Saturday's Sayings - Progress in the Healing Journey… - Part Nine

Until you're broken,
You don't know
what you're made of.

via ~Death of a Loved One/Facebook*

Saturday's Sayings

Progress in the Healing Journey…

Part Nine

"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man."

~Antone de Saint-Exupery

~~~

"Amidst our Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, when you think about it, we have been assaulted emotionally, physically, and spiritually! We never really 'heal' from Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, but we're always in recovery. 

"We can be in a process of healing, but healing will not completely happen this side of Heaven."

~Angie and Tommy Prince
Mother Grieving Loss of Child blog

~~~

"The case of a parent losing a child is very special because the most deep-seated protective and nurturant emotions are brutalized. Because this “injury” is so severe to such primitive emotional processes, the grieving parent is likely to feel and express the pain associated with it for the rest of his or her life."

~Dr Joanne Cacciatore

~~~~~

If indeed there are "stages" to our Child-Loss Grief, then this may be the best list:

THE SIX STAGES OF GRIEF

1. Sadness

2. Overwhelming Sadness

3. Incomprehensible Sadness

4. Crippling Sadness

5. Misery and Despair

6. Acceptance of Your Never-Ending Sadness

via ~Wings of Hope-Living Forward

~~~~~

My emotions are too much to bear

I'm blinded and can't imagine the ones who care

It starts with a memory, then the sadness creeps inside

I debate whether to tell anyone; I have too much pride

I have soo many friends and family but feel so alone

However though, I don't want any visitors in my home, 

putting on a front so no one can see the sad unhappy lonely me

Feels like a fight; beating the ever life within me

Flashbacks of my Loved one haunt me every night

It's like it's happening all over again and I don't like the sight

having a battle in my mind and I'm losing the war

My tears stream down my face as I lie on the floor

I'm usually a very happy person and can brighten anybody's day

But when it comes to my painful grieving, it doesn't work my way

via ~Death of a Loved One/Facebook* 

~~~~~

"To overcome Grief
One has to fully surrender to the process."

via ~Death of a Loved One/Facebook*

~~~~~

Please do not tell me how I should be

You really don't know what is happening to me.

You may feel exhausted by my grieving so hard

Doesn't make you an expert to drill me with no regard

I'm doing my best to overcome my grief

Living in this hell daily; I wish it was brief!

If you don't like what you see just turn around

I don't have a light switch to shut it down.

I know I can overcome this in time you will see

for this grieving process to be ceased

So Understand my dilemma or don't say a word

Either/or, crying and sadness needs to occur.

via ~Death of a Loved One/Facebook*

~~~~~

You never stop loving 

someone

You just learn to live

without them.

via ~Remembering Loved Ones/Facebook* 

~~~~~

I will always be near,

although you cannot see me.

~Unknown author

via ~Death of a Loved One/Facebook*

~~~~~

Grief was never meant to keep us sad or (too) lean

but how does one come out of it when people are so mean.

When someone you love deeply is not living anymore,

The feelings are great, beyond words can (implore).

It knocks a strong man to his knees begging and (pleading),

Makes our Faith be questioned, searching for meaning.

It's an unexplainable jolt, a pain that devours our sanity,

Keeps us wondering if we can save our own family.

All I have mentioned is part of the Journey;

You can't rush grieving, there's no such remedy.

Days become months, then Years soon to follow;

Whatever it takes, Don't let (any)one make you shallow.

via ~Death of a Loved One/Facebook*

~~~~~

My Loved one has gone and the pain is so deep.

It's like living on auto pilot with a triggered weep.

So many scenes and reflections run through my mind

A Happy Strong Family we all were; once upon a time

Does God know my devotional faith has shook?

I can't go on pretending or open His good book

I feel so betrayed from all that has happened to us.

People say it's part of a master plan. "We need to trust"

"God has his reasons and one day you'll find"

"Why your precious Loved one had to die"

I replied, "Spare me your religion and repetitive speech"

"There's nothing left from me; My faith has breached"

Total disappointments, my mind left with conscious reality

Crying hard not knowing it's getting the best of my sanity.

Only time can make me come back to understand

For now I'm living in this torture with no future plans.

via ~Death of a Loved One/Facebook* 

Our faith has been "breached" at some level by our child's death. God is real, but there are some myths somewhere along the way that we have swallowed, and now we must sort out myth from truth. Even those of us who have been blessed with a depth of knowledge in Scripture and a long walk with God Himself, have unwittingly swallowed some of the "cliches, smug sanctities, cheap slogans…" running rampant in today's religiosity that ultimately "woo falsely or promise glibly," and now it is incumbent upon us to separate out the chaff from the wheat of our Faith.

~Angie Bennett Prince

(phrases in quotes, by Jerry Sittser)

~~~~~

via ~Death of a Loved One/Facebook

In our western culture, we tend to forget the value that Jesus, God's own Son showed for the children around Him. When we think about our little ones being so vulnerable before they were killed, perhaps it can help us to realize that Jesus spoke many parables about the importance of the Shepherd seeking out His sheep, never leaving one behind but doing whatever it would take to go and find them and rescue them for Himself... 

When His own disciples tried to shun the little children away from One so important as Jesus, Jesus reprimanded them saying, 

"Suffer the little children to come unto Me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

~Matthew 19:14 

~Angie Bennett Prince
Mother Grieving Loss of Child blog

~~~~~

"He who has gone, so we but

cherish his memory, abides

with us, more potent,

nay, more present

than the living man."

~Antone de Saint-Exupery

~Out of the Ashes/Facebook*

Bodies may have boundaries but spirits have none. Why shouldn't we feel the potent, abiding presence of our beloved child when we are at our most vulnerable, and therefore open in our spirit? Newest psychological research recognizes one of the most invaluable aspects of a Child-Loss parent's grief process is that of establishing a bond with our deceased child, and this ongoing bond is vital in enabling us to Progress in our Healing Journey.

~Angie Bennett Prince

Picture, "Broken" thanks to ~Death of a Loved one

*Death of a Loved One/Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Death-of-a-Loved-one-Quotes-Poems-and-Resources/310515538965543?sk=info

*Remembering Loved Ones/Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Remembering-Loved-Ones/338742372882107

*Out of the Ashes/Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/outoftheasheswerise7

Saturday's Sayings - Progress in the Healing Journey… - Part Eight

Until you're broken
You don't know
what you're made of.

Saturday's Sayings

Progress in the Healing Journey…

Part Eight

Broken things have been on my mind as the year lurches to an end, because so much broke and broke down this year in my life, and in the lives of the people I love. Lives broke, hearts broke, health broke, minds broke. On the first Sunday of Advent our preacher, Veronica, said that this is life’s nature, that lives and hearts get broken, those of people we love, those of people we’ll never meet.

She said the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward, and that we, who are more or less OK for now, need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. 

~Ann Lamott

~~~

I don't like to hear/read '...it's what your child would want.'

I really believe she would want to be grieved relentlessly; yearned for desperately; unreservedly loved, even beyond the grave. Never forgotten or 'gotten over.'"

~Grieving Mother, Marsha Bell

~~~

Amidst our Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, when you think about it, we have been assaulted emotionally, physically, and spiritually! We never really "heal" from Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, but we're always in recovery. We can be in a process of healing, but healing will not completely happen this side of Heaven.

~Angie and Tommy Prince

~~~

"The case of a parent losing a child is very special because the most deep-seated protective and nurturant emotions are brutalized. Because this “injury” is so severe to such primitive emotional processes, the grieving parent is likely to feel and express the pain associated with it for the rest of his or her life."

~Dr Joanne Cacciatore

~~~~~

Don't hold in your emotion

during 

Grief

Most of us have heard the term "emotional baggage," and admittedly carry some around. We spend our time keeping busy with work, friends, socializing, cleaning, daily tasks, shopping--anything to avoid having to face or feel our emotions that we are carrying around from past painful experiences, death of loved one or traumas. The problem with this, according to mind/body medical experts, is that repressed feelings don't just go away. They actually remain in the body, taking up our energy and laying the groundwork for physical ailments, illnesses and disease.

"Many illnesses are quite simply the end result of emotions that have been stuffed, unacknowledged, and unexperienced for years," says Christiane Northrup, specialist in women's health and author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom. "Unexpressed emotions tend to 'stay' in the body like small ticking time bombs," she says. "They are illnesses in incubation." 

According to experts in mind/body medicine, our emotions have a profound effect on us because they are physically linked to our bodies via our immune, endocrine, and central nervous systems. These experts agree that often the seeds for a patient's physical problems were planted by the patient's earlier emotional traumas.

~via Death of a Loved one: Quotes, Poems, and Resources

~~~~~

Words of Comfort 

mean the world to me 

when they come from another 

Grieving Mother.

~Joy Bowman

~via Grieving Mothers

~~~

We become so thankful for our fellow Child-Loss Grievers… who ofttimes become more like family to us than family…

~Angie Prince

~~~~~

I had my own idea of grief.

I thought it was the sad time

that followed the death of someone you love

and you had to push through it

to get to the other side.

I am learning that there is no other side.

There is no pushing through anything,

but rather, an absorption,

adjustment and acceptance.

Grief is not something you complete,

but rather endure.

Grief is not a task to finish and move on,

but an element of yourself.

~via Grieving Mother Jill Compton shared ~Wings of Hope-Living Forward

~~~~~

Oh My God! I never knew
it could hurt so deep.
Feels like a living nightmare
holding onto my mind as I weep.

I don't know how anybody

can be the same after all of this;
The pain is so gut wrenching,
will it ever be dismissed?
I lay awake thinking of everything
I could have done,

thinking about your life;

seems like sanity has gone.
I feel so tired

yet my mind wants to keep me up

With painful memories.

I just never thought it could be this tough.

~via Death of a Loved One 

~

This week, I seemed to have spent many nights doing this, "lying awake thinking of everything I could have done." I remember even ruminating to Tommy about this (and ruining his good night's sleep!) around 3:00 a.m. one night this week… Other people just cannot imagine the traumatizing effects of going through losing our child… But we Child-Loss Grievers simply have to walk through it, and over time learn to manage the severe pain.

~Angie Prince

~~~~~

~Grieving Grandmother Faye Marie Miller's provided this picture

Child loss creates sorrow that is all-consuming. It's difficult enough to get through today, let alone planning for the future. Most days it's all we can do to get out bed, get dressed, and go through the basics of the day. Please, family and friends, don't expect us to plan holidays, vacations, and special outings months in advance. Once you lose a child, time takes on a different meaning. Our focus is getting through "today" -- the future is way too far away for us to handle. We know all too personally how uncertain the future really is!

~via Silent Grief - Child Loss Support

~~~~~

~Grieving Mother Ce Thibodeau 

There is no right or wrong way to grieve the loss of a child. The only thing for certain that we know when a child dies is that our heart will be broken, and we will never be put back together the same as before our loss. We are left to travel this uncharted path that is now ours. We are like wanderers without a map facing the most treacherous storm of all -- child loss. A note to every loved one grieving the loss of a child: do what is best for YOU, do not listen to criticisms of others, and be kind to yourself!

~via Silent Grief - Child Loss Support

~~~~~

~Grieving Mother Jill Compton shared ~Grieving Mothers (Barbara J. Karrer's) picture

Child loss leaves us feeling hollow, empty, and wounded. We're left feeling so "breakable" following the loss of a child. Any word of encouragement, any extra hug, a listening ear, or the mention of our child means SO much to us! So many times people ask, "What can I do to help?" Just care. And, continue to care. Don't forget us. Please, don't forget us because every day without our child is a struggle.

~via Silent Grief - Child Loss Support

~~~~~

~via Death of a Loved one 

There is a new appreciation of all the tender moments of life so that you find yourself basking in the sweet things that you find around you, knowing that the self-care of the meditation, comfort and hope therein are critical to your survival of this deep grief.

When I was at my conference this week, a man managing the "book table" commented as he saw me coming and going amidst all the breaks of the day, "You are always smiling!" (Can you imagine a grieving mother ever hearing these words, but I realized I was indeed… smiling!) I quickly said to him, "It's just so nice to get out of the house!" 

I know I was in my element, getting to learn ways to be a better therapist to my clients, but there was also that element of just the simple joy of getting out of my house! As a Child-Loss Griever, I find myself "holing up" a lot, I guess to nurture my broken heart, and protect it from being any further accosted. Maybe a better phrase for that should be: "Wholing Up" as I ever work on my grieving heart in the hopes of receiving comfort upon comfort upon comfort for my multi-faceted wounds of grief.

~Angie Prince

~~~~~

“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Psalm 30:56

To me, this is a most precious promise from God. For although we are in pain, although we may weep, although we grieve, we are reassured that joy will return, we will be happy again, we will smile again… joy will return.

~via Sweet to the Soul

~~~~~~

GOD BLESS THE HURTING HEARTS

(Author Unknown)

God bless the wounded hearts

the walking wounded souls

Bring peace unto them Lord,

with graciousness untold.

Let them mend in such a way

their lives will overcome

the pain & suffering they know

the desperateness of some.

Let Your angels kiss the wounds

and bring them peace again

Bless the hearts who cry at night

allow the healing to begin...

Hold those hearts within Your hands

that feel so tossed & torn

The helpless and the hopeless

let spirits be reborn.

Bless the hurting hearts, My Lord,

bless souls so wracked with pain,

too overcome with weariness

to try to start again...

Let them see Your sunset

with faith enough to try

to find the answers that they seek

when teardrops have run dry.

Hold them in Your gentle hands

and wipe away their tears

give them comfort, will to know,

You're there when they have fears.

God bless the hurting hearts 

the souls in so much pain,

Let them see the sunrise

with faith to start again.

~via In Memory of Lost Loved Ones 

Saturday's Sayings - Progress in the Healing Journey… - Part Seven

Saturday's Sayings

Progress in the Healing Journey…

Part Seven

Grief gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness."

~C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

~~~

We never really "heal" from Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, but we're always in recovery. We can be in a process of healing, but healing will not completely happen this side of Heaven.

Amidst our Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, when you think about it, we have been assaulted emotionally, physically, and spiritually! We never really "heal" from Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, but we're always in recovery. We can be in a process of healing, but healing will not completely happen this side of Heaven.

~Angie and Tommy

~~~

"The case of a parent losing a child is very special because the most deep-seated protective and nurturant emotions are brutalized. Because this “injury” is so severe to such primitive emotional processes, the grieving parent is likely to feel and express the pain associated with it for the rest of his or her life."

~Dr Joanne Cacciatore

~~~~~

~Death of a Loved One 

How refreshing that one of our Christian heroes, C. S. Lewis, in his own deep grief over losing his wife Joy, could admit to himself and to us who come after him, the desperate nature of the grief over his loss. Despite naysayers all around you, one of the healthy features of grieving Child-Loss is developing the ability to admit to yourself the desperate nature of your own grief as you learn to accept that life will never be the same, and it becomes a matter then of how you may best cope with that which is overwhelming and often unbearable. 

~~~~~

~Death of a Loved One 

People around us seem to go on unmercifully with their lives as if nothing has happened. Even the sun seems to betray us as it continues to come up every morning even though our own world has come to a standstill. Somehow, in our planting one foot in Heaven with our child while one foot is still on this earth, we must learn to grapple with the constant dissonance we feel with life going on while our child's death seems to bring ours to a complete stop.

In the words of another grieving mother,

“Every morning when I awake

my heart begins it now familiar ache

the sun comes up, the sky is blue

it doesn’t know I don’t have you.”

~Grieving Mother, TeriAnn Sargent, to her son Jarred 

~~~~~

~Death of a Loved One 

What other people don't seem to realize when they ask us to "move on" from our Child-Loss Grief and Trauma is that each and every inch of Grief's journey that we muddle through is as a "forest of razor blades" that no one in their right mind would race through, nor would they come through intact if they did so. No, we learn we must crawl through even if just one inch at a time, and that will just have to be enough.

~~~~~

~Death of a Loved One 

Comfort from the civilians to our Child-Loss Grief and Trauma War is often going to ring hollow as they honestly can have no real clue as to what we are up against in our steep climb uphill day after day after day. We learn to take their words in stride as we learn to more often turn to other Child-Loss parents for the understanding and comfort we need.

~~~~~

~Death of a Loved One 

There is a certain peace we attain once we come to an acceptance of our never-ending grief, that this is our lot in life, and we begin to realize that any time we spend in actively grieving is also time spent in meditating on that love we have and always will have for our missing child even as we also bask in the tenderness we feel for that very precious child.

~~~~~

I never knew I could slip through grieving this bad:

The daily struggle, the heartbreak which I have.

My strength is slowly dying inside, the pain truly (exists).

Really I couldn't feel anything else, only this.

Grief is such a mysterious emotional drainage

Living in limbo, trying to live with such courage,

This is actually hard, be easy with me.

I didn't ask for this, it's not an act, you see.

Attacking me verbally doesn't make me rush through it.

It only prolongs the grief and (ruins) our relationship.

So don't be (surprised) if I don't come to your door.

You have hurt me deeply with words you thought (were) the cure.

~Lu

~via Death of a Loved One 

The secondary injury can sometimes feel worse than the first when those we expected would love us through the world's worst grief not only aren't there for us, but they say some of the most hurtful words, or show the meanest of attitudes when they feel threatened by the depth of our grief. This disappointment and hurt we feel adds loss upon our loss and feels almost unbearable. As the graphic says, we ultimately learn to not "come to (their) door."

~~~~~

~Death of a Loved One 

On the one hand, in losing your co-rememberer, it feels like you have lost the heart of the memory itself, as the memory seemed to hold its importance because it included the both of you, and the two of you could at any time bring it to mind and re-cherish it. But without the co-rememberer, it feels as if some of the life was sucked out of it…

And as one of my sons said, "She held all my memories," as he was feeling lost without her, not only for any present or future together, but also in much of their past because she carried many of those memories off with her.

“There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.” 

~Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Much of our healing will occur with the fond recall of the memories which hold our child in them; it is as if we bring a little part of them back to us with the retrieval of each of those memories.

~~~~~

~Death of a Loved One 

As my hubby recalls Jesus's words, "A father is always seeking his little lost lamb," so we too seem always to be seeking our little lost lamb, even if in the faces, resemblances, or mannerisms of others. We "know" we will not find her, but it's as if our hearts need to ever be seeking her anyway.

Picture, "Broken," thanks to ~Death of a Loved One 

Saturday's Sayings - Progress in the Healing Journey… - Part Six

Saturday's Sayings

Progress in the Healing Journey…

Part Six

The agony is great and yet I will stand it. Had I not loved so much I would not hurt so much. But goodness knows I would not want to diminish that precious love by one fraction of an ounce. I will hurt. And I will be grateful for that hurt for it bears witness to the depth of our meaning. And for that I will be eternally grateful.

~Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

~~~

We never really "heal" from Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, but we're always in recovery. We can be in a process of healing, but healing will not completely happen this side of Heaven. 

Amidst our Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, when you think about it, we have been assaulted emotionally, physically, and spiritually! We never really "heal" from Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, but we're always in recovery. We can be in a process of healing, but healing will not completely happen this side of Heaven.

~Angie and Tommy

~~~

"The case of a parent losing a child is very special because the most deep-seated protective and nurturant emotions are brutalized. Because this 'injury' is so severe to such primitive emotional processes, the grieving parent is likely to feel and express the pain associated with it for the rest of his or her life."

~Dr Joanne Cacciatore

~~~~~

~Out of the Ashes

~~~~~

~SKTJ Creations via Wings of Hope~Living Forward

Distractions from our grief can be nice, but the old adage of "Just stay busy" is not so helpful because to help our traumatized systems deal with and process our grief, loss, and trauma into our lives, we must allow ourselves to face our horrific and incredibly sad reality one tiny bit at a time, and many times over and over and over. It is as if we have become unraveled by this reality and we must carefully reweave our frazzled foundation back into a tapestry by which we can "live" again, with changes in our lives, yes, but with new meanings for our child's death, as well as transitioning ourselves into a new understanding of our child's life now, and our new way of relating to them now.

~Angie

~~~~~

~Remembering Loved Ones 

~~~~~~~

My life has been

shattered

so (bear) with me while

I pick up the pieces

~Remembering Loved Ones

How beautiful to be able to be honest with one's self that our lives are shattered, and that others simply must bear with us as we sort through and pick up our broken pieces rather than try to shape our lives around what "they think we should be" amidst our terrible grief.

~Angie

~~~~~

When a person loses an arm or leg, they have several weeks off work, they are put into daily physical therapy, and they are often given emotional support to help adjust to life without a limb. When child loss occurs, we are given off 3 days work without pay (if we are immediate family), no time off to learn how to live with part of our heart missing, and we must search long and hard to find consistent emotional support to help us adjust to life without part of our heart. There's just something very wrong about this picture. Losing a child is far more intense than any other loss we can ever experience yet we must continually remind people of how hard this loss is! God bless every family going through the pain of child loss today!

~thanks to Grieving Mothers, Marsha Bell, Leena Landmark, and Isabelle Efstathiou sharing this post from "Silent Grief - Child Loss Support"

~~~~~

When I'm feeling desperate and lonely,

I search for your face in a cloud,

And though my lips may be silent, 

My heart cries out ever so loud

How can it be that you have left me?

Are you safe in heaven above?

Has God in his goodness embraced you

With his sweet, everlasting love?

Do you know that I yearn to hold you?

Can you hear me repeating your name?

Can you see that I'm lost without you

That nothing...no nothing's the same?

In time will I be more accepting?

Will my poor heart begin to mend?

And will I find peace in believing

I'll be with you once again?

I'll be with you once again!

~I Miss Those Close To Me Who Are Now In Heaven As Beautiful Angels 

It is so important for us face our devastating loss and its effect on us. Everyone else is wishing it away, but we truly know it is just not that easy to "move on" when we have lost a core part of our lives and of  who we are. 

The questions in this graphic are questions that help us to transition from seeing our beloved children as being here with us, to not just seeing them as gone, but seeing them in their newly transformed state of peace, surrounded by love in our Father's arms. These questions are typical of ones we will often ask our child, our Father, and ourselves along our journey as we try to grapple with this stark reality that has been thrust into our world.

~Angie

~~~~~

~Out of the ashes

Couldn't say it any better than that! How precious and tender.

~Angie

~~~~~

~Remembering Loved Ones 

The risk of love is loss,

and the price of loss is grief -

But the pain of grief

Is only a shadow

When compared with the pain

Of never risking love.” 

~ Hilary Stanton Zunin

Another beautiful way to say what Dr. Kubler-Ross said...

~Angie

~~~~~

~Grieving Mother, Alice Jay Wisler, graciously sent to ~The Compassionate Friends of Atlanta

Don't ask

what his

name was.

Ask, instead,

what his 

name is. .Don't ask

…………….how much I

…………….loved him.

…………….Ask how

…………….much I love

…………….him still. ...In Heaven 

…………….…………...... love never

………………………….... .dies.

…………….....It is only

…………….....perfected;

…………….....those who

…………….....dwell there

…………….....are more ALIVE than

…………….…………….you or I.

……Their LOVE

……radiates Forever

………………………….~Alice J. Wisler

Top picture, Broken, thanks to ~Death of a Loved one