Thursday's Therapy ~ Good Grief - A Short Animated Documentary About Grief ~Griever, Fiona Dalwood

Thursday's Therapy

A Short Animated 

Documentary 

About 

Grief

~by Griever, Fiona Dalwood

Writer, Director, Animator

Good Grief, a remarkably powerful and touching animated short film by Australian director Fiona Dalwood, shows how five different individuals cope with loss. Whether the loss was that of a parent, a bunny, an amputated leg or a good friend by suicide, each person’s compelling story of grief rings familiar with anyone who has had (a) loss of their own.

Inspired by the loss of her own mother and the grief that ensued, director Fiona Dalwood went about finding out how the experience of loss transforms us. With a shoestring budget and months of hard work, she made Good Grief, a beautiful short film that has been described as “adorable and heartfelt.” Accessible to children and adults alike, it is being used in educational programs as a starting point to discuss the process of grief and what some of the positive outcomes of grief can be.

Good Grief

(Winner of at least ten (10) film awards)

~Fiona Dalwood

Article presenting the animated Grief film:

http://laughingsquid.com/good-grief-a-powerful-animated-short-film-showing-how-five-different-individuals-deal-with-loss/

Tuesday's Trust - by His grace...

Tuesday's Trust 

by His grace...

  

"But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." 

~2 Corinthians 12:9

~~~

by His grace...

We cannot climb into another's pain

Nor imagine their distraught

That consumed their heart to make them wane

And leave them so overwrought,

But we can climb into God's arms

To ask Him ever to hold

Our dearly beloved safe in His arms

And into His heart, to closely enfold.

We cannot know the ways of God,

Of how He holds the fragile sparrow,

Or how He holds our little ones

Who may fall upon His road so narrow...

But we can know that His great love

Overcomes all our weaknesses and fears

And takes us safely to Him above,

Who lovingly awaits to wipe away our tears. 

Such tender hearts belong to Him;

He guards them all the way,

Even, and especially, when days grow dim,

When they can't see the light to find their way,

For He alone created the miracle that brought them here

To grace this earth and be with us awhile;

So too, He alone could return them Home

To restore their souls, and return the gleams unto their smile.

So He alone can come alongside

Us grieving dads and mothers

Who long for our children through this long while

For despite the pain and the angst that still smothers,

He sends His comfort and soothes our hearts,

While our little ones from our sides are briefly torn away…

Restoring the Hope for when we nevermore will part,

On that blissful, Eternal, Life-giving Day.

Thank You dear Lord for Your Life-giving Grace;

May it ever spur us on, as it did our child, 

As You work in each of our hearts with Your mercy mild,

As we, too, falteringly flail on, until we too finish our race,

And then, by Love's great mercy, we'll see You face to face!

~~~

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.…

~Hebrews 12:1-2 (New American Standard)

~~~

Dedicated to Merry Katherine and all our deceased children, and to Andrew, a friend of Merry Katherine's, a beautiful, bright, and caring young man, captain of his State-Championship high-school soccer team, one-year younger than Merry Katherine, who died just 2 weeks after Merry Katherine had been killed… 

Andrew, along with his brother, had just sent us a sweet note of condolence just a few days after Merry Katherine's death. May God be with precious Andrew's mother and daddy and two brothers who are left behind in their great grief… 

Thank You God that Merry Katherine and Andrew, and so many others of our children just like them, because of Your great love for them, have all been safely escorted Home where we all may meet again.

Poem - by His grace… ~Angie Bennett Prince - August 19, 2013

Wednesday's Woe - "So Very Much Changed" ~Grieving Mother, Robin Craig, Blogger of "Beautiful and Terrible"

Wednesday's Woe

"So Very Much Changed"

~Grieving Mother, Robin Craig,

Blogger of

"Beautiful and Terrible"

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Another Advent and Christmas Season (Almost) Behind Us

~by Robin Craig

~Robin Craig, married, mom of three, grieving mother of Josh is also a Pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and Spiritual Director in the Ignatian tradition. Robin blogs about her grief in her grief blog, "Beautiful and Terrible." (See blog address at the bottom of this post.)

I wish that I understood the phenomenon to some small extent, but I am at least coming to expect it. 

At these times of year, these times of anticipation and excitement, God recedes further, and further, and further into the distance.

I don't know why that should be.  People speak so frequently, and so eloquently, of the comfort provided by the presence of God.   I wonder what they know that I don't.

Have you ever looked backward through a telescope?  The image is so small ~ a miniature of itself.

We went to what used to be my home church for the midnight service on Christmas Eve ~ my own responsibilities in my own church completed a few hours earlier, I was officially on vacation.  We were last at our "old" church in 2007.  

In 2007, I was still an active elder, and a first-year seminary student who hadn't quite grasped that it would not be my home church for much longer.   And I had, of course, no idea that in 2008 we would want to erase the holiday season in its entirety from the calendar.

This year, the  service was again elegant, the music spectacular, and the milk-and-cookies afterward a wonderful time of seeing old friends.    Much laughter, and a blend of serious conversation as well, as some of the same people who had been at the outdoor memorial service a few nights previous for the young woman who had just died were there also. 

It's good to be with people who don't mind that you simply skipped the last five years.

But as worship began, as the choir sang so beautifully and the pastors spoke with such passion and joy, that was the image that came to mind:  

that I was looking backward through a telescope at a life that used to be mine.   

They all seemed to belong to another universe entirely.  This one is so very much changed.

Thank you to Robin Craig for graciously granting the privilege of reprinting her blog post here on my blog for my readers to enjoy.

"Beautiful and Terrible" graphic, thanks to Grieving Mother, Jill Compton
Robin Craig's child-loss grief blog, "Beautiful and Terrible" can be found at 
http://metanoia-mrc.blogspot.com
Robin's post: http://metanoia-mrc.blogspot.com/2012/12/another-advent-and-christmas-season.html
Robin also has two other blogs:
Well of Hope: Life After a Loved One's Suicide - http://wellofhope-mrc.blogspot.com/
http://revgalblogpals.blogspot.com/

Monday's Mourning Ministry - World Suicide Prevention Day - Song: Why? ~Rascal Flatts

Monday's Mourning Ministry

World Suicide Prevention Day

Song: Why?

~Rascal Flatts

Why?

~Rascal Flatts

It must've been a place so dark

you couldn't feel the light

Reachin' for you through that stormy cloud

Now here we are gathered in our little home town

This can't be the way you meant to draw a crowd

Oh, why? ~ that's what I keep askin'

Was there anything I could have said or done

Oh, I had no clue you were masking a troubled soul

God only knows what went wrong

And why...

you'd leave the stage in the middle of a song

Now in my mind I keep you frozen 

as a seventeen year old

Rounding third to score the winning run

You always played with passion,

no matter what the game

When you took the stage

you shined just like the sun

Oh, Why? ~ that's what I keep askin'

Was there anything I could have said or done?

Oh, I had no clue you were masking a troubled soul

Oh, God only knows what went wrong 

And why...

you'd leave the stage in the middle of a song

Now the oak trees are swayin'

in the early autumn breeze

The golden sun is shing on my face

The tangled thoughts I hear

a mockingbird sing

This whole world really ain't that bad a place

Oh why? ~ there's no comprehending

And who am I to try to judge or explain?

Oh, but I do have one burning question

Who told you life wasn't worth the fight?

They were wrong

they lied

Now you're gone, and we cried

'Cause it's not like you...

to walk away in the middle of a song

Your beautiful song

Your absolutely...

beautiful song.

Saturday's Sayings ~In Loving Memory~ Another Child-Loss Parent Lost to Grief…

Tom Calvert with his son David

Saturday's Sayings

~In Loving Memory~

Another Child-Loss Parent Lost to Grief…

David Calvert

Tom Calvert

Heroin

Heroin took my son took him far away
I found him on his bed so dead as he lay
Eyes closed in sleep spoon on night stand
Bloody foam in mouth with needle in his hand
This vision haunts my dreams keeps me from sleep
What sin did I commit that this is what I reap
It’s hard to close my eyes so many tears I’ve cried
Thought I was a good dad and know I really tried
Where did it all go wrong that I must feel this pain
I’d give up my own life just to see him once again
To hold him in my arms and tell him of my dreams
Tell him how I love him in frustration I do scream
There’s no turning back these cruel hands of time
How stupid I must be trying to capture this in rhyme
There’s just no explaining the feelings in my heart
I want to live again but don’t know where to start

Written 02/18/10 by: Thomas Patrick Calvert

Like · · Unfollow Post · September 6

Tom Calvert

On May 25th it will be two years...............I still cry every day.

Like · · Follow Post · May 16

David Calvert

Tom Calvert

Another Night

You were only twenty-three on the day you died

And since that fateful day each night I have cried

Another endless night streaming out my tears

As I think of you dead and all the stolen years

Haunting screams I hear in the middle of the night

My dreams blown away like a broken string kite

So beautiful you were in oh so many ways

It’s hard here now without you these are empty days

I miss your gleaming smile and the light in your eyes

I ache for your laughter and the times we shared a cry

I want to cook you crab cakes and see you fall in love

I want to see you happy and I pray you are Above

I want to see you marry and hold your precious child

I’m sorry I must stop I have to cry awhile

Written 07/08/ 2010 by: Thomas Patrick Calvert

Like · · Follow Post · August 10

I belong to several grief groups on the internet. In the ten months in which I have been active in these groups, I have seen 3 mothers succumb to their grief over their child's death by taking their own lives. Yesterday, I learned of the death of a child-loss father whom I had gotten to know through his very poignant poems. Eleven days ago on 10/3/11, I put onto my blog post a poem called "Empty" that Tom Calvert had written about his child-loss grief. Best I can tell, that was the last poem Tom would put on the internet before he succumbed to his grief and took his own life on October 8, 2011, just last Saturday. I am heart-broken over this loss, another precious parent grieving a child, buried down under his load of grief, and gone too soon… The final words of Tom's last-entered poem were these:

I pray to you Jesus please touch your Hand to me.

The words I had written to Tom over these past two months I've known him and his response are all below:

After I first read Tom's poem "Heroin," my heart went out to him, and I sensed the desperate cry within his soul, so I wrote the following note to him under his poem:

Angie Prince ‎{{{Tom}}} I am so sorry for your loss of your precious son and the angst of the images in your head. Some of the traumatic visuals that were attached to our children's death can be very effectively "resolved" with a new treatment available called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). I am a therapist so I am very aware of its availability and its success although I am not trained yet to do it. But my best friend in grief who lives in California had it done over the images of her child's suicide, as did her husband and her son, and it was very effective for all three of them. It does not remove the memory, as you need your memories. It takes the toxicity out of it so that you can better function, and puts the memory back into the past where it belongs rather than as an ongoing trauma for you. (The trauma does not need to be in the present for there is nothing we can do for our child now (so the terrorizing pain that you have no longer has a useful purpose now), so the trauma can be effectively treated now to help you to be soothed and to be better able to function.) {I hope this makes sense! You might want to google EMDR to learn more about how it works! Thank you so much for sharing your poem; it is very helpful for me to articulate my pain through poetry as well. (We lost our 19-yr-old daughter 5 years ago in a terrible car crash with friends, in which 3 of the 5 teens were killed.) May God bless you and comfort you in your deep loss and your deep pain. September 11 at 12:09am · Like Then I read his other poems as he put them out in the sequence in which I have them ordered here. When I got to his poem, "Empty," I wrote the following to Tom, and he responded back:

Angie Prince Tom, I am "lovingly lifting" your very poignant poem to share with my blog readers. May God bless and comfort you in your deep, deep pain over your loss of your precious son David, and like your poem says, may Jesus, our Loving Lord, indeed touch His Hand to you and your broken heart. You may find my child-loss grief blog (where my husband and I post of walking through our deep grief over the loss of our precious 19-yr-old daughter Merry Katherine) at

http://MotherGrievingLossofChild.blogspot.com/

~ Thank you for sharing your heart with us. October 3 at 8:36pm · Like

Tom Calvert Thank you Angie. The thought that anything I write because of my loss being used to help anyone who has suffered a similar loss is always welcome. I write because it just comes to me. It does not belong to me and you are welcome to share anything I write with anyone who you think may benefit from my words. I claim no rights ownership to any of it. If it helps one person; I have done something good from the worst tragedy I have ever suffered. God Bless you. October 3 at 10:05pm · Unlike · 2 people

Angie Prince Thank you again Tom, you are very gracious. And may God bless you as well, and may He hold you close to His heart.

October 4 at 11:31pm · Like

I pray tonight that, indeed, God heard Tom's plea, "Jesus please touch your Hand to me" and that our God is holding Tom close to His heart tonight. And I pray for each of us child-loss grievers, that we will avail ourselves to the gentle love of God for His loving comfort and sustenance for the rest of our earthly journey.

I added these comments under Tom's poems after his death, the first one upon just finding out on Wednesday, the 12th, that Tom had killed himself on Saturday, October 8th:

Angie Prince Karen, Thank you for sharing with us; I am so saddened and shocked by Tom's death. His poems touched my heart for his deep loss and depth of pain. I too pray for his family as now they grieve two precious lives. I pray that He was met by God's loving arms. I am simply stunned. May we all reach out to one another in our pain; and may we all meet one another with kindness as we never know the depths of pain that may be there. ~Much love to you all~ Wednesday at 11:29pm · Like · 1 person

Angie Prince I am so sorry we lost Tom to his deep grief. I barely knew him (through Facebook), but felt I knew him through his poems. And now to lose him is so, so sad. God, please help us all; our grief is so heavy to bear. RIP Tom.

6 hours ago · · 1 person

~R.I.P. Tom and David~

Pictures, thanks to Tom Calvert via TheCompassionateFriends/Atlanta, Facebook

Thursday's Therapy - "Mystery and Manners"

Thursday's Therapy

"Mystery and Manners"

Flannery O'Connor, an ingenious southern writer from my home state of Georgia, wrote a brilliant book for writers called, Mystery and Manners (which includes essays she had written spanning the years 1957 through 1969). In it, she made many a profound statement, several of which I hope to share with you in today's post!

I have been very grieved this week. As a child-loss-grieving-mother, I seek out a lot of connection and support from Facebook grief groups. As you and I know, the civilians in our childloss-grief-war aren't ones much for wanting to hear our mourning song, so we look to other grievers who are suffering, like we are, to uplift us. In one of my grief groups this week, a grieving mother succumbed to her pain (see yesterday's post) and took her own life. As hard as this tragedy is on those of us who were "facebook friends" of this precious soul, it became even more complicated when others outside our group wanted --in a sense-- to pile on to the tragedy by demonizing the leader of this particular group.

The leader of this particular grief group is, by self-profession, a practicing Jew; her group is specifically for those of us grieving parents who have lost an adult child, or young adult child. I think due to the nature of the group itself, there are some serious complications to our grief. For one, many of us were in the throes of "tough-love" kinds of discipline due to the age and new-found independence of our children in pursuing all kinds of endeavors that might have been harmful for them. There are also a number of members who are surviving one of the most painful kinds of death a parent could endure, and that is the death of their child by their own hands via suicide; you and I can at least begin to imagine the degree of angst in many of these parents' lives.

There are both Christ-believers in the group, and non-Christ-believers. Many of you who read my blog are Christians, and so you know the degree of comfort we can find in our Lord, and in knowing where our child is, and that we will get to be with them again. But, imagine the depths of angst and pain if a parent does not have those comforts to draw from...

So after the suicide of one of the grieving mothers in this group, some of the other grief group leaders began to be fairly nasty to our group leader. Unfortunately these other grief-group leaders are Christians, and though they have every right to stand on their convictions when they are afraid folks might be hurt by certain practices, they have seemingly overstepped their boundaries and have become particularly harsh toward our group leader.

Again, using some wise words of Flannery O'Connor, "Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way." She also confirms what I feel, "Conviction without experience makes for harshness."

What these other group leaders seem to miss is the capability of our great God to move mightily by "the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil." (~O'Connor) Child-loss throws us all into the tumultuous territory of Satan's particular ground of, as Christ describes, "(coming) to kill, steal, and destroy." We stand with these grieving parents "at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet," and O'Connor challenges us, our "problem is to find that location."

O'Connor also says,

"Mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind. This generation has been made to feel that the aim of learning is to eliminate mystery...

"Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge."

For most of us, it remains a mystery why our child had to die. For Tommy, he questioned,

"Why did my child end up getting killed in spite of me praying for her everyday ... that God watch over her and keep her safe?"

And once our child did die, many of us ask like I did,

"Where IS my child?"

We've spent the entire life of our child protecting them; when they are suddenly taken, the protector in us is still very present, demanding to know,

"Where is my child now? Is she okay?!"

Particularly in the first year, we both wondered that, even though in theory, or by faith, we KNOW where she is, our spirits, our hearts, our souls would still cry out,

"Is she okay NOW ?!"

The Christian group leaders should know, Christian or not, we parents are going to go through the same angst of wondering where our child is upon the point of death. Christians and non-Christians alike will have a lot of the same questions. To not expect unbelievers to seek the answers in unorthodox ways is naive. (One area of particular contention of the Christian leaders is that several in one of my grief groups admittedly seek out psychics or mediums, they are so desperate for answers.)

Everything we've known up to the point of our child's death was essentially experienced through our earthly senses... being able to touch our child, talk to our child, hug our child, feed our child, breathe in our child's aroma, check on our child, speak to our child, hear our child, call our child...

and then when death happens, all we sense is a great big empty blank where our child once was???

Now we are left to gape into that black emptiness of our child's permanent absence from this earth where we had come to know them so well???

And we learn, that just because our child is absent does not mean we are not preoccupied with them. In fact, we are probably MORE preoccupied with them than ever before.

So, yes, there's mystery... Not just for the non-Christian, but for the Christian as well. And we are all raw, so terribly raw. The way we speak to one another needs to be terribly gentle, for we are ALL searching, questioning, second-guessing ourselves and our actions with our child. And each and every aspect of our lives with our child will have to be visited and revisited many times. It is all a part of our healing. It is normal.

We therefore know how cruel it is for the non-child-loss-grief civilians to insist it's time we "move on" before we've barely even begun our grief process. It is harmful; it is callous; it is cruel.

But we grievers can be just as unkind to one another as well when we speak even what we see as "the truth" in a cruel and insensitive manner.

Christ was indeed tough on the Pharisees who should have known better, leaders of the temple who were pompous and arrogant about the things of God, yet missed the blatant truth of God's Own Son standing there before them. And they were putting themselves in the position of God's mouthpiece to others, so Jesus was extremely tough on them (e.g., "Ye brood of vipers," "You are the blind leading the blind," etc.) but with the meek, the humble, the wounded, Christ was gentle, compassionate, and patient -- He was true to Himself in always speaking truth to them, yes, but He was loving, and the people could feel it.

Jesus always spoke His truth in love. Sometimes people were able to receive it and respond to it; sometimes they were unable to receive it at the time "and went away sorrowful." But Jesus was always kind and truthful, speaking the truth in a way they could receive it if they so chose. And so should we.

Flannery O'Connor called her book "Mystery and Manners." May we respect the mysteries many of us cannot understand this side of Heaven, and use loving manners as we receive one another's grief and all it entails (fears, extensive time, angst, questions, sometimes bad choices to get our questions answered, anger, hurt, confusion, etc.). We are all in this together and our words (just as civilians' words) can bring further hurt or can foster healing. May our words to one another foster healing.

And may we trust God's grace to abound "where eternity meets time and place," very likely in this very "location" of our child's death, for God always seeks the seekers. As my clients have often reminded me, God found them in the midst of their seeking, even in the most lurid of places, doing the most lurid of deeds amidst their desperation. As O'Connor so wisely put it,

"Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow."

Flannery O'Connor quotes taken from her books, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, and The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor