what life has to offer me, I meet each day with an open heart.

    What a wonderful gift.

     

     

  • Grief As initiation

    Grief As initiation

    Rereading this chapter was interesting.

    It took me right back into the feelings that I had as I was beginning to find my voice in the middle of my grief journey.

    For years before Leah died, I had been working thorough childhood wounds. Leah’s death created a sense of urgency that I hadn’t felt before. What I realized is that all of those years I had been doing my inner work were laying the groundwork for the initiation of Leah’s death. When grief entered my life in this profound way, I was ready to make the changes, almost without thinking about them.

    Initiation is both the ending of one part of life, and the beginning of another.

    It is a rite of passage, and we can go through many initiations in our lifetime. I began to understand that the way I was moving through grief was an initiation each time I took a stand for myself, or spoke up for what I believed in. Losing Leah made the difference. Each time I was faced with a decision to speak up or stay silent, I was reminded that the cost of saying nothing was too great if I was to find the life I was meant to live.

    We often hear that in order to grow, we need to get passed our comfort zone.

    I was already out of my comfort zone as I tried to figure out how to live without Leah, and I had nothing to lose. That newfound urgency and the years of preparation were coming together to show me the way forward. Each time I heard myself take a stand for a belief, or set a clear boundary, I recognized that it was my grief journey that was giving me the courage of heart and the perseverance to be myself.

    All of this didn’t change my grief.

    It’s still there. It’s still strong but now I am empowered to meet it successfully.

    That is a distinction for me. Cultivating the resources to meet my grief allows me to be fully myself, which includes being with my feelings of grief when they arise.

    So often we think that if we resist our painful feelings long enough, they will go away, and we won’t have to feel them. Whenever we resist something, it persists. Our painful feelings don’t go away, they go underground, and wait for a crack in the surface of our lives to burst forth. And burst they do. Like a volcano erupting, our overwhelming feelings spew their wrath when we least expect it. And we crumble.

    When we develop and nurture tools to meet our grief in a way that makes sense to us, we are on a path back to ourselves. We are learning how to be who we were born to be.

     

     

  • Renovations

    Renovations

    If you are like me, the thought of renovating a house brings excitement.

    Renovations mean newness, new paint colors, new furniture, and perhaps new room configurations. Have you ever considered that in order to renovate, we first have to deconstruct the space? Demolition and deconstruction are messy. It is during this time that we may wonder why we wanted to renovate, yet the walls are down, the floor is torn up, and we may have paint samples all over the remaining walls to determine which color looks best in the new space.

    Demolition is messy; deconstruction brings chaos.

    Maybe I like these metaphors because of my time working as a project manager for a contracting company. From the beginning of my grief journey, I always viewed what was happening as a deconstruction. Grief is messy.

    My life was ripped apart.

    In the early days, I really didn’t want to put it back together, and I didn’t know how to take the first step even if I did want to reconstruct a life worth living.

    Over the course of my grief journey, my life was deconstructed many times as I excavated the wreckage that Leah’s death created. I tried to figure out where to start putting the pieces back together, yet I had no idea where or how to start. Each time I thought I found a way through the maze that I was in, I came upon another obstacle. A closed door, or a tangle of feelings that felt too overgrown to unravel.

    I used to think of them as false starts, until I realized one day that each and every turn on the labyrinth serves a purpose. Each and every deconstruction exposed a place in my life that needed attention and love.

    It felt exhausting at times, because I thought that loving myself in the messy, chaotic places meant that I would have to admit that there was something wrong with me; that I was flawed beyond repair.

    In truth, it was, it is, love that heals me.

    Loving myself as I am in all the messy imperfection showed me the way through the confusion, through the disarray. What I know now is that I was loving my way back to myself; healing old childhood wounds, even ancestral wounds; all the places that needed to be seen and loved because I am deserving of love.

    Love is like the sword that cuts through all of the detritus of my life.

    It is love that renews our life. I find this to be a revolutionary thought because all through this journey I’ve heard versions of loving being the way through, and it wasn’t until I was able to experience it directly that I was able to take it in, to know the power of love.

    The renovations I have done on living spaces, when viewed from completion, have all been worth it. We are more comfortable in our space, it is lighter, and we can move around with more ease.

    I can say the same thing about my life having gone through many deconstructions of grief. In all cases, the experiences were different than I thought they would be; they took a lot longer to see progress; and the outcome is/was completely different than I could have ever dreamed possible.

    Having successfully moved through both experiences, I can say with certainty, they have all been worth it, every single time.

     

     

  • Opening Your Heart

    Opening Your Heart

    At the time of Leah’s death, Samyama had been a part of my life for seven years.

    It wasn’t a practice that I turned to daily; it was there when I needed a little more assistance contacting to my feelings.

    I didn’t realize at the time that Samyama would be my lifeline as I began meeting my grief.

    Even though I did not have a daily Samyama practice over 20 years ago, I did know the power of the practice. Samyama helped me to begin to shift anger for the first time. I grew up pushing anger down. It wasn’t allowed in my family. My anger would erupt in rage when it could no longer be contained. These eruptions happened when I least expected them and at inopportune moments.

    I have done lots of work with anger over the years, with limited results. Samyama allowed me to meet anger for the first time in a safe space. From this safe space I was able to fully feel my anger and allow it to begin to shift. After a few months, I got to the root of my anger. As my heart held all those old feelings, the anger was gradually transmuted, shifted, and released.

    These days when I feel anger it is about something that occurred in the last few days, or weeks, not 30 or 40 years ago. I now know how to meet anger, (and all my feelings) and they aren’t pushed down until they can no longer be contained.

    What a relief I felt when anger and rage were no longer controlling my life. This experience with anger showed me the subtle power of Samyama.

    When I was ready to begin to meet the painful feelings of grief, I was instinctively drawn to Samyama. I began working with my own Samyama Practitioner. She was able to hold space for me to go deep into my feelings.

    I began to unravel the stories that were intertwined with my feelings; the stories that kept spinning in my head and wouldn’tlet me sleep or rest. The stories that threatened to devour me and keep my heart locked tight, so I didn’t have to feel the pain of my daughter’s death.

    As I began to open my heart to my feelings, I discovered that it could hold all of them.

    Even today, I can’t wrap my head around the fact that Leah is no longer here physically. It’s only when I bring my feeling to my heart and allow it to hold whatever shows up in each moment that I can get a glimmer of peace. As that glimmer grows, it eventually spreads from my heart to every cell of my body, and I’m once again reconnected to my soul’s purpose. I’m once again connected to myself, and my reason for being here in this lifetime.

    Another gift of my grief journey was showing me the power of Samyama, and how it can help with daily disappointments or concerns. Today I do have a daily Samyama practice. Samyama not only helps with difficult feelings, but it also helps me meet whatever arises in each moment, the full spectrum of all my feelings.

    I bring everything to my heart, and my heart never fails me.

  • Grieving Uniquely

    Grieving Uniquely

    This chapter foreshadows the birth of my work with clients.

    As I read about my experience of early grief, I get a sense of going through that time with blinders on. From where I am today, I can see a bigger picture. Back then I felt lost in a maze, not knowing which way to turn, or where it would lead.

    Around each turn, I met many facets of grief: shock, denial, fear, panic, hopelessness, and isolation, to name a few. I was unsure of where to turn in the confusing landscape. Yet even through my confusion I was aware that I was meeting grief in my own way, a testament to my radical nature from the previous chapter.

    Each of us grieves in our own unique way, and often when we face grief, we don’t know what our way is to grieve.

    It gets even more complicated in a family. We may be grieving for the same person, yet our experiences of grief and how we grieve are completely different from each other. One reason is our unique relationship with the person we are grieving. We grieve from our own perspective.

    In my own family, Dan, Peter, and I all had to meet our grief in our own way. We couldn’t help each other until we reached a certain point in our own grief journeys. If this is the case for you, give yourself the time and grace needed to allow everyone to process in their own way.

    We haven’t been taught how to grieve by our parents, or by society. Or maybe we were shown that by denying our feelings long enough, they will go away, and we won’t have to face them.

    Grief can also be a catalyst for change.

    In my own experience, Leah’s death exposed all the places in my life, including my marriage, which needed attention. I had a huge decision to make; did I want to do the work necessary to see if those places could be healed or did I want to use distraction to help them go underground not knowing when or how they would show up in my life?

    None of these decisions were easy, yet they were made more urgent by my commitment to honor Leah and her message to me about living the life I was meant to live.

    Sometimes giving yourself permission to grieve in a way that makes sense to you is all you need to begin that trek in your own  life.

    What do you need permission to do?

  • Radical Grief

    Radical Grief

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    This was a hard chapter to read, and as I recall it was a hard one to write.

    It tells the story of my relationship with Leah and some of the struggles we had as she was growing up.

    I remember when I was writing it that I wanted to be true to the story without sugar coating our struggles. I could feel the dynamic between us back then streaming off the page, as well as how much I wanted to understand what Leah was going through at the time so I could help her make good decisions.

    From where I am now, I can more fully see how my own upbringing influenced my approach to mothering, and how it defined what I called my radical nature. To help Leah accept who she was, I needed to accept who I was; the connections between our stories are undeniable.

    As I came to own the way I approached life, my radical nature; I also saw that it was the way I approached grief.

    Always feeling like I didn’t fit in as I was growing up served me well as I entered mygrief journey. I felt like I was different from everyone else because my daughter was no longer present in my life. The feeling of being different was a familiar one to me, and maybe that’s why grieving for my daughter felt different than I thought it would too. Even as I write those words, I’m not exactly surewhat I mean; maybe I mean that I was more comfortable finding my own way to grieve, which led me to understand that we all grieve in our own unique way.

    One of the topics that I frequently talk about with colleagues and clients is the ability to prepare for grief.

    We like to be prepared for all things in our life, yet when an unexpected tragedy occurs, we may feel ill prepared to cope with it.

    I certainly felt like I wasn’t prepared to face life without Leah’s physical presence in it. At the time I didn’t fully understand what that meant. If I had, I’m not sure what I would have done. I think that’s part of the grace that I received; the complete story of what life would look like would only be revealed as time passed, and I was ready for the next layer. I feel like that is a blessing of the journey, that I was not plunged headfirst into the deep pool of grief with all the stuff all at once, it’s revealed only when I’m ready to meet it. Being ready to meet it also means doing the necessary work during that time.

    It’s one of the reasons that grief is a life-long journey.

    It’s only after a time that I can acknowledge that I was better prepared than I thought I was. Claiming my radical nature helped me to realize that. I also think that it’s possible to cultivate practices that can help us navigate difficult feelings and experiences when we encounter them.

    What has helped prepare you for difficult experiences that you may not have considered helpful until you go through a challenging time in your life?

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  • Holding On to Who You Are – Chapter 3

    Holding On to Who You Are – Chapter 3

    As I reread this chapter, I immediately saw the roots of my intuition playing out in my life.

    I saw the tentative way that I mothered my children, and the fledgling awareness of my inner voice making itself known to me as I faced the so many losses.

    My inner knowing was strong, yet it wasn’t quite ready to lead.

    I was sad about that at first because it feels like I’ve wasted so much time not being myself. As I sit with those feelings, I realize that all the experience, all the paths with their twists and turns and all the messiness of my life, were, and are, a part of the journey to love all the parts of myself, even the parts that aren’t always so easy to love.

    This chapter brought me to tears as I read about my resolve to be the best mother I could be, even though I felt like I was failing. I was the best mother I could be at that time. By staying true to that calling, being the best mother I could be, has led me to be the best person I can be, and to continue to excavate the parts of myself that need more love.

    The person that I was holding on to as I traveled those early days of grief, the essence of who I am, was always present. Some days it was easier to feel her presence and other days it felt like I had been abandoned.

    Leah now has a stronger place in my life. She is always present as a sacred witness to my continued unfolding. These days the unfolding has a different quality to it. My life has an ease and flow to it like it never has before. I used to struggle to be myself, now I allow myself to unfold. The struggle would always lead to self-doubt and self-recrimination. The harder I tried to beat that struggle, the tighter hold it would have on my life.

    It wasn’t until I learned, through my grief journey, the necessity of letting go.

    I learned to let go of the need to control every aspect of my life. I’ve learned to allow what is here to be here, and that by doing that, I give it voice, and expression.

    Rereading my book is giving me gifts that I would not have noticed if I had not returned to these pages to shed a light on the totality and value of my grief journey thus far. The fullness of those gifts is yet to be revealed. I can feel them beginning to coalesce.

    I’m once again humbled and grateful for this journey I am on.

     

  • Chapter 2 ~ Early Grief

    Chapter 2 ~ Early Grief

    I find the juxtaposition of early grief and 21-year grief startling.

    As I went through this latest date marking Leah’s death, it felt more difficult than other years.  Maybe it always does, and I forget that it does. The date of the death shines a glaring light on the event that changed the course of my life.

    Revisiting the time of early grief in this chapter shows me the passage of time in an almost surreal way.  This chapter plunges me into the unknown territory of life without Leah’s physical presence. My feelings were raw and unformed back then. I was reminded of the terror I felt as I faced what was to come, not feeling like I had anywhere near the skills or capacity to do so.

    How does one continue to live after the death of a child?

    All those thoughts were coursing through my body at that time, sending me deeper into my own shell, isolating me from my deepest fear.

    This year as I sat with my feelings, I noticed them circling around me, waiting for their turn. It’s almost like they trust me now, so they can wait quietly until I am ready for them. I invited them in, one at a time, feeling them deeper than I have allowed myself before now. It feels to me that as I continue this journey, that is what happens, each year I am able to go deeper into my feelings, and when I do, they shift a little more, and show me their wisdom.

    It’s always a relief when that day is over, it’s intensity, even now is not somewhere I want to live every day.

    I do take with me the blessings and grace that always show up when I am with my feelings as they arise in each moment.The blessings and grace that allow me to continue this path, to walk with others on their grief journeys and teach them how to tend to their hearts after a loss so deep.

    I always emerge from this time with gratitude.

    Gratitude that I met my grief journey the way I did; by doing that I am able to live my life fully. And that means being able to feel the full spectrum of all my feelings, even when they are painful.

  • Chapter 1 ~ You’re Never Prepared

    Chapter 1 ~ You’re Never Prepared

    In this chapter we find out that Leah has been in a car accident on her way to school.

    She hit a tree, the only one in the middle of a cornfield.

    As I reread my words and remember the feelings, I was struck by just how much I wasn’t prepared to learn what had happened. I describe it as being in a country without knowing the language or customs, and I’ll add here, I didn’t want to learn the language.

    During this time Leah was in surgery and we didn’t know her prognosis. Both Dan and I were going over our last conversations with her, trying to figure out where we could have made a change that would have altered the outcome; that would have prevented her accident.

    We were sitting with the “what ifs,” and the “if onlies.”

    We were praying for her to emerge from surgery with a smirk on her face, and her familiar eye roll. We were sure that our lives would once again return to the way they were before, a normalcy with a few lessons from this experience. I didn’t realize at the time how much I was clinging to that gossamer thread. I could consider no other outcome. We were going to laugh about all this someday.

    We were in the unknown.

    We are always in the unknown, yet this experience, being driven to the hospital without knowing what had happened, waiting at the hospital while she was in surgery, not knowing what challenges she would have when she was out of surgery, introduced us to a level of the unknown that we had never experienced before.

    I had forgotten that Dan and I each had different thoughts about those early days.

    We could barely share our feelings with each other. We had to be strong, for each other; for Peter, our son; for Leah. I could not even allow the thought that Leah may die enter my consciousness. I couldn’t comprehend anything other than the four of us leaving the hospital together, arguing about whether we were going to get pizza or tacos for dinner.

    I wanted another chance to be a better mother for her, for me, and our family.

    I wanted it all back. And it wasn’t to be. I didn’t yet know what was going to be asked of me in the next fewdays. I often wonder if the five days in the hospital were for me and us to prepare in whatever ways we could for what we would be soon facing.

  • The Prologue ~ A Time Between Realities

    The Prologue ~ A Time Between Realities

    When I said yes to beginning this project of revisiting my book and sharing insights from where I am today, I didn’t consciously know that I would be rereading my words.

    I am sure I knew it on some level, and if those thoughts had made it to the surface, I may not have said yes to this project.

    As I reread the Prologue, I was taken back to who I was over 20 years ago; a mother who was trying her best to help prepare her teenage daughter for college. A daughter who tested every limit she was given. A mother who wanted more for her daughter than she had at that age. A woman who was not yet the person she was meant to be in this world.

    I saw myself in that in between time when I knew something had happened, yet I didn’t know the impact it would have on our lives. During that time, I was angry with Leah because I thought this was another instance of limits testing. I was frustrated because sometimes it seemed like I couldn’t get through to her.

    One of the biggest challenges after her death was separating the normal mother/daughter teenage angst from the feelings of pain, loss, and regret. In time I was able to work through those feelings, yet at that moment in time I felt like I was floundering.

    Reading these words this morning took me back to the sheer terror I felt before I knew what had happened. It seemed like a cruel joke that I had to sit with dread and trepidation all the way from my place of work to the hospital, in the back of a police car no less.

    I imagined the worst, yet the reality was far worse than I ever could have imagined.

    I remembered how alone I felt sitting in the car by myself, while Dan was in another car, and we were both traveling too fast down the expressway.

    Looking back now, I still don’t understand why I wasn’t told more about what had happened. I can see the courage and strength that was still lying underground in my being; the courage and strength that I would draw on in the days, weeks, and months to follow. I realize now that I had been preparing all my life for the part of my journey that was just before me. It was a journey that I didn’t want to go on.

    Sitting where I am today, I am grateful for so many things.

    I am grateful that I wrote about what I was going through in those early days even though I had no intention of sharing them in a book.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to be Leah’s mother, she taught me so much. The lessons I learned from her blessed me on my journey and helped me in ways that I still can’t completely comprehend.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to revisit where I was back then.

    Each time I do I receive so many new insights. Insights that help me where I am; and insights that help me to be a better guide for my clients.

    I’m grateful that you are reading my words now, and hope that you will receive blessing and grace toassist you on your grief journey, wherever you may be on that journey.