The Grief and Happiness Alliance

losing a loved one

Gifts of Love

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I was talking with Dr VJ Raju this morning. He was telling me about the tradition of celebrating the death of a loved one each year after the death. He said for his mother, he plants 100 trees every year.  This gift not only honors here, but it also helps our planet especially now with all the major fires that are destroying trees with devastating effects. This made me think about how important gifts are when honoring someone or demonstrating love.

I always used to send flowers, but when I thought about how soon the flowers die, that seems to me a reminder of the loss of the loved one. I still like to send flowers for happy occasions, but if I send flowers because of a loss, now I send a living plant that will last lots longer.

When Jacques died, we set up a scholarship fund for students to go to the school of arts that we had founded years before. We requested that in lieu of flowers, that donation be made to that fund. So many people told me that they were happy that they could contribute to something that Jacques loved so much and that it benefitted children.

When I published my book, Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief, I realized that it would be a perfect gift for someone dealing with loss, and it does costs lots less than flowers! I addition to that, the book can bring the receiver comfort and support for months or even years. Many people have sone this and let me know how much they appreciated something that they could give that provides comfort and support.

Other thoughtful gifts could be a warm comforter that could be snuggled with accompanied by some tea. A journal is another thoughtful gift maybe with some ideas you write that your friend could use to write about when they are challenged getting started. I have created a set of 52 cards, and I send them to the person I seek to comfort, one each week for a year. I have done this several times and the receivers have told me how much the cards meant to them especially when they feel like people have forgotten what they are dealing with. Another idea would be to put on your schedule contacting this person each week for a year. This could be a phone call, a text, an email, or a card, or any combination of all these things.

Whatever you give for a gift for someone bereaved, by thoughtful, and make it something that will last. Grief doesn’t end after the first weeks, and thoughtful gifts can support for a while.

 

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.

Join my Facebook group here.

Bereavement Leave

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I am thrilled to hear that President Biden has proposed the Family Medical Leave Act which would include bereavement leave. Although this hasn’t passed yet, and we can’t know exactly what it will stipulate until it is enacted if it is, at least it is a step in the right direction.

Allowing adequate time for people to deal with the dying and death of a loved one should be a priority in our society. When each of my parents died, even though I had a good job working for the state, bereavement leave wasn’t part of my benefits.  I only could get off work using sick leave and then I wasn’t allowed more than three days.  I also was working part time at another job at the time, and they graciously allowed me to take time off that I needed to tend to all I had to deal with at the time, but that time off was unpaid.

I wonder when businesses or the government are making rules about bereavement if the people making the rules have ever suffered a loss.  I can imagine someone in the Human Resources department of a company telling and employee who had just called in to report that his son had been killed by a car in a crosswalk, that the HR person would say “I’m sorry for your loss, but this company does not provide bereavement leave. Be sure to come in to work today so that you won’t risk losing your job for not showing up.” Yes, things like this do happen.

Think about it. Recall how you felt immediately after your loved one died. Even three days later, were you capable of doing whatever your job was?  I felt like I was teaching like a robot, providing essential information but not engaging with my students.  The evaluations my students submitted about me the quarter my father died unexpectedly were the worst I ever received, even though my evaluations were usually very good.  When employers expect their workers to keep the standards they always had while they are dealing with the fresh trauma of grief is completely unreasonable.

Because I took care of both of my husbands at home for two years before their deaths, I wasn’t working at the time they died.  There was no way I could have worked either time. I was fortunate to have close friends who handled any arrangements that were essential while I sat in a fog or curled up in bed. I can’t imagine how I could have worked either week.

I wrote this blog because I want us all to think about the concept of bereavement leave so that any time it comes up, we can advocate for it. This could be anything from talking to a friend who owns a business and asking them what they do.  This could start a conversation that could lead to change.  Also, contact your lawmakers and ask them to advocate for bereavement leave whenever they can. Even talk with your friends.  You may just be planting a seed that can lead to positive changes.

And when loss comes to you, be sure to take care of yourself. Rest, eat well, meditate.  Allow yourself the time to reset your focus. And when loss come to those you care about, be sure to support them with love.  That’s always my intention to do for you.

 

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.

What is the Ideal Way to Deal With Grief?

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Here is the dilemma.   There is no ideal way to grieve.  Each grief is as individual as each fingerprint.  How you grieve depends on lots of different considerations:

  1. How long did you know who you are grieving for?
  2. How close were you to this person?
  3. What are your personal feelings about death?
  4. What do you think happens after death?
  5. What new responsibilities do have because of this death?
  6. Is your income affected?
  7. Are you relieved?
  8. Are you devastated?
  9. Are you alone?
  10. Are you angry?

I could go on and on with this list.  What is most important, though, is how you feel right now and what you are willing or able to do. I have heard that following Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s Five Stages of Grief is the best way to deal with grief, so let me put that idea to rest.  To start off with, she wrote those stages about dying, not grieving.  While you may be able to apply some, or maybe all the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance to your grief, chances are most of them won’t apply to you, and if they do, there are lots of other stages people have suggested like shock, disbelief, pain, and hope to name a few.

Does having a list to check off really help? I don’t think so. The best way to deal with your grief is to pay attention to what you are experiencing and act on that. For instance, the main feeling some people experience is loneliness. If you were accustomed to spending most of your time with your loved one who died, chances are, you may be having a hard time figuring out what to do now. If this is your case, what could you do to help with your loneliness?  I found that getting together with others who were also dealing with loss to write about what we were experiencing helped me a lot, as it did the other members of the group. Or you may prefer to spend time with people who aren’t dealing with loss so you can focus on something different.

If binge watching Netflix allows you some escape for a while helps, do that, and don’t judge yourself for doing it. Just be sure to come up for air sometimes and do something different. Discover what brings you some joy. Is it calling or Zooming with grandchildren? Or maybe you want to hear from an old friend.  Instead of waiting for that person to contact you, reach out. I just had a wonderful conversation on the phone with a friend who I hadn’t talked to in ten years. When we hung up, we both were smiling and have stayed in touch since.

The key here is not to judge yourself in relation to how others are dealing with their grief. Rather, find the ways to deal with your grief that suit you the best. Think about what you want to do, about what could help you feel better. Then do it, whatever it is. One thing that helps me is to walk on the beach.  I also love to garden and write. Discover something that you feel good doing and that you look forward to doing again, then do it. Just take good care of yourself, please. You are worth it!

 

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.

Are Your Journaling?

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What good is a journal when you just write random things in it that no one else will ever see? My answer is: a journal is a lot of good!  The things that I hear most often from people who are grieving or dealing with loss is that they miss their loved one or they are lonely or both. A journal can help with that.

When Ron was still here, we sat on our lanai (Hawaiian for deck/porch) and had long conversations every day. We would talk about anything that popped into our minds, from how to help out someone we knew, to how we felt about something going on politically, to what to have for dinner, to when we would have our next party.  After he was gone, none of those things seemed important, and I felt very much alone.

After a while, I realized that I didn’t want to live in a state of sadness, yet I was struggling to think of anything that I could be positive about. I turned to my journal.  At that time, I I wasn’t even thinking in complete sentences, so I started writing lists. I would write a list of things that would make me happy. I wasn’t eating much and was losing weight, so I wrote lists of food I would enjoy if I ate it. I wrote a list of people I would love to hear from. And I wrote lists about anything I thought of.

At first my list making was just helping me to pass time, then I realized that I was starting to pay attention to what I was writing. I said I loved to walk on the beach, so I did that. I wrote that I would love to have some Cherry Garcia ice cream, so I did.  I wanted to hear from my friend, so I wrote to her. I didn’t have to do everything I wrote down. I was grateful to have an idea of what to do, of what could make me happy.

These small successes helped me to start waking up, so I started writing more in my journal. What came to me was to have a conversation with Ron.  I would write to him in great detail.   I had so much I wanted to tell him. I wrote to him about all I was doing to report the bad effects of the peritoneal dialysis her was doing to help the doctors to know that these things happened so they could monitor their patients for them and get them help. I wrote to him how I felt about our life together. The more I wrote, the more I had to write.

With this writing, the heaviness of the grief I was experiencing began to lift. I was able to breathe more easily.  I felt like I could start to talk to others again. I started to look toward my future. I explored ideas in my writing, and my writing comforted me. Then I started to write others to send them love and support for whatever challenges they were dealing with.

The more I wrote, more came to me. I started realizing I had more to do. And I would plan out my future in my journal. My journal became my invaluable friend. Now I can go back and read what I wrote in those early times, and I am grateful for the strength I gained by writing just for myself. Now I am grateful to write to others to help provide comfort and support.

You will be amazed how writing in your journal can support you on your journey. Just write out all you are feeling and allow it to help you move forward.

 

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.