The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Happiness

Stuck

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When I read what people are saying in some of the grief groups I follow, I notice that many people are stuck in their grief. The gist of what I hear is that people feel that if they lighten up on their grief, they somehow will lose the connection with their loved one who died.  The people who express this seem so sad, unable to connect with their new situation of their loved one’s passing. They seem to feel that they must stay sad because being happy in their situation feels like a betrayal to their loved one.

I was writing the other day about how my husbands would like for me to deal with my life now. In the process of writing, I felt my husbands smiling at me, so I started to smile while I was writing. When that happened, I realized that my husbands would want me to be happy. I remembered how when we first got together, Ron was always telling me to smile.  I was so serious then. As I looked in the mirror, I could see how much better I looked when I was smiling, and that smiling actually was making me feel better, lighter, and happy.

All of us people grieving will experience periods of yearning or sadness.  The key is to recognize these feelings, experience them, thank them, then release them and smile even if smiling is a challenge.  When we stay stuck in these feelings, that is all we are concentrating on.  Time goes on, and we aren’t moving forward with it because all we can think about is our loved one. When you find yourself falling into this abyss, take a few slow, deep breaths to center yourself, and commit to yourself to release those feelings.  And when they come back, do this again.  The more you recognize what you are doing, the easier it will be to deal with your feelings.

Make your journal your friend.  When you start feeling that sadness, anxiety, or yearning, write about what you are feeling. Include why you are feeling the way you are right now. What triggered this feeling?  For instance, if whenever you eat apple pie, you remember how much your loved one loved apple pie and always had to have two servings each time you made it. You find yourself feeling blue when you remember this.  Take some time to explore this feeling. My main memory of apple pie was how much I enjoyed making apple pie because Ron loved it so much, and it made him smile. Instead of staying stuck in that sadness you I was feeling, I could smile at the happiness of the memory.  You will be amazed how you can shift your reaction to your memories in a positive way so that you can release the sadness and replace it with the good memory.

I challenge you to pick up your journal each time you start feeling the negative emotions and find the joy in the experience you remember. Focus on that joy, and in the process, release that sadness.  The more you do this, the happier you will become until you find yourself naturally feeling the happiness while releasing the negativity.

You can do this.  You can be happy.  Your loved one would want you to be happy.

 

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to emily@lovingandlivingyourwaythroughgrief.com and giving me your email address.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

Doodling Your Grief

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I can just hear you say, what does doodling have to do with grief? Think about it, what have you doodled in your life? I remember in junior high school the days seemed interminable. In my class notes, you could find a countdown for the number of minutes left in class, or you’d find my first named followed by the last name of whichever boy I had a crush on in the moment.  I would try out all the different styles of writing of what I dreamed my name would be.  So, again, what does that have to do with grief.

When I did my countdowns or my possible names, that was all I was focusing on.  I escaped into my doodles and away from the drone of the teacher I couldn’t bear to continue listing to.  Doodling when grieving can have the same effect. You can clear your thoughts and focus on the colors and shapes you choose as well as focusing on the movement of your hand.  Even if you think you can’t draw, everyone can doodle. I took a ceramics class from the wonderful ceramic artist Patricia Griffin, and she showed us how we could doodle on clay.  The picture at the top of this page is a ceramic bowl I made and doodled on.  And here is a picture of a cheese board I created in Patricia’s Iclass. You can look up on Google and see the beautiful work she does.

I like to start by drawing shapes on a piece of paper and then dividing up the shapes. Then I fill them in with more shapes and then colors.  The first picture here shows how I first sketch what I am going to doodle around with a pencil. Then I cover the pencil marks with a very fine rolling ball black pen; then I erase the pencil marks. I fill in what I outlined with colored pencils.  Of course, with doodling, you can do it any way you want to! You can also Google Zentangle and see all the images there. There are so many!

The key here is not how you do it. Rather, the key is to do it.  Get lost in your colors and lines. Relax, have fun, and totally forget about anything else as you do it.  Make it a form of meditation for you. Doodling has also been used for helping people deal with cancer and helping children deal with health issues.

I would love for you to find as many different ways as you can to deal with the different aspects of grieving. If you have found other creative ways to deal with grief, please share them with us in the comments below. We are all in this together, and we can all help each other out!

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to emily@lovingandlivingyourwaythroughgrief.com and giving me your email address.

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

 

Busy-ness

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Last week I hit a wall. I have been working all day long every day on doing things to market my book, and one day I just couldn’t think of one more thing to do.  I knew that wasn’t true, but I still felt that way.  My intention is for my book to become a best seller so that it can bring comfort, support, love, and joy to all who read it. And we all have been dealing with grief and loss on some level, so I want to get the message of my book out to everyone who can use it.

My publisher has an excellent marketing team, and I know they are doing a lot.  I appreciate that, and I also know I can do more.  Every podcast I am on, each opportunity I have to speak, each time I am interviewed on the radio, I reach more people.  All the social media I do also reaches many people. And all of this keeps me very busy.

As I was thinking about all this, I realized that what is missing is time for me. In focusing all my energy in one direction, wasn’t taking care of myself.  When this hit me, I decided that I would not continue this behavior, and I started thinking about what I do. I made some new commitments just for me.

I will now longer work on weekends. Last weekend was wonderful! I taught my Writing Through Grief online class, which isn’t work for me.  I consider it part of my creative time. The rain stopped for a while, so I sat outside and enjoyed the fresh air. I took a bubble bath. I read a book. I drew a picture of some spring daffodils. I meditated longer. And I fixed dinner. And on Monday morning, I felt great and had lots of positive energy to start my week.

Giving up my busy-ness has already made a big difference for me. Are you always busy? What ways can you find more time to take care of you? Focus on how special and beautiful you are. Give yourself some love. Make yourself your number one priority! You will be so glad you did.

 

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to emily@lovingandlivingyourwaythroughgrief.com and giving me your email address.

The Truth About Greif

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Mark Nepo says: “Only while telling the truth does the truth lighten us.” Early in my grieving I would say to myself things like: “I will never feel better “I will never love again.” Or “Nobody understands how bad I feel.”  Did you find yourself saying things like that? You may have only said them to yourself, and you may have felt that way at the moment, but were you actually telling the truth?

How would you describe how you were feeling early in your loss?  Did you feel empty, lonely, devastated, inconsolable? Think back to those days.  I barely remember much of what happened because things didn’t seem real.  It didn’t seem possible that my husband would never hold me again, sleep with me, or have a wonderful conversation with me.  All those things were my normal before he died, then he was gone along with all the wonders we had shared.  When I felt the unfamiliar experiences, I believed them to be true. But as time went on, I realized those were temporary feelings, and I didn’t need to stay mired in them. I could start moving forward a little at a time.

I didn’t think I would love again. Jacques and I had been married for 22 years. After he died, I didn’t feel suddenly unmarried. I still said “my husband” when I referred to him. And even after I fell in love with Ron, it took me four years to say yes to his proposal because I didn’t feel unmarried to Jacques.  Fortunately, I finally realized I wasn’t being fair to Ron and to our relationship and I was able to say yes.

When Jacques died, I had a hard time imagining that anyone could understand me. I just knew that anyone who hadn’t had someone very close to them die just wouldn’t get how I felt. I only had one friend who was also a recent widow. She set a good example for me. Through watching her be able to smile again, I realized that people didn’t have to know how I felt, since that isn’t possible, but they could care about me, and I could accept the comfort they offered me.

When dealing with these issues, I realized I wasn’t telling myself the truth. Integrity is important to me, and here I was, telling myself things that weren’t true.  When I finally realized that I was living in a fantasy that I had created, I started to examine the truth of what I was saying. I could see that I was starting to feel better, though it took a while. Discovering that allowed me to see that the truth was, and is, that things change every moment.  I can choose not to live in the depths of despair but chose instead to see what is good and beautiful about my life.

Focusing on what I am grateful for, on what I can enjoy, I began to see the truth and focus on that.  When I would start to tell myself that I couldn’t be happy, I would stop and say, “Is that true?”  Focusing on what I knew in my heart to be true allowed me to start on my path of staying in the moment and discovering the truth in my life.

If something starts to bring you down, ask yourself if whatever it is can really be true. Chances are you will discover that there is a more positive way to look at things, and a much more positive way to move forward for you.

 

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to emily@lovingandlivingyourwaythroughgrief.com and giving me your email address.

Freedom From Problems

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Often when grieving and dealing with loss, we feel like life in general is one big problem. We spend our days navigating from one problem to the next. We think if only I could go visit with friends, if only I could keep my home clean, if only I had something constructive to do, if only I could get into an exercise routine, and on and on and on.

You think that once all these problems are solved, you can be happy, you can relax, you won’t have any more problems, but is that true? Not really.  I lived a lot of my life in the “if only” zone. If only I had a degree. If only I had more money. If only I had a wonderful relationship. If only I had another degree. If only I had my own theatre and school of arts.  Each time I accomplished one of these things, the next one was there waiting.

Does this sound familiar to you? You may be living in the “if only” zone too. I hear you saying, but I really want all those things I am saying “if only” about. And I am not saying you can’t have them. When you focus on something, when you give all your attention to it, the result of this is for it to take more and more of your energy, and you have less and less energy to devote to everything else in your life.  The key here is balance.

When I decided to get a master’s degree, it consumed more and more of my energy until I wasn’t focusing on anything else. I spent less and less time with my family, I cooked less, I didn’t participate in organizations I loved, I was lost in books, writing, and studying. While I ultimately reached my goal, the process was grueling, and I was kind of miserable which affected those I loved most.   Reflecting, I see how I could have taken more time to get my degree which would have allowed me more time for what I loved and was missing out on.

Here is how I handled a situation now where there was something I wanted. In dealing with my grief after Ron died, I did a lot of writing, and out of that writing, I was inspired to write a book. My intention was to provide comfort, love, and support to those dealing with loss. I completed the book, then without any effort, I discovered who my agent was supposed to be. We discussed the kind of publisher we wanted, and we started researching. Instead of spending lots of time on getting a publisher, I set my intention to have the perfect publisher for my book.  In the meantime, I found other ways to offer comfort, love, and support to grievers. And I spent my time enjoying my life; I even travelled to Bali pre-Covid. In due time, my agent and I found the perfect publisher and my book is published and available at a time when there is unprecedented grief and loss in so many ways.

Now I choose to focus my energy on what I want. I use my energy positively to create the life I desire to live. Knowing that my energy will expand where I focus, I focus on solutions instead of problems. The result?  I’m not dealing with problems. And life is good!

 

You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief  by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to emily@lovingandlivingyourwaythroughgrief.com and giving me your email address.

A Fresh Start

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We are all ready for a fresh start!  Actually, we get to have a fresh start every day. I have noticed this to be especially true for those dealing with loss.  And while we may think we are ready, we actually need to take action to make it happen.

Waking up each day after my husband died was always kind of a shock. I would be all ready to cuddle up next to him, then I couldn’t. That still happens some mornings. I had to adjust to this so I wouldn’t stay stuck in that lonely place. I started by realizing that each day was a fresh start, a new opportunity to experience every moment.

Every morning I would journal. I thought about discovering my purpose. What did I want to do? And I explored listing things that would make me happy, bring me joy. I started small by choosing one thing I could do, then I progressed from there.  I would choose something like making a list of people I would like to reconnect with.  I prioritized my list and started writing an email or text to one person on the list each day. Writing instead of calling helped with the anxiety I had that I might break down if I heard their voices. This simple practice started bringing me much needed human connection.  Most people wrote back, and hearing from them felt so good.  The more I wrote these notes, the better I felt, and the longer the list got!

Reaching out was a small step, and doing it boosted my mood and opened my curiosity as to what to do next.  I realized that I was in control of my ability to move forward, to discover what I wanted or needed out of each moment.  If something didn’t turn out the way I imagined it would, I saw that in the next moment, I could try something different.  I didn’t put pressure on myself, and I was grateful for my new experiences.

When 2021 came, I knew this was a big fresh start, yet the start of the year was a little rocky. So now I am declaring for myself that today, 1 20 21 is my new fresh start.  I am making a list of things to focus on and to experience.  At the top of that list is staying positive. I will smile as I go about my day and always actively practice gratitude. I encourage you to recognize your fresh start too!  What will you focus on?

 

This week is the fresh start for my new book, Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief which launches this week. This book is a demonstration of a huge fresh start for me after Ron died. I started writing a little big each day, and that led to this beautiful book that I know will bring comfort and help to all who read it.

 

If you would like to attend the book launch for Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief, please email me at emily@lovingandlivingyourwaythroughgrief.com and I will send you a Zoom link.

You can preorder the book by clicking here at Amazon.

I would be happy to put you on the reminder list for or Writing Together Through Grief occurring on Saturdays each week by sending an email to me to emily@lovingandlivingyourwaythroughgrief.com and giving me your email address.