Thursday's Therapy - You Know You're Getting Stronger When. . . ~with Helen Fitzgerald

Thursday's Therapy

You Know You're Getting Stronger When. . .

~with Helen Fitzgerald

The following is a list created by grieving mother and hospice worker, Helen Fitzgerald. It is with mixed feelings we share these thoughts with you; some of them we cannot imagine ever going back to (looking forward to holidays?), but we could be surprised one day. We will be working on our own list meanwhile; hopefully we can share it soon.

Helen's list is actually entitled by her as, "You know you're getting better when…" But if you think about it, in many ways, we have all become "better" people amidst our grief (as opposed to life before our grief) because we now know for a fact what is really important in life! So, at the least, I would possibly use a different term than Helen used in characterizing her list as, "You know you're getting 'stronger' when you…" But there are many good things about the list so we wanted to share it with you. Thank you to Helen Fitzgerald who wrote the book which contains this list, The Mourning Handbook, a Complete Guide for the Bereaved.

You Know You're Getting (Stronger) When. . .

The progress through grief is so slow, and so often of a "one step forward and two steps backwards" motion, that it is difficult to see signs of improvement. The following are clues that will help you to see that you are beginning to work through your grief:

• You are in touch with the finality of the death. You now know in your heart that your loved one is truly gone and will never return to this earth.

• You can review both pleasant and unpleasant memories. In early grief, memories are painful because they remind you of how much you have lost. Now it feels good to remember, and you look for people to share memories with.

• You can enjoy time alone and feel comfortable. You no longer need to have someone with you all the time or look for activities to keep you distracted.

• You can drive somewhere by yourself without crying the whole time. Driving seems to be a place where many people cry, which can be dangerous for you and other drivers.

• You are less sensitive to some of the comments people make. You realize that painful comments made by family or friends are made in ignorance.

• You look forward to holidays. Once dreaded occasions can now be anticipated with excitement, perhaps through returning to old traditions or creating new ones.

• You can reach out to help someone else in a similar situation. It is healing to be able to use your experience to help others.

• The music you shared with the one you lost is no longer painful to hear. Now, you may even find it comforting.

• You can sit through a church service without crying.

• Some time passes in which you have not thought of your loved one. When this first happens, you may panic, thinking, "I am forgetting." This is not true. You will never forget. You are giving yourself permission to go on with your life and your loved one would want you to do this.

• You can enjoy a good joke and have a good laugh without feeling guilty.

• Your eating, sleeping, and exercise patterns return to what they were beforehand.

• You no longer feel tired all the time.

• You have developed a routine or a new schedule in your daily life that does not include your loved one.

• You can concentrate on a book or favorite television program. You can even retain information you have just read or viewed.

• You no longer have to make daily or weekly trips to the cemetery. You now feel comfortable going once a month or only on holidays or other special occasions.

• You can find something to be thankful for. You always knew there were good things going on in your life, but they didn't matter much before.

• You can establish new and healthy relationships. New friends are now part of your life and you enjoy participating in activities with them.

• You feel confident again. You are in touch with your new identity and have a stronger sense of what you are going to do with the rest of your life.

• You can organize and plan your future.

• You can accept things as they are and not keep trying to return things to what they were.

• You have patience with yourself through "grief attacks." You know they are becoming further apart and less frightening and painful.

• You look forward to getting up in the morning.

• You stop to smell the flowers along the way and enjoy experiences in life that are meant to be enjoyed.

• The vacated roles that your loved one filled in your life are now being filled by yourself or others. When a loved one dies he or she leaves many "holes" in your life. Now those holes are being filled with other people and activities, although some will remain empty. You are more at ease with these changes.

• You can take the energy and time spent thinking about your loss and put those energies elsewhere, perhaps by helping others in similar situations or making concrete plans with your own life.

• You acknowledge your new life and even discover personal growth from experiencing grief.

Wednesday's Woe - Metamorphosis: The Need to Cocoon

Wednesday's Woe

Metamorphosis:

The Need to Cocoon

The presence of that absence is everywhere.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay

Failure to mourn impairs a life. Most people's problems with mourning are not caused by compounded losses; their problems are caused by other people's desires to get mourning over with.

Family, friends, and medical staff want accommodation of the loss as quickly as possible. Only through mourning can we find a life on the other side of loss.

We need to grieve losses and find people who will accept that grieving. To grieve well is to value what you have lost.

~Arthur Frank At the Will of the Body

The simple fact is that what is considered abnormal or pathological in other losses is typical after the death of a child in the sense that it is experienced by the majority of bereaved parents.

Failure to delineate a new, more appropriate model of mourning and to determine what constitutes pathology within this group has resulted in the development of inappropriate and unrealistic expectations for bereaved parents, who cannot and must not be expected to have the same bereavement experiences as other mourners.

~Therese Rando, Treatment of Complicated Grief

**********

The Need to Cocoon

Coming to understand that most of us bereaved parents will have the symptoms of "complicated grief" as a normal part of our grief to one degree or another, perhaps you will understand why we have felt the need to "cocoon." As bereaved parents of our precious Merry Katherine, we have needed to "hole-up" in the safety of our home to do a massive amount of grief work alone, together, and with our Lord...

It is hard work.

We feel like we are walking around with no skin on.

We cannot handle any additional stimuli to our already overburdened hearts.

Our belief-system has been attacked.

Our view of God has changed. (Of necessity, our view of God needs to be cleansed of some of the *pagan-infiltration we didn't even realize had seeped in until a tragedy as great as this occurred... And so, we must work hard to cull away the false, and to cling to the true that is of our Lord, for He is Truth.)

Our view of our very selves has changed.

Our view of our parenting has been challenged.

Our view of our career has been impacted.

So, our philosophy is that a natural part of grieving the death of a child is the need to cocoon into the safety of our chrysalis. In this chrysalis, it may "look" like nothing is happening... But inside, there is an enormous amount of energy being expended.

A tremendous amount of emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual energy is being expended to process through our losses - yes the loss of our child, but also the loss of many other facets of our lives as well.

******

Search: what happens inside a cocoon

Answer: Lots!

1. When the caterpillar has eaten enough, it turns into a pupa. It stops eating, finds somewhere safe, and becomes very still. Pupa never eat and seldom move at all.
2. It molts its skin the same as it does when growing, but instead of another larval skin, it secretes a thicker, stronger pupal skin. Generally, the pupa then breaks out of the old larval skin, though in many moths, the pupa remains inside the old larval skin. You can often find the remains of the caterpillar skin around the tail of a Butterfly pupa. {Some of the elements of the old life become part of the components of the "new normal"?!}
3. A lot of the caterpillar's old body dies. It is attacked by the same sort of juices the caterpillar used in its earlier life to digest its food - it sort of digests itself from the inside out in a process called histolysis. Not all the tissue is destroyed, however; some of the old tissue passes on to the next stage.
4. Special formative cells called histoblasts - until now dormant in the larval body - come into action. They form a new body out of the soupy mess that the digestive juices have made of the old caterpillar body. They do this using histogenesis, which is the same biochemical process that all insects use to turn food into part of their bodies. They make a new heart, new muscles, new digestive system - everything. {A new normal?!}
5. During this whole time, the butterfly or moth can't excrete anything, so all the waste products accumulate. When it emerges from the chrysalis, it leaves behind a reddish-brown meconium that is made up of all the nitrogenous waste.

The Beautiful Glass-Wing Butterfly!

*See Frank Viola's book, Pagan Christianity

Search: what happens inside a cocoon

http://carlygoogles.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-happens-inside-cocoon.html

with highlights and {notes in parentheses} mine