Welcome! I am Angie B. Prince, child of God, wife of Tommy, mother of 3, Grief and Trauma Life Coach, Psychotherapist, and Mother Grieving. On 8/2/2006, our precious 19-yr-old daughter Merry Katherine was killed along w/ 2 other teens via vehicular manslaughter. Here I share as we agonizingly process our grief and trauma. Email: MotherGrieving(at)gmail(dot)com. Coaching (Tommy or Angie): Call 865-548-4four3four / Counseling (Angie in TN) 865-604-9nine9two. I pray God will minister to you here.
Welcome! I am Angie B. Prince, child of God, wife of Tommy, mother of 3, psychotherapist and Mother Grieving.
Tommy and I met in graduate school in Atlanta, then married in 1979 and started a Christian Counseling/Coaching practice in Knoxville, TN where we still live. We have 1 daughter Merry Katherine, forever-19 in Heaven, 2 sons, Nathan (age 34) (wife Ashley), and Rollin (age 37) (wife Stephanie), and two granddaughters, Ellie and Penny.
In this blog, we process our grief over our Merry Katherine who was killed along with two other teens in a brutal car crash while on the way to the beach on 8/2/2006 (two teens survived). Having lost our daughter suddenly and violently on the cusp of launching her into adulthood, we were thrown into Complicated and Traumatic Grief. We share here our agonizing process of wading through the multiple twists and turns of shattered assumptions, challenged faith, traumatized body-soul-and-spirts, and devastated hearts. May our grief touch some of your own pain as we walk through this difficult but sacred ground together.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" Scientifically Documented!
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080620195446.htm
___________________"Addicted To Grief? Chronic Grief Activates Pleasure Areas Of The Brain"
OR "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" Has Now Been Scientifically Documented!
. . . . . We now have physiological evidence via Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that such "comfort" is indeed, a fact! In debilitating, complicated grief after the sudden death of a loved one, "comfort" was shown by significant nucleus accumbens activation in the brain's reward network!
For several weeks I played this album of The Isaacs who are from up the road from us about an hour from Knoxville, though now most of them live in Nashville where they routinely travel and frequently appear on Bill Gaither's Homecoming productions. We didn't even know about them until we attended a Gather concert here in Knoxville, and there they were, our "neighbors," world-famous yet unknown to us. Since then, I have fallen in love with their amazing harmonies, musical talents and hand-written songs. It is so rare to hear a family singing together these days, and I just love them!
The irony of this particular album is that while I was playing it over and over from my room which is right across the hall from Merry Katherine's room, I am sure she heard the songs over and over and over. Little did we know she indeed would be about to die. Did God know something we didn't when I chose to play those songs? It made me wonder, in retrospect. It is my prayer that these songs were some of the many tools God used to prepare my baby's heart to meet Him...
InWhen the Bough Breaks: Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter, psychologist and grieving mother, Judith R. Bernstein, Ph.D. has some wonderful insights to share about the ridiculous notion that one can "recover" from something as cataclysmic and life-shattering as child-loss:
We know that our grief will never end. We will mourn for our children every day for the rest of our lives. We will never return to normal. But we will live again.
We will be able to enjoy the bittersweet colors of a sunset. We may be productive. Laughter is not out of the question. Life will be forever colored by what has happened.
For every parent who loses a child, one life ended and another life is indelibly changed.
...(O)ur attitudes toward life change dramatically following a trauma. We don't get over a trauma; we adapt our way of thinking and feeling as a consequence.
Dr. Bernstein then shares some ideas from a noted researcher, and then disagrees with her, and others' notion that child-loss grief can have a time-table of a certain length of time until "recovery"...:
Catherine M. Sanders, a noted researcher, author in the field of bereavement (and also a grieving mother) wrote in her book Grief: The Mourning After,
"Our culture has not been educated to acknowledge the length of time necessary to overcome a major loss. This lag of information adds to the burden on the bereaved because they themselves feel that they should have been 'back to normal' long before this."
~Dr. Catherine M. Sanders
As time goes by, social supports diminish because "family and friends expect the bereaved to be over the grief in six months to a year rather than the three or four years that is generally required," Sanders continues.
Even researchers who are working in the arena of bereavement put time limits such as three or four years for grief to be overcome.
Along with "overcome," the word "recovery" is often seen in association with grief.
(Dr. Bernstein's premise greatly contrasts with the notion of "recovery" from child-loss grief held by some of her fellow-professionals:)
...(G)rief, or any major trauma for that matter, is never overcome nor does recovery take place. The course of healing involves integrating that trauma, not overcoming it.
There is a significant difference. To overcome suggests that you get past or get over the trauma and go on from where you left off. But that is not what happens.
No one goes on from any major event in their lives without having that event change them psychologically in some way.
The process of integration involves changes in the person's view of the world, in the way they relate to others, in their values, in spiritual feelings, and so forth.
It's the difference between stepping over an obstacle and being rerouted by it.
(Dr. Bernstein then defines "recovery" and shows how this word does not fit life-changing losses and traumas such as child-loss grief, rape, drug addiction, etc.:)
Recovery: to return to normal; to win back, as health.
Psychology is full of recoveries. People are "in recovery" from alcohol or drug abuse. People recover from childhood abuse or recover from major trauma or catastrophic illness, or so the theory goes.
Recover, overcome, no, let's save those words for those situations from which we in fact do return to normal without alteration, as good as new. Like the flu.
People get the flu, take aspirin, drink plenty of fluids, perhaps stay in bed for a brief period, and then recover. They return to normal, not changed in any perceptible way physically or mentally.
But if we think recovery means return to normal, can we use the word to apply to conditions like drug addiction, like having been raped or abused, like losing your child?
In order to lead a productive, drug-free life after a period of drug abuse, the last thing in the world the individual needs is to return to what was his version of normal. He needs a whole new way of looking at himself, of dealing with frustration, of relating to people, he needs new values, new attitudes.
He should not be said to recover, but to undergo a metamorphosis, perhaps like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. That person needs to change, to find a way of sculpting the former life into a new lifestyle.
We cannot be said to recover, in the sense of returning to a former self, from any major trauma. Trauma as shattering and cataclysmic as losing a child, as rape or abuse, as addiction, as natural disaster, and so forth, leaves indelible imprints on our lives.
We are not the same having traveled that road as we would have been had we been spared that journey.
Events of bone-crunching intensity inevitably leave us different.
The emotional journey people take to regain equilibrium, to be able once again to feel good and value life, to reform themselves so that their loss is somehow integrated into the fiber of their existence--that is the process of mourning.
~Dr. Judith R. Bernstein
(highlights mine)
We will continue with more of Dr. Judith Bernstein's insights and research findings in next week's Thursday's Therapy, so stay tuned!
picture of puzzle from google.com/images
When the Bough Breaks: Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter (1997) ~Judith R. Bernstein, Ph.D. - excerpts from pages xiv - xvi
Grief: The Mourning After, ~Dr.Catherine M. Sanders
Tonight, we as a family watched the first in a series of the Henry Granju story on a local Knoxville television channel (WBIR). This thirty-minute episode is the first in a series about the silent epidemic killing our kids. Sobering. Sad. And haunting.
Katie Granju, Henry's mother, is a new "blog friend" of mine. (You may be familiar with her blog at mamapundit.com.) Katie and her family are graciously sharing their heart-wrenching story with us in an attempt to save other children who may even now be at risk to this silent but deadly epidemic.
Katie's own son Henry, bright, talented, and handsome, got caught up in a drug addiction that along with the drug world that surrounded him ultimately took his life at the tender age of 18. Robert Allison (Henry's maternal uncle) said that the hard narcotics we think of as the ones that hard-core junkies shoot up on, are now available to our kids in pill form...
Tonight's episode traced the tragedy of this bright child whose soul was captured by addiction and whose will was overcome by his craving for more. At age 14 when Henry first smoked marijuana, he said, "Oh, THIS is how I'm supposed to feel!" Scary. It's as though the drug takes the rational part of the brain and holds it hostage, meanwhile slowly destroying his body while his mind is on hold and his body is "feeling" good.
Katie and Henry Granju
The show was very well done, but it was gut-wrenching. Being that my daughter went through a similar process of losing her identity into that swirling world of junk, even if in a different form, it hit home with me...
Then a client calls me to help her walk through what she as a parent should do with her pill-addicted child...
It is all too much.
It literally terrorizes my heart. It paralyzes me. Kids self-destructing. Bright kids. Beautiful kids. Talented kids. Sensitive and Loving kids. It kills me.
Back to Henry's story. This one child had such a huge impact on everybody who was related to him. Brothers. Sisters. Cousins. Uncles. Aunts. Grandmother. Mother. Daddy. Step-mother. I was struck in the show by how many lives were emotionally undone by what Henry was into and how it was destroying him little by little, and now, are all undone by his death.
His mother knew Henry was going to have to get clean or die. Everyone was helpless. This was his only choice, and no one knew how to help him. They tried everything, but still, were helpless.
We are professionals in the field, and we didn't know how to help our own child to Stop.The.Madness.Before.It.Is.Too.Late.
And it was.
Katie and Henry Granju picture thanks to mamapundit.com
Jesus suffered throughout his earthly life. Jesus did not only suffer at (His) death or under Pontius Pilate (as the Apostles' Creed says). He suffered
at His birth in a poor stable,
when He was a refuge from Herod,
in the misunderstandings of His family,
when the disciples were unable to comprehend Him and His mission,
in His homelessness and fatigue,
from the incessant pushiness of the crowds and the constant critique of the religious leaders, and so forth. Similarly we diminish His sufferings on the cross when we limit them to the physical or even the spiritual.
Imagine the emotional weight of bearing all our accusations and rejections, the sin of the whole world -- of being for our sake... made to be sin {He} who knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Envision the temptations hurled along with the scorn and abuse of the bystanders; why not take again Your divine power and hurl a few lightning bolts at them?
We don't want to ponder the extent of Christ's afflictions because we don't want to bear them ourselves. We are like Peter rebuking Jesus for forecasting the fullness of His agony. Peter wanted a triumphant Messiah, not One calling him to follow Him into hardship.
...Oh, Jesus, don't let this happen to You -- because, if we follow You, we will be called to divest ourselves of comfort and warmth, to find ourselves in a cattle stall, a place of muck and cold, humility and poverty and persecution.
~Marva Dawn
Jesus wept over his best friend dying.
Jesus wept over Jerusalem not responding to Him ~ How I longed to gather you like a mother hen gathers her chicks, but you were unwilling...
Was Jesus a Victim?
So, would Jesus be considered a victim? Nowadays we call people who go through such torment, persecution, grief, and ridicule, "victims."
Scripture says Jesus suffered the cross and the shame of the cross for the JOY that was set before Him...to be seated at the throne at the right-hand side of His Father. He suffered, not because He had to, but He chose to be obedient to His Father to complete God's will for us.
Can we suffer the desperate void left by her loss for the JOY of reuniting with her that is set before us?
Our son Nathan's view of his baby sister who was not only a sister, but a very best friend to him, is
"God knew the one thing I wanted the most for my little sister was for her to go to Heaven. And even though it may take a lifetime of (my) suffering (from) her not being here, I'll gladly accept it knowing she's in paradise, (awaiting) me to join her."
~Nathan Prince
*****
Is our weakness and suffering a tool in the Master's hands for a greater love for our child than we can imagine?
Is our debilitation actually a tool used for more spiritual empowerment in the hands of Creator God?
Is our weakness possibly a part of the "ground-wire" for God's earthly circuit to His resurrection power?
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus informs us that it is only the poor in spirit, the meek and the mourners who will see the kingdom of God (and its King) break into their lives.
~John of Ruysbroek
Perhaps Jesus has a different set of scales or a different standard of weights by which He measures the weakness we carry around with us everyday in our child-loss grief. May He realign our values to fit with His so that our lives become His vessel for what is more important for eternity than for what is needed for our present happiness and comfort.
May we trust Him to use us in His ultimate eternal plan. And may we trust Him in the weakness of our grief's stupor ever to carry us...
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