Archive for year 2012
How to Move Beyond Grief and Why it’s NOT about Emotion
Today’s guest post is from Kristie West, a grief specialist who focuses on helping those who have lost parents. The advice Kristie gives in this post is helpful for anyone who is experiencing the bereavement of a loved one.
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How to move beyond grief when you’ve lost your mum or dad and why it’s NOT about emotion
Huh?!
I know what you’re thinking, “How on earth can you say that, Kristie?! Do you have any idea how I am feeling? It’s all about emotion!” Well if you’ve read me before you know I don’t throw out weird-sounding statements without explaining what I mean. So here goes…
I get asked all the time about where emotions fit into my work – am I encouraging them, suppressing them, ignoring them, allowing them to be released?
Every time I am asked this my brain blows a big raspberry at me, my mouth opens and out come some words that fit together, and the person I’ve been speaking to walks away thinking they know my position on emotions….even though they can’t possibly…..because even I am not sure what I said. And I am left feeling like a lemon.
But there is hope -I’ve finally figured out what the issue is. It’s because when I am asked about how emotions fit into my work my brain frowns and asks, in a confused way, “what does it have to do with emotion?”
So…where does emotion fit in then?
It isn’t about expressing or suppressing your emotion. You do need to let it out – yes. Cry, scream, write, move your body, have massages, whatever works for you – all that emotion gets stored and your body doesn’t want to hold it. So expressing your emotion is great, don’t hold it in, but simply expressing your emotion is not how you heal completely.
We’ve all spent plenty of time expressing a great deal of emotion over a great many things…enough to know that, while useful, it doesn’t take the problem away. The emotion is not the problem. The emotion is just a symptom.
Hold up a second….
Now let’s just stop for a second. Grief and all the emotions involved can seem beyond comprehension or rationalisation when you are in that space and it can be very tough to be objective about something so big and overwhelming, so to make sense of this let’s step away from grief for a second and use an easier example.
We often berate modern medicine for treating the symptom instead of the problem. Your doctor might give you paracetamol for headaches without trying to find out why you are getting them, or they might throw anti-depressants at you without once asking you to examine what thoughts you are thinking when you are depressed and do something about those. Treating the symptom helps alleviate your symptom. But the real source of your pain hasn’t been touched so the symptoms will keep coming in some way or will come back.
This morning I went to my chiropractor as my neck is hurting me. The pain isn’t the actual problem (though yes, it is what I am immediately experiencing as difficult and what is alerting me to a problem). The real problem is the source of the pain and that is why I go to my chiropractor. I don’t just start bunging on arnica cream hoping that will fix the problem for good. I do use the arnica (because having a sore neck feels horrid) but I know there is something causing this pain…and that is the thing that I need to work out.
How does this apply to grief?
Your grief is the same. Expressing your emotion is wise….but it won’t totally heal you. Because the source of your pain (and the source of your emotion) is your experience and understanding of the loss of your mum or dad. And that is what you have to change to move beyond your grief. Because you can let out all the emotion you like, scream it out, exercise it out, write it out, tap it out….but doing this won’t change yourexperience or perception of your loss. And as long as the source isn’t touched you could potentially be dealing with a bottomless cup of emotion. Yes it feels better to get your emotion out today. But what happens tomorrow? Or next week? Or in 10 years time when you talk about the loss? More emotion. More ‘symptoms’…….because the source, the root, the cause of your pain, is still exactly where you left it.
A new way of thinking
I know this is totally different to probably everything you’ve heard or read. If it’s healing you want, then just working with your emotions – no matter what you do to them – won’t provide that. You need to go much deeper. Because here is the thing with your emotions: when you go deeper than them, when you get underneath them, and change your experience and understanding of what has happened in your life….then the emotions change. And this is where true healing happens.
Are you ready for a new way of thinking?
It can seem an impossible journey to reach a different understanding and perspective of your loss. But it starts with the first step…and though deceptively simple, that step is profound and powerful.
The first step is to ask yourself whether you are prepared to try a different way of looking at your loss. And to be able to answer ‘yes’.
If a new perspective is possible….are you willing to look?
If a new perspective can move you beyond your pain….are you willing to look?
If a new perspective can allow you to talk about, remember, and love your mum or dad without it hurting you….are you willing to look?
If a new perspective allows you to feel closer to them than you imagined was possible… are you willing to look?
And don’t stop asking until your answer is yes. Because that is the first step in an incredible journey….and your journey cannot start until you take that first step. And this journey will change your experience, your life and your connection to your mum or dad for good.
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Kristie West is a grief specialist. Her experience with the death of six family members (including her father) in a four month time span and her personal journey through those devastating months provide her with a unique position to speak about this tender subject with objectivity and sensitivity.
Head on over to her website and sign up to receive her free e-book, “The Seven Biggest Myths about Grief”.
You can also stalk her on twitter and like her on facebook.
“Home Burial” by Robert Frost
There’s some context here that should probably be put in place before you start Frost’s poem. As you may realize, there were/are places and times where cemeteries as we know them today didn’t exist.
And during these times when there weren’t massive cemeteries with thousands of bodies buried beneath, the dead were simply buried on one’s own property. It was a home burial.
And many of the home cemeteries contained children. In 1870, the mortality rate in England was 32% before a person would reach the age of 20. In 1920, roughly 10% of English infants would die before they reached the ago of one. In 2001, roughly .05% of infants under the age of one died (that’s 5 out of a 1000 infants).
Today, the death of children is the exception. The time period in which Frost is writing his poem, it was commonplace.
The story starts out with the husband catching his wife looking from the second story window at a freshly dug grave in the back yard.
He saw her from the bottom of the stairsBefore she saw him. She was starting down,Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.She took a doubtful step and then undid itTo raise herself and look again. He spokeAdvancing toward her: ‘What is it you seeFrom up there always—for I want to know.’She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,And her face changed from terrified to dull.He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’Mounting until she cowered under him.‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’She, in her place, refused him any helpWith the least stiffening of her neck and silence.She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh.’
‘What is it—what?’ she said.
‘Just that I see.’
‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what it is.’
‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.I never noticed it from here before.I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.The little graveyard where my people are!So small the window frames the whole of it.Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?There are three stones of slate and one of marble,Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlightOn the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those.But I understand: it is not the stones,But the child’s mound—’
‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.
She withdrew shrinking from beneath his armThat rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;And turned on him with such a daunting look,He said twice over before he knew himself:‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’
‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!I must get out of here. I must get air.I don’t know rightly whether any man can.’
‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.’He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.’
‘You don’t know how to ask it.’
‘Help me, then.’
Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.
‘My words are nearly always an offense.I don’t know how to speak of anythingSo as to please you. But I might be taughtI should suppose. I can’t say I see how.A man must partly give up being a manWith women-folk. We could have some arrangementBy which I’d bind myself to keep hands offAnything special you’re a-mind to name.Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.But two that do can’t live together with them.’She moved the latch a little. ‘Don’t—don’t go.Don’t carry it to someone else this time.Tell me about it if it’s something human.Let me into your grief. I’m not so muchUnlike other folks as your standing thereApart would make me out. Give me my chance.I do think, though, you overdo it a little.What was it brought you up to think it the thingTo take your mother-loss of a first childSo inconsolably—in the face of love.You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’
‘There you go sneering now!’
‘I’m not, I’m not!You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’
‘You can’t because you don’t know how to speak.If you had any feelings, you that dugWith your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;I saw you from that very window there,Making the gravel leap and leap in air,Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightlyAnd roll back down the mound beside the hole.I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.And I crept down the stairs and up the stairsTo look again, and still your spade kept lifting.Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voiceOut in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,But I went near to see with my own eyes.You could sit there with the stains on your shoesOf the fresh earth from your own baby’s graveAnd talk about your everyday concerns.You had stood the spade up against the wallOutside there in the entry, for I saw it.’
‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.’
‘I can repeat the very words you were saying:“Three foggy mornings and one rainy dayWill rot the best birch fence a man can build.”Think of it, talk like that at such a time!What had how long it takes a birch to rotTo do with what was in the darkened parlor?You couldn’t care! The nearest friends can goWith anyone to death, comes so far shortThey might as well not try to go at all.No, from the time when one is sick to death,One is alone, and he dies more alone.Friends make pretense of following to the grave,But before one is in it, their minds are turnedAnd making the best of their way back to lifeAnd living people, and things they understand.But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief soIf I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!’
‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!’
‘You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’
‘If—you—do!’ She was opening the door wider.‘Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—’
There’s so many dynamics at play in this poem. And there’s so many different thoughts you can take away.
My main thought is practical: death in a family can be the death of a family. We’ve all seen couples who have been separated by death. The stress of processing grief together simply pulls them apart. There’s a extreme individuality to grief and when two people must process the grief TOGETHER, at the same time, there’s a tendency for Frost’s poem to unfold in real life.
The individualistic nature of grief demands a couple be honest, willing to communicate and able to find an out. As disturbing (an stereotypical) as Frost’s poem is, it does display something REAL.
The bottom line is this: grief shared is grief diminished. If a couple has a community where they can share, there’s a better chance they will find a healthy manner to walk through the stages of grief both apart and together.
Why Hide? My Journey of Hope, Faith and Overcoming
Today’s guest post is from Kerstin Knaack. I was referred to this post about two weeks ago when it was posted on shelovesmagazine.com. It’s immensely powerful, so I asked Kerstin if she’d be willing to share her story here. Thankfully, she obliged.
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I am ten weeks pregnant. It takes courage for me to tell you that.
Why? This is my fourth pregnancy–my first three babies are in heaven.
I am from Germany. There, we don’t usually tell people we are pregnant until the fourth month of pregnancy. But several weeks ago, I went to Brazil and found out the women there announce their pregnancies as soon as they have a positive test in their hands. I asked why they do this, considering most miscarriages occur within the first three months. They said that in their culture, they celebrate and mourn together. If something happens to the baby, they come to the mother’s side, offering everything from a big hug to cooking for her or massaging her feet. Whatever she needs, they journey with her.
Loss
My first miscarriage was in 2009 in the eighth week; the second was in 2011 in the 33rd week and the third was at the end of 2011 in the 12th week. All these losses were difficult, but to give birth to a dead baby in the ninth month of pregnancy was definitely the most painful.
After the third miscarriage, I wasn’t able to pray or worship. My heart ached, but I had good friends who carried me through. When I was far from God, they spoke life and truth over me. My church gathered around and carried me. When I couldn’t pray, they prayed for me; when I couldn’t worship, they worshiped for me.
I knew that death doesn’t come from God — He is love and nothing bad comes from him—but He did allow this to happen.
Restoration
After several weeks, I reached a place where I was able to think about my situation in a different way. If God allowed this to happen, there must be something good within these situations. This was a turning point for me—I wanted to turn bad into good. It was a decision, not a feeling. I chose to no longer accept being bound by lies.
So many good things happened as a result of my miscarriages:
– my marriage to my husband Rainer became stronger and we decided to give 100 percent of our lives to God, stepping into His purpose for us
– the opportunity developed to do an internship at Relate Church, Canada, with Pastors John and Helen Burns
– my father returned to my life after 28 years of rejection
– friends put their lives into Jesus’ hands.
Overcoming
From now on, I will no longer hide. I have discovered that it is healthy for me to talk about how I feel and which thoughts and emotions have kept me away from God. If I don’t share my life and the difficult journey I have made, it will be harder for God to work through me. I want Him to use me to help other women and to fulfill His plan.
That’s why I am openly telling people that I am pregnant for the fourth time.
Is it easy for me to enjoy my pregnancy? Definitely not. Every day I am reminded of the past, the positive pregnancy tests; pictures of my big belly; the ultrasounds; the decorated nursery; the movements in my belly; memories of the day I was told our daughter had passed away; the pain of giving birth to a dead baby and the joy of having her in our arms; Rainer’s love letter to our new daughter; the invoice from the funeral parlor.
Stepping Forward in Faith
How do I deal with these images and the daily fear of possibly having the same pain again? There is no magic solution–it’s a journey every day. I think back to those Brazilian women, who understand what sisterhood means and I know that if I fall, my sisterhood will carry me. And I talk about it. If I am overwhelmed by fear, I ask my husband or a friend to help me.
The opposite of fear is faith. God holds my life in His hands. I trust Him.
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About Kerstin
Kerstin Knaack was born and raised in the city of Kirchheim, Germany. She and her husband Rainer are currently involved in an internship at Relate Church in Surrey, BC, where they are learning to be leaders and teachers in the area of marriage, family and sexuality. Their long-term vision is to teach on these topics and to raise a large family of their own.
You can stalk her on twitter @KerstinKnaack and you can visit her website (unless you can read German, make sure you employ Google Translate).
Abortion as an Act of Mercy?
I’ve often spoken about the silent grief of miscarriages. I’ve spoken about how the mother, and father, will often bear the weight of the grief, when too few friends and family are willing to be sympathetic. Surely, the grief of miscarriages is a complicated grief process.
And yet, I’m not sure how it rivals the complicated grief that can result from an abortion.
While miscarriages can produce an intense sensation of guilt (after all, the very word seems to imply fault to the carrier of the child), I would speculate that the guilt doesn’t have the same potential as the guilt that can be produced by an abortion. And in all honesty — since we’ve never had a funeral service for an unnaturally aborted child — I simply have no basis to understand how both the grief and potential guilt is processed.
I can say, as one who has struggled for seven years to have a child, that it’s hard for me to understand how someone can abort something that I see as so precious. And, on the other hand — as one who also works with at-risk youth … youth who often find themselves pregnant in their early teens — it’s hard for me understand why so many evangelicals are so supportive of the idea of being pro-life and yet are totally unwilling to support the actions of being pro-life. If we acted pro-life, we may find that the abortion rates we so hate would begin to organically drop without any change of policy.
But no, Christians like to talk pro-life. We spout the rhetoric so that we can ignore the sacrifice that comes with both finding and supporting those who are unexpectedly expecting.
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Emily Rapp with her son Ronan
Is is possible that a person can be both pro-life and abort their child? Here’s a story from over at Slate.com:
This week my son turned blue, and for 30 terrifying seconds, stopped breathing. Called an “apnea seizure,” this is one stage in the progression of Tay-Sachs, the genetic disease Ronan was born with and will die of, but not before he suffers from these and other kinds of seizures and is finally plunged into a completely vegetative state. Nearly two years old, he is already blind, paralyzed, and increasingly nonresponsive. I expect his death to happen this year, and this week’s seizure only highlighted the fact that it could happen at any moment—while I’m at work, at the hair salon, at the grocery store. I love my son more than any person in the world and his life is of utmost value to me. I don’t regret a single minute of this parenting journey, even though I wake up every morning with my heart breaking, feeling the impending dread of his imminent death. This is one set of absolute truths.
Here’s another: If I had known Ronan had Tay-Sachs, I would have found out what the disease meant for my then unborn child; I would have talked to parents who are raising (and burying) children with this disease, and then I would have had an abortion. Without question and without regret, although this would have been a different kind of loss to mourn and would by no means have been a cavalier or uncomplicated, heartless decision. I’m so grateful that Ronan is my child. I also wish he’d never been born; no person should suffer in this way—daily seizures, blindness, lack of movement, inability to swallow, a devastated brain—with no hope for a cure. Both of these statements are categorically true; neither one is mutually exclusive.
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More properly, I think what Emily is talking about is a type of euthanasia. Euthanasia simply means “the good death”, which often implies that death be induced unnaturally so as spare the terminally dying from that pain that is sure to come with natural death. This would have been a euthanization while in the womb.
Emily wasn’t aborting Ronan because she didn’t have the ability to raise him, nor was she aborting him because he was the result of an ill advised but consensual night with a nearly unknown man. She would have aborted Ronan for Ronan’s own good.
So — at least in my mind — although this would have been an abortion, it falls more in line with the mercy death of euthanasia.
Euthanasia makes sense from the standpoint of a culture of independence and isolation; a culture where a lack of individual pain and individual suffering define the good death. On the other hand, in more communitarian societies, dying well is dying with your family and friends surrounding you in their love. In the West, dying well is dying on your own terms, as pain free as possible.
And I wonder if a communitarian society doesn’t have something to say to this situation.
When community is at the center of death, death becomes more than suffering. It can become a beautiful display of love … a time when the community shines forth its compassion, care and giving. I know this isn’t an either /or situation, as though Ronan’s dying is either individual or communal (it’s both), but when you have community and you’re caring for a the needs of Ronan, love is created.
Is is possible that Ronan has created more love in his short lifetime than I will with my 30+ years of health?
I’ve seen it and let me say that while death is always somehow painful, it’s not always ugly. There’s few things that move me more than seeing the loving care of a family who have utterly surrounded their loved one in both the dying and in the death.
If Emily had chosen the “good death” (abortion), would her community have had the ability to paint the picture of love and care? Would the “good death” have stifled artistry? Would her act of love for Ronan — while saving Ronan pain — have diminished love in community?
So here’s my main question: is the “good death” ultimately defined by one’s lack of pain, or by the community of love it creates?
Even though I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that question, I do know that we’ll never know if we only talk pro-life.
Are You Confident that Life Exists after Death?
I’m not too sure I like the idea of arriving to heaven in a state of human perfection, where I’m free of my mistake ridden, gas producing body; and, where I somehow transcend my sometimes mischievous, often depraved, usually creative and darkened mind. I don’t like the perfect me.
Or, rather, I don’t like perfect me in the Greek philosophy sense of perfect, where I’m static, gloriously unmovable and unable to grow. I like the unGreek idea of perfect me, where perfection is growth! Where perfection is sometimes mistakes!
If the next “world” is an “afterlife” where we sit around like a bunch of 60 somethings at a high school reunion reminiscing about the old times, then take my name off the sign-up sheet. Life is growth. Eternal life is some type of eternal growth. But if the eternal is somehow after life, where we sit and admire both our own and God’s timeless perfection … then it’s not for me.
I want messy relationships with God and others. I want a place where it takes an eternity for the finite to exhaust the infinite. I want a place that’s lived in … not some fancy mansion where every little piece of furniture is in its rightful place, where the white carpet can’t be tread upon and the windows can’t be smudged. Give me the place where I can be myself and allow God and others to mold me as I interact with them. I want a place that’s dirtied by the use of people.
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But I have a secret doubt that I’m afraid to admit. I’m afraid to admit it because this doubt could undermine both my legitimacy as a Christian and my ability to comfort people during their weakest moments.
Sometimes I doubt the whole resurrection and eternal life thing even exists. In fact, there’s times when I tell myself I have to learn to be content with this life because it could be all I’ll ever have.
I know that Jesus talks time and time again about eternal life, but is it possible that his understanding of eternal life is different than ours? Yes, it’s possible.
For those of us that are Christians, sometimes it’s the highest expression of our faith to believe in something that’s unseen. And so it’s hard to admit when we doubt about the seemingly certain promises of the unseen eternal life that’s promised in God’s Word. It’s as though we’re being faithless and, in a sense, unChristian if we doubt and question the life to come after death.
Realizing that few of us are brave enough to put our doubts out in the public for all to question, I’ve set up this anonymous poll.
Please answer honestly. I realize that many have NO doubts about eternal life. And I also realize that some of you have totally written off eternal life as a type of “opiate for the masses”. Either way, feel free to respond according to what you believe.
Once you take the poll, it will show you the results.
[polldaddy poll=5986253]
