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!
1) Copy the http: address above the line below. . . .
2) Paste it into your web browser's address bar. . .
3) Hit Enter to find the article below.
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!
Bible Verse for Today!
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USA since 6/7/09
World since 6/7/09
Showing posts with label Child-Loss Grief War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Child-Loss Grief War. Show all posts
As we go through Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, we discover there are many opinions coming our way from people who really have no clue what our new world is like. Much less then could they intelligently advise us as to how to grapple with a world they could not comprehend, much less have a handle on.
(Thursday's Therapy - Only a Few Really Know..), my last post, was about a knowledgable group of people coming up with illogical answers for our needs even though they are often considered to be "experts" in the (psychiatric / psychological) people-helping field. Such a professional faux pas serves as a drastic example that we, the survivors, or "invisible heroes" to our Child-Loss Grief and Trauma "war" simply must attune to our own hearts and souls for how then we must live.
How many of us have had to correct our doctors or our therapists as to the true nature of what we are up against when they toss out superficial bandaids to our deep soul wounds?
Experts in the helping fields must remember two cardinal rules we (I am in that same helping field) must live by, and those are, First, "Do No Harm!" and Second, "Know What You Do Not Know!"
Walt Whitman Graphic, thanks to Dr. Joanne Cacciatore "Invisible Heroes" - thanks to, Bellaruth Naparstek
Gathered from One a Warrior Always a Warrior, ~author Charles W. Hoge, who is both a medical doctor and a U. S. Army Colonel:
Neurobiological research has helped us to understand that PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) is not an "emotional" or "psychological" disorder, but a physiological condition that affects the entire body, including
cardiovascular functioning,
hormone system balance, and
immune functioning.
PTSD can result in
physical,
cognitive,
psychological,
emotional, and
behavioral reactions
that all have a physiological basis.
PTSD is a paradox.
For medical professionals it's simply defined by the specific set of symptoms and impairment.
However, every "symptom" included in the definition (of PTSD) can also reflect normal responses to life-threatening events or the normal way the body responds to extreme stress....
Perceptions Matter. Why is this important? ...If you view yourself...as having a disorder according to what a professional (or society) says, rather than someone experiencing expected reactions from (severe stress), it affects how you feel and think abut yourself....
A negative perception of yourself actually affects your body chemistry.
Perceptions (usually considered in the realm of psychology) involve nerve functions that connect with virtually all organ systems in the body. The mind and body are not separate.
Many therapies focus on helping to correct negative perceptions through a process called "positive reframing." Having a positive view of yourself is an essential starting place toward navigating the reactions resulting from (severe stress) experiences.
Mental health professionals can contribute to the stigma of mental illness through the perception that most everyone coming into their office has something wrong with them. A therapist's role isn't typically one of a minister or coach, but rather that of an educated professional entrusted to make the correct diagnosis so that the right treatment can be prescribed.
This perspective sets up an expectation that this person {the "expert"} is the judge of what's normal or abnormal, rather than an ally helping the client navigate their own way through serious life difficulties.
Some therapists fool themselves into thinking they know what the best treatment is for each individual sitting in front of them. Good therapists understand that they don't know what's best for their client, and set the stage by helping to normalize the experience of the client by saying something like, "I don't see how you could have done anything differently at the time," or "How did you have the strength to respond in that way?"
Everyone who has ever deployed to a war zone (and I would add to a Child-Loss Grief-War) is changed by his or her experiences; it would be abnormal not to be.
Some reactions may seriously interfere with your life, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with you as a person. There are things that you'll identify and want to change, but, more important,
the journey of readjusting...is one of learning to live with your experiences, and of integrating them into who you are....
If we take each component of the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistics Manual that psychology professionals use for ascertaining diagnoses) definition of PTSD and break it down...
Every "symptom" of PTSD stems from things your body normally does in response to severe danger or stress. PTSD symptoms can be manifestations of normal stress reactions to threatening situations, as well as a disorder that requires treatment.
That's the paradox of it.
(In other words, what our bodies do to cope with stress at the time of the severe threat is very appropriate to help one deal with the severe distress in a self-preserving way.
The problem comes when the severe threat is gone, but our bodies are still wired for severe distress!
That is when we start to have problems because we cannot seem to get our bodies to gear DOWN as automatically as they geared UP.
Therein lies the conundrum.
We want to take healthy steps to help our bodies gear down so that the stress hormones that help us in a crisis do not STAY in our systems which could lead to tearing DOWN the very systems the hormones were originally trying to PROTECT!)
~author Charles W. Hoge, who is both a medical doctor and a U. S. Army Colonel, from One a Warrior Always a Warrior
(In Hoge's writings which are italicized above, I substituted "severe stress" for Hoge's word "combat" since my audience is distressed by Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, a different kind of "combat" than war. Unitalicized words are mine.)
To be continued...
Picture from FotoSearch.com
Excerpts were taken from pages 3, 9-11 of Colonel Hoge's book, Once a Warrior Always a Warrior
This week, I was reading about a mother who seems to be fighting her child-loss grief. To be fair to this precious grieving mother, when you have children who are younger than the child you lost, you do feel the responsibility to "keep on keeping on" in a way that sometimes forces you to repress the normal grief surges so that you can function. But the way it was described by this one particular mother made it sound to me that it is possible to squelch the grief and move on with life, like it is simply a choice for any of us child-loss grievers to make...
In my experience on the other hand, the following is true:
Grief WILL "Out."
Our choice is whether or not to let this deep, complicated child-loss grief out in our emotions (to keep it flowing out as I tell my clients), and whether or not we will begin to help our brains process it through the neural pathways in a healthy way...all of which requires
a LOT of Grief WORK...
In my observations of life, if we don't help ourselves to process grief out, it can begin to take a toll on our bodies, on our relationships, etc.
Child-Loss Grief is too huge to simply ignore, squelch, or consciously repress. It WILL come out in one way or another.
So anyway, it was in grappling with all of that conundrum of how do we "live" amidst Child-Loss Grief and also, processing the differences of our grieving styles that I wrote this poem last night:
The White Flag in Grief's War
Father, shall I bear this cross for Thee
Cross of suffering Child-Loss Death and Grief?
You watched Your own Child bear the cross for me ~
Who am I, while earth-bound, t' expect relief?
Is it true Lord, You oft use Suffering's
Crucible through which t' show Your love for us ~
Th' Way of th' Cross, versus from death, buffering...
From th' manger to th' cross, Your Son suffered for us...
If my life's goal is to be more like Thee,
Why am I surprised You'd hand a cross t' me?
Help me embrace this cross, and follow Thee:
Th' cross: Earth's Basic (Training) Camp before Eternity...
"Must Jesus bear the cross alone,
And all the world go free?
No, there's a cross for everyone,
And there's a cross for me."
In this war, I'm not called to fight...
But to surrender to win the victory!
How precious, in a phone call this afternoon from my precious grieving-mother friend, Danielle Helms, she recommended the following very inspired song to me. It was literally "music," in more ways than one, to this grieving mother's ears...
Better Than a Hallelujah
~Amy Grant
God loves a lullaby
In a mothers tears in the dead of night
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
God loves a drunkards cry,
The soldiers plea not to let him die
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah
The woman holding on for life,
The dying man giving up the fight
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes
The tears of shame for what's been done,
The silence when the words won't come
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah
Better than a church bell ringing,
Better than a choir singing out, singing out.
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
Photo thanks to FotoSearch.com
Poem - The White Flag in Grief's War - Angie Bennett Prince - 1/9/2011
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said,
“I am making everything new!”
Then He said,
“Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
He said to me:
“It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children..."
~Revelation 21:1-7 (capitalizations mine)
Picture - Thanks to http://HoangNguyen.cgsociety.org/gallery/464305/
Poem - The Great Grief Brings The Great Battle - Angie Bennett Prince - 9/17/10
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