how to deal with grief

Convincing Yourself to Change

by

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

 

Lani

by

Yesterday I went to the beach here on Maui to watch a group of children learn about a special tradition we do in Hawaii. There were twelve children, 6 boys and 6 girls. They were brought together by two organizations, Experience Camps and Camp Manitou to spend 5 days in beautiful Maui. All the children are dealing with the grief of a close loved one. I went to their special ceremony on their final day.

We met on the beach, and a Kupuna, an honored Hawaiian elder, spoke about how in Hawaii, the people looked up at the sky and noticed how it joins with the ocean where they blend together. She said how most people look into the sky for heaven, but Hawaiians see the ocean and sky together as one, and they call that Lani, the Hawaiian word for heaven. In Hawaii, when someone dies, a celebration is often held at the beach, where flowers are released into the ocean/lani to celebrate them.

The children and their counselors all went out into the ocean in canoes and on paddle boards. They gathered in a group where orchids and plumerias were given to the children to release into the water. Then to their surprise, a helicopter arrived above them. Because it was a rescue helicopter, it had a siren going, which delighted the children. Then cascades of flowers were released over the children to join them in honoring their loved ones. All of the adults on the beach were in awe and tears.

In our society, we often equate grief with older people, yet we all experience different kinds of grieving throughout our lifetimes. The concept of death may sometimes be beyond the understanding of our children, and they are often left alone in their sorrow or, even worse, taunted or bullied about their grief by their peers.  Allowing children to be with others who are also dealing with loss can help normalize the experience for them.

I am including the link below for Experience Camps which has a beautiful, inspiring short video about Experience Camps, and an article from their website called “Can we please stop grief shaming.” Think about the grief children are experiencing. You’ll never know when you may discover a child you can comfort during this challenging experience.

When my husband Ron died, the people who attended the ash scattering service all showed up with grocery bags full of flowers from their yards for us to take out on the canoes to release with the ashes. Then when my sister died during the pandemic, I couldn’t go to be with my family. I took flowers from my yard to the beach and released them thinking of her. Yesterday the Kapuna handed me flowers, so I released them into the lani with such sweet memories. This beautiful tradition I will always remember, and whenever I go to the ocean, I will do so with love, sweet memories, and flowers.

 

Link to Experience Camps

Link to Experience Camps blog Can We Please Stop Grief Shaming?

Link to Camp Manitou

 

https://experiencecamps.org/

https://experiencecamps.org/blog/can-we-please-stop-grief-shaming

https://campmanitou.mb.ca/

 

 

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 Guide 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

 

Gathering

by

When I was at a meeting this week, the leader said whenever people come together, every person is meant to be there. I immediately thought of the Grief and Happiness Alliance. All the people who attend, all the people who discover the Grief and Happiness Alliance, find us for a reason. We come together seeking comfort, support, love, and happiness, and all that happens, as well as making new friends.

Initially, we said we were holding meetings or classes, but that never felt quite right. Then Rev Rachel, the president of our nonprofit association suggested that when we come together to write about grief and happiness related topics, talk about what we write, and make new friends that we could call this coming together gatherings. We all agreed!

We formed the Grief and Happiness Alliance Nonprofit Organization to provide financial support for these gatherings because we believe that anyone dealing with grief doesn’t need to pay for the support we give. We consider this funding to be like a scholarship that we bestow to those who participate as an act of service and love to those who attend.

All we ask in return for this gift is for people to show up and make the most of every moment of our gatherings which is a beautiful gift of self-care. Magic happens when we commit to attending and making new friends, exploring our grief, and realizing we can be happy at the same time. I love to see all the smiles at the end of each gathering.

To those who are attending, we thank you for your participation.  To those who would like to attend, we welcome you. And to those of you who know people that could benefit from what we offer, we welcome them too. Please feel free to invite anyone you’d like to.

We meet Sundays at 9 AM Hawaii time, noon Pacific time and 3 Eastern time. Register each week to receive the Zoom link by clicking here.

Sign up for our newsletter to learn all we do by clicking here.

Visit our website by clicking here.

We look forward to seeing you at our gatherings.

 

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 Guide 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

Choose Your Guide

by

Every Sunday the Grief and Happiness Alliance gathers on Zoom to write together and learn happiness practices. We write on different subjects every time, and when we share what we wrote about, we learn much from each other.

This week, I invited the participants to write a dialogue, a conversation with someone they would love to have a guide or mentor them through their grieving. Whoever they chose didn’t have to be living now. The range of people they chose revealed the distinctiveness of concerns the participants were dealing with.

One chose Maya Angelou because of her strength and tenacity in dealing with life. Ms. Angelou is a powerful storyteller who explores deep truths.  I was fortunate to be in her presence when I attended a conference where she was the speaker. I’ll never forget her powerful, resonant voice, which enlivened each word she uttered. Since that experience, whenever I read something she wrote, I hear her speaking the words in my mind and feel her power. I would love to have a conversation with her to hear her advice for me.

Another writer in our group chose Thich Naht Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who is considered to be the “father of mindfulness.” With his gentle words, he explores concepts like loneliness, worrying, and peace with sage advice for anyone, yet we can apply that guidance to our grief experience now. Just thinking about his gentle spirit and tranquil smile brings me peace.

Others chose people like a favorite minister or a lifelong friend.  We were all seeking different types of guidance and comfort. I found myself in a conversation with my husband, Ron.  I asked him a question, and his words just poured out with consummate guidance that not only helped me right now but are guiding my next steps. When this happened, I realized I needed to contact him more often. Just as when we used to have our wonderful conversations on our lanai, we can still have them now. I just realized that the word for patio in Hawaiian is lanai, and the word for heaven is lani. So similar. Our very special place to spend time together is still here and is heavenly.

Who would you like to have as your guide or mentor as you deal with grief? You could have more than one. When you keep your heart open to inspiration, you discover your guidance is already there, waiting for you to notice it.

 

 

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 Guide 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

You can order the International Best Selling book in 9 countries that I wrote a chapter in, Ignite Forgiveness, by clicking here

Reflections on Manifestations 

by

My new book, The Grief and Happiness Handbook, launches this Friday, July 7, 2023. Last week, my publisher asked me what my intention is related to the book. I told her that the book is a bestseller, and I am thrilled because I know it is bringing comfort, support, love, and happiness to all who read it. Now I am watching that manifestation unfold.

I did some serious soul-searching after my husband Ron died. We moved to Maui just two years before his transition. I had met wonderful neighbors and some of Ron’s friends from when he lived here long before I knew him. At that point, though, I was pretty much alone and longed to know what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. In my exploration process, I journaled a lot, revealing to me the value of writing to deal with loss.

I realized that my new purpose in life was to help myself by helping others deal with their grief using writing in the process.

When Ron’s friend Chappy died a few months after Ron, I decided to write his dear wife Lori a card every week for a year. As I created those cards, I realized I had an outline for a book with the subjects of those 52 cards. I had written three university-level textbooks at that point, and I was teaching writing at the university, so writing a book helping people learn how to write through grief seemed to be my logical goal. My challenge was finding a publisher.  My agent and I worked for months approaching publishers.

A friend invited me to attend a group where people shared what they were manifesting and then supported each other toward those manifestations.  I went with her and told my new friends that I was manifesting the publisher for my book. I continued to focus on that and attend the meetings, and in two months, I had my publisher.

When I wrote my next book, my publisher wanted to wait a year or two before they published it, and since I didn’t want to wait, I set my intention to manifest the perfect publisher for my new book. When I talked to one of my podcast guests, she told me how wonderful her publisher is, so I approached that publisher, Ignite Publishers, and my guest was right.  Ignite is a wonderful publisher.

I am reflecting on being grateful to manifest the perfect publishers for these two books this week. I became aware of the process of manifestation after my husband Jacques died.  Two friends of mine suggested that I watch the movie The Secret. The movie is about the power of manifestation and stars many experts in the field, including Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center; Jack Canfield, creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series; and Marci Shimoff, author of Happy for No Reason and founder of the Happy For No Reason Certified Trainer program.  In the years after I watched that movie, these three people have assisted me in my efforts to help those dealing with loss. I found that Michael Bernard Beckwith was a childhood friend of my husband Ron. He conducted the celebration of life we held for Ron and wrote the forward to my book Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief. Jack Canfield did a beautiful interview with me about that book. You can watch it on my website. And Marci welcomed me into her happiness training program and wrote the forward for my new book, The Grief and Happiness Handbook.

When I watched The Secret, I had no idea how it would help me on my journey. By being willing and open to living my best life, much wonder and good has come to me. Looking back, I realize that I have been manifesting things throughout my life without realizing that was what I was doing. For instance, in every job I have had, I was invited to do rather than search for a job. I’ve manifested buying and selling homes with ease and grace.  I manifested creating my live theatre. I manifested perfect roles for me to perform in plays.  And I could go on forever.

Manifestation is a powerful tool to create your dreams. I encourage you to manifest your best life or maybe, like me, realize that is what you have been doing all along.

 

You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance, which meets weekly on Sundays 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

You can order the International Best Selling book in 9 countries that I wrote a chapter in, Ignite Forgiveness, by clicking here

The Power of Optimism

by

I lived most of my life in neutral, with sometimes sprinkles of happiness and sadness. In dealing with grief, I found myself more often on the sad end of the scale. When I realized that’s where I was, I made on conscious effort to tip the scales in my favor and spend my time on the top seat of that teeter-totter. I read much about happiness, became a Happy for No Reason Certified Trainer, started the Grief and Happiness podcast, and listened to happiness podcasts.

I learned that in early grief I easily fell into the role of “catastrophizer” where I magnified my woes and focused on the worst that could happen. That did not serve me and made it difficult to move forward with my life. When I came to understand what I was doing, my epiphany was that I was in charge of my thought patterns, and I knew I could change my mind. When I chose to dispute my catastrophic thoughts and focus instead on positivity, I found the power of optimism.

With the birth of positive psychology by psychologist Marty Seligman, more research on happiness resulted in great books, fascinating podcasts, and university classes about Happiness. One of my favorite happiness experts is Dr. Laurie Santos who created a Happiness course at Yale University which has become the most popular course there in its 300-year history. She also hosts a delightful podcast, The Happiness Lab, which I highly recommend.

All the scientific research has demonstrated innumerable benefits of happiness. A few of those benefits are:

  • Optimists try harder.
  • People like to be around optimists.
  • Optimists tend to do their best at whatever they do.
  • Prosperity comes more easily to optimists.
  • Optimists are likely to live longer.

When you emphasize happiness in your life, you will keep feeling better and better. This is something we all crave while grieving. The self-care of paying attention to keeping your emotions positive allows you to experience more positivity which in turn lightens your grief.

So, in the words of Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry! Be Happy!”

 

 

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

You can order the International Best Selling book in 9 countries that I wrote a chapter in, Ignite Forgiveness, by clicking here