Friday's Faith - When there's a Mess…

Friday's Faith

When there's a Mess…

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All graphics, thanks to ~M For the Survivors on ~pinterest

Tuesday's Trust - Don't Mess with a Grieving Mother!

Tuesday's Trust

Don't Mess with a Grieving Mother!

Since your assumptive world has been torpedoed,

Who can you trust?

And what can you trust?

Compassionate Friends has been very good to repeatedly tell us vulnerable Child-Loss grievers,

"Don't let ANYONE 'should' all over you. YOU decide what's best for you at all times."

Coming off the holidays, then the death of my mother, I had been getting all kinds of pressure about what I "should" be doing. And now, we have had another family event, upon which there was going to be a family get-together over that event (with a different part of family than the previous-mentioned events), and bless glory, here come the manipulative guilt-trips again... And this, from a person I generally like pretty much, is a likable person, and is usually a fairly sensitive person, but not this time...

WHAT?! I honestly don't think I could be this clueless with a grieving mother even before I became one.

WHO do these people think they are, and why are my feelings being treated like so much mincemeat for them to just step over before they kick me in the heart?

Why does no one hear my "NO"!? Is it because "It just isn't the answer we wanted to hear, so let's ignore it?"

It seems there's a grandiose judgmentalism out there that others think they know how to run my life better than I do. And over what? A party?! You've got to be kidding me. NOTHING about that is sacred. These people are majoring on the minors, and we can't even get the majors figured out thank you. Leave us alone so we can please try to get the majors figured out. YOU handle your minors if you think they are ALL important.

I have a new scale in my life, and none of the hoopla matters. What matters is what is real.

What gets put through the meat grinder when you lose a child is

"The world is predictable, and I'm in control."

And the rebound effect of that is -

"Things are chaotic, and I am helpless."

My emotions are FULL, thank you. If I have room left over for other family issues, I'll let you know. But don't you DARE presume that things surely are hunky dory by now when I still can't even function, much less have room to fulfill your social obligations you have set up for me.

And that's all they are folks. Social obligations. They are not litmus tests for how much I love, I assure you.

How do we get it through people's heads, our lives have been turned upside down and inside out?

When this same person taunted me that she started to come to my house to sing Christmas carols over the holidays (when we weren't up for coming over to their house for a get-together!) just to get us to come out of the house, wisely my son told them that wouldn't be a good idea...

I assured her he was right, then told her when someone comes over to my house without calling first, I not only go to the door with a loaded gun, I go to the door with that gun loaded AND cocked. Don't mess with my PTSD that can signal DANGER at any turn...

BEST not to MESS with a GRIEVING MOTHER, period!

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Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand. For the Lord is able to make him stand.

One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God, and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord....

You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or, why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat... So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way... If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died...

Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.

~Romans 14:4-19 NIV

Picture thanks to FotoSearch.com

Thursday's Therapy - “Personality Intensification”

Thursday's Therapy

“Personality Intensification”

from

A TCF Speech – 8 Things I’ve Learned About the Grief of a Grieving Parent

Part Seven of Eight

Sunday, July 6, 2003 - TCF National Conference

Closing Speech by Charlie Walton

Part Seven

7. "PERSONALITY INTENSIFICATION"

I learned a new term recently that helped give a name to something I had observed that happens when sudden grief occurs. A gerontologist at our church was conducting a class on the problems of aging, and specifically, how to deal with aging parents. One of the things he said is that, as people get older,

a phenomenon occurs which is called

"personality intensification."

As the good doctor struggled to explain the meaning of "personality intensification," someone in the class spoke up and said, "Oh, you mean that, as you get older, you just get more like you have always been." The doctor had to agree that that was a pretty good definition.

You've probably seen this in older people. If they were grumpy as young people, they are going to be even more cantankerous as they get older. If they were sweet and loving and forgiving all their lives, they are probably going to be folks who grow old gracefully.

It's just that aging removes some of the motivation to hide our natural characteristics, and "personality intensification" is the result.

Well, I think the same thing happens when grief enters your life.

The motivation to monitor and adjust the way you behave just kind of melts away and your personality characteristics intensify.

For some people, that can be a blessing - they may have needed to open up and be less careful about life. For others, it can be really disastrous.

Sometimes you hear folks say that the death of a child is likely to cause the death of the marriage of that child's parents. That's just not true.

What happens is personality intensification. If there were cracks in that marriage relationship, the stress on those cracks will be intensified by the child's death. On the other hand, if that marriage relationship was a strong one, it will grow even stronger.

It is important for us just to know about "personality intensification," to know that it occurs naturally, and to recognize it when the added stress of grief is making it happen to us. It's not by accident that the customary wisdom of the ages is "Don't make any major life decisions for a whole year after the loss of a loved one."

You are not yourself, and you shouldn't expect yourself to be yourself. You just gotta tell the world to wait.

Thank you Charlie Walton for your insightful observations! May we use these insights to better understand our complicated grief and to take steps to make our lives healthier in the midst of them.

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Another way to define Charlie’s phrase of “personality intensification”:

Personality Intensification –

What happens in the volatility of grief over your child’s death is that

· Whatever strengths you had before become stronger.

· Whatever weaknesses you had before become weaker.

· Whatever fault-lines were present in your life before, whether in your personality, or in your relationships, or both, those fault-lines become heightened or more intense, and thus your life feels more unstable.

· Sometimes your own intensified strengths and weakness work counter to one another and collide. For instance, your naturally compassionate heart becomes more compassionate so that you begin to help others in their grief, but if you have difficulty with boundaries or with time management, your once-positive work can become overly stressful and at times disruptive. Your strengths and weaknesses, at that point, have collided.

· Other times, your fault-lines are exacerbated by the intensive and pervasive grief process to the point of cracking and creating more chaos in your already over-stressed life. These added stressors effectively create more disruption in your already stressful life.

Stress can create either negative or positive changes in a person. Although

"personality intensification" can create more challenges to our system, even if

those challenges temporarily create chaos, ideally, those challenges can create

a new, positive growth in a grieving mommy or daddy. That is certainly my

hope for you!