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Category: Grief Recovery Method

  • Being Stuck

    Being Stuck

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    Over the years, Nancy and I have become aware that being stuck in grief is a problem for most of the people coming to us for grief support work. When a griever comes to us, they are acknowledging that there is a blockage. This blockage prevents them from the healing part of the journey that accompanies the loss. For me, that blockage was my own ignorance of what grief was. 

    How was I to treat the pain that I was suffering through?

    In previous posts, I have mentioned that I had a compartment that I call “the Box” to put all of the grief and pain that I felt after our daughter, Leah died. Into this box, I poured feelings of all the things that I didn’t want to acknowledge. All the birthdays, holidays, and celebrations including the graduations, weddings, child births that were never going to happen. These are the emotions that I could not afford to feel. I closed the lid on the box and made sure that I stood on the cover as I tied, taped and hermetically sealed it.

    I could not deal with feelings and emotions at the time.

    I had work to do and a family to provide for. I learned the hard way about the myths of grief, that I had to be strong, stoic, and shoulder the burden. I thought that the “Box O’Grief” was better on the top shelf of my mental closet and I made sure that the door to this compartment was locked until “I had the time” to reflect. In my mind, I would do this alone in my own time and lick my wounds where no-one could see.

    I was stuck and didn’t know it. Stuck with those many myths of grief and had no honest way of facing my feelings about her death. I had attempted to rally and carry on. I tried to be pragmatic, go back to work and to my “normal” life. What I realized was that there was no going back. I admit that at this point I slipped and began the tumble down the slippery slope. I had no-one to talk to because I had isolated myself. I had a hard time of it at work because I could not concentrate or make decisions.  I lost interest in many things and I sat in front of the television, drank too much and played video games to numb feeling.

    How do you begin to move towards healing?

    What can you do when you understand that you are stuck and blocked from feeling?  Is there a path forward? Realize that you may be on the hamster wheel, spinning in old stories of “What if” and “If Only”. Understand that you are responsible for these thoughts.

    Your mindset and what you focus on can change. How?

    I went to my closet, opened my box and began to see that I owned this grief. It wasn’t someone else’s fault. If I didn’t dig in and start sorting it out, then I wouldn’t begin to be able to heal and to start feeling again. Much of the work that I do with the Grief Recovery Method touches on these very topics. The work helped me look at my grief and my hurt in a new way. I was able to unravel and unlearn the stories I thought I knew about grief from watching my parents grieve their losses. I confronted grief and learned many new lessons. It is my invitation to you to begin your recovery journey. Seek the resources that will help you get off your hamster wheel and into a new mindset.

    It is possible, I did it!

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  • Memories of Grieving

    Memories of Grieving

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    Looking back on my 66 years on the planet and being involved with the work that we do, has given me time to reflect on the memories of the grief that I have experienced. I often use the example of my little league story. As a youngster, I finally got a base hit only to be left stranded on base after a third out. It dashed the hopes I had of a winning season.

    I had forgotten this small example of grief. After years of stuffing my emotions and trying to be strong in the face of adversity, it took a willingness to open the door to this memory. Now, I can remember clearly the feeling that I had been let down and that life wasn’t fair.

    At the time, I was probably told to forget about it. After all it was only a game yet, I realized that I had not forgotten this loss. I had carried it with me until I began doing my emotional work caused by the death of our daughter.

    What was it that made me hold on to this pain?

    So often, kids feelings are discounted. We attempt to distract them from their present moment of suffering the pain of a loss. We are inconvenienced and made uncomfortable by their mood and behavior. We look for ways to distract and deflect their pain.

    I can remember being asked, “How was your day at school?”

    My reply was, “Terrible.”

    In response, “Oh, thats too bad, here have a cookie.”

    My feelings were discounted and deflected in one quick statement. If this is what they have been raised with then its no wonder kids give us single word responses, grunt or totally ignore us. There is a “better” list of “50 questions to ask your kid after school” floating around FaceBook these days. Kids look for engagement. Showing interest in what they have to say is a great way of getting that engagement.

    As a child, I learned from my parents example of dealing with the loss. As their parents and siblings died, I observed the ways that I would later handle death and process my loss. Watching how a parent mourns is the primary way that we find out about this concept of death. We have seen many examples of what not to do in this situation. We have also heard many things said that can’t be unsaid. How can being told that grandpa is sleeping in heaven help a child understand that grandpa isn’t going to wake up to play with them again? Being afraid of falling asleep has been attributed to this example. We don’t do a good job of explaining death to children.

    The Grief Recovery Method has a program that is specific to kid’s grief and the premise is that children need help to process their response to loss with the help of an interested and caring adult. An adult as a co-participant in the grief recovery process, provides the support and explanation of many of the questions that a child might have of death, loss or grief. As a Grief Recovery Advanced Specialist, this program and all the Grief Recovery Institutes offerings seek  to engage and explain how our uncommunicated feelings prevents us from healing from loss.

    Having resources in troubling situations is important for anyone dealing with the pain of loss. Our advice is to find the resource that works for you and to ask when you need help. 

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  • Working with Grief

    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.

  • Husband & Wife Grief

    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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  • 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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  • Grief Recovery Method

    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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  • Grief Work

    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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  • 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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  • The Impact of Unrecognized Grief in the Workplace

    The Impact of Unrecognized Grief in the Workplace

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    On November 8, 2000 my world changed forever. That was the day that my 17 year old daughter Leah died.  My life was shattered. I had no idea how I was going to go on living without Leah’s presence in my day-to-day life. I wanted to completely isolate myself. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I tried to eat enough chocolate chip cookies to numb my feelings. I couldn’t sleep because that meant waking u to remember, yet again, that she had died.

    At the time I was working in a job I loved, one that allowed me to use my planning skills and my resourcefulness to accomplish sometimes seemingly impossible projects. I was a project manager for a Contracting Company. I returned to that job about a month after Leah died. I couldn’t concentrate. I found myself staring off into space often. My coworkers were hoping that having something to focus my attention on would help me heal.  That didn’t work, and I found out later why. Keeping busy is a myth of grief. If I kept busy and didn’t allow my feelings out, I would stay in that place of pain and isolation.

    Around this time I received this message,

    “Losing Leah is too high a price to pay to not live the life you were meant to live.”

    Those words knocked the wind out of me further.  I felt like I had been dropped in a new country without knowing the language or customs, and now I was being asked to inspire the residents of that country to save it from impending doom. How was I going to do that?

    Up until that time my feelings had been overwhelming, intense, painful, and unrelenting. Even with the diversions I felt like I was never going to find a way out of the deep pool of grief I was in.  I knew I would have to find a way to do something with those feelings. I discovered that rather than doing something with the feelings, or trying to control them; that I needed to feel them. Because they felt SO overwhelming and intense, I thought if I felt them that I would be completely destroyed. As I began to find ways to express my feelings in a safe place, I was able to concentrate more at my job. I didn’t feel as spacey. Make no mistake, the feelings were still strong, as still are sometimes today.  I was beginning to find resources to meet those feelings. I was beginning to learn the new language and adapt to the customs of the new territory I in which I found myself.

    As I traveled deeper into that territory I discovered that grief is a life long journey. We may name it as grief when we lose a loved one like I did; however we experience grief anytime we go through a life changing experience. Loss of a job, a relationship, major lifestyle changes, loss of a pet, or any time our lives don’t go the way we want them to, we experience grief.

    In 2019 The Grief Recovery Institute reported that unresolved grief has a hugeimpact on the workplace.

    The hidden costs of unresolved grief exceeds  $116 billion!

    The looked at a wide spectrum of losses, such as those I mentioned above, and at three (3) major categories, poor decision-making, lack of concentration, and safety.

    When I saw those statistics I was startled. When I first went back to work after Leah died, I certainly could have made poor decisions, and I wouldn’t have even known it. I’ve already talked about my lack of concentration. Safety is always important, and in the field I was in, safety is first and foremost every day.

    I began to wonder, what if more business leaders were aware of the impact of grief, current or unresolved on their businesses? What if there were resources available to their companies and employees to help them navigate grief and the associated issues, like higher stress levels, lack of concentration, and the inability to feel their feelings?  What if there was a new conversation around grief, and it wasn’t so taboo.

    In my work with private clients, I provide all of these resources, and I help them find meaning and purpose in their lives again. My vision is to bring this work to a larger audience. I’ll be sharing what that is going to look like, and how you can learn more about it. In the mean time, I’d love to hear from you. What are your thoughts about grief in the work place? What conversations do you think are important?

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  • Grieving Bravely

    Today, while sipping my coffee, I read some postings on the Grief Toolbox. There was sharing, sadness, and resolve. Regarding one particular entry, I wrote:

    “Grief shows up uniquely for everyone.

    Just reading the posts, you see a wide variety of feelings. There was anger, sadness, and compassion. But the poem I read spoke of wanting to shield the world from pain and to go on an inward journey.”

    What made this piece such a powerful statement for me was that healing can occur while grieving. Each grieving person who speaks their truth, whether it is from their pain or from their sense of healing, presents us with a gift. While suffering and pain is real during grief, when we speak from our heart an act of bravery is performed.

    To write of bravery recalls all the fictional constructs of physical muscle, stoic fortitude, and personal strength that allow nothing to deter you from your goal. But, in reflection of the many stories of the loss of a loved one, an image of a deeper kind of bravery has emerged.

    Grief involves broken heartedness.

    A painful condition when you realize that your life has been changed. What you thought was your path is shaken and you are left to wander. You stumble on in a wilderness of the unfamiliar. You do not know where you are and things seem hopeless. When you are lost you may not realize that you have choices. But the choice is to stay lost and stuck in your current funk or to find your compass and move.

    I read the personal stories that are posted on line. Some people have overcome and are aware that foundational changes have happened in their lives. Some wish that things could go back or be different. Some lament that they will never again know what they will do. The sadness and pain that flows from their words emanates from the pages.

    During grief, your pain is potent and paralyzing.

    People may spend a long time in their pain. Once you have reached the point where you have emptied yourself of that sorrow the bravery enters.

    This bravery is drawn from within; when you feel like you have nothing left moving forward takes courage.

    To meet the darkness of your feelings takes a brave heart. To know that you make a decision not to forget your loved one but to carry their memory takes strength.

    A moment of decision occurs when you take up the hand you were dealt or, as my mother would say, “to bear your cross”. In that decision, your grief can be transforming. It is not about missing your loved one, but of finding a way within yourself to love them in a different way. It is allowing yourself the permission to conclude the former relationship and dream a new way to carry those feelings that allows your heart to heal. You can then enter the new phase of your relationship in a way that honors their memory and builds a positive place for you to live.

    Grieve bravely for yourself and for the lost ones who you remember and love.