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Category: Men’s Grief

  • Tales from the Ammo Box – Elder Academy

    Tales from the Ammo Box – Elder Academy

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    Another edition of Tales from the Ammo Box

    In browsing today, I came across an article from The Elder Academy and it sparked a few thoughts that I would like to share and expand on. When we experience loss, so many changes happen.  I relate this to when I was confronted by the loss of my daughter. My wife, Nancy and I had our world turned upside down and little was left that was recognizable.

    On that November 2000 date, we experienced a moment that transitioned what was familiar into chaos.  Like most people faced with an unexpected death, we were overwhelmed. We needed reorienting in our changed worlds and lives, but without a roadmap or guide it was nearly an impossible task for me. Grieving is exhausting, no matter what kind of loss you have. Reorienting took me awhile to maneuver. I was not available or not showing up for Nancy or our son Peter. I just went through those early days in a haze. I didn’t broadcast my need for help because I was just drained. I isolated,  being quiet and self-protective in an attempt to regain balance.

    I walked in fog; twisting on a path through through the unfamiliar landscape of grief. Nancy said that at times she felt the need to walk on eggshells around me. I returned to work in an attempt to keep busy, to numb the pain and attempt to put on a strong face. After all, as men we are told to be strong and sIlent. I gained weight, drank too much and lost interest in most activities. I didn’t fully know who I was, who others were and made some bad career and personal decisions.

    In those early days, I realize now, that I was not trying hard enough. I was at a point where just showing up was difficult and I struggled with the inertia and exhaustion. It wasn’t until I became too uncomfortable living in the mess that I was in, that it was either change or give up on everything I had built. I chose to salvage my damaged life and to try to regain my identity and well being. I had assumed that I was going to make it, but I didn’t know how my recovery would play out.

    “Knowing that you don’t have a clue about how to help yourself can be a huge gift to yourself.”

    Along the way I spoke to professionals who planted seeds for my eventual recovery. I discovered the Grief Recover Method that spoke to me on my level and learned of men’s work. In short it took a lot of effort. Today, I use those building blocks to help others in their recovery.

    “Not knowing is allowing openness and spaciousness to reveal the mystery and provide a path to understanding.”

    This is especially true when grief is present. Not knowing is one of the hardest things for people to master. It often seems dangerous to take a leap of faith in a time when things are in chaos.  Our mind attempts to fill in not-knowing with all kinds of assumptions, assertions, projections often just making us more confused.

    In grief, we have to navigate by guesswork, prepare to be wrong, and at best be open to discovery. My father used to tell me something like this and I never understood it until I was in that situation. “Hope for the best, expect the worst and take whatever comes,” he would say. Again, it boils down to a choice that I made and that you can make too.  Are you ready to take a positive healing step and set the pain of your loss aside? It doesn’t mean you will forget the loss but that you can let go of the pain. 

    If you ask someone who is grieving how they are, there may be reasons why they can’t or won’t give a full answer. Don’t presume to fully comprehend what someone should be doing or what their capacity is. They are hurting and need help. You can be there for them and listen with an open heart. There are resources you can guide them to and a conversation may be the beginning of their journey to healthy healing.

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  • Tales from the Ammo Box – Temple of your mind and Warrior Culture

    Tales from the Ammo Box – Temple of your mind and Warrior Culture

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    A few days ago, I journaled about the area aligned with my eyes on the side of my head, referred to as your temple. And being a good follower of the obvious, the origin of the word struck me. What better name could you have for this area?

    Nancy and I both talk about today bringing your feelings to your heart to experience them and I understand that that is difficult for many. So when I think of Christ preaching in “the Temple” I am envisioning those words landing between my ears. In this inner chapel of my mind where ego and self square off against being conscious and being “woke”, I believe. By that i mean, that all my authenticity, my words and actions are examples of how I show up in the world.

    The issue is to not remain stuck in a warrior mentality.

    How then does this relate to the mythopoetic notion of warrior culture. In men’s work, one starting place for engagement is to invoke the warrior “self” as a quest to find meaning. I like idea that this invitation ignites a calling to go deeper. The issue is to not remain stuck in a warrior mentality. Calling the Warrior self into “consciousness” is a first step in a process that engages other important aspects of a man including the artist, inventor, lover and the “king”.

    Therefore, if you become stuck in one place, you can become the cannon fodder casualty of your inner war. When you look at the results of war and what it brings and that’s not the place I ever want to be. So when I became stuck in my grief, I had to go deeper because I didn’t have all the puzzle pieces of myself fitting neatly together. I had anger, shame, guilt backing me into a corner. Yes, I had to fight or better engage with those feelings as a first step. I then became a student of my grief and now I find myself in a place of mentorship. To take up the task of speaking of my grief, I accomplish my mission of serving those stuck in their grief. I do this by elevating the conversation, removing the stigma of talking about uncomfortable things.

    “Only by normalizing the difficult conversation… move through the emotions that grief brings.”

    When your heart is broken from a devastating loss you seek relief from pain and sadness. If you walk around with the idea that you can’t express your feelings, then you can’t find that relief. It is only by normalizing the difficult conversation, that grief becomes less scary and painful. You can release the pressure of holding everything inside if you make that choice.  Your choice is to respond not react to the discomfort.

    That is why we call you and invite you to hear our conversation, participate as you are called to and become part of the community to move through the emotions that grief brings. We want you to be successful in meeting your grief in a safe environment and become comfortable in Being with Grief.

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  • Another Installment of Tales from the Ammo Box

    Another Installment of Tales from the Ammo Box

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    The Ammo Box contains tales from my past that influenced my life in both big and small ways. These stories come from my parents, my siblings and the people who have come into my life at one time or another.  I have described the ammo box as the place I put things. The container for the bad things that happened as I grew and didn’t have a place to share or a way to express the accumulated emotions. Now, I come to realize that holding all that grief and all that pain did not serve me and so I open the ammo box before it can explode.

    Revealing the things we believe to others, especially about grief, can bring us right back to that “moment when”…(fill-in your description here).

    For me, it was the death of my daughter, Leah that brought me to my ‘Moment When.’ I like to consider these posts of mine as conversations, the kind done sitting down across the table from you and not shouting across a bar. Someplace safe where I tell you something in confidence about myself in the hope that by being vulnerable I can let go of being strong, grieving alone and simply tell you my story.
    Leah was 17 when she lost control of the car she was driving to school. We don’t know why it happened. We saw the skid marks but the ‘why’ will always escape our knowledge. We were not prepared for what came next but after 5 days, all brain activity had ceased and she was removed from life support. Thus began our grief journey.
    Maybe that moment for you, wasn’t a critical life trauma. I am talking about the moments that revealed  something that changed your thinking. Suddenly, you understand things differently than you did. It could be an “A-HA” moment or just a glimpse of a possibility of change on the horizon. The distance to be covered from where you were to where you are headed.
    Our thinking changed after she was gone and our world turned upside down. Nothing was normal and there was no going back to the way things were before. It challenged us and made us consider things differently. And things in our life that seems foundational shifted.

    What has to change?

    The glimpse across to the shore of broken dreams indicates that change is headed non-stop toward you.  The moment when you are faced with yourself and your beliefs.  For some, it is a place that makes us cower and we retreat without a direction or purpose. There are those who make up their mind to take a different direction. What will it take to make the change from stuck to moving in a different direction? Those are the people we are reaching out to.
    As a kid, I liked hanging out with my parents and grandparents as they played cards on Sunday afternoons. After the dishes were washed and everything was put away, the cards came out and the adults arranged themselves as partners at the table. Ready to relax a bit, perhaps have a beverage and a palaver.

    Palaver is a real word that means idyl chatting like you do when your playing cards.

    If you are the adrenaline fueled poker player then our Sunday afternoons were not for you. It was about catching up on the local news while spending idle time. The adults didn’t mind or didn’t notice that we sat under the table playing and listening to their chit-chat. Not that we understood much but we were part of the family scene. When it was discussed that my aunt had seen a doctor, it wasn’t anything unusual. I didn’t know what cancer was or how it might create change in our family.
    This was one of the first places that I learned about what it meant to be family, and how our story was to be shaped. There were lessons to be gotten from these Sunday afternoon times. Lessons that didn’t register and as the tale unfolded, the lessons had important missing elements. Those elements involving what to do with and how to react as our feelings surfaced. How would our family be impacted once our family was reduced by one. So like many, my education suffered because the tools I needed to understand and address grief are not presented in neat time release capsules. It was messy and I witnessed sadness, anger, fear and a host of other emotions as we attempted to navigate the roller coaster that is life.
    So when Nancy and I open up “The Conversations around Grief” as a webinar series, these are the things we talk about.  The everyday events that all families go through. Some families navigate grief better than others. Some families never make it. Our hope is that by sharing the things we observed and how we came through our daughters death together that can be shared by us for you. It is our hope that you will pick up some nuggets that help you in your journey. We want everyone to be successful at facing the uncomfortable moments and be able to move in a direction that creates meaning and purpose. I hope that you will consider joining us.

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  • Tales from the Ammo Box

    Tales from the Ammo Box

    Today I was struck by another question. On a typical day, I’ll either find myself thinking about how did “That Guy” think up “that idea” and gift it to the world or I end up musing about the lyrics to songs going through my head. Since I started this men’s grief series that I am calling the ammo box, some of the songs going through my head have been Chicago,  Jethro Tull and Paul Simon (with or without Garfunkle).

    The ammo box was the place that I stuffed my feelings into. Anyone who worked with me, knows that the Pink Floyd song, Comfortably Numb was a go to for me. Stuffing my feelings made me feel comfortable and it numbed the senses. So for a while it worked to “help me get by”. That is, until it didn’t. Then the feelings came back and demanded to be seen and acted upon.

    So I use the image of an ammo box like the Grief Recovery Method uses a pressure cooker image. Or for any guy who is reading this, a boiler or an ICE radiator.  It brings me back to thoughts of my origins, my family and my father. This also leads me to the Simon & Garfunkle song, ‘I am a rock.’

    The refrain towards the end of the song:

    And a rock feels no pain

    and an island never cries

    The entire song is such a powerful expression of avoiding feeling and a suffocation of emotion. The idea that as a stoic rock you can avoid pain and as that as an isolated man, you never have to cry. Now that idea makes my blood run cold. Especially, with what is happening in the world. Our attitudes and approach based on never being hurt also prevents us from being sympathetic and compassionate toward the less fortunate victims in Ukraine.

    I grew up in a household where my father’s father lived with us. I got to see my father interact with his father. As a grandfather, Herman was not the kind of grandfather that I am. Then again, think about growing up in America after WWII and being called “Herman, the German” (I need to cut him some slack).

    Needless to say, the refrain of the song applies to him. I never saw him express any other emotion than maybe disdain. I don’t know if the was because of something that happened to him and he resented us or his situation but he was not a happy man. As for crying, it was only into a bottle of Old Crow that he kept in his closet. Gives me another appreciation for, “You are what you eat or in his case drink.”

    Not to judge him, but to use these images to place a comparison on the evolution of expression that occurred in my experience. The choices that I made to be more conscious and aware of the moments in life that give it richness and meaning. That day almost 21 years ago and the meaning that hit home.  The day my daughter got into an accident on the way to school. The 5 days we spent being bombarded with crushing emotions and tidal feelings; waiting to hear if she was going to make it. Then the ‘coup de gras’ of having to remove her from life support. I did not have the experience or the emotional bandwidth then. So like Herman, I chose to feel, no pain. I used the only method I had, which was to bottle it, box it and tighten the seal. To store it until a time I could process it or it consumed me.

    Because, it was what I knew,

    It was what I had seen. I was limited in understanding or any teaching that my parents could impart. I had to choose and I chose to grow and successfully handle my grief process. Over the course of time, I have come to understand the importance of expressing these to the people I come into contact with.

    It is another reason to have conversations about this kind of topic. “Because, it was what I knew,” and now I am ready to successfully incorporate these messages, these data points, and experiences into a better version of myself than it was when I started this life.  That’s what Nancy and I hope to do for anyone willing to do the work and engage with “Being with Grief”. Helping your process of grief has become our mission. I know there is a lot of hard lessons we learn in our lifetime. Having tools and cultivating the desire to successfully handle what you are thrown. So like the little league coach, Go out and practice practice practice. You can get better at being with grief.

     

     

  • Tales From The Ammo Box

    Tales From The Ammo Box

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    Preface: The ammo box is a physical illustration of how I stuffed my grief.

    As I start this storyline, I begin to understand the relationship that I have with my father who died less than a year after I got married. That was 45 years ago and I can’t help but think that our hopes and dreams were never to be realized due to his health failing him. It was ironic that the man who never seemed to have a sick day or failed to go into the office could go as quickly as he did.

    I realize now that the long hours he put in contributed to his early death.

    Not only working at his regular job but his commitment to many after hour drafting jobs to help support the family that he created for three children relinquished through adoption. His health decline, rapid as it was had signs that as a young man I did not recognize. After all, I was going to live forever so why didn’t he?

    As is true with many who suffer loss, there was an expectation that there was time to plan and act upon those plans. How quickly that evaporates when life throws you a curve. The more unexpected, the more unprepared you are the harder the new reality hits home and knocks you flat. It was true for me and my siblings. Each of us had expectations of how dad who be there for us. My sister would miss him walking her down the aisle for her marriage. My brother would miss Dad’s attending his graduation. I would miss the opportunity to work with him on projects, working side by side as my dreams changed after he died.

    Remnants are all I have.

    The ammo box is just one of the token pieces of his life that I have to reflect upon. The ammo box which now represents the place where I buried my emotions after the death of my daughter and never had the tools to constructively deal with my grief. The contents of this real ammo box reminds me of the contents of my psyche, bits that surface from time to time to remind me of my success and my failings. For example, after he passed I realized that it held among other things drill bits. A perfect metaphor for drilling down into grief and the emotions struck when trying to get to the my truth.

    Now as a father, I have come to realize that as much as I attempted to have a better and different way of raising my own family that there were gaps in how we raised them. Conflict was one of the blindspots where I failed to show by example how to deal with one of the troublesome aspects of humanity. Namely, we don’t always agree with one another and that this gives rise to conflict. The basics of fight, flight or freeze are not the only options to deal with conflict when it arises. There is a constructive conflict option that allows for open questioning and the attempt to reach a satisfactory resolution without resulting in a harmful conclusion.

    In our family, my initial instinct was to freeze when I would get myself into a situation where my parents had to reprimand my actions. Whether it was getting caught smoking as a teenager, bringing home grades that were not up to my potential or being late for family dinner. I was stuck like the deer about to get slammed by the truck frozen in the glare of my parents eyes.

    In grief, we likewise have options that usually manifest as freeze because we are unaccustomed to being in the situation of having to deal with what is confronting us. It stops our forward motion and it seems like time is paused. Fleeing isn’t an option in the case of an accidental or unexpected death and there is no fight response because you have lost what you would fight for. Freeze is usually accompanied by a general disconnect from the situation and many poor decisions and choices can affect the outcome.

    What Nancy & I have come to realize is that having the conversations now before a crisis is involved can deepen our connection and opens our hearts to our loved ones. Then when the time occurs, the communication is already there. Then the bedside watch as death comes knocking, isn’t as much a traumatic drama. What has been revealed in these preemptory conversations will have filled the gap, salved the hurt and have made way for a better death. Preparing for a better death by breaking the seal that locks our words in our hearts and de-ices the chill that keeps us silent in our inner dialogue. That is our hope in continuing to explore this uncharted territory and to change the conversation around grief.

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  • Grief Associated with Loss of Health

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    One of the fears that most people have as they age is the loss of health. I know this because as it has become a real life situation that I happen to be facing.   I am facing surgery in a couple of weeks and the fear and surrounding grief associated with this loss is taking a toll on me.

    I was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer.

    In my case, fear is irrational but it is present nonetheless. I have every reason to believe that the surgery will be successful and that I will live to a comfortable old age. Yet, there is fear and the doubt that comes from think all of the possible “What if’s” that creep into my mind. This is where the internet becomes a blessing and a curse. There is a lot of good information and options that are detailed in the various websites but there are also the horror stories of what people have had to live through.

    Based upon my diagnosis, the doctors say my options are chemo or surgery. Surgery being the surest form of treatment, it is the course that I have opted for. Knowing this, I have tried to prepare and to get my affairs in order. Nothing like facing surgery to make you consider your Health Care Directive. By the way, I encourage everyone to take the time to consider your estate and how you want to be treated if there needs to be decisions made regarding your health and you can’t make them yourself.

    Being aware and planning for something like surgery is much different than having an accident that causes you to be admitted and treated for injuries. When our son was born, we were involved in a head on collision with a drunk driver. Nancy was 8 1/2 months pregnant and the accident sent her into labor. I, on the other hand, was in another hospital miles away from her being treated (maybe re-constructed is a better word) for catching the engine of our import car in my lap.

    Also, there is a big difference of being hospitalized at 26 than it is being hospitalized at 66. At 26, I was optimistic about my recovery and looking forward to healing, getting back home, enjoying a growing family and building a budding career. At 66, I am happy to get up each morning, greet the new day and spend time with my grand daughter(s). Your priorities change and you begin to value time in a much different way.

    Each person grieves in their own way and letting go of what you are makes it possible to embrace what you will become. You can’t hold onto both. So I am resolved to accept that I will have a new normal and that together, Nancy and I will make our way through this unknown territory. That together we can bridge what is left behind and look for the best of what is yet to be.

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  • Friendship Grief

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    Some friendships are meant to last a lifetime while some blossom beautifully and fade. There is grief associated with each of these types of friendships. What does it mean to be a friend? How can you tell a long term from a short term friendship.

    I hope that everyone has a friendship or two that time never seems to touch.

    A lifetime friendship is the kind of relationship that allows for a break of a week, a year or a decade but brings you right back to the same comfortable feeling of knowing that this friendship endures.

    The likes and dislikes may change, as even more substantial changes are bound to occur.

    When time has passed and life intervenes in ways that you can’t imagine, friendship endures. There is no expiration date no matter the circumstance. Maybe, it is a spouses death or a divorce but in essence you still connect and find comfort in being accepted for who you are. Your relationship to the other isn’t altered by the facts and you can stand authentically in your own skin with the scars and bruises both physical and emotional. If you have basked in the feeling of knowing a true lifelong friend then you have been blessed.

    The other type of friendship is a different type of blessing.

    These shorter term friendships have a different texture and feeling to them. It may start as a physical attraction. An immediate like of some characteristic or physical attribute. It may be a colleague at work who you admire for their work ethic or a particular ability. It can start as simply that they notice you and give you their attention. We all want to be recognized. It is built into our makeup that we want to shine brightly and be recognized. From these early indicators, a friendship may blossom, finding time to spend together and share some of ourselves. But being short term there seems to be a limit on what this type of friendship olds. It may be limited by a set time period, the length of a job or a semester in school. A friendship can end for any number of reasons. Moving to a new location, a breakup, new job opportunities or it may culminate in a type of lesson that we learn from and add to our life lessons.

    So how do we grieve these friendships and why are they different? Long tern friendships are only limited by, time distance or death. There isn’t a limit and it will always “just Be.”  However, I have had many friendships that have run their course. Some for the reasons I mentioned, we moved, a job ended or I learned that the friendship in some way did not serve to make me more aware of my authentic self. When this lesson arose there was no choice but to allow the friendship to fade. Over the last year or five this may have been a lesson for you. Did a friendship fade because of health concerns, political or religious beliefs that somehow conflicted with what resonated for you?

    There is such anger and mistrust in the world over concepts and beliefs that it may seem that we will never find common ground or a path forward together. There is grief present in these situations. There are uncommunicated messages that hold us back from showing understanding, from being authentic and we end up turning away. I am reminded of the Pink Floyd song, “On the Turning Away” with hope in my heart.

    “…No more turning away from the coldness inside

    Just a world that we all must share

    It’s not enough just to stand and stare

    Is it only a dream that there’ll be

    No more turning away.”

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  • More Insights on Men’s Grief in Marriage

    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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  • 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.