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A Grieving Place

August 5, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Career Coaching, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Knowledge, Love, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, success, Thought, Uncategorized, Understanding, Wisdom

My grieving started when my son of 20 years suddenly went missing. I found that I needed to figure a way to grieve without it interrupting my day for that’s when I needed to be strong to continue looking for him. I needed strength then also to coordinate the continual onslaught of information with the many agencies that assisted us as well as be there for my three girls. My husband and I also needed time together and I continued working fulltime to pay for our normal bills as well as hire different individuals to search for Josh. All of this took time and energy something which it seemed I never had enough of.

I found that creating a schedule including a regular time to grieve, as well as a place to grieve which for me was the bathroom was the best way to keep my grief from taking me and my day over. It was necessary to have a quiet place and to not be interrupted I learned. Starting out I had a picture of my son in a bathroom basket along with some pictures of my girls. Later I added more pictures and a lock of my sons hair I was given by the coroner much later when his murdered remains were found. Eventually I ordered an amulet and a small decorative vase with a bit of my sons cremated remains and added those things to my basket. What one uses is not important nor how much or little and obviously what you change or leave the same is unimportant as well. What is important is that it means something to you and helps you feel connected to your child and assists you in the grieving you must go through.

At first it happened spontaneously, I found myself getting ready for bed after everyone else had gone to sleep and the day had slowed down enough for me to start thinking about how much I missed my son and wonder what had happened and where he was. This of course led to the grief, it started usually with tears and then led to spasms of grief much like throwing up but from the bowels of your soul rather than your stomach. I often needed to scream at the very world itself for allowing this to happen to my wonderful son and me and our family and friends. Screams of anger, sadness, fear, frustration and my own agony. I found this was possible and just as effective to my mental and physical health if I used a bath towel to muffle my screams and soak up my tears without my family being affected any more than they were already. This is not to mean that I never cried in front of them, because I did, both to help facilitate their grieving as well as my own but no one wants anyone watching them while throwing up and this was no different.

Some parents I have talked to found this scheduled time alone to grieve very frightening. They mentioned feeling alone and a bit crazy. But even small periods of time can allow you as I did, to explore the very heart of your grief and pain and find in that dark place, that black hole, a way back to a source of life from within. It is from this inner place that you come upon the resources to move through the passage of grief and ultimately to transform the experience into healing.

One of the meditations I was taught during this tough time to assist me with the hard work of grief and healing I invite you to try:

Meditational Grieving Exercise

Sit quietly alone in a safe and private place bringing your full attention to your grief. Take a few minutes to reflect on your child who is dying or has died, acknowledging this loss. Feel where the grief is residing in your body right now. Note how it surfaces in your thoughts and feelings. Grief changes from month to month, from week to week, from day to day, even from moment to moment. Give it your full attention. Don’t assume that what you felt yesterday is what you are feeling today. Be present with your grief as it is right now without judging, without criticizing, without trying to change anything. If feelings surface, let them flow. Trust them as they present themselves. Don’t push them back, don’t push them away. It’s safe here where you are. If you are feeling numb, you may at first feel that nothing is going on but if you look closer you may discover that even numbness involves a complicated set of sensations and experiences . So don’t judge yourself for feeling numb. Explore the feeling.

Give yourself permission to cry, express anger, be crazy or quiet, to feel a lot or to feel numb. This is your protected sanctuary where you can fully acknowledge the loss of your child. Your child is dying or has died. Your world has changed both within and without. Cradle yourself in your grief. You need your love, your protection. So be gentle with yourself and take your time. Let yourself be however you are in this present moment.

Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach

www.parentsgriefrecovery.com

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson

Tags: attitude, Balance, coaching, gratitude, grief, Grief Recovery, growth, intuition, knowing, opportunity for growth, parents grief, understand No Comments »

by Stella

Healing a Loss at a Time

July 30, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Career Coaching, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Knowledge, Love, Uncategorized, Understanding, Wisdom

Interesting how each loss prepares you for the next. Surviving the loss of my son after he had been missing for almost two years was certainly the most devastating event in my life. And I have reflected back on the fact that each of my previous loss experiences both big and small helped me to handle something like losing a child. How remarkable that the very things I learned to handle that loss I am again using with new losses I have found myself up against.

I, my siblings and friends are at that time in our lives when either we have lost parents and or have aging parents that we realize will not be there for us one day. We find our children are growing up and are leaving home and we find ourselves mourning that connection when they were part of our daily lives. We are experiencing retirement or career changes and the losses associated with that. Some of my friends have life altering or life threatening illnesses, even the world we once knew is becoming a scarier place to be in and makes us feel sad at the loss of olden days and simpler times. Each of these things once again forces me to let go of the very false perception we have that we have control of our lives. In an instant the rug can be pulled out from under us, the course of our lives forever changed and leave us ungrounded and devastated.

What I have come to understand is that while the tide in our lives is the constant, what the tide brings each time is ever changing and seeing the beauty in this natural rhythm of things is profound.

A fact of life is we will experience many losses and in our lifetimes we live by losing, leaving and letting go. These are simply a part of our ever changing world like the seasons. We nor those we love can escape this sorrow that is part of life. Parents die, friends drift away and our children grow up and leave home. We lose spouses and partners to divorce or death; sometimes we lose them emotionally long before.

With each major loss, we often encounter multiple losses. For example, the death of a parent can lead to many other losses– of our identity as their child, of our family history, and sometimes of friends as they retreat from the intensity of our grief. Losing a job can lead to the loss of self-confidence, identity, and power. A miscarriage or infertility can bring about the loss of the dream of having a family. A divorce can result in the loss of a lifestyle, home, friends, and identity.

Our culture is one of acquisition and in it we are not taught how to handle loss. We often think that we can avoid the pain of loss if we keep busy, that we can wall off our hearts a little to protect ourselves. However it is the un-grieved losses that snowball and eventually take their toll on our hearts and deaden us. We do not realize that even these, as hard as they are, are connected to our personal growth.

Irish poet John O’ Donohue writes that loss is the “sister of discovery”. He explains that as it empties and clears away the old, loss makes room for something new. It allows us to grow and enjoy new things. Loss provides a “vital clearance of the soul”. It prunes away the dead branches so that new shoots can break forth.

When we are able to open our hearts and ourselves to the many smaller losses in our lives and treat them as teachings for the more major losses for which life will bring us, we are not so overwhelmed when a major loss such as the death of a child happens. Instead we are able to tap into that reservoir of loss we hold within us and not only survive it but grow from it.

Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach

www.parentsgriefrecovery.com

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson

Tags: attitude, Balance, coaching, decision-making, emotions, gratitude, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, knowing, opportunity for growth, parents grief, reflection, Thought, understand 1 Comment »

by Stella

Finding The Path Through The Bewildering Experience Of Loss

July 23, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Career Coaching, Communication, Compassion, Grief, Grounding, Healing, Intuition, Knowledge, Love, Motivation, Perception, Purpose, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Spiritual Connection, Thought, Uncategorized, Understanding, Wisdom

Parents who lose a child are often left feeling as if they have survived a catastrophe and are left standing at ground zero with no clue as to where to go or how to begin getting their life back. It is difficult to know what to do from where they are at and on top of it they are left feeling stunned and reeling from the intense feelings of loss and pain. Our society I have found offers little help in this area and the things people tell us such as time heals all wounds and he’s in a better place anger, frustrate, and stir up the anxiety and confusion we already feel. What I was fortunate enough to have found is that there are tools we can use that make a huge difference in how quickly and easily we are able to merge our lives before we lost our child with the life we have now without that child. Although forever changed we can learn to adjust and be happy again. We can each use our own creative and intuitive abilities fine tuned to us to help us find the peace we need. We just need to be taught how and my experience was that with a grief recovery coach I was able to learn not only what these tools are but was coached on how to use them. Some of the help I found came from a book I read called: The Infinite Thread: Healing Relationships Beyond Loss by Alexandra Kennedy. In it she mentions 7 steps for the process of recovery.

They are:

to express all the feelings over this loss: anguish, longing, relief, anger, depression, numbness, despair, aching, guilt, confusion, and often unbearable pain
to let the nonnegotiable and excruciating reality sink in that you will never again be in the physical presence of your deceased loved one
to review your relationship from the beginning and to see the positive and negative aspects of the person and the relationship
to identify and heal your unresolved issues and your regrets
to explore the changes in your family and other relationships
to integrate all the changes into a new sense of yourself and to take on healthy new ways of being in the world without this person
to form a healthy new inner relationship with this person and to find new ways of relating to him or her.

Kennedys book reinforced how it’s important to actively work to integrate and resolve our grief, not to just passively experience our reactions to it. She states that, “Grief carries us until we learn to carry it.” Reading that phrase helped me understand that we do not need to stay victims of grief we can be survivors and even captains of our destiny again if we wish!

Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach

www.parentsgriefrecovery.com

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson

Tags: attitude, Balance, choice, coaching, emotions, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, intuition, knowing, Love, opportunity for growth, parents grief, peace, Purpose, rainbow bridge, spiritual growth, success, Thought, trust yourself, understand 1 Comment »

by Stella

Child Loss Can Be Incapacitating

July 1, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Knowledge, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Spiritual Connection, success, Thought, Uncategorized, Understanding, Wisdom

Losing a child can be and most often is incapacitating to varying degrees depending on the individual. The definition of incapacity according to the Encarta Dictionary is: “A physical or mental challenge, making learning or performing basic tasks difficult.”

In Learning About Grief from Normal Families: SIDS, Still-birth, and Miscarriage, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 1991, Vol. 17, No. 3, 215 it says, “the period of substantial incapacity normally lasts one to three years when a child dies, nine to fifteen months for a miscarriage.”

Because such a large part of incapacity is the loss of mental function, parents who have lost a child often are unable to properly measure the depth or level of their incapacity. Many parents report that immediately following their loss, they lost the ability to stand, talk and think at the same time. The mental effort required to keep their balance took more than they had. At the time this was happening they were unaware of this incapacity they were suffering from and not until they looked back did they come to realize how impaired they had been. What is important here is to understand that this is a quite normal and common response to child loss.

For caregivers, during the time right after child loss, understanding this concept should help in what areas you might step into to help the grieving parent. Things such as driving, cooking, caring for other children in the home, errands etc. Having been there myself as a grieving parent an excellent approach would have been “let me come be your friend/servant for the day so you don’t have to be worrying about menial things like driving or cooking so soon after your loss.” Specifically suggesting rather than generally asking “where can I help?” Always the independent one when I was asked about where I needed help I resisted but later found myself in dangerous situations like going through red lights and leaving pans burning on the stove. Thank heavens my guardian angel was obviously on overtime duty during the weeks following when my son was reported missing and again when his murdered remains were found.

”Unfortunately, in addition to reduced mental function greater financial obligations usually accompany loss” according to research from Counseling Bereaved Families (Springer Publishing Company, Inc.) at 75-77. Thus the demands on your ability increase as your ability decreases. Most parents report that due to medical bills, funeral bills and or inability to work they feel the stress of decreased income after child loss. This in turn also causes additional stress and therefore has an even further incapacitating effect.

Again the important thing here is that as a grieving parent one realizes that this is a normal and universal reaction to losing a child and that there is light at the end of the proverbial tunnel once an individual has done enough grief recovery work for themselves. As I have mentioned before this can be done on one’s own but is most often faster and easier when done with a Professional Grief Recovery Coach like I and many other parents have or a Therapist.

Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach

www.parentsgriefrecovery.com

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson

Tags: attitude, Balance, choice, coaching, decision-making, emotions, grief, grieving parents, growth, knowing, opportunity for growth, parents grief, Purpose, rainbow bridge, spiritual growth, spirituality, success, Thought, understand 1 Comment »

by Stella

How Many Children Do You Have?

June 11, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Communication, Compassion, Grief, Grounding, Healing, Intuition, Knowledge, Love, Motivation, Purpose, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Relationships, Thought, Uncategorized, Understanding, Wisdom

Soon after my son’s murdered remains were found I was filling out a form and came to the question, “How many children do you have?” I remember feeling panic at that moment at how to answer this question I had previously answered easily for over twenty years. Logic said three girls but my heart thought no, that is not right, that seems like denying my sons existence. Next I thought, I have three girls and one son, four kids, no, that isn’t right either, is it?

Losing a child was bad enough and now staring me square in the face was this awful question that I now realized I was going to have to deal with not only once but numerous times I knew for the rest of my life. So I figured I might as well find the right answer for me for all those form questions and those individuals I would surely come across who would ask me as well.

In the beginning when I needed to tell my story of my son and how he had died I spoke in detail of how he had gone missing for almost two years and how and where his remains had been found as well as how his case was being pursued by numerous private, state, and federal agencies.

As the months began to pass and I found I had told my story enough and the grieving process had begun to heal me I found I did not need to go into the details any more. My needs had changed and so I rethought my answer.

Now I answer five stepchildren, three daughters and one angel son. I consider who is asking and why and whether or not they are going to be a continuing part of my life to determine if I am going to go any further in my answer. If so I tell them more so as not to feel as if we are dancing around the fact at hand of my son’s death. I may also explain that my husband’s first born daughter also died of spinal meningitis when she was two, many years before I met my husband. Better out in the open I figure, as it than loses its ability to interfere with the relationship.

If on the other hand the individual is just a passerby in my life than I leave it at five stepchildren, three daughters and one angel son and seldom does anyone pursue it beyond that. If they do or if they have follow up questions about my children I tell them that my 20 year old son went missing for almost two years and his remains were found at that point and the authorities are all in agreement of who did it and know who did it but it is still an ongoing investigation and they are waiting to make an arrest. Then I tell them about my stepchildren and daughters who are alive and well. This way I give them a chance to either acknowledge my son’s death and continue asking questions or ask about the rest of our kids. Doing it this way usually keeps everyone, including me comfortable.

The occasional embarrassed individual I feel bad for but I see it as their problem. Everyone is different when it comes to this question and no answer is a wrong one in fact my husband who lost a daughter in his first marriage along with his stepson (my son) answers seven children. For him this is what works.

Each of us has to decide what is right for us and then simply say it. In this way we strip the question of its ability to traumatize us, we take away it’s negative power and it can no longer have a harmful affect on us.

Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach

www.parentsgriefrecovery.com

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson

Tags: attitude, Balance, decision-making, emotions, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, intuition, knowing, opportunity for growth, parents grief, Purpose, rainbow bridge, relationships, spiritual growth, Thought, trust yourself, understand 1 Comment »

by Stella

Time Alone Does Not Heal Grief…

May 7, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Career Coaching, Communication, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Knowledge, Love, Motivation, Perception, Purpose, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Spiritual Connection, Thought, Understanding, Wisdom

Immediately after I found out my son had been murdered people starting telling me “time heals all wounds”. I am sure they told me this because they wanted to say something to make me feel better or because they had heard the phrase before and it seemed to fit or because they did not know what else to say. I can honestly say that at first when you lose a child it seems like time is the enemy. The impossibly long harrowing days blended into even longer agonizing nights of pain, loneliness and confusion make one wish that time could be stopped and even better reversed to a point when your child was still happy and with you. Then there is the sudden realization that now that your child has died you will never see him on this earth again. That all you really have to hold onto if you are religious or spiritual is that you will eventually be together again but you also soon realize that it will be a long time in coming and in another place. And that thought puts you at odds with time as well!

What I did find out about time and healing is that although time moves along it alone does not heal. Healing is an active process not a passive one. When you have a wound and do not care for it properly, although it may scab over it often gets infected underneath, takes longer to heal and leaves a scar.

When we lose a child we feel as though our heart and mind and very soul have been mortally wounded. We eventually seem to heal up but if we have not cared for those wounds properly while healing then they too merely scab over closing off the infection beneath which greatly lengthens the healing process experts say and can take according to (Time Magazine July, 1985) 5 to 8 years to recover. Most generally as well this too can leave a bad scar.

The basic definition of to heal means to make whole again. When we become sick something or someone has affected our wholeness. To get back to wholeness we must either eliminate the thing that is affecting our wholeness as in taking antibiotics for strep say or we must integrate it so that we no longer see it as a threat. Once we can do that it no longer has the same impact and we are free to heal and move on.

A common factor among many grieving parents I found is that once they were able to create a shift in thinking and acceptance as if they had chosen their loss themselves they were free to move forward again into happiness. And although not easy to do even when guided by a grief recovery coach or other professional this was necessary to help them heal.

Healing is thought of as a spiritual idea where as curing is a medical concept. That is why it is an active process that we must participate in, it does not happen to us as in curing by a doctor. As in the saying “Physician heal thyself” we must be active in order to heal from the wounds of child loss. To do that we learn how to stay open and accepting the very thing that wounded us.

In Lamaze classes I learned to embrace the pains of childbirth and relax through them as I was taught to view them as completely normal and natural physical and emotional responses to the birth of one’s baby. In doing so I was able to endure up to 20 hours of labor followed by delivery of a healthy baby together with a few stitches of some slightly torn tissue. All this with no medication of any kind nor an episiotomy. And I went home the next day!

Lamaze as well as chronic pain management teaches one not to tighten up around the pain but to relax and allow the pain to be present. The idea taught is that when pain is resisted it intensifies but when we relax and accept it, it can move and flow through us easier. Pain is merely an alert that something is wrong whether it be something physical, emotional, spiritual or mental and all we need do is listen. To relax and breath through it. We do not want to fight it but learn from it.

Time alone does not heal but healing takes time. To be healed we can give ourselves the time we each need to open to the pain and open to the loss. As we do this we grow as we include more of what life holds. We include what would have been lost to us if our hearts and minds had closed against the pain. We include what would have been lost if we had not taken the time we needed to work at the healing we needed all along.

Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach

www.parentsgriefrecovery.com

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson

Tags: attitude, Balance, choice, coaching, emotions, gratitude, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, intuition, knowing, opportunity for growth, parents grief, Purpose, rainbow bridge, reflection, relationships, spiritual growth, spirituality, success, Thought, trust yourself, truth, understand, unity, vision No Comments »

by Stella

16+ Things to Know To Help Yourself When Experiencing Child Loss

April 23, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Compassion, Grief, Grounding, Healing, Knowledge, Love, Physical Health, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Spiritual Connection, Thought, Understanding, Wisdom

My 20 year old son Josh went missing in 2005 and was missing for almost 2 years. I spent the better part of that time working and trying to continue being a mom to my three girls, a wife to my husband and a friend to my friends. Simultaneously I physically searched for my son as well as tried to drive as many people and agencies to keep looking for him with me as if it were their own child that had disappeared.

Police Station Today the police called and asked my husband Mike and I to come down again to the station and meet with Joshes dad and step mom for the umpteenth time. Little do I know that the rug will be pulled out from under me severely and quickly without any warning as it was 2 years ago when I was told that my 20 year old son Josh had gone missing.

Upon arriving at the police conference room they told us that my son had been found. A moment of pure joy that was followed by the next comment b y the police,” his remains were found yesterday afternoon by some individuals in a remote area several hours away from Lewistown. The area has been cordoned off and evidence is being collected.“

It takes all my strength and concentration to simply remain where I am under the continued assault of information. Josh my son is dead. I ask if they know what has happened and they say yes he has been killed and an investigation will follow. Joshua what happened did you know it was coming? Did you suffer? Did you think of me and wonder why I could not come and help you or even stop this terrible thing from happening? Did you even know you were dying? Or was it mercifully quick and painless? I sure hope and pray you didn’t know or feel a thing. (Excerpt from my diary and upcoming book “Grieving Joshie-A Mothers Triumph” by Stella Haight-Wichman)

Each grieving parent receives the news of their child’s death in some way, a phone call, in person, from a relative or friend. It becomes our ground zero. Complete and utter devastation. We each respond in our own way. Some emotionally, some go numb, some respond more physically feeling nauseous or feeling as if they were hit hard in the stomach.

Understanding the reasons for our reactions goes far in how well and how soon we start our recovery from child loss. Emotions as many of us may have learned, help to regulate our lives, to give us consistency, balance and stability. So when we suddenly lose that balance as we do when we find out our child has died and life no longer makes any sense, our emotions are affected and felt often times immediately.

Our emotional response in turn causes a physical response often times felt as quickly as a second later. Chemicals in our body are released , causing anxiety and stress which causes the heart to beat faster and can mimic a heart attack and the muscles in our body contract causing a feeling of stiffness and weakness and tiredness, blood vessels constrict and may reroute blood causing a feeling of coldness in our bodies and or numbness even, antibodies that normally help to keep us from getting sick have a tough time keeping up with things and we may find we get sick more often or more severely. Neurohormones temporarily shut down our awareness so that we feel an emotional numbness not altogether feeling in touch with reality. I have tried to keep the explanations here simple and in laymen’s terms and they are but a few of the many and different responses parents experience when losing a child.

A question I often had when experiencing all these varied and sudden emotional and physical reactions to my son’s death was what is normal? Below is a listing of some normal reactions to child loss.

No emotion or feeling (a feeling of numbness or emotionally empty or dead)
Strong emotion (varying from a little to a lot) Can be tears, hysterical laughter, anger, etc.
Inability to sit still (often needing to constantly move or roam about doing things)
Loss of focus (trouble with concentration similar to ADD)
Feelings of memory loss, fear, disorientation and confusion (as if you suddenly got Alzheimer’s)
Nostalgic yearning for and or longing (often times intense and constant)
Changes in biorhythms (eating, sleeping etc)
Feeling controlled and overrun by memories
Attacked by guilt, anger or blame

A second question I had was what can I do to survive this?

We must give ourselves permission to grieve. (to feel however we feel, to express our grief in any way that is appropriate for us and to know there is no wrong way unless it is immoral, illegal or is harmful to ourselves and or others i.e. cutting, starvation etc) Studies point to more physical and psychological problems in the initial months following loss for those suppressing grief as well as more problems over a year and more later. So expressing how we feel is a normal and healthy means to experiencing grief.

A third question I had was what should I know to help me through this?

Hang with those who are supportive of allowing you to grieve your own way.
Talk to the child you lost as if they were actually there.
Find a professional counselor, therapist, or grief recovery coach. What better time to hire a guide to help you through this painful grieving process so as to move forward easier and quicker.
Live in the moment and try and appreciate the small things. The taste of an orange, the smell of the flowers, the feel of a warm bath!
Let others help! This is a time that tables turned you would want to help out so give others the opportunity to help you with anything you need.
Stay close to those that love you. You do not need any more loss in your life so it is worth focusing on trying to minimize the effects of your grief on your other relationships. This also gives you something concrete to do to help you through your grief.
Take care of you! For all sorts of reasons but most of all because you matter in this world! No telling who or how you might have an impact on someone else who is suddenly thrown into grief and may need your hard earned wisdoms, strength and direction!

Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach

www.parentsgriefrecovery.com

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson

Tags: Balance, coaching, decision-making, emotions, gratitude, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, intuition, knowing, opportunity for growth, parents grief, Purpose, rainbow bridge, relationships, spiritual growth, Thought, understand No Comments »

by Stella

The Rebalancing Of A Family After Child Loss

April 14, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Communication, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Intuition, Knowledge, Love, Purpose, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Relationships, success, Thought, Understanding, Wisdom

When my son was found murdered, indeed even after he went missing I found that my family and myself instinctively knew that we needed to get itself back into the rhythm and balance that was lost when our Josh was gone. This feeling seemed to grow out of a necessity to not replace but to reorganize roles. I found that when your child dies there is a definite shift in the balance of the family and it helped for me to understand what needed to happen to again find that equilibrium.

It seems that the role of your child which held parental hopes and expectations, and was as well the object of love and focus of your family’s attention, is an important one, and its absence is felt keenly by everyone.

I observed families are a lot like an organization. They take on their own identity with their own characteristics and are more than the sum of their parts or in this case family members. They do not merely reflect the individuals that are in it.

In families it seems that when something happens to an individual it has an affect on the family and conversely if something happens to the family it has an affect on the individuals in that family. So for example when my son died I was preoccupied and withdrawn as I grieved at work and everywhere else for that matter which took my focus away from where it was usually therefore having an affect on others in the family. And because my focus was drawn away our loss not only was felt by each one of us but in addition it was as if my family lost me as well as Josh.

I have learned that families which have experienced child loss also work hard at regaining the balance in the family they had before the loss and may not even be aware of the fact that they are making changes to accomplish this. They may shift or change roles, rules, communication, expectations and behaviors to regain the equilibrium that stabilizes the family so it again operates consistently. There is no right way to achieve this as each family differs due to the uniqueness of its individuals.

My older girls each pitched in and spent more time with their little sister after losing their brother. They seemed to know instinctively that she would need that as he and she had been very close and spent a lot of time together. My oldest started calling me daily which she still does after 5 years as she knew her brother had regularly called me or visited on weekends and summers while in college. My youngest started turning into the family clown always trying to lighten things up when needed, which is the role her brother had filled in the family until he went missing. These are just a few examples of reassigned roles and obligations in our own family as we tried to reestablish a balance in our family again.

This happened entirely of its own accord in our family as water will move to fill a void when it’s there. Regardless of whether family balance is resolved healthily or successfully, the period of reorganization following a family’s loss I can say firsthand is very stressful.

I did find with other parents I have coached through grief that one must be careful of not doubling the grief for your surviving children by stealing their own unique identity by placing demands on them to take on the role of their deceased sibling. (Your brother was an accomplished basketball player and you should be too now) when they have no interest in basketball.

On the other hand sometimes if a surviving child has been in the shadow of his sibling (an accomplished basketball player for instance) he may be able to step into the limelight and shine now.

Remember that this is such an explosive time for each member of the family and one member’s grief can trigger another.

An accumulation of grief and pain in an individual or even in the family as a whole can trigger blowups. On the other hand at times the family can draw strength from each other and gain support and solace.

Recognize the need to look at each family members needs and weigh them against that of the family at times. An example would be everyone wanted to celebrate Christmas traditionally at home and I wanted to get away instead and so we celebrated out of town at my oldest daughters. It is important to strike a delicate balance so as to encourage healthy grieving and communication and unity rather than the opposite. Compromise seems to be in order here as each person finds that the health of the whole family is the goal and that each family member will have situations come up that will take precedence.

Remember that each family member does not have the same needs, grieve the same nor have the same relationship with the deceased individual. There are personal differences which must be taken into account. Individual factors are responsible for how each person will react to grief rather than similarity to others in the family or the fact that they all lost the same person in the family.

Lastly the very thing that helps which is the closeness of the remaining members of the family also can be the very thing that threatens to destroy the family. It is easy when we are hurting to place blame, be angry, make false accusations, and place unfair expectations on those we need the most due to irrational demands or fear of upsetting another in the family.

Although a huge undertaking the surviving family needs to reorganize itself to survive and must cope with the stresses of containing different grievers, each with different, unique needs. It is indeed a huge job and what is needed is patience, love, compassion and understanding.

Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach

www.parentsgriefrecovery.com

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson

Tags: attitude, Balance, coaching, Communication, decision-making, emotions, fear, gratitude, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, intuition, knowing, Love, opportunity for growth, parents grief, Purpose, rainbow bridge, relationships, success, Thought, understand, unity No Comments »

by Stella

Do Men Grieve Differently Than Women?

April 7, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Intuition, Knowledge, Love, Motivation, Perception, Physical Health, Purpose, Spiritual Connection, Thought, Understanding, Wisdom

How long can I cry each day before I run out of tears?

I remember asking myself that a year and then again almost two years into the loss of my 20 year old son when he went missing. I continued needing to vent sometimes long and hard and sometimes softly and briefly daily into the third year. Mostly at night, late in the bathroom, alone and screaming into the bath towel. The tail end of the 2 year his murdered remains were found hastily hidden in some brush in a remote area several hours from where we lived in Montana. At some point into that third year after he had been found the daily spontaneous bursts of tears became not always so daily. Here and there I was surprised when I woke up and realized I hadn’t cried at all the day before and it struck me as just short of miraculous. I do not know if it was because I knew where he was now and that knew no one could hurt him again. Or perhaps I was finally resolving my grief and learning to integrate it into my life and move forward, but it had finally started for me, my recovery and a sort of rebirth of sorts of the new me.

I visited about this throughout the three years with my family and took note of how differently we each grieved during the loss of our Josh. The women in the family all talked of tears off and on for a period of time. Some cried more and some less. Some were affected by depression others simply sadness, some got angry, some wanted to talk and some didn’t want to talk at all about their loss yet alone mine. Most of the men in the family showed little outward emotion. They did however spend a lot of time by themselves either praying or talking to Josh. Each of them seemed to throw themselves in their work as a means of dealing with the stress and the anger over his murder.

Dr. Colin Parkes, Hospice Pioneer says that there is an “optimal level of grieving” that differs from one person to another. No two people—no matter their gender—grieve alike. There is no right way to grieve. Someone once said that we grieve as we live. If someone is a reserved stoic in life in general, that person is likely to grieve as a reserved stoic. If someone else finds it easy to express emotion in life, then that person will be more likely to show grief by expressing emotion. What is important is that grief be expressed. What is not important is the specific manner in which that expression occurs.

So do men and women express their grief differently?

Phyllis Silverman, who did important work on grieving at Harvard, points out that there is a “male model” of loss, in which one speaks of “learning to break away from the past.” Persons—and they might be women or men—who follow this “male model” prefer to “get on with life” and quickly involve themselves in work or other activities.

A “female model” of grief, however, emphasizes connection rather than disengagement and separation. Those who identify with this model are more comfortable saying, “You don’t break your ties with the past; you change your ties.” People—and this, too, can be men and women—following the “female model” are more inclined to display grief to others, reach out to one or more persons around them, and to talk more openly about the loss.

Those who tend to follow the male model will work hard to keep from breaking down in front of others emotionally, keep to themselves more and are apt to refrain from asking for help. These people feel an importance in being independent or autonomous. The female model stresses connectedness and being related. What is important is that men and women grieve consistently with how they respond to things in life.

Their different outward expressions can cause criticism towards each other as they feel the other isn’t feeling the degree of pain the same. We must realize that we are each different and grieve in our own way and there is neither right nor wrong except for those that stifle their grief or demonstrate an unwillingness to fully express grief in any form at all. To do so is to set ourselves up for a lifetime of anger, bitterness, illness and a feeling of apathy or deadness or lack of joy for the rest of our lives. It is important whatever our method of grieving be, to be able to integrate that loss so we can again feel engaged in life and happy. That is our goal in Grief Recovery and that is the outcome of healthy grieving.

Peace & Light,

Stella Wichman

Certified From Heartbreak to Happiness Coach

www.parentsgriefrecovery.com

“Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?”

Thomas Jefferson

Tags: attitude, Balance, coaching, emotions, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, intuition, knowing, opportunity for growth, parents grief, rainbow bridge, spiritual growth, Thought, understand 2 Comments »

by Stella

GRIEF RECOVERY CLUES THAT SHOW YOU’RE GETTING BETTER

April 2, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Intuition, Knowledge, Love, Motivation, Perception, Purpose, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Spiritual Connection, Thought, Uncategorized, Understanding, Wisdom

As I have worked through my grief over the loss of my son, I found myself wondering if there were going to be recognizable clues that I would see that would let me know if I was making progress with my grief recovery. I also know that it went agonizingly slow and that it seemed that for every good day forward where I felt as if I might survive this wilderness of grief it was most often followed by several steps backward into sadness, sorrow, anger and despair.

July 13^th 2005 I was abruptly catapulted into grief when my 20 year old son first went missing. Almost 2 years later his murdered remains were found. Initially I stumbled along the road of grief recovery and later with the help of a grief coach continued down that road at a quicker more purposeful gait. What I wanted was clues that could help me see that I was making progress. Markers that I could strive for and upon reaching would tell me that there was a light at the end of the tunnel and that my hard work was paying off. That although things would never be the same I would be happy again.

The list below is the clues that I compiled from both myself and other parents. These can be used by other grieving parents to give them hope and to see they are starting to make progress through their grief as well:

You have come to terms with the finality of losing your child. You understand that they are gone and can not come back to this earth.
You are able to think about the difficult memories as well as the nice ones. Initially in grief it seems that memories are hard as they bring to focus how much you have just lost. Now it seems easier and is comforting to remember.
You once again enjoy the company of just yourself and no longer need to distract yourself with things and people to keep you busy.
You can safely drive again without breaking down into tears because it is one of the few places you can be alone with your grief and vent even though you know how terribly unsafe it is.
You find you are less sensitive to other comments and are again able to see that some comments are simply made due to stupidity and are not purposeful attacks.
Holidays and special occasions are again something you look forward to whether or not they have remained the same or you have adopted new traditions.
You are able to take what you learned from the experience of losing a child to try and help others going through the same thing.
You are able to listen to your child’s favorite tunes without crying or needing to turn it off as it hurts too badly. Now you may even be able to enjoy the songs as they bring happy memories shared with your child.
You finally realize that grief is not Permanent, Pervasive nor Personal. It merely is what it is and just happens sometimes for no reason.
You can go to church without tearing up at some point.
You find yourself not thinking of your child as much or as long at one time. At first you worry you are forgetting them. This is not true though. Instead you are giving yourself permission to move forward with your own life which is what your child would want for you anyway.
You are able to laugh again and be happy without feeling any guilt.
You find you’re eating, sleeping and other routines you once had are returning to what they used to be.
Your previous energy level is returning.
You find you have developed new daily, weekly, monthly and yearly schedules that do not include your child.
You find you are able to concentrate on things again like a book or movie or TV show and can retain what you read or saw!
You find you no longer need to visit your childs grave as often or as long.
You find you are again able to focus on and embrace the positive which was there all along but impossible to see.
You are able to again enjoy new people and develop healthy relationships with them.
You feel your confidence returning and know who your new self is. You’re able to focus on and work towards your future again.
When you look into your eyes they no longer look like the wildebeests whose being attacked by the lion. The shock is over as well as denial and anger mostly has given way to acceptance and understanding of your new reality. This is not the same thing as condoning the death however.
You have adopted the attitude of “Why argue with the rain?” You now understand that it will not change things. Instead you look for ways to work around the rain or you may even choose to dance in it (for example I continue to make my sons favorite Birthday 7 layer bars on his birthday for his family even though I understand he will not be blowing out his candles or having a piece to eat.)
You find you are calmer about the grief bursts or grief attacks. You realize they are happening less often and are less intense.
You find you are starting to look forward to waking up to your day again.
You find you have found others that fill the void in your life created when your child died. You may also have found other activities as well to fill the space and find you are more so comfortable with the changes.
The energy it used to take just thinking about your child and the time it took as well is now being used in other areas. You may be helping other parents who have lost children or making other definite plans for your life.
You accept your new life and find that the experience of losing a child has led to new personal growth.