Thursday's Therapy Unpackaging the Princes' Top 10 TRUTHS of Child-Loss Grief #7e) Child-Loss Grief is Pervasive throughout... our Spirit

Missing...

Thursday's Therapy

Unpackaging the Princes'

Top 10 TRUTHS of Child-Loss Grief

#7e) Child-Loss Grief is Pervasive throughout... our Spirit

#7) Child-Loss Grief is pervasive and invasive throughout your system. It is multi-dimensional, affecting your body, soul, mind, heart, and spirit. Your old beliefs about God, and about How the world works will be challenged.

Child-Loss Grief is Pervasive throughout... Our Spirit.

Spirit: the non-physical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character.

Spirit can also be defined as personal identity.

Tommy:

For the longest, my spirit felt crushed to where, relatively feeling, there wasn't much "life" left in me. As an example, due to trauma and/or my crushed spirit, the songs that I always had in my head went silent, were absent.

In regard to personal identity, we do not know who we are now. Many things that were once characteristic of our personalities are not characteristic of us now, for example, our otherwise

• Out-going nature,
• Comfort being in crowds,
• Looking forward to going to church (Church as we once knew it is "kaput" (definition of kaput: broken and useless, no longer working or effective - for example, often what they're interested in teaching or talking about, I am no longer interested in.) All of these otherwise normal traits

are the antithesis of what they once were.

Angie:

An example of the changes in our personal identities were played out in me simply in our going out to eat with our precious sons and daughter-in-law last night:

Yes I was happy, even jovial. Yet

• I was insecure,
• I was unsure of myself as to who I am compared to how I see my former "more confident" self.
• I cannot compete with the positive, secure, outgoing, overly generous person I felt I once was.
• I don't know who I am, what I can do, or what I can give.

Tommy:

My spirit is very much grieved once we "all" get together, even to the point of ~ last night's family outing was probably the best it's ever been in these last almost-five-years, but my subconscious betrayed me. In my nightmare afterwards, I was going to another funeral for Merry Katherine, this one in Georgia (Angie's home state), and

I was so ripped up, I was weeping in my sleep.

So just our little family getting together rips me up??? What kind of bad joke is that?!

Once Merry Katherine was killed, my relationship with God changed, feeling betrayed, abandoned, like,

"Did You not hear me???!!!"

It's taken me five years for that relationship to begin to recover, and then there's still some things I can't deal with... for example, the "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for you" statements, prosperity theology, etc.

Child-Loss affects one's spirit at a very deep level, sometimes at levels so deep, we are not even consciously aware of it:

Tommy:

There is an invisible dynamic ever at play within us. Externally, I was having a delightful, playful time with my family last night. Internally, my spirit was very grieved without me even knowing it or being consciously aware of it.

Angie:

Evidently, always struggling within our spirits is a cry,

"WHERE IS EVERYBODY? SOMEONE VERY VITAL TO OUR FAMILY IS MISSING, AND WE WILL NEVER BE OKAY WITH THAT!"

Picture - Thanks to Grieving Mothers

Thursday's Therapy - Unpackaging the Princes' Top 10 TRUTHS about Child-Loss Grief - #7d) Child-Loss Grief is Pervasive throughout...the Heart

Thursday's Therapy

Unpackaging the Princes' Top 10 TRUTHS about Child-Loss Grief

#7d) Child-Loss Grief is Pervasive throughout...our Heart

Losing a child is like a broken down car. To go in reverse brings painful memories. To go forward is too scary without your child. So we sit in neutral with our hands clutched to the emergency brake, hoping someday to find a way to run again....

~Unknown

"And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up?"

~Charles Dickens

~quotes from my facebook friend Bonni

*****

Our hearts of course are massively affected by the loss of our child. And then we find we are surrounded with other losses that seem to come alongside our greatest loss so that we have a whole basketful of losses:

• The Loss of Our Child
• The Loss of Ourselves (as we once knew ourselves)
• The Loss of Our Family (who we once thought they were in the pre-grief days as opposed to who they become when you think you need them more than ever)
• The Loss of Our Friends (who can't seem to love us as-we-are amidst our grief process, but are ever demanding that we "move on" whether directly spoken or not)
• The Loss of Our Careers (at least, as we once knew them...)
• The Loss of the Mother or Father we once were to our children

Here are some of the other changes we have found in our hearts amidst this painful grief process. (We would love to hear some of the changes you have experienced as well!)

• It seems our Sensitivity Meter in regard to our emotions has drastically changed, in that we are more sensitive than ever to the pain of other people.
• We cannot seem to go around family, even for major events such as weddings or funerals. The petty unresolved conflicts, the untreated and unresolved toxins, and the unnecessary power-struggles penetrate our thin walls into our heart and add to our already overburdened heart.
• The Grief's pervasiveness is such that whatever used to be second nature to us now takes a much greater effort (going to the store, running errands, seeing clients, etc.). It is almost like everything must take a backseat to our broken heart's need to grieve.
• Our emotions sometimes terrorize because we do not know when we will be triggered nor by what we may be triggered (by a song, a person, an event, a triggered memory, something said by someone, etc.).
• We can be brought to our knees emotionally over something like a song that seems to bypass the cerebral mind to go straight into the core of our heart.
• Like the first quote at the top of the post, there seems to be an emotional paralysis like we are standing in wait for something...but what? Our child to come back and our world return to normal? (It defies logic.)
• Our hearts are always heavy with only reprieves of pleasure, laughter, intellectual absorption, etc.
• We don't know how to manage our lives because we do not know exactly how much our emotional stamina can bear on any given day.
• It feels like our hearts never fully will recover this side of Heaven.

Sometimes a poem can capture the complex emotional state of a griever the best. Here is a description of a mother dealing with her broken heart:

Living with Grief

She can feel it pressing against her

Squeezing the happiness from her mind

She's drowning in the confusion

Gasping on each reminder and choice

She still grieves for what was lost

The tears still glide down her skin

As she sets the candle alight

She prays they are now at peace

She whispers her love to the scented air

And mumbles something about regret

The flame hicupps softly

While she let's out a sob

It seems nothing lasts forever

Even though we believe it should

Her heart crumbles apart again

She feels it breaking inside her chest

The room becomes suffocating

The candle becomes too much

They can't be brought back with a wish

No matter how hard she tries

She collapses to the floor

As despair takes control

When will it become easier to bear

When will this day no longer hurt

She pulls her knees up to her chest

And cries out all the hurt

The candle has burnt out

Before she once again becomes numb

~added to Grieving Mothers' archive of grief poetry by Marisa Somerville on Facebook

Pictures thanks to Grieving Mothers

Thursday's Therapy - Unpackaging The Princes' Top Ten TRUTHS About Child-Loss Grief - TRUTH #7a) Child-Loss Grief is pervasive throughout our body.

Thursday's Therapy

Unpackaging The Princes'

Top Ten TRUTHS About Child-Loss Grief

TRUTH #7a) Child-Loss Grief is pervasive throughout ... our body.

#7) Child-Loss Grief is pervasive and invasive throughout your system. It is multi-dimensional, affecting your body, soul, mind, heart, and spirit. Your old beliefs about God, and about How the world works will be challenged.

Child-Loss Grief is pervasive, affecting your body, soul, mind, heart, and spirit.

On this Thursday's Therapy, we examine how Child-Loss Grief often affects our bodies:

30 Major Reactions Physically Indicating Anxiety After the Traumatic Death of Your Child

Motor Tension

• Trembling, shaking, twitching, nervous energy, "jumpy," foot/leg shaking, finger drumming
• Muscle tension, aches, soreness
• Teeth grinding, clenched jaw
• Easily fatigued, exhaustion
• Headache
• Restlessness and searching for something to do

Autonomic Hyperactivity (Being "revved up")

• Anxiety, tension, nervousness
• Heart palpitations, rapid heartbeat
• Shallow and rapid breathing, shortness of breath
• Numbness, tingling sensations
• Smothering sensations
• Dizziness, unsteady feelings, faintness, lightheadedness
• Dry mouth
• Sweating or cold, clammy hands
• Hot flashes or chills
• Chest pain, pressure, or discomfort
• Nausea, diarrhea, other abdominal distress
• Frequent urination
• Tightness in the throat, difficulty swallowing, feeling of something stuck in the throat, choking
• Digestive disturbance (such as upset stomach)
• Stress cardiomyopathy (aka "broken heart syndrome" - when you feel all the symptoms of a heart attack but it is not an actual heart attack

Vigilance and Scanning

• Heightened arousal (hyperarousal)
• Agitation
• Sense of being "geared up"
• Easily startled
• Irritability, outbursts of anger
• Difficulty falling or staying asleep
• Impaired concentration
• Heightened awareness of surroundings in order to be "on guard" (hypervigilance)
• Physiologic reactivity upon exposure to events, stimuli, and/or internal or external cues that remind you of the loved one, the death, events associated with it, and/or other painful reactions to the loss

~Rando, 2011 (In Press)

~Above information was posted in this blog on 9/1/2010

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10 Major Reactions Physically Indicative of Responses to Stress After Your Child's Traumatic Death

• Reduced immune response
• General feeling of being unwell (more on this another time...)
• Constellation of vague, diffuse physical complaints, sometimes experienced in waves lasting minutes to hours or as diverse aches and pains
• Distressing physical reactions when exposed to
• reminders of the loved one (see our comment below),
• the death,
• events associated with it, and/or
• other painful reactions to the loss

• Increased vulnerability to illness and/or physical risk
• Gastrointestinal Symptoms
• Cardiopulmonary symptoms
• Symptoms that appear to be neurological in nature, but aren't
• Hair loss
• Pain

Rando, 2011 (In Press)

~Above information was posted in this blog on 9/16/2010

*****

15 Major Reactions Physically Indicating Depression After Your Child's Traumatic Death

• Anorexia or Appetite disturbance leading to Weight Loss or Weight Gain; food doesn't taste right and is difficult to eat
• Increase or decrease in Sexual interest or activity
• Crying and tearfulness
• Feeling as if there is a "Lump" in the throat
• Tendency to Sigh
• Fatigue
• Physical Exhaustion
• Decreased Energy, lack of vigor, lethargy
• Lack of Strength
• Feelings of Emptiness
• Feelings of Heaviness
• Slowdown in overall Movement
• Agitation in overall Movement
• Increased Physical Vulnerability
• Increased Physical Risk (Accident Prone)

Rando, 2011 (In Print)

~Above information was posted in this blog on 9/9/2010

*****

Of course, many of these "physical" symptoms can have many emotional connotations as well. For instance, in the last symptom listed above: Increased physical risk - Accident Prone, consider this scenario from my own life:

Do you think there are possible emotional "vicarious" pain symptoms played out in my life after my child was violently killed which included

injuries to her right arm and her left leg,

and my "accident prone" incidents occurring after her death

which included

broken bones in the vicinity of my right arm (shoulder blade) and

several broken bones in the vicinity of my left leg (3 broken bones in the pelvic girdle on the left side of my body)?

Interesting phenomenon to consider, isn't it?