The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Health

The Healing Power of Nature

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Years ago, someone told me all about the benefits of grounding, and I’ve got to admit, I didn’t believe his story.  He claimed that attaching a wire to his bed sheets and running it outside through his window, then burying that wire in the ground ensured that he was sleeping better than he ever had been. I figured that was just the power of suggestion, so I didn’t try it.

Over the years, I have heard more about grounding, so I thought maybe there is something to it, though I still don’t want to hotwire my sheets!  What does sound interesting to me is the power of nature used in healing. Studies now say that walking with your bare feet in the grass or on the dirt every day will soothe a myriad of issues, especially pain, inflammation, anxiety, depression, fatigue, sleep disorders, and even cardiovascular issues.

While I am not sure that all these issues can be healed by a barefoot walk, I can see, and feel, the value of spending time in nature. I know how good it feels to wiggle my toes in fresh, green grass. I also enjoy the feeling of creating ceramic sculptures which is essentially playing in the mud. Inhaling the fresh fragrances of lavender and rosemary in my garden is so refreshing. Walking in the sand on the beach and stepping in to the shallow waves energizes me every time. Sitting outside with my eyes closed and facing the sun warms my eyelids and causes me to smile.

While it’s easy to go online and purchase lots of grounding equipment, stepping outside and taking a few deep breaths can be very effective, and you can enjoy the beauty of nature at the same time. I encourage you to practice great self-care every day by stepping outside.

A Natural High

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I saw a commercial on television where people from a neighborhood had gathered to watch a Christmas movie projected on a garage door. Families all seemed to be smiling and happy while enjoying S’mores they made over open fires. What I didn’t understand was that they were all bundled up and sitting in the snow. I’ve never lived in the snow, so this could be common behavior, so it did look strange to me.

After I thought about this cold scene for a while, I realized how good it feels to be outside. I imagine that people in snowy regions don’t spend much time outside, and I think that would be a challenging way to live. I spend time outside every day sitting on my lanai, going for walks, or working in the garden.

Listening to the birds, watching the white, puffy clouds float by, seeing the kaleidoscope of colors in the sky as the sun raises and sets, and watching the moon and stars in the dark sky all are as important to me as the air that I breathe. And I appreciate that fresh air even when I am in the house because most of the time, I have all the windows open so I can appreciate nice, deep breaths of that fresh air all the time.

Wherever you are, whatever kind of weather you are experiencing, find a way to spend at least a little time outside every day.  Be mindful of the comfort of the natural high you feel while enjoying nature. Self-care like this is essential to both your health and your general well-being. Enjoy!

 

The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief

My email is emily@griefandhappiness.com

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The Sound of Silence

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My voice has been changing for a few months and it kept getting harder to talk, so I went to my doctor who sent me to a specialist who sent me to a vocal therapist.

After all that evaluation, they decided to put me on vocal rest. I had to be totally silent for a month, no talking and even no whispering.

This turned out to be quite a challenge. Can you imagine not being able to speak at all? I am sure it will be worth it ultimately, and I have learned some things I want to share with you.

First, I am amazed that people think that since I can’t talk, that they have to speak softly or even whisper to me. I do not have a hearing issue, so people can speak normally around me, but they don’t.

People seem to get irritated at my inability to speak. I see them get frustrated and even walk away from me. Trust me, my inability speak is more frustrating to me than it can be to you. I tried texting my son who lives with me, but that irritated him. There are things we must communicate about, so I tried a modified game of charades.  While he was entertained by my efforts, he still didn’t understand me. He bought me a white board so I could write what I want to tell him. That was helpful.

Initially, I kept thinking about what I could contribute to conversations. It was too much trouble to write my thoughts on that white board, and I was realizing that all those little things my monkey-mind was urging me to share didn’t need to be shared at all. This was huge for me. I could see that much of my conversation was irrelevant or just didn’t need to be said. This turned out to be freeing. I hadn’t realized how much time I was spending organizing those thoughts and figuring out what I wanted to say. I am now noticing those random thoughts as they pop up and releasing them from my thinking.

In focusing on all I do related to grief and happiness, I have been smiling much of the time. However, being quiet, I have noticed that I haven’t been making the effort to smile.  I see that when I speak, my smile is part of my conversation to reinforce what I am saying. Without speaking the positive words I usually do, I just haven’t thought to smile. Becoming aware of my sad face, I am making a conscious effort to smile often.

I have turned to the comfort of my journal. I find my writing deeper and wider as I explore my thoughts and beliefs. I love Mark Nepo’s writing, and his books have wonderful journaling prompts that I am loving exploring. And I have more time to meditate and write without all those unnecessary conversations my mind is encouraging me to start. I find my silence brings me peace.

I heard from a dear friend who was very active in singing and acting. She developed nodes on her vocal cords and was required to be silent for six weeks. She learned to love the silence and didn’t really want to go back to speaking when her time was up. That resonated with me. I know when my time is up, I will be paying more attention to what I choose to say, and I will continue my practice of the peace that comes with silence.

I encourage you to be silent for a day and see how this affects you.

 

The Grief and Happiness Alliance

Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, by clicking here

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling The Grief and Happiness Handbook by clicking here.

You can order The Grief and Happiness Cards by clicking here.

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

You can sign up for our newsletter here

 

Convincing Yourself to Change

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Getting stuck while grieving is easy to do. Freeing yourself from being stuck is another story. Think about your grieving experience. What are some habits you have created? What are some old habits you have amplified?

Many people tell me they are lonely in grief, yet often, they have been isolating themselves. They could deal with this issue by contacting people they’d like to spend time with. Making that first move can feel overwhelming. If that’s how you feel, try something easy, like texting or mailing a note. Little efforts can start to break the ice. Once that happens, moving forward is easier.

Another common challenge grievers have is eating too much or too little. Mindless eating happens when you keep unhealthy things around to eat. You can eat a cookie or two, but when you eat the whole bag, you have a problem. The opposite is true if you don’t keep healthy things around to eat. When you are at the store, pick up some grapes or berries that are easy to store and eat. Find some pre-picked and cut carrots or some celery. That fresh crunch is a great sensation to brighten your mood.  When you’d have to make an effort to go to the store or farmers’ market, just not eating is easier.

What habits do you recognize that you need to address? Try writing about it. Make a list of what you want to change. Identifying what you’d like to change or improve will help you to be mindful of what you are doing now to support your habits so that you can change your behavior.

When you consciously decide to change what no longer serves you, you can release whatever that is.  What can you let go of that allows you to get out of your way and start moving forward?

You can do this. Start today.

 

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here

You can order the International Best Selling The Grief and Happiness Handbook by clicking here.

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

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, by clicking here

 

Healing My Heart

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When my husband Jacques died, I had many different physical symptoms like a flair of inflammation and insomnia. I spent too much time with doctors trying to find relief, but I eventually did feel better.

Then when Ron’s heart started to fail, I was challenged too.  My blood pressure was way too high which was especially strange to me because I had always had low blood pressure, and I developed an arrythmia in my heartbeat.  While I was concerned, I was mostly focused on Ron and caring for him.

After Ron transitioned, my blood pressure stayed high, and I could even feel my rapid pulse and get light headed. Back to the doctor I went, and my cardiologist told me I had PTSD.  Instead of giving me more medicine, he advised me to stop taking several of the drugs I had been taking. I started feeling physical better when I did this. I had an echocardiogram at this time which showed that the wall of my heart had thickened because my high blood pressure was causing it to work so hard.

My blood pressure was still high and would elevate to dangerous levels. I decided to do whatever I could to start helping myself.  I started being mindful of what I was eating. I took daily walks. I meditated and wrote in my journal every day. And what seems to help me most was helping others by teaching them how to write to deal with their grief. I also became a Happy For No Reason Certified Trainer and started infusing happiness with my teaching and everything else I did.

I started feeling much better and didn’t notice my racing pulse anymore. My blood pressure gradually went down to a normal range consistently.  This all happened when I realized that by doing when I am doing, I am happier now than I ever have been.

This week I had an appointment with my cardiologist after I had a new echocardiogram done, and she was delighted that the thickening of the wall of my heart was no longer there. I asked her how that could be, and she explained that since my heart didn’t have to work so hard because of the hypertension, it was able to heal and she said that now my heart looks perfect.

I recalled hearing how our whole body replaces itself every seven years, so I decided to discover what I could about that.  I found this fascinating article: https://www.discovery.com/science/Body-Really-Replace-Itself-Every-7-Years

I found out that our body is constantly changing in different ways so it made perfect sense that my heart could heal.  What made even more sense was that all I had been doing to take good care of myself actually did make a huge difference in my life. I am now more motivated than ever to keep up all those good self-care habits I started, and I am encouraging others about how important self-care is.

I suggest you eat well, go for a walk, write in your journal, read a good book, weed your garden, visit with friends, and maybe even dance.

Find happiness in your beautiful self, and you will feel so much better!

 

 

Get your Awaken Your Happiness Journaling Guide at no charge by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/pl/2147595767

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

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

https://www.amazon.com/Loving-Living-Your-Though-Grief/dp/1642504823/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1658356016&sr=8-1

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763

Are You Running?

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As Kelly Grote was in the process of dying, she wrote “Are you running towards life or running away from death?” This quote gave me pause as I considered her question.  I realized that I am not running at all. This thought was comforting to me.

When my husband Jacques suffered from so many different issues and hospitalizations while he dealt with congestive heart failure, two open heart surgeries, renal failure, and dialysis, I see now that he was always running away from death.  Jacques was raised in the Catholic church and was very active in church as an adult until he started to question his faith as he studied philosophy when he was working on his Master’s degree.  He came to realize that the more he learned, the less he could support the tenets of his church. He left the church before I met him. He was comfortable with the idea that there wasn’t a higher power.  While that brought him comfort at the time, it also led him to denial of the fact that he was dying.  I see now that he endured so many hospitalizations and treatments in the hope that he would get well and not die. As a brilliant man, I am sure he knew this wasn’t true, but it did give him hope that he would get well and live longer. He was running away from death which led to anxiety and unhappiness.

Everything was different with my husband Ron. His belief was centered in his relationship with God and the belief that he was whole, complete, and perfect no matter what was happening to his body.  Since he died from congestive heart failure and renal failure just has Jacques did, he accepted what was happening to him as experiences he was having while he was alive.  When he was frequently in the hospital, he made friends with everyone who came into the room from nurses to housekeepers.  He was always listening to them and helping them when he could. I remember a prolonged conversation he had with a hospitalist, a doctor who just worked with patients admitted to the hospital. This doctor was so stressed from the expectations of his employer and the terrible hours he had to work that he was on the brink of walking away from his profession. Ron listened to him and reflected to him what he was saying. By the time the conversation ended, the doctor had an awakening, he was smiling, he thanked Ron, and left the room with a new, clear perspective. Ron was moving toward making the best of each moment remaining in his life.

While all of us will die at some point, we can make our lives miserable or make them the best they can be, or somewhere in between, on our way.  While I am not running either direction, I am focusing on the awareness that my life is what I make it.  I love what I am doing now. I am helping people, I am teaching, I am writing, and I am living my best life. This way of life came to me gradually months after Ron’s death after I had spent much time writing in my journal examining where I was and where I wanted to be. All this writing helped me much as I decided that every day, I would lead life the life I desired. The best part now is that after much writing, meditating, and examining, I am clearly focused and am now happier than I ever have been.

Are you running through your life? If you are, learn from my experience that you can slow down and decide to live your best life now.

 

 

Get your Awaken Your Happiness Journaling Guide at no charge by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/pl/2147595767

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking here: https://www.griefandhappiness.com/offers/ytK7eLBa

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

You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loving-and-living-your-way-through-grief-with/id1509589686?i=1000535381763