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  • Reflections on World Sorrows

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    Reflections on World Sorrow

    Francis Weller, in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow, talks of the Sorrow of the World.  By acknowledging the losses in the world around us, we begin to understand how our personal loss seems insurmountable due to our accumulated experiences of loss that we witness in the world. These are not the natural disasters that we respond to with volunteering and supporting donations but, living day to day in response to man’s inhumanity to man. Events like; war in Ukraine, drive-by or school shootings, violence against women, children, immigrants or people of a different race, creed or culture, sexual persuasion are not events we know how to genuinely and compassionately respond to. 

    While the sorrows of the world cannot be assuaged as individuals. We can acknowledge them in community and come to understand what Weller describes as the “anima-mundi.’  Defined as, that intrinsic connection between all living things. To consider the world as “a living organism and we as creatures who inhabit this Living Planet” has been a concept since antiquity. To consider any damage to the planet as a wound or scar is to begin to acknowledge that the immense repercussions of how we as inhabitants of this Earth have profound impact on our environment and the very “liveliness” of earth.

    My wife, Nancy often speaks about alchemy and grief. The transformation that is possible when grief undergoes a change that results in an opening of our souls. This grief of the world registers in our bodies and lacking resources to heal the pain it accumulates, stagnates and manifests as illness, depression, loneliness and despair. When we incorporate our loss, into our being, it results in the experience of growth. The alchemy transforms us.

    Grief Work and Ritual offer opportunity to experience the communal cup of loss. To express our kinship to one another based not on a comparison of loss but of honoring the loss because each loss is unique and profoundly felt. In our sacred complex world, the alchemy that grief allows us to turn our losses into the gold of what might yet be.

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  • Being Arya’s Baba (Part 2)

    Being Arya’s Baba (Part 2)

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    When I look at Arya, I see a bundle of potential.

    At almost 2, she understands everything, and each day has more and more words to express her view of the world. Everything she does is in service to becoming the person her soul already know she is.  We try our best to encourage and support her becoming, while guiding her when she tests us.

    I know that each child born into this world has the same potential and the same drive to become who they are meant to be. And I wonder what would happen if each child had the support and encouragement to do just that, would they be the ones who change the world?

    And what about those of us who somehow found the tenacity to stay the course and find ourselves, do we also have a part in saving the world?  I think the answer is a resounding yes, and I’ll take it a step further to say that as we become adults we have a responsibility to be a part of the solution.

    As Arya’s Baba, I want to make the world a better place for her and the community in which she finds herself in as she grows.

    I realize this is not a simple equation, and that there are many layers of societal and cultural stuff that have been in play for a very long time.  I do think that as a part of the solution, there is also an element of the miraculous involved.  When I take responsibility for my own actions and take a stand for what is true, there is a ripple effect that joins with everyone else who is doing the same thing.  A prayer that joins hearts and becomes something greater than the sum of its parts.

    We may not see the effect of our efforts, yet they are felt far and wide by the greater consciousness, and by God, or the Universe or the Divine.  I believe they are one in the same, and that by living in alignment with my heart, soul and truth, without attachment to the effect I am having, I am in service to Love and the greatest good of the world. By living in this way I am also holding space for my own family, and especially Arya to live in alignment with their own values and Truths.

    The fact that Arya’s life intersects with mine is important, and a tremendous responsibility and honor.

    I don’t take that responsibility lightly, and I fully intend to do my part to change the world.

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  • Creating Flow and Ease

    Creating Flow and Ease

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    I mentioned in an earlier writing that I’ve heard the whispering of my longings since I was a little girl.

    I didn’t grow up in a space that encouraged me to listen to my own inner guidance.  I don’t even know if that was a part of the greater consciousness back then.  I do know that all of my life I’ve felt like I didn’t fit in.  I felt different than everyone else I met.  As a child I thought that meant that something was wrong with me.  I spent my life trying to figure out what that was, so I could be like everyone else.  It didn’t help that I grew up with a severe stutter that began when I was 8 years old.  I already knew that the stutter made me different than anyone in my classroom, as no one else had the same difficulty speaking. I spent most of my time trying not to get called on in class, and when I knew it was inevitable, I was busy running through my head alternative words for the letter sounds that gave me the most difficulty when speaking.  I was never present; I really had no concept of what it meant to be present in those days.

    And yet it was in those fleeting moments of whispered longing that I caught my first glimpse of presence, even though I wasn’t aware of it at the time.  There was a part of me that always knew that the life I am living now was possible, without even knowing what that was.

    Only by being present could my heart be heard above the stress of trying to be what I thought I was expected to be.

    I’ve recently been connecting the dots between all the times I heard my heart nudging me, letting me know that even though I was different, there was nothing wrong with me.  I remembered all of the times a younger version of myself was touched by a deeper ache to know myself, and let her take the lead.

    This was long before Leah was even a part of my life, long before I knew Dan, or thought about having children.  That strong yearning was laying the foundation for my future work.  Being different, and claiming my unique self, helped me to step into a body of work that was not a “popular” choice for an entrepreneur.  I was deeply called to do this work, and there was no decision.  I’ve often said that choosing not to follow my own grief journey in the way that I did would have been much easier that choosing to follow it. And the same is true of walking with others on their grief journeys.

    Saying yes to this calling has always felt like a choiceless choice, something that I have been preparing for my entire life, and something that is a deep and sacred honor.

    I did not look at options for what to do after corporate life and settle upon grief work as the ideal choice for a second career.  (yes, there is a little sarcasm in that last sentence)

    I’ve found that even though grief changed me, it also brought me back my true essence. Today I don’t think of myself as different, or even unique, I am merely me, the person I’ve always been.  The difference now is that I ‘ve fully stepped into the fullness of my being, and yes, I even love myself, all the parts of myself, even the parts that are not always easy to love.

    There have been many twists and turns in the course of my life that brough me from the little girl who lacked confidence, was unsure of her worth, and tried too hard to be someone she could never be, to the, woman that I am today.

    Today I get to live fully, I get to play, and connect with my family in a way that seemed elusive to me early on I my journey.  I am someone who has experienced great loss in my life, yes even the death of my teenaged daughter Leah over 21 years ago.

    What I know about how I met that grief is that I was already used to the uncomfortable and painful parts of trying to be someone I could never be.  This was different, yet is still carries the template of that experience.  When I was in early grief and feeling the deep loss of my daughter, I recognized what was necessary to first dive into that well of grief, and then come out of it with the resources I needed to continue to create a life worth living, even after the death of my daughter.

    Finding my own flow and ease was a long, hard, fought battle.

    A battle that I had to relinquish to allow the ease and flow into my life. Again, presence was fundamental to learning this lesson.  I’ve been on a journey with presence for over 25 years.  It took me a long time to learn to trust the present moment. And even after I did, there were times that I did not turn to it for one reason or another.

    As I turned more and more to presence as practice in my daily life, I learned to let go of holding on to the past, and trying to grasp the future.

    The more I became present, the more my life flowed and the more I experienced ease.

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  • Being Arya’s Baba (Part 1)

    Being Arya’s Baba (Part 1)

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    Ever since we knew we would be grandparents, our friends asked us what our grandparent name would be.  That’s something I never really contemplated for myself. If I were to be lucky enough to be a grandma, that name would be the best possible name my grandchild could call me.  Nonetheless, we played with names. Names like Grand-Dan and Grand-Nan felt playful, and in the end, we mostly referred to ourselves as Grandma and Grandpa when we were with her.

    Until she named us Baba, both of us are Baba.

    We always know which one of us she was speaking to. If only one of us is there, she would ask, “Baba?” And we all knew she wanted to know where abouts of her other Baba.  Eventually she began calling us Baba-Na and Baba-Da, and our hearts swelled even more, if that was possible.

    Being with Arya is not something I can easily describe.  I now know why my grandparent friends used to tell me that I’d never fully understand what being a grandparent really meant until I experienced it for myself. To say I’m enthralled might be heading in the right direction.  I have the luxury of time to contemplate her hair, her hands, her feet, and marvel at their wonder.

    Sitting on the floor with her looking at her books, and her listening to her A Bs and watching her grasp new concepts is an extravagance that feeds my soul.

    Opening the door and being greeted by her huge smile, and a “Hi Baba!” and not moving until I pick her up almost brings me to tears every time. Yes, I love my role in her life and in Peter and his family’s life.

    I know that I was enthralled with my own children too, yet not having the same kind of responsibilities of life makes being a Baba feel indulgent.  The time I have to contemplate her being brings me pure joy.

    Take her hair for example, I’ve spent what seems like hours meditating on her hair.

    Its color, its texture, the curls, and the way it grows out of her head.  The way new layers start growing under the top layers.

    When I gaze upon her hair, I see colors I never knew existed. If someone were to describe her hair color to me, they may say it is blondish.  Yet blond doesn’t come close to the colors I see the dancing with each other to create colors not yet named. Colors light and dark, and in-between, gossamer colors that use light as their expression.

    Yes, I am completely in love.

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  • “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

    “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

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    What happens when your life is going along in a fine fashion, the way you envisioned your life going, no, the way you intentionally created it to be, and then something changes to seemingly spin you off the rails?

    “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans”

    This John Lennon lyric has come to mind often in my life, and revisited again recently.

    The month of May and June 2022 have been full; full of wonderful things, yet full enough to make me step back and take a deeper look at the structure of my life.  While at first glance there was a familiar feeling to the busyness, as I took a closer look, I found that underneath it all was a sense of calm and peace.  I did not feel the panic as I wondered what wasn’t working after I had seemingly carefully considered the structure of my life. (what I used to do until I got to this stage of flow)

    For part of that time, we were supporting Peter and his family with almost fulltime child care for Arya, our almost 2-yearold granddaughter.

    During this time we also had out of town guests, we got sick, (not covid) and our support was needed in additional ways.  Throughout all of this, I was very present, I was still doing the basic things I needed to do for myself, and for our business, and I had a chance to see how the life I created was working. (!!!)

    This year has been a year of further grounding and anchoring deeply listening to myself, and staying loyal to my soul.

    As a part of the move from Raleigh to St. Paul, I not only left behind stuff that no longer was needed, I also examined my resources for my business and relinquished everything that I thought I needed, yet when I put them into practice, discovered that I didn’t.

    Things that coaches I’ve worked with told me I needed to do to be successful, that didn’t feel aligned with my Truth. Things that I thought made me a failure if I didn’t figure out how to fit them into my work. And the judgment that I sometimes felt for myself for not conforming to what others told me would be sure success.  The thing is I tried a lot of those things, and none of them worked.  Why?

    Because they weren’t aligned with my values.

    There are so many strategies, formulas, and techniques that help to create a successful business. And just like there is no one perfect diet or food choices for everyone, there is no one formula for a successful entrepreneur.

    Many coaches wanted me to turn to something other than grief as my work.  Here are some of the things I was asked, or was told.

    “What made you choose grief as a focus?”  (I didn’t choose grief, it chose me)

    “Are you sure you want that to be your message?  Not many people are comfortable talking about grief?” (I know, and it’s so needed……)

    “You talk about gifts from your grief journey, and how you are living a full life, how is that even possible after such a devastating loss? If you tell that to your potential clients, they will think you are making false statements to get a sale.” (I can only speak from my own experience, and as I traveled my own grief journey, I was receiving gifts, the very gifts that allowed me to stay on my path, and yes eventually find meaning, purpose and joy again in my life.)

    “You can’t talk about meaning and purpose you have to illustrate it in your story. It needs to be grandiose and larger than life, you need to have glitzy programs that cost a lot of money, or your potential clients won’t see the value you bring.”  (no)

    About this time, I was beginning to see that most of the advice I was receiving was not in alignment with my own values, my own experience, and my own truth.

    I got really good at discerning for myself what is a good fit for me, and sometimes took a kernel of an idea from a coach and made it my own.  Perhaps that is what they had intended all along.

    Perhaps our coaches, teachers, and mentors are in service to us to help us to learn to be ourselves, unapologetically full of vibrant life.

    That, at least for me, is the life I wanted.  And I found a couple of coaches who helped me with that discernment process and gave me permission to listen to the longings of my own true heart.  Longings that have been whispering to me for most of my life.

    I was able to tend to the inner little child victim who has been a part of my life for so many years. She wanted to know “why me?  why do I have to be the one that……”

    I found that staying there kept me in a loop of doubt, kept me from fully experiencing my own wonder that I see reflected in Arya.

    Arya makes it simple for me to love myself, when in the past it hasn’t been easy, or even possible.

    I look at her and her own love for her self and feel sad for the little girl who experienced original grief at a young age, and lost her innocence without any support to find herself again for many years.  I know that all of the inner work I’ve done, and that I do is not only for myself, it’s also for my family, and for Arya, and now she is like a guru for me.

    As I look back on this recent busy time from where I am now, I can see that the basic structures I had in place for my own self-care,  (the non-negotiable stuff that I need to fill my energy reserves) and for our business, are in place, and do work.

    Were there other things that I would have scheduled if I had the additional time, maybe, yet I know myself well enough to know that trying too hard no longer gets the job done.

    I’ve created a flow that keeps me able to auto correct my course at any given time.

     

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  • 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.

     

     

  • More … Tales from the Ammo Box

    More … Tales from the Ammo Box

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    We just finished our 2nd intro seminar that is entitled, “Changing the conversation around grief”

    One of the topics that surfaced was having more than one type of conversation. I would like to reference the preemptory and the post-traumatic type conversation today. Our idea of changing the conversation starts with overcoming the stigma and reluctance to start the conversation that needs to be talked through. In the case of aging parents, my example of how our son started the conversation was, “Hey, mom and dad have you made out a will?”

    How simple and direct was that question? We looked at one another and admitted that it was time to have these conversations. How much easier would life be if our hesitation to ask a difficult question vanished? The awkwardness you feel betrays the value of answer. So often the question is responded to with,

    “What? I don’t want to talk about that.”

    The symptom of awkwardness in confronting something that you would rather not face. Yet, with the occurrence of an unanticipated death, had the question been asked, then the feelings of grief mixed with guilt could have been avoided. Guilt in knowing that there was something left unsaid.

    However, if you have a plan for your estate, then the conversation is much easier to have. In contrast, a parent may have an estate plan and their survivor may regret that they responded the same way with,

    “Let’s not talk about that now.”

    Conversations becomes a critical part of the grief process or any process really. As we discussed, in the introduction of Seminar 2, “You are not ready until you are ready.” Being ready is acknowledging that you can step into the grief. I have found that the Marine adage of “Over, Around or Through” that only by going through grief can you heal. Going over or around only avoids the issue and doesn’t begin healing.

    Communication is critical in both instances. Having the conversation ahead of time is a preference. In the unfortunate case were the question wasn’t asked, it must then occur post-event. In this case, relying on a post-traumatic event conversation you can begin the process to heal from the loss. Now this event can be anything, I used an example of an estate plan or will however, the example could have been a divorce, the loss of health, death of a grandparent or child. The Grief Recover Institute has identified over 40 different types of events that cause grief.

    Sometimes, we get stuck in the avoidance cycle like a washing machine stuck in the spin cycle. I know I attempted to side step my grief by putting it all in the ammo box. It wasn’t until my grief sounded the alarm and threatened to explode that I paid attention. The compartmentalization of my pain over the loss of my daughter responded with that alarming siren. My alarm showed up for me as a loss of interest in my life and well-being.

    Yet, I wasn’t naming it as grief and I was suffering.  I realized that the pain wasn’t serving me and that by reaching out for help I could  begin to understand how this was grief. I could then heed the warnings of my stress induced behaviors and thereby address my grief. I didn’t want to ruin what Nancy and I had built and committed to and work so hard at. We ech grieved differently and I had to find my own way.

    That is when I began my own inner work and explored Men’s Group work and eventually the Grief Recovery Method that I use in my grief service and support work. Being willing to understand that my heart was broken and that I was having difficulty doing this work on my own opened me to the healing that I now offer to others. More from the Ammo Box in future writings.

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