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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

Learning To Cope With Pain After Child Loss

July 9, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Grief, Grounding, Healing, Knowledge, Love, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Spiritual Connection, Thought, Uncategorized, Understanding, Wisdom

When I was learning how to navigate the world and my new life after I lost my son, I read an article that helped me tremendously. So much in fact I decided to base this blog on it! The following is from Richard Marsh’s biography “Surviving Loss”:

Coping and Catastrophic Change

By nature, everyone has multiple ways to cope with any problem. While everyone has heard of the “Flight or Fight” alternatives, there are actually about nine methods of coping used by people, each with a typical type of action and an associated mental state.

1. Attack. When faced with a problem, one may attack it.

The action for this pattern is fighting and the emotion is anger.

Anyone who reacts to challenge and problems with anger is focused

on this pattern of resolving conflicts and problems.

2. Fleeing. When faced with a problem, a person can run

away from it. The action is flight, and the emotional state is

fear. Many people run from their problems.

3. Denial. The action is to ignore the problem and the

emotional state is dullness.

4. Dithering. The action associated with dithering is

random response and the emotional state is confusion. Dithering

is also referred to in the literature as distracting.

5. Co-option. The action associated with co-opting problems

is cooperation. The general act is trying to reach a

participatory and collective action and the emotional state is

a cooperative one.

6. Analysis. This response to stress or problems is to

attempt to think through and understand the problem.

The emotional state is usually curiosity.

7. Action. This response is somewhat of the opposite to

Analysis. It is “doing something, anything” and in many ways is

an active form of dithering. The emotional state is one of

extreme intentness.

8. Appeasement. The general act is to just give in and

the general emotional state is guilt.

9. Anguish. This response is to give up and the emotional

state is one of despair.

Whenever there is catastrophic change and pain, the mind treats the pain as a signal that the current methods of coping need to be changed. The subconscious treats the pain as proof that the current method has failed and forces a person to begin to try the methods over and over again until the pain decreases and something is found that “works.”

Persons who have catastrophic loss will experience all of the above states and methods over and over again in their lives, almost randomly, until the pain decreases.

Thus, if a person were assaulted and robbed in a parking lot, they would feel anger, confusion, guilt and a desire to do something (or nothing) over and over again until the pain had healed. The emotions and states would be applied to everything in life, not just parking lots and banks.

A person who loses a child will suffer through this cycle for at least a year and usually for three to five years. If they are moved off track in their healing they can become stuck in a mode for five to ten years or even for life. One of the worst things outsiders can do is pressure grieving parents not to resolve a mode or to attempt to force them to stick in one.

Steps and Cycles

It is important to understand that these steps associated with grief and mourning can afflict everyone, not just those with ”serious” losses. While these steps are caused by the constant cycling of coping mechanisms, these steps occur, to some extent, in every life when loss occurs. While few lose children, many lose jobs, friends and other hopes, and experience portions of the same steps.

In spite of it all, it is possible to cope. You, your family and others can all do things that will help you make it through the loss of a child (or other significant loss) in shape to make a better tomorrow and able to care for those who remain. Always remember, those who remain need you as much as those who died.

While I had read about the stages of grief written many years ago by the famous Dr. Kubler- Ross, and was able to apply them to my own healing. I found that the 9 stages of coping with catastrophe found above carried me even further up the road to grief recovery. I hope that in reading this many others find the help they need as well.

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: coaching, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, knowing, opportunity for growth, parents grief, rainbow bridge, Thought, 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

What Grieving Parents Want Professionals To Know

May 27, 2010 in Acceptance, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Knowledge, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Spiritual Connection, Thought, Understanding, Wisdom

April 29th, 2007-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.

These memories of that fateful day when I found out my son had been murdered will remain with me forever. In my work with Grieving Parents I was surprised to find how many of them had similar stories and each of us talked of how we wished professionals were more adequately prepared for how to work with parents who have just gotten the news their child has died. Below are some things that grieving parents would like to see professionals know:

Looking For Significance-What we are looking for in the midst of a trauma is significance. We need to know that our relationship to the patient is acknowledged and that we don’t have to relinquish our family position just because our loved one is in the hospital or has died.

Need to be Informed-Obviously, it will not always be possible or even wise for family members to be with a patient during all life-saving procedures. However, we need to be kept informed. A liaison should be assigned to the family, someone who can explain what’s happening, someone who will represent the doctor and the family well. A liaison can also offer to call a pastor, chaplain, or friend. A liaison should also help provide privacy for the family, and most of all they need to be gentle. We have just been severely traumatized, our child has died or is dying, we are in a strange environment, and we are frightened. We need someone who will establish good rapport and establish our significance

Answer Our Questions-We will have all kinds of questions. “Is he conscious? Is he in pain? What happened? What are the medical people doing right now? Why is it taking so long? Will he live?”

We need someone to explain hospital procedures and answer questions. A caring staff person who is well informed can go a long way toward preventing malpractice suits and most certainly promote goodwill between the hospital, the doctor, and the patient’s family.

Parents are often so frustrated by the lack of answers by medical personnel that they feel a malpractice suit is often the only way to force an explanation of what happened and get answers to their questions.

I have learned that families can handle an “I don’t know” or “I did everything I could” answer much more easily than a medical person’s refusal to answer or a medical person’s apparent avoidance of the family. When our questions aren’t answered by medical personnel, we are left to come up with our own answers and they may well be wrong.

Do Not Avoid Us-As medical professionals please do not be evasive because you are afraid of us and our questions. Instead gather information and inform when we ask. Be aware of volunteers from bereavement support groups who can be called to talk with and/or sit with a family facing the death of a loved one.

Do Not be Afraid to Show Sympathy- for fear we may “fall apart. When we cry or show some other emotion, we are not doing so because you showed concern. We are doing so because someone has finally given significance to us and our situation and we feel it is safe to express our true feelings.

Allow us to Vent-It is helpful if someone shows enough concern that we know it is safe to express our feelings and our fears. Once we know it is ok to express our true feelings, the strong emotions usually dissipate quite quickly. However, when we sense it is not safe to show our emotions, we generally do everything we can to hold them in until some often insignificant situation arises and the top explodes off of our emotions like an exploding volcano.

Provide a Liaison-If a hospital can provide a caring person to stick with the family and even call and check up on them later, that will go a long way to create good will and positive attitudes between the family and the medical establishment.

Educate Yourself- It is important that medical personnel become well versed in how to help families when things don’t go the way they had hoped. Don’t just read clinical material on bereavement; read articles and books written by bereaved people.

Don’t Let Us Leave Empty Handed – Gather information for us on support groups. Prepare a resource list of helpful books and articles. Hand it to us. Give us a card with the telephone number of a minister, grief recovery coach or counselor. Send us home with some books that will address our situation. Make arrangements to have someone check on us periodically. I was told a medical professional asked, “Well, what kind of time-line can we put on grief?” The answer to that question, “Everyone and each situation is different so grief takes as long as it needs to for each individual.” So please give us time, and please give us permission to grieve.

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: coaching, decision-making, emotions, gratitude, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, knowing, opportunity for growth, parents grief, Thought, understand 3 Comments »

by Stella

Mysterious Things That Can Happen To Us While Grieving

May 21, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Intuition, Knowledge, Love, Perception, Purpose, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Spiritual Connection, Thought, Understanding, Wisdom

In the parents grief support group I attended after I lost my son there was often talk of strange occurrences that seemed to happen to not all but many of the parents . By strange occurrences I mean things out of the normal range that are unexplainable and that seem to follow or surround the death of their children. The interesting thing about the discussions is that not one of the parents was spooked by the occurrences nor thought they were evil, witchy, satanic, or otherwise came from or led to anything bad. In fact most parents seemed heartened by them feeling their child was connecting to them in some way as if they were trying to reassure them that they were OK.

There is one couple that I met who see butterflies in the strangest places and at the strangest times. In fact they have finally built a butterfly flower garden in their backyard so they can sit there to enjoy it and through those butterflies feel close to the daughter they lost.

Another set of parents I know have had experiences with lights, especially a certain lamp in their home going on by itself. This started soon after they lost their son. They feel it is a way for him to connect to them from the new realm he is in. A way to say hello! I am here and okay! It gives them great peace of mind and reassurance that he is okay where he is and is still watching over them.

Many other parents claim to see what is called an orb of light. I round bright ball of light that is sometimes seen around someone before, during or after death. We have pictures taken several months before my son died where there is an orb seen in the picture by him. I was told by a number of parents in my support group they too had looked back at pictures taken of their child who had died and noticed these strange round lights near them.

Many of us experience some kind of unusual occurrence when we are grieving. Often we are embarrassed to talk about these curious events. We wonder if others around us may think us crazy. We are most certainly not though. Many normal average people experience these sorts of things upon losing someone.

For example my son’s greatest trouble with being employed once he was old enough to be, was his loss of freedom. He told me once before he died that he valued his freedom more than he did money. He would rather be poorer and be free to spend his time doing what he wanted with his friends and family than have money to buy an expensive car, etc and lose his freedom by being tied to a job and the material things most people are. Of course as his mom and the voice of logic I explained how you must get a good education and job so you have good insurance and pay for all that may come your way so life is easier for you and your own family should you have one. We had this argument through his three years in college and he frustrated me as he worked hard at school but not also at a job after school. He choose instead to live meagerl,y to keep his prioritized freedom as opposed to working more and having more money for things. Looking back I am glad he choose what he did. Had I known he was going to be murdered I would of chosen the same for him so he could enjoy the time he had with friends and family doing the things he enjoyed to do. Did he know or sense something about his life being short?

As a high school senior he was not happy like I thought he would be about graduating when we talked about it. I remember him telling me he wished he could do another year in high school as he liked things as they were and knew his freedom would lesson upon going into college and beyond. Again looking back did he sense something I wonder about what was to come? He flat out told me several times in his life he did not think he was going to grow old. Just a feeling he said. Other parents who have lost children have told me similar stories about their own kids. Do they sense or have a feeling about their untimely deaths?

The day of his memorial almost two years after he had gone missing and again a week later when we scattered his remains I noticed a golden eagle above me in the sky. In Montana that in itself was not odd. Not only did Josh love the freedom of Eagles but he had an Eagle blanket in his room on his bed. Both of these days every time I looked up outside this golden eagle was overhead. I counted 5 different stops the first day when that eagle was over me and a week later while we were out of town scattering his ashes there was that darn eagle again. When we returned home a second time that day I saw a golden eagle overhead and again later that day 3 more times before the day was over. Ten times in all, five times each day! By the third or fourth time I was saying “Hi Josh, I see you, thanks for being so close to us, it helps since this is so terribly hard to do!” or later when I looked up “Hi Josh, love you too much, too!” Inexplicably I felt each time that it was too often to be coincidence or my wishful thinking. I felt as if I was being touched by either my son Josh, God or both when I needed it most.

There are many who have tried to find explanations for this kind of thing. In science they call it the -Laws of Seriality and Object-Impact Interactions. In physics-Implicate Order and Morphogenic Fields. Many have written about -Synchronicity and those in theology tell of -Grace and a Higher Being.

What I have found is that these mysterious events especially in our early grief are not to be understood so much as to notice them and reflect on them. Noticing something unusual does not mean we are crazy. We don’t always need to be able to understand something to be comforted by it or be surprised by it. My belief is that these occurrences are meant to be respite from dealing daily with loss. Often they stay with us for a long time if not forever. They are gifts sent to us, moments to be honored. Times when we realize that some things are a mystery and that there may be a presence we cannot explain. As for me I have now come face to face with the fact that I can be affected by something even when I do not understand it and it can give me immense and lasting comfort.

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, coaching, decision-making, emotions, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, intuition, knowing, Love, opportunity for growth, parents grief, peace, Purpose, rainbow bridge, spirit, spiritual growth, spirituality, Thought, truth, understand 2 Comments »

by Stella

The Overwhelming Grief of Sudden Child Loss

May 14, 2010 in Acceptance, Balance, Compassion, Grief, Healing, Knowledge, Love, Purpose, Rainbow Bridge Coaching and Healing, Spiritual Connection, Thought, Understanding, Wisdom

When I was told that my son of 20 years who had gone missing almost two years previous, had been found murdered I experienced many emotions. I was extremely bewildered, felt anxious, was depressed and wondered if I had done something or not done something that may have led to it. I had trouble continuing to lead a normal life as I had no time to absorb or prepare for the fact that my world as I knew it had ended and I was catapulted into one I did not understand.

The death of one’s child is painful no matter what the cause but in sudden death the ability to cope is severely diminished. The sudden loss of a child puts the grieving parent into shock. This kind of loss is so terribly hard that recovery is more difficult due to additional complications. The complications are that the parents adaptive capacities and ability to cope are so severely hit that it leaves the grieving parents stunned and overwhelmed.

There is no gradual transition time, no time to steady or ready or prepare yourself. Sudden death places you between the way you thought your world would be with your child still with you and the way the world now is. Your beloved child has died without even a warning. This totally disrupts your ideas on what is to be. It disrupts your beliefs in the world and of one’s own control in it. When a loved one’s impending death is known ahead of time these issues are also dealt with but the difference is that they have had a valuable time period to place the death in the context of events that were predictable and made sense. Even though they experienced pain they could see what caused the death. They more than likely were given the opportunity to prepare for the death and to deal with their feelings about it. They were given the opportunity to say I love you, to say good-bye and to do the things they wanted to do for their child before they died.

There are many emotional demands and problems with any type of death of a child but at least when the death is known ahead of time the grieving parents have been able to focus their coping abilities towards the expected outcome. For instance a child is diagnosed with a terminal illness, even though the parents still must struggle with the craziness of their child dying out of order or before them it still is logical that when anyone at any age is stricken with a terminal illness the outcome is most likely death. So the loss makes sense of a sort.

When a child dies suddenly the loss does not make sense. There is no logical sequential explanation of what has happened that prepares them somewhat for the death. The sudden death leaves the parents so stunned that they have a hard time even comprehending what has happened. Accepting that the death even occurred is often difficult, and often takes quite a bit of time. Parents will find themselves going over the story of the accident, suicide, or murder trying to make sense of the loss after the fact. Because they were not prepared for the death and it had no understandable context, they will try to deal with their lack of anticipation by putting the loss into a series of events. They may find themselves looking back at the time leading up to the death and searching for clues that could have indicated what was to come. For example, I remember trying to piece things together to figure out why my son was murdered, who had he been spending time with? had he made anybody angry enough to kill him?, did he owe anybody money? was he involved in anything illegal? For me the answers were no and after repeatedly trying to make sense of the loss I still could not. I found that sometimes people are in the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes people trust the wrong people, sometimes the saying “It is what it is” is all there is to explain it.

This did not stop me though from trying to restructure the sequence of events by looking back in time leading to his death so I could feel a logical progression, a control and predictability and looking back some sense in what had happened.

Holding yourself responsible however I found can lead to problems such as guilt. For example I felt that maybe I should have paid more attention to what he was doing in college and who he was with there. Knowing this I thought maybe could have prevented it. Eventually I rationalized though that when your child of 20 years is in his 3rd year of college 4 hours away and you see him once every few months it would be impossible and unhealthy for you to keep tract of everything your child did and who he did it with .

The grief symptoms for parents experiencing sudden child loss tend to last longer and be more intense. In addition to dealing with feelings of loss and grief a parent is trying to understand what has happened to them and is trying to cope with their drastically altered world. These parents have not only the same job as all mourners , but they also must cope with the extra stresses that leave them relatively more worn down and disadvantaged.

Losing a child suddenly gives us no chance to say good-bye, no chance to tell our child how much we love them or how much they mean to us. This cause a lot of pain as we feel a sense of unfinished business. We long for a chance to tell them things, apologize for things, explain things or simply let them know what they meant to us.

Parents who lose their child suddenly seem to talk of their shared loss of security and confidence in the world. We have been taught a dramatic lesson: Loved ones can be snatched away without warning. What is to prevent another similar loss from occurring in our future we may think. Avoidance and anxiety eventually can lead to states of anxious withdrawal since the world has become such a frightening, unpredictable place.

The consequences of losing a child suddenly in some ways can last a lifetime. For some parents this is evident as chronic grief, or persistent anxiety where security and confidence never totally return. For other grieving parents the consequences are less dramatic though still powerful. An example would be my friends who have not lost children when faced with a spouse or child who is late in coming home will reason they have been held up by traffic or some other logical explanation and not worry unless they are terribly late. Me on the other hand when faced with the same scenario will assume something terrible has happened. I experience a lot of stress and have to mentally self talk myself out of the assumption and into a more logical non-disaster explanation. Newer grieving parents to this may jump at calling the hospital or police. After grief recovery coaching I learned to tell myself that the odds are on my side that everyone is ok and there is a reason for their tardiness. I am however concerned. I have experienced having a child snatched from me without warning and found that this sort of thing does not always happen to other people.

With coaching though I learned that this awareness can also be turned into a positive:

I now make time for and prioritize my family and friends differently.
I do not put things off or wait to say important things to those I care about like I may have in the past.
I do not want to have unfinished business with anyone important to me because I now know that no one is guaranteed a tomorrow.
I now tend to live in the moment more relishing the small things I used to overlook in my hurry to get things done.
I choose my battles better and don’t get caught up in stupid matters that are trivial now realizing that my energies can better be applied to things that truly are worthy of my time and energy.

I appreciate life more now that I have experienced such a traumatic thing. I did not chose this to happen but what I did find was that I could choose to pull something positive and meaningful out of such a tragedy.

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, coaching, emotions, grief, Grief Recovery, grieving parents, growth, intuition, opportunity for growth, parents grief, Purpose, rainbow bridge, spiritual growth, Thought, understand 2 Comments »

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 »