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Category: Thriving after Loss

  • 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.

     

     

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Family Vacations

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    Recently we took a family vacation with our son and his family. We went to northern MN, to the boundary waters. The lake we were at was at the Canadian border. As a matter of fact, the border was in the middle of the lake.

    Here are some photos of our trip. I think they speak for themselves.

    I also know for a fact that I would not have been able to enjoy it like I did if I had not met my grief the way that I did. (Reason 7, 468 for meeting grief when it arises in you life….:)

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  • Navigating the Holidays after Grief

    Navigating the Holidays after Grief

    Every year when August hits I am reminded that the holidays are right around the corner.

    The holiday season can be stressful on it own without the added layers of grief.  Grief is a difficult emotion to describe because it is made up of so many other feelings such as sadness, anger, devastation, and so many more.  These feelings often show up in different intensities at different times.  What helps you cope one time may make you dissolve into tears the next.  Having some skills, or some alternative traditions to draw on when you find yourself hit by intense feelings can help you to cope with the holidays.  Here are a few that worked for me.

     

    • Take a look at your family traditions. Are there any that feel too painful?  Give yourself permission to do things differently or not at all this year.  You may feel differently next year.

     

    • A change of scenery may help. Traveling to a new destination can take you out of the too familiar that may be too painful for you.   You will still miss your loved one, and remember past holidays, however you will not be faced every day with constant associative memories that you are not ready to face, especially if your loss has been recent.  Even if your loss has not been so recent, take care of your own needs.

     

    • Self-care is especially important during times of stress.When I am feeling stress my grief lives right under the surface.  Give yourself some extra self-care this holiday season.  I suggest that you make a list of things that nourish you, or give you pleasure.  It is good to have this list handy when you do feel stressed or overwhelmed.  You can choose something from your list without having to think of what you want to do when you are already feeling stress. Naps can be great stress relievers, as can mindlessly doodling.

     

    Remember that grief changes with the seasons.  What worked this year may not work next year.  There is no right or wrong way to meet your grief, no timetable on when you will begin to heal.  Give yourself the time you need, honor your own process.  Each member of your family will process grief in their own way too.  You can let them know their way is ok, sometimes that is all that is needed, to know that however we are processing grief and wherever we are our grief journey is exactly right for us.

    That can be enough to allow us to relax a little and let the healing begin.

     

  • 10 Lessons I Learned from my Grief Journey

    10 Lessons I Learned from my Grief Journey

    Grief is not linear

    I used to think that I would move through each stage of grief progressively. When I completed one stage, I would move to the next, never to return again. Grief is nothing like that. It is messy and chaotic. Especially in the early days, we can be all over the place. I began to think of the stages of grief as aspects of grief. Stages to me suggested a more linear movement. I also realized that when I felt a feeling again after thinking that I was “done” with a certain stage, that when a feeling comes around again, it is a slightly different feeling.

    Everyone grieves uniquely.

    There is also no right or wrong way to grieve. This can take pressure off when we hear things like, “Aren’t you over that yet?” or “It’s time to get on with your life.”  And you may feel differently on different days, or times of the year. Listen to your own needs.  This may be difficult in the early days of grief when you are still reeling from your loss. This is a time to go slow, don’t try to do too much, be gentle with yourself.

    Grief was a doorway to transformation.

    This was a big surprise for me. I never expected to be able to live a meaningful life again after Leah died, let alone find my grief journey to be transforming. It was only after I allowed myself to feel all of my feelings that I was brought to a place off “now what?”

    Grief is nothing like I thought it was before my daughter died.

    Not because I spent time contemplating what grief would be like, I definitely did not. Yet, I remember thinking that it was not what I expected it to be. This is a good reminder that grief shows up differently at different times of our lives.

     

    I’m still the same person I’ve always been.

    Maybe even more so.  I think it’s more like grief removed all of the layers of protection I had built up so that my true self is the one who is now living the life she was meant to live.

     

    Everyone in a family has a different experience of grief, even though they are grieving the same person.

    That is because everyone has their own unique relationship with their loved one. In my own experience, my husband, son and I each had to meet our own grief before we could be of any help to each other on our grief journey. Grief brings up a lot of stuff, feelings, regrets, things we wished we could have said or done. Each of us had our stuff to work through.

    No one likes to talk about grief.

    Not even me, ok, maybe that’s not completely true, I talk about grief a lot, and I’m more comfortable talking about it now than when grief was new and raw. We don’t want to be vulnerable. Talking about our grief makes us vulnerable.  That’s why it’s important to find a safe space with someone you trust before you delve into those difficult and painful feelings.

    Grief is a Life-long Journey.

    We often think that grief arises only when we lose a loved one. Maybe you’ve discovered, as I did, that grief visits us many times throughout the course of our lives. Anytime we experience a loss, we experience grief. The loss of a pet, a job, a friend who moves away, the loss of our health, a relationship or divorce, the loss of a dream. These are just a few of the life experiences that we may go through. When we don’t recognize them as grief, they can stay underground and wreak havoc on our health, physical and emotional.

    My grief journey brings many gifts.

    This is one that had me scratching my head for a while. How could grief bring gifts? And who was I to deserve a gift after my daughter died? That was when I still believed at some level that it was my fault, and that not being deserving of gifts was a way to be punished for not keeping her safe. The gifts began arriving when I was able to bring a feeling into my heart. As my heart shifted the feeling, I would receive and insight, as well as a miraculous gift. A phone call from one of Leah’s friend telling us something about our daughter that we didn’t know. A random meeting with Leah’s favorite teacher. A lilac in my mailbox when there was not lilac bush in our neighborhood. Eventually I began view these gifts as blessings and grace, exactly what I needed to continue on my path.

    Distraction and diversion will not make my feelings go away.

    Our first response to the overwhelming intense feelings of grief is to push them away, or use a diversion or distraction like food, or TV to take our mind off of our feelings. While these can be helpful, eventually they stop working.

     

  • My Book

    My Book

    After I began helping others to navigate their grief, I thought to myself,

    “This is the life I was meant to live”;

    referencing the message I heard shortly after Leah died that said, Losing Leah is too high a price to pay to not live the life you were meant to live.

    About this time, I begin to hear that it was time to write my book.  I resisted writing it for all kinds of reasons. I told myself,:

    I’m not an author,

    I can’t write,

    I don’t want my vulnerable story out there for anyone to read, and on and on.

    I resisted writing my book until it was easier to just write the darn thing!

    I began a writing boot camp to see if I had a book to write.  I still doubted myself, and I thought if I wrote a book at all it would be an ebook, and it would live where ebooks live, thereby not being a “real” book because I couldn’t hold in my hand.

    The boot camp consisted of writing 1000 words for 10 days, and then sending them each day to my writing coach.  After the ten days, we had a phone conversation. He told me, not only did I have a book, my book needed to be a physical book I could put in someone’s hands. There went my ebook idea.

    I spent the next 3 months writing my first draft, and then sent it back to him.  We had a 2-hour conversation, going over the book chapter by chapter.  He helped me to format it so it was cohesive, and gave me ideas on how to flush out each chapter.

    I wrote for another 3 months, everyday, writing and editing, again and again. When it felt complete, I found someone to help me edit and self-publish it.  This was really happening!

    While it was being edited, I did a lot of work to release old beliefs about my value and worth so that I cold talk about my story when my book was ready to publish.

    That first year, I took my book on the road and did over a dozen events in Raleigh, where I lived at the time, as well as Chicago and Boulder. After that year, I claimed the fact that I am an author as well as a speaker.

    Today, when I pick up my book and read a portion of it, sometimes I wonder who wrote it. In some ways it felt like it came through me.  While I was writing it the words flowed easily. I find that is true most of the time when I am writing. I am able to touch a place where my words describe what I am feeling, sometimes before I even know that I am feeling a certain way.

     

    Writing my book was another step in saying yes to the life I am meant to live.

    You can find my book here.

     

     

  • What Does Healing From Grief Look Like?

    What Does Healing From Grief Look Like?

    I’m often asked what it means to heal from grief.

    It’s a question I’ve pondered for over 20 years, and I’m not sure even now I know what it means.

    We hear often that “Time heals all wounds.”  Time by itself isn’t the only factor; it’s what you do with that time that makes the difference. If I broke my arm and allowed time alone to heal it, the bones would eventually knit back together.  My arm may not be very useful to me.  If I had it set in a cast, and then did physical therapy, my arm would then have a better chance of regaining full functionality.

    The same is true of grief. If we do nothing with our feelings, stuff them in a drawer and hope they go away, what we may find is they seem to get louder and more intense.  All we want is relief from the incessant overwhelming feelings, and for things to be the way they were before we experienced our loss.

    Let’s look at the dictionary definitions of healing and heal:

    Healing-Adjective

    • Curing or curative; prescribed or helping to heal
    • Growing sound, getting well, mending.

    Noun

    • The act or process of regaining health

    Heal-Verb

    • To become whole or sound, free from ailment.

     

    Looking up these definitions sent me down a rabbit hole, looking at definitions of curative, (serving to heal) mending, (an act that mends or repairs) of becoming whole, (comprising the full quantity) etc.

    Each definition provides another layer of meaning, yet none fully describes what healing from grief means to me.

    With each definition, I became more and more sure that the healing that is described in the dictionary looks nothing like what healing from deep grief looks like. The closest I can come to what healing feels like for me is this. As I began to emerge from the day-to-day fog and shock of my daughter’s death, what I describe as healing came in glimmers of hope.

     

    • A smile after I heard a song that reminded me of Leah.
    • A day that I didn’t sob all day long. In the early days I stopped wearing make-up because it was cried off my face before I got to work.
    • Being inspired to paint again after a couple of years of not wanting to get my paints out of the closet.
    • Sleeping better at night.
    • Wanting to eat nourishing food.
    • Wanting to get showered and dressed in the morning.
    • Being ready to go through her clothes and her room. (I did this with someone who did not know her, which made it easier for me)
    • Decorating for Christmas again. (this looked different every year, I’ll write more about this in specific blog about navigating the holidays.)
    • Being ready to move from the house we lived in with her. (after 7 years)
    • Wanting to bring a painful feeling to my heart because I knew it would shift. There were many years that I still avoided this, even though I knew it worked.
    • Being ready to write my book and share my story.
    • Being ready to speak about my story.

     

    I can point to these as sign posts along the way like I was reclaiming my life, even though it looked different than it did before. I didn’t experience healing as a linear journey. There were many starts and stops, and sometimes it felt like I was taking one step forward and several backwards. The common ground was continuing to see hope and light, no matter how dim, at the end of the tunnel.

    Everyone’s healing journey is unique just like everyone’s grief journey is unique. What is your experience of healing after a loss?