Wednesday's Woe - Grief and Trauma's Toll ~Tommy and Angie Prince

Wednesday's Woe 

Grief and Trauma's Toll

~Tommy and Angie Prince

(Tommy) Once our child's death happens, notice the impact it has on you… physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, etc. Something that happened in an instant is going to affect us years from now.

For Angie, how long did it take her to get her digestive system straightened out? About 5 1/2 years…

6 1/2 years into it, we are still working out our sleep disturbance. For us, a good night's sleep is the exception rather than the norm.

Emotionally, how long does it take to re-enter society? You are rehabilitating everything: your emotional life, your physical life, your brain, your spiritual life. And the cause for this need for "rehab" is nothing you did to yourself; it was done to you, yet you still feel responsible for it!

In other words, you are hit with the same dynamics of someone who is into self-destructive behaviors: not eating right, not sleeping right, "holing up" away from society; yet you are doing nothing wrong!

(Angie) People seem to think they can "tell" you what you should be doing, but it simply doesn't work that way. In my seminar last week the speaker said to a room full of health-care therapists,

How many of you in this room know that it is healthy to 

• Eat proper nutrients.
• Get 8 hours of sleep at night.
• Exercise 4-6 days/week.
• Meditate daily.

Everyone in the room raised their hand. 

Now, how many of you can say then, that you do these things regularly?  

NO ONE raised their hand! 

(Bereaved parents can barely raise their head, much less their hand. I myself had had only 2 1/2 hours of sleep the night before this seminar!) 

The speaker's point is this: we don't need advice on what to do!  

We all know what to do, but somehow, we don't seem to be doing it. 

She suggested that what we need instead is a reframing of what we want in our life so that we can take ownership of what we want (to accomplish, achieve, etc.), and then we can help ourselves to take the necessary steps to become more resilient.

Let's consider now the life of a bereaved parent.

This week, I had a grieving mother write to me that she is up in the middle of the night, "seeing" her dead daughter who died in her crib with SIDS. Now, who in the world of otherwise "normal" people is having to deal with that trauma? We are not taking only weeks or months to deal with that problem; we are talking years that it takes to deal with such an assault on our being. This problem is all the result of being traumatized over a little one who means more than life itself to us! This requires understanding on the part of people around us, not condemnation because they only see the symptoms that are wreaking havoc in our lives. (They can't seem to "fix" us, and they feel helpless, so they start demanding superficial fixes for our symptoms!) Rather, we need them to attempt to 

"climb into" our reality, and love us in the midst of such debilitating pain, but who in our worlds are going to do that?!

So it starts with us, ourselves. Can we at least learn to have patience with ourselves and our complex grieving process? Can we begin to recognize and accept that it takes one little baby step at a time just to walk through each and every day? Can we have compassion on ourselves and give ourselves the support we need to walk through this incredible journey into which we have been unwittingly thrown?

For instance, Will we ever laugh again? What can you do to make that happen? Nothing! It's just that one day laughter does come back again! 

"Will I ever have a song going through my head again?" Tommy wondered.  

"I couldn't even listen to music, much less have a song going through my head at that time of my traumatized state!" he says. 

"There was nothing I could 'do' about that. It's just one day, it came back again!"

Could I (Angie) do anything about my digestive system straightening out? It's just one day, it seemed the time was right, so then my left brain was able to implement the normal steps toward stabilization, and it worked! But my emotions had to be at a place of better stabilization before any proper steps could be effective, or it would have all been dismantled again anyway!

All of this complexity is going on inside of us, but of course, no one can see that complexity working its way through our system.  

Something happened to all us that we didn't ask for, and it feels like it's going to take an eternity to walk through it all…

The speaker at the seminar ended her talk with this poem that encourages acceptance for some of this overwhelming complexity in our life:

The Guest House 

~Rumi, (born 1207 A.D.)

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Picture, thanks to Huffington Post

Tuesday's Trust - From Meditation to Melt-Down!

The women, deep in wonder and full of joy, lost

no time in leaving the tomb. They ran to tell the

disciples. Then Jesus met them, stopping them in

their tracks. "Good morning!" he said. They fell

to their knees, embraced his feet, and worshiped 

him.

~Matthew 28:8-9, The Message

Tuesday's Trust

From Meditation to Melt-Down!

As I read this Scripture today, tears came. I was reminded of my meditation during the night on Wednesday night when I couldn't sleep, yet had an all-day seminar to attend the next day... I lay there thinking, 

"Okay, left brain, since you cannot seem to shut down to help me sleep, perhaps you can gather together the details for me as I imagine with my right brain the act of placing my heart into God's keeping." 

(See my poem in last week's "Friday's Faith" post:  "My Heart's Home" written after God had comforted me by saying He Himself was my heart's Home.) 

The desire I had that night for peaceful meditation backfired however: 

As I had invited my left brain to gather details, it put me on several airplanes (!) to get me to Heaven, but then my right brain jumped in and had me running straight into God's arms… 

Instead of receiving a gentle soothing, this very envisioning of being engulfed in such Love left me weeping on my pillow, and then, hoping the tumult of my heaving shoulders and my weeping would not awaken my husband as well! 

It seems I went swiftly from Meditation full-speed into Melt-Down!

God has a way of doing this, doesn't He? His Love can be overwhelming and both Joy- and Tear-producing!

These women I've cited in the Scripture above, too, were running, this time into the newly resurrected Jesus. They too didn't just stop in their tracks and stare in awe -- No, Jesus, like God, is much more intimate than that --- they knelt in intimate reverence and then dared to touch and hold onto His feet! Also, since they recognized immediately that they "were dealing with God in the living presence of Jesus," "so (too) they worshiped."

As Eugene Peterson goes on to describe what often happens as I meditate regarding being in God's arms, it seems to 

"(pull) us out of our preoccupation with ourselves, our feelings, or our circumstances into a world of wonder. It pulls us out of ourselves into the very action of God."

And many nights, resting in God's arms while He tackles all the weight of my world, I can rest like a baby, securely nestled in the safety of her mother's arms, or as I noted in the poem on Friday's Faith, securely nestled under the feathers of His wing… 

God truly does work in mysterious ways as the warmth of His love infills our hearts.

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 

Friday's Faith - My Heart's Home ~Angie Bennett Prince

Friday's Faith

My Heart's Home

~Angie Bennett Prince

There are times when we need to step back from life and allow ourselves the time to grieve. There's nothing wrong or crazy or unnatural about that. After losing a child, society wants to push us back into the regular routine of life only days after going through the trauma of child loss. We're told we should be brave, not cry, get busy, do "normal things" -- but rarely does anyone say "Take all the time you need to cry. Take time to grasp hold of what has happened. Take time to externalize some of the pain you're holding in." We can only fake it so long until we finally have to stop and deal with the grief. Child loss is a life-changing, traumatic happening that can't just be swept under the rug. The pain touches every area of our lives -- even the way we breathe.

~Silent Grief - Child Loss Support

~~~~~

In my distress of a very stressful week this week, God gave me a poem of comfort that was the balm that carried me through this week. May it minister to your heart, dear grieving mother and grieving father.

My Heart's Home

He will shield you with His wings,

O troubled mother without child,

For in Heav'n today she sings,

No more by Vile One is beguiled!

Under My wings, you will find shelter

Despite the evil thrown your way

in the death that Satan dealt her,

For I AM the Truth, the Life, the Way.

Within the shadow of the Almighty

By the might of My own hand,

Your own battles I am fighting;

Rest My child, and take My hand.

I AM your Refuge, and your Safety,

Your Protector, and your Shield.

Neither slow nor none too hasty

My Word of Truth, My Sword I wield.

I AM your Sanctuary and your Rescue,

Fully acquainted with your grief;

Though the Vile One will test you,

I will always provide Relief.

Rest your head upon My feathers,

Enjoy the comfort under My wing.

My heart, to yours, ever tethers;

I will lift your heart to sing.

Lie down in My green pastures;

Allow Me to restore your soul;

I'll empower for what I ask you,

So My tasks won't take a toll.

Lean on Me, not understanding;

Trust My Way, and not your own,

For I AM never too demanding;

I AM your Rest, and your heart's Home.

Be merciful to me, God, be merciful to me, for my soul takes refuge in you. Yes, in the shadow of your wings, I will take refuge, until disaster has passed.

~Psalm 57:1, World English Bible

Pictures, thanks to Google Images
Poem - My Heart's Home - Angie Bennett Prince - March 12, 2013

Thursday's Therapy - The Road to Resilience - Part Three

Thursday's Therapy

The Road to Resilience

Part Three

Learning from your past

Some Questions to Ask Yourself

Focusing on past experiences and sources of personal strength can help you learn about what strategies for building resilience might work for you. By exploring answers to the following questions about yourself and your reactions to challenging life events, you may discover how you can respond effectively to difficult situations in your life.

Consider the following:

• What kinds of events have been most stressful for me?
• How have those events typically affected me?
• Have I found it helpful to think of important people in my life when I am distressed?
• To whom have I reached out for support in working through a traumatic or stressful experience?
• What have I learned about myself and my interactions with others during difficult times?
• Has it been helpful for me to assist someone else going through a similar experience?
• Have I been able to overcome obstacles, and if so, how?
• What has helped make me feel more hopeful about the future?

Staying flexible

Resilience involves maintaining flexibility and balance in your life as you deal with stressful circumstances and traumatic events. This happens in several ways, including:

• Letting yourself experience strong emotions, and also realizing when you may need to avoid experiencing them at times in order to continue functioning
• Stepping forward and taking action to deal with your problems and meet the demands of daily living, and also stepping back to rest and reenergize yourself
• Spending time with loved ones to gain support and encouragement, and also nurturing yourself
• Relying on others, and also relying on yourself
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ~The American Psychological Association
  
  
  http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx#

About this guide

Information contained in this brochure should not be used as a substitute for professional health and mental health care or consultation. Individuals who believe they may need or benefit from care should consult a psychologist or other licensed health/mental health professional.

Acknowledgments:

The American Psychological Association gratefully acknowledges the following contributors to this publication:

Lillian Comas-Diaz, Ph.D., Director, Transcultural Mental Health Institute, Washington, D.C.

Suniya S. Luthar, Ph.D., Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, NY

Salvatore R. Maddi, Ph.D., The Hardiness Institute, Inc., University of California at Irvine, Newport Beach, CA

H. Katherine (Kit) O'Neill, Ph.D., North Dakota State University and Knowlton, O'Neill and Associates, Fargo, ND

Karen W. Saakvitne, Ph.D., Traumatic Stress Institute/Center for Adult & Adolescent Psychotherapy, South Windsor, CT

Richard Glenn Tedeschi, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association (APA), located in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 155,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its 53 divisions and its affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science and profession and as a means of promoting health and human welfare.

Discovery Health Channel

Discovery Health Channel takes viewers inside the fascinating and informative world of health and medicine to experience firsthand, compelling, real life stories of medical breakthroughs and human triumphs. From the people who bring you the Discovery Channel, the most trusted brand on television, Discovery Health Channel is part of a major, multi-media business designed to help consumers lead healthier, more vigorous lives. Discovery Health Channel and Discvoery.com/health were formed by Discovery Communications, Inc. (DCI), a privately held, diversified media company headquartered in Bethesda, MD.

Wednesday's Woe - Ode to Joy... or Perhaps, Lid to Joy? ~Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

Ode to Joy... or Perhaps, Lid to Joy?

~Tommy Prince

There seems to be an unseen lid on feeling good about things. It's like there's a limit to positive feelings. Positive feelings don't go as far as they used to, or only seem to go up to a certain level. It's like approaching things or events with a guardedness rather than an excitement or a reckless abandon. Spontaneity seems squelched or watered down.

Angie asks if I'm excited about the next band gig and I'll say, "I think so." I'm all too aware now of how things can fall apart or the unexpected can come our way.

The world is now seen as one large Trigger.

When I walk out the door, who or what will I see, and will it trigger me, and will I be able to handle it when I'm triggered? I seem to keep forgetting I am not the same person I was, and that the world as I once knew it has been shattered...

Tuesday's Trust - The Birthday Party Now

Tuesday's Trust

The Birthday Party Now

With Merry Katherine's birthday coming up in 2 1/2 weeks, her birthday is on my mind... So last night I had a wonderful dream that ended in a nightmare. And yet, her happiness was replete, unencumbered by the complications occurring around me...

I dreamed of your birthday party last night;

Happy, you were, surrounded by your friends ~

Oh, for me, it was a joyous sight,

Like a glimpse at a happiness that never ends…

My family soon came to join the party,

A festive reunion was felt in the air.

The joy was great, the laughter hardy;

Then entered a tiny glimpse at despair…

When a grumpy soul issued a complaint,

Communicating I was doing it all wrong,

The festive air attempting to taint,

But I knew the happiness coming of your birthday song…

and knew you were above the fray of the fretting doubts of the petulant throng.

Is that how it is today:

Your happiness is complete;

The tragic air that surrounds me,

With your joy, simply cannot compete?

The taunts that come do not touch you

For you're surrounded with your Heavenly view.

And I? I must simply keep my eyes Above,

Seeing, you truly are ever surrounded with love.

The torments here may come and go

But I know they'll never impair your Heavenly glow!

Rest easy now my child in all your joy;

Your family of love will soon come to enjoy

Our Heavenly Father's never-ending love

As we join the ranks in your party Above.

Until then, please know, our hearts are ever with you;

Though steeped in sadness, we're ever refreshed by God's Heavenly Dew

That keeps reminding us of the Joy that lies ahead when together we'll sing,

"Happy Birthday to you!"

Picture, thanks to ~Pinterest
Poem - The Birthday Party Now - Angie Bennett Prince - 3/11/2013

Monday's Mourning Ministry - I Stand ~Britt Nicole

~John 11:25-26

Monday's Mourning Ministry

I Stand

~Britt Nicole 

Thanks to ~Journey of the Survivor (From Grief to Survival) for sharing this song with me this week…

Stand

~Britt Nicole

Oh oh

I wake up to another day

I don't know if I can face

All the fears that are starin' me down

Yeah, I'm tryin' to be brave

But I'm a thread about to fray

I want to stand, but I don't know how

I look up

And all I see 

Is Your love holding me

When I feel like giving up

When my heart has hurt too much

Feels like I've reached the end

No, I won't turn and run

This battle will be won

When I've done all I can

I stand, stand, stand

I stand, stand, stand

Some days I lose my place

It's a fight to keep my faith

But, You are with me

I am not alone, no

When all around my world gives way

Tossed like an ocean wave

You are my rock when the storm clouds blow

I look up

And all I see 

Is Your love holding me

When I feel like givin' up

When my heart has hurt too much

Feels like I've reached the end

No, I won't turn and run

This battle will be won

When I've done all I can

I stand, stand, stand

I stand, stand, stand

On Your promise, I will stand

All other ground is sinking sand

On Your promise, I will stand

All other ground is sinking sand

Sinking sand

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh 

Is sinking, sinking ... yeah

When I feel like giving up

When my heart has hurt too much

Feels like I've reached the end

No, I won't turn and run

This battle will be won, yeah

So I'll stand, stand, stand

I'll stand, stand, stand

I'll stand, stand, stand

Because He is risen, we too (as well as our children), through faith in Him, will also be raised from death to life!

John 11:25-26 KJV

"Jesus said unto her, "I am the resurrection, and the Life: He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die...."

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