Tiny Buddha

Tag: grief

  • How to Safely Enjoy the Pandemic Holidays

    How to Safely Enjoy the Pandemic Holidays

    “Surreal” is the word that keeps coming to mind. Life has felt like an alternative universe for quite a while now, and it feels even stranger during the holiday season.

    After a year of much sacrifice, reality is requiring us to forgo traditions we hold dear and distance ourselves from people we may feel we’ve already gone too long without seeing.

    And many are navigating the season with a sense of grief—for lost loved ones, lost purpose, maybe even lost hope.

    Maybe that’s not you. Maybe you are full of gratitude for everything you have, and now appreciate even more because of the pandemic.

    That’s also me, on some days.

    Some days I look around and feel undeniably blessed to have my health, my family, and all my needs met.

    On other days, I feel the weight of these long, isolating months and mourn for lost time with people I love and the family celebrations I will miss with my parents and siblings, who all live together, across the country from me.

    You may be in a similar position, oscillating like a pendulum between gratitude and grief. And you may be debating how to approach this season, logistically, mentally, and emotionally.

    Whatever your unique situation, I hope this checklist helps you approach the weeks ahead safely, with peace, hope, and joy, wherever you can create it.

    1. Caution

    This is the big one, and the hardest one to swallow and follow. It’s been a trying year, one marked by loss and heartache for many. We’re tired of it all and want this pandemic behind us—but it isn’t yet. So as much as we’d like to throw caution to the wind and end the year celebrating with all the people we love, we all need to do our part to protect ourselves and the people around us.

    Not the most exciting way to start this list, I know, but just figured I’d get this one out of the way!

    If you haven’t already seen the CDC guidelines for holiday gatherings, you can find them here.

    2. Communication

    As I imagine you’ve experienced as well, different people hold vastly different perspectives on what constitutes “caution,” and some are willing to take greater risks.

    For example, my extended family got together with at least four different households on Thanksgiving—including some who are regularly exposed to masses of people, some without masks—and they will do so again on Christmas. That’s a risk I wouldn’t be willing to take, but I’m also 3,000 miles away, so it’s a choice I don’t have to make.

    If you’re considering gathering with family, it’s essential to clarify where everyone stands, what precautions everyone’s taking in their daily life, and what precautions will be followed on the day itself. Don’t assume you know how anyone thinks unless they’ve clearly communicated it, because it’s quite possible you’d be wrong.

    3. Empathy

    This can be a tough one. When people make choices that may seem reckless to you, or they push beliefs you just can’t agree with, you may feel hurt, frustrated, or even outraged. It’s hard to separate a person from their choices, especially when it involves something as emotionally loaded as pandemic safety, and it’s hard not to take it personally if their choices seem selfish to you.

    I have been here recently, and I took it very personally. I got upset, I criticized, I judged. What I didn’t do is change anyone’s opinion, or in any way better the situation. I realized then I needed to empathize with the people who see things differently than me. Even if I wouldn’t make the same choices, I needed to understand the feelings behind them and focus on that.

    This doesn’t mean we need to condone decisions we don’t agree with, or in any way put ourselves at risk. It just means we accept what we can’t control and choose love over righteousness, however warranted it may feel.

    4. Self-compassion

    Odds are things haven’t been easy for you. Even if you are healthy, have a job and a roof over your head, and haven’t lost any loved ones, this year probably took a toll on your mental health. I know it’s taken a toll on mine.

    You may feel lonely, discouraged, overwhelmed, impatient, or even downright depressed right now. You may also feel frustrated to have to change your usual holiday plans, at a time when you could really use a little extra love, joy, and connection.

    It’s okay to feel frustrated. It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling, even if you know you’re fortunate. It’s hard to be far from people we love, especially around the holidays, and to miss the traditions we value most. Be extra gentle with yourself and know it’s okay if your gratitude is mixed with a wide range of complex emotions.

    5. Acceptance

    I know how tempting it is to live each day in resistance, especially when you’ve lost a lot, or when things seem unfair. I know how easy it is to get caught up in how things should be or were supposed to be or would be, if only…

    What I don’t know is what you specifically have been through or what you’re feeling right now. So please know I am in no way suggesting acceptance is easy, or that I’d be able to do it easily if I were in your shoes.

    I can only speak to the general idea of acceptance, and how it frees us mentally when we stop fighting reality. I know that when we accept what we can’t control, we’re free to focus on the things we can control and make the best of them.

    I also know I feel better about the person I’m being, and ultimately better about life, when I come from a place of acceptance—even if it takes time to get there. I’m lighter, more present, more accessible to the people around me, and more likely to see opportunities where before I only saw unfairness.

    6. Perspective

    As with everything in life, this is all temporary. Things won’t always be this way. These challenges, these feelings, they won’t last forever. We will eventually get through this and will be able to live more freely. Though life won’t be exactly the same for many, we will find a new normal and new reasons to smile as we adapt to life as it evolves.

    It may be hard to see that now. It may seem like this earthquake of an experience will send shockwaves for years, and we’ll never find our footing again. But we are amazingly resilient as people. Odds are you’ve been through some deeply trying experiences in your life, and you’ve come out stronger, wiser, and maybe even enriched for having gone through what you’ve been through.

    Trust that, odds are, you will not only get through this, you will have many more reasons to smile, and many more holidays to celebrate with the people you love. This one year will one day be a crazy story in all of our rearview mirrors, so long as we keep driving, cautiously, on this somewhat treacherous road before us.

    7. Ingenuity

    One of the gifts of any challenge is that we need to be a little more creative, which can in itself be a source of pride and joy. If you’ve ever made a full meal on a day when you really needed to go grocery shopping, you know what I mean! My mother has a special phrase for this: “Not bad for a throw together!”

    Think of this as your throw-together—your chance to do more with less, to find beauty in simplicity, to make the best of what you have and maybe even start new traditions.

    I’m guessing you may have mastered the art of online connection this year. So now take it to the next level. How can celebrate in creative ways with people from afar? And how can you honor the people right in front of you, even if they’re only some of the ones you love?

    As for me, I’m planning to focus on the excitement of my son’s second Christmas, since I think he’ll appreciate it more this year. I’m going to ask my brother to Zoom-watch A Very Brady Christmas with me, since we’re dorks and watch it every year. And I’ll Portal with my family on Christmas morning when they open the gifts I sent them, so it will be kind of like I’m there.

    8. Mindfulness

    So here we are. At the end of a strange, painful year, staring down months more of uncertainty and potential stress and struggle. No one would fault us for looking back—it’s like there’s a massive multi-car pileup behind us; it’s hard not to gawk. And no one would be surprised if we anxiously looked ahead, worrying about the potential for more accidents down the road.

    But right now, many of us are sitting safely in our cars, with heat and music and at least one person we love to play car games with and pass the time.

    I realize this isn’t true for everyone. You might not have your needs met right, and you may feel unsafe in your home. If that’s you, please know there are resources out there to support you. You can find some here and here.

    If that’s not you—if, like me, you’re relatively fortunate and have a lot to appreciate and enjoy if you choose to be present—make the choice. As best as you can.

    If it’s hard, be good to yourself. Then try again. Try to see the beauty right in front of you, even if you have to look a little harder. Try to hear the magic in the music that’s playing even if you wish you could belt out the lyrics with someone who’s far away. Take some deep breaths, take an inventory of everything that’s going well, and then just let yourself be here, in this moment, enjoying whatever’s here to be enjoyed.

    —

    I think one of the gifts of especially trying times is that we’re reminded of things that are always true, but we often forget: That life is short, nothing is guaranteed, every moment with the people we love is precious, and each day is ultimately what we make of it.

    I know it’s easier for some than others to make the best of the life they’re living, because life is different for all of us. But I also know when I remember these things, I feel a lot more present, peaceful, and alive. And that’s the best way to appreciate the life we’re currently living—to choose to fully live it.

    —

    To help us all be a little more mindful, I’m currently running a holiday sale for my newly launched Mindfulness Kit, which includes four aromatherapy-based products for peace and relaxation and three FREE bonus guides for daily calm.  

    For a limited time, it’s available for $29 (usually $45). I know many of you have already gotten a kit for yourself and for holiday gifts for friends and family. If you haven’t yet, this may be the perfect time to give it a try or gift it to someone who could use some relaxation and relief. I hope it brings a little serenity to you or the people you love!

  • How to Best Comfort Someone Who’s Grieving

    How to Best Comfort Someone Who’s Grieving

    “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” ~Vivian Greene

    Compassion is one of humanity’s greatest gifts. During times of suffering, such as following the death of a loved one, sufferers rely on the empathy of others to survive their ordeal. Yet, too often when someone is grieving, we do little more than offer an “I am sorry for your loss” because we are fearful of accidentally increasing their pain.

    Speaking as someone who lost her husband unexpectedly after just over three years of marriage—and who has counseled many people who have lost loved ones—I understand both personally and professionally how it feels to grieve deeply.

    All grievers appreciate the compassion offered them, but there are some expressions of sympathy that are more helpful than others. Here are five don’ts (and dos) for people wanting to comfort grievers.

    DO talk about the person lost, don’t assume bringing up their name or stories about them will make the sadness worse.

    What hurts me most is when people do not talk about my husband Jim. There were a lot of people who thought bringing him up in conversation would hurt me or intensify my sadness. The opposite was the case.

    I would tell them that I love talking about Jim and I always will because that is how I keep him alive and with me. I enjoy hearing a funny story about him or a memory of him that someone is eager to relive.

    Many people wanted to be there for me—even to reminisce about Jim—but since they did not know what was appropriate, they did nothing. As I suffered through the pain and shock of losing him, the last thing on my mind was who I had not spoken to recently or who might be available for a fifteen-minute talk.

    Grievers are not in a psychological state of mind to reach out to anyone, so please reach out to them. We need all the support we can get.

    DO ask questions, just don’t ask open-ended questions.

    One of the most common things you hear while grieving is “Do you need anything?” Or “How can I help?” These are the most stressful questions you can ask a sufferer. They’re heartfelt and have the best of intentions behind them, but for someone who is already overwhelmed with grief, shock, anxiety, etc., making decisions is very difficult.

    For example, food is one of the most stressful things when you are grieving. Sounds ridiculous, but it is true. Every client I work with who has lost a loved one says that food elicits the same stress with them.

    One of my clients is blessed with a family member who makes peanut butter protein balls so that my client will satisfy her nutritional needs without having to cook herself.

    My life was made so much easier by friends and family who brought me food already prepared. All I needed to do it was put it in the refrigerator until I wanted it. It was one less thing to worry about.

    So if you are going to ask a griever if they need anything, make it a simple choice: “Do you want soup or salad?” Or give them a multiple-choice question—A, B, or C.  They will still need to make a choice, but it will not be based on open-ended options.

    DO offer to get together, but don’t assume the person suffering will want to do the same things they have done in the past.

    Meet the sufferer where they are and not where they once were.

    Jim and I loved road trips to football games and live band performances. Today I can only enjoy those things with people whom I feel very safe.

    Many people just assumed that because I enjoyed it previously that I would naturally fall back into it again. It doesn’t work that way. Joy is a difficult emotion after grieving because you almost feel guilty to be happy. Maybe some people cope with their grieving that way, but the vast majority I have encountered do not.

    I would much rather spend the day outdoors in nature quietly, or have friends phone me and say, “How about we come over and watch a movie? You don’t have to entertain us or get dressed. Stay in your pajamas.” 

    DO leave the small things out of conversations, don’t bother the griever with trivialities.

    Grieving or not, if a friend or family member is facing a major problem in life, you want to help them, regardless of whether you are suffering. Life is about helping one another whenever it is needed. That is, when it is a legitimate problem.

    For example, I no longer have any patience for pettiness. I do not care about the traffic or the weather, or about the rude checkout lady at the supermarket.  Jim died two and a half years ago, and it is still a struggle climbing out of bed and getting through the day. With that kind of daily battle, I have no tolerance for those mundane conversations anymore. And I guarantee you I am not alone.

    Do yourself and the griever a favor—if your problem is nothing more than an irritant, speak to someone else about it.

    DO be open and patient with outbursts and breakdowns and don’t judge.

    Just because a griever looks better after a few weeks or months does not mean he or she is no longer suffering. It simply means they are getting better at improving their appearance. The suffering on the inside continues, and the daily struggles remain even though they are unseen by the public.

    Little stresses can derail us. For example, due to a rain delay, the Michigan-Michigan State game was running late, and living in Colorado, the local channel switched to the Colorado game. You would have thought I lost my dog. I called my brother (hysterically) and he took care of the issue in five minutes.

    You feel as if you have overcome so many challenges already that the frustration at not understanding what is going on around you sends you spiraling. It’s why you can only approach life one day at a time.  So resist the urge to judge another’s progress or choices. Sufferers really are doing the best we can.

    —

    In closing, it is so important that you remain who you are. Don’t try to change how you act or interact in fear of how you will make the person grieving feel. Just be who you are for them and remember that normalcy is not a goal let alone a destination. Their lives will never be the same again, but your consistent presence and authentic support will make the grieving process just a little less overwhelming for them.

  • Want to Help a Grieving Friend?

    Want to Help a Grieving Friend?

  • How to Be Your Own Best Friend When You’re Grieving

    How to Be Your Own Best Friend When You’re Grieving

    “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need.” ~Kristen Neff

    Your best friend just lost her husband and her mother within five days of one another. Her husband was terminally ill. Her mother was eighty-six. You don’t know how she is going to get through this. You know that she was assuming that after her husband died, she would console herself by spending time with her mother. But that is not how it is going to work out.

    Your best friend is grieving. Doesn’t she deserve your compassion? And by the way, by best friend I mean you. You are grieving, and you need to treat yourself with compassion. How do I know? Because in November of 2014, my mother died and then five days later my husband died. I had no idea how I was going to make it through the day, let alone a month, or a year, or beyond.

    I quickly learned that I needed to be my own best friend, to wrap myself in self-compassion.

    Understand your limitations, while gently pushing beyond them.

    Being self-compassionate includes being self-aware and empathetic.

    For example, during the first two months after Mom and Ed died, I would reach a certain point in my day where I was just done, mentally and physically done for the day. The problem was that, initially, this was at about 4 p.m. At 4 p.m., I felt like I could not do one more thing. I also knew that it was far too early to go to bed.

    When I felt like I could not do one more thing, I would pick just one more thing to do and then, after I completed it, I allowed myself to be done for the day. Next, I would meditate. At first, I could only meditate for a few minutes, and it was a major sob fest. But that is okay, I needed those tears.

    Include the people in your life who will help you regain your strength. And stay away from those who drain your energy.

    Being self-compassionate includes minimizing the amount of time you spend with people who drain your energy. This is a great rule for us to follow at all times, but now it is even more important. You are running on empty both physically and emotionally, and you need take care of yourself first. Remember put your own oxygen mask on first!

    Trust your intuition. A friend who I had fallen out of touch with learned that I was navigating the death of my mother and my husband. The good news for me is that she had forgotten my address. I say that because she began bombarding me with messages about how she needed to come be with me. I needed someone to come take care of me, and I could not be by myself.

    In the past, I had watched her method of taking care of others, and while she meant well and had a heart of gold, she was loud, and she was overbearing. Her way to take care of someone was to take over every aspect of their life. As an introvert, all I wanted was quiet. I could not imagine having someone in the house with me, telling me what was best for me.

    Tell your inner critic to be quiet.

    You would think that during a time such as this, your inner critic would just be quiet. But that’s not what inner critics do, is it? Your inner critic might be telling you things like:

    “You should stop crying so much.”

    “Why aren’t you crying more? What’s wrong with you?”

    “You should be able to concentrate on your work.”

    “You should be more productive.”

    “You should, you should, you should…”

    There is no such thing as should, there is only what is. Pay close attention to what you are feeling.

    Don’t use self-compassion as an excuse for self-destruction.

    Being self-compassionate is not a free pass to being self-destructive. It does not mean that it is okay to eat a pint of ice cream every day or to drink a pint of vodka every day. Keep an eye out for self-destructive behaviors.

    You still have responsibilities, and you will handle those responsibilities. This is the time to really sort through the difference between what are nice things to do and what are required things for you to do. Paying your rent or your mortgage, let’s call that required. Going to an event because someone said it would be good for you, let’s call that optional.

    Being self-compassionate does not mean you never do anything difficult. The day comes when you need to go back to work, or interact with the public, or attend social functions. Be aware of your limitations.

    Keep an eye on yourself.

    You are going to have days where all you want to do is stay under the covers. This is normal. Allow yourself a day to mope. However, do not allow yourself to spend seven days a week under the covers.

    Most days you want to get out of bed at a normal time and get dressed. Groom yourself, whether you are leaving the house or not. Eat healthy meals. Resume your exercise routine. Keep in touch with the right people, the people who do not drain your energy.

    If you are having severe difficulties getting up and getting dressed and handling day-to-day living, then get help. Seek out grief support groups and counseling. Ask trusted friends for help. Nobody said you had to go through this alone.

    Allow grief to be a part of your life. 

    I found that I was able to return to instructing and also to attending classes within a week. On my way to teaching, I would cry in the car all the way to class. When I was in front of the class, I was able to concentrate on my students and, for that short period of time, I was able to forget about my sadness.

    Once I left the classroom and got back in my car, I would cry all the way home. I learned to keep a good supply of tissues and eye makeup with me at all times. And I learned not to judge myself for needing to cry.

    About two months after, I was scheduled to travel to teach a corporate class across the country. I went, because I thought it might be good for me to leave the house and because I believed that I could be sad anywhere.

    I was right; in some ways it was good for me, and it was true, I could be sad anywhere. Living my life was not about denying the grief, it was about supporting myself in a way that I could get back to the business of living, and, for me, the business of living included making room for grieving. 

    Don’t impose an end date on your grief.

    Even while I was teaching others how to plan and schedule and meet deadlines, I began to realize that there is no specific timeline for grief. There is no magic date on which your sadness expires. As you move forward your days will be different. Your grief will change from a sharp stabbing pain, to a dull ache. Do not let anyone tell you when you should ‘get over it.’ Everyone’s path is different.

    Please be your own best friend.

    You are the one who knows yourself the best. Be kind. Do not use your own self-talk to say things that you would not say to others. Your best friend is grieving, and he or she above all others deserves your compassion.

  • What I Learned About Love and Grief When I Lost My Cats

    What I Learned About Love and Grief When I Lost My Cats

    “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” ~Anatole France

    Unconditional love.

    The thought of my cats envelops me with warmth whenever I think of them.

    Why? Because we’re so connected. It’s an ethereal thing. Beyond words. Beyond reality. Beyond rationality.

    When I’m holding them, I feel so spiritually connected. They stretch out as I start to scratch their backs, signaling that they like it. A welcome sign I should continue.

    They stare with their mysterious eyes. Their stares are hard to read. Yet, they tell you a lot of things. They open the flood gate of emotions. Me to them and back. They don’t need to be able to speak. I can understand those tiny meows. Those sighs. Even those imperceptible smiles. And all because of the special bond we have.

    The inner joy they provide is incomparable whenever I play with them.

    They may not be as active as dogs, but it’s the sweetness that melts me.

    The moment I touch them, they start to meld their bodies into mine, telling me not to let go.

    Sometimes they are aloof. Their snobby attitude makes me laugh. Especially when they demand something and I withhold it. I stare back. I tell them “No.” Yet their eyes impinge upon my soul. Saying “no” for long is not an option.

    When I’m not feeling well, they know. They lie down next to me. They stay quiet next to me. They try to take away the illness. They’re sharers and carers.

    It’s a bliss being with them! It seems to be mutual. Indeed, I can’t last a day without my fur babies. Nor they, me.

    A Month to Forget

    Then came that dreaded month in 2013. In October that year, my two most beloved babies died.

    I was devastated. My grief was instant. It was raw. It hurt like hell.

    I started to question the concept of goodness and the fairness of life. How can the universe be so cruel? How can humans cope with the onset of grief that can come upon us so suddenly? Will our lives ever be the same again? Can we ever recover from the all-pervading feelings of grief and get back to those blissful feelings of unconditional once again?

    How can the source of my joy now be the source of my sorrow? How can it be that the reason for my existence is now the reason for my annihilation? How is it that my cure is now my pain?

    Ironic, isn’t it?

    Life is unfair.

    The joy that is given to any of us is always temporary.

    You may say I’m exaggerating. It’s just a cat, a pet, an animal. You can always replace one with another one.

    But I tell you, that’s easier said than done. For those of us who are animal lovers and who are by themselves, having a pet is like having a miniature human. Many people won’t understand this. It may be difficult to comprehend. Hard to accept. But yes, our animals can replace humans for comfort and reassurance in many instances.

    But that’s life. That’s how the circle of life evolves. One is birthed, one dies. It goes on and on and on. And it’s up to us to accept it and move on. At some stage we need to release. To let go. Otherwise we can get caught up in the devastation of loss and grief.

    That’s how grieving is. It is so painful. More painful than the loss of an object or career. It goes beyond physical pain. It’s a forever thing as a piece of your heart goes with them.

    Grief almost killed me.

    But I realized that it’s just a phase. It’s a doorway toward a better place. It’s a key to unlock your hidden courage.

    Sometimes, you have to undergo grief. To release the negativity and allow positivity to enter your life. As they say, you have to empty out so one can pour more love in.

    More than a painful phase, grief can teach you lessons that will add to the missing puzzles in your life. Lessons that will make you stronger; that will make you a better person. That will eventually bring strength and resilience.

    And while on this painful journey, I pondered upon these lessons that changed how I look at life.

    Lesson 1: Cry if you must.

    Never say sorry for crying your heart out. Most of us feel ashamed when we cry. We don’t usually like others to see us when we are crying. Society taught us that crying is a sign of weakness.

    Definitely not.

    It’s an outlet for your emotions. To cry is to release all the negative feelings that are killing your soul. Isn’t it that after crying, we all feel better? As if a huge stone was lifted out of our chest?

    That’s what I learned when my cats died. I cried. I cried a lot. I cried every day. I almost cried everywhere. Whenever I saw cats, tears would fall from my eyes. I allowed myself to be drenched in my tears. It just seemed natural at the time.

    Until the sadness is gone. Until my eyes ran dry. Occasionally, I still cry whenever I remember them. But I was never ashamed of my crying.

    Lesson 2: Every being is precious.

    “Don’t be a fool, it’s just a cat!”

    “Don’t waste your time on those animals.”

    “You can always replace them.”

    These are some of the things I heard people say as I grieved. People smirked. They didn’t laugh at me outright. They thought I was insane to grieve for those beings.

    “What makes them less of a precious being that I should not grieve for them?”

    That’s what I wanted to shout to those who were mocking me at that time. Because for me, every being is precious. Human and animals alike. For me, whoever—or whatever being—made me feel so loved and special, is as precious as a human person.

    My cats, they were so generous in letting me feel the love, the warmth, the joy. They made me feel special. Isn’t that enough proof that these beings are precious?

    And because of them, I learned to see the value of each being. Whether it’s another person, my neighbor’s pet, an old person, or a child. All of these beings are precious. They all play an important role. They all add value to my being.

    I believe that every person or animal we encounter throughout life adds something to our life. All those you bumped into on your life journey create an impact. They create a ripple effect that multiplies into bigger ripples, until all those who are in your circle feel the impact. We are all joined in some way, even if we don’t recognize it.

    Lesson 3: Reality bites.

    I was in denial for quite a time. I kept convincing myself that I’d be fine and that I’d get the hang of it.

    But the moment I was home by myself, the silence almost killed me.

    Where are those naughty meows?

    Where are those tiny fur babies cuddling at my feet?

    Where are those eyes staring up at me demanding attention?

    The thought of these memories haunted me. There’s this big hole in my heart that seemed to widen as the days lingered. Indeed, reality bites. As days went by, the pain got more intense. The feeling of missing them tore me apart. Reality certainly had bitten hard.

    In a painful situation, denial can make you feel good but only temporarily. Denial does not alleviate the reality of what is. It will bite you so hard and so deep that it can’t cure pain anymore. Sooner or later, you need to face reality. Feel the heartache.  Feel the overwhelming pain and sadness of loss of part of your soul. But you must not let the venom of reality kill you. You’ve got to allow a cure to surface.

    Lesson 4: It’s okay to not be okay.

    You don’t owe anybody an apology just because you don’t feel okay.

    In the midst of this painful phase of grieving, life had to go on. I needed to go to work. I needed to go out. I needed to do my chores. And, I needed to continue breathing.

    There were times I survived the day being okay, but there were times that I was stopped by the dreaded feeling of being not okay. How I wished I could just feel these things when I was safely at home. Or, during the night before I went to sleep, so that no one could see my weakness.

    Most of the time, this feeling paralyzed me, to the point that I could not continue my work or what I was doing at the time. Sometimes I could not speak. If I pushed myself to socialize, I ended up offending someone. Good thing my loved ones understood what I was going through.

    I tell you, it’s okay to not be okay. You’re not the only person who has felt this way. Acknowledge it if it comes. Welcome it with open arms. Then allow it to dissipate in its own time.

    But here’s the thing. The feeling of not being okay will eventually be temporary. By all means immerse yourself in the feeling, but do not allow yourself to wallow in self-pity, such that you cannot recover.

    Lesson 5: Grief itself is medicine.

    People tend to ignore this stage. When they’ve lost a loved one, they act as if nothing has happened. They act as if they have already recovered. Well, it’s okay to have that attitude. But I tell you, it is better to allow yourself to experience grief.

    Grief can be your healing pill. Just like a pill, it tastes awful at first, but as you progress, you’ll get the hang of taking it. Somewhere in your subconscious, it will register that the pill of grief really is medicine, and that it is good for you to experience what life offers in emotional enrichment. Until such time as when you’ve reached the recovery stage, and you no longer need the pill.

    That’s why I acknowledged my grief. I was aware of what I was going through. I acknowledged its presence every day. And then one day, I just woke up healed and refreshed.

    Lesson 6: Grief is temporary.

    If there is one thing that is permanent in this world, it is “temporary.” True, isn’t it?

    The reason why I allowed myself to undergo grief is that I knew it wouldn’t last forever. I thought it was just a stage of life that I had to pass through.

    For those times I missed my cats, and I suddenly felt bad, I somehow knew it was a temporary feeling. For those times I saw people playing with their cats, and I would suddenly feel the envy, somehow, I knew that feeling was temporary. For those times that I can’t help but think of my cats, and I want to isolate myself from the world, I recognize that it’s temporary.

    Grief is temporary. Sooner or later everything will fall into its proper place. Sooner or later you’ll get through. However, “temporary” can be a short time or an eternity.

    No Matter What, You’ll Get Through

    The road to recovery may be long, but there’s no other way to bypass that road. I even told myself that I would never let myself have another cat again after that dreaded loss.

    Days, weeks, months passed.

    Four months later, I found myself cuddling two fur babies again. They’ve been my medicine to full recovery.

    I find myself back to my old self. That person who loves to nuzzle cats. That person who finds joy playing with cats. That person who regards cats as family.

    I just realized that’s how the circle of life evolves. We lose some, we gain some. We love, we hurt. We become pained, but eventually, we receive healing.

    I realized that I needed to embrace life as it is. Even if I take things into my hands and try to manipulate an ending, pushing myself against the tide, I will always be swept back to where I should be. Life settles these things for you.

    This is grief.

    This is how you lose a beloved.

    This is how you fall and stand again.

    Grieve if you must. It’s part of life. Of growing. Of moving forward.

    And all will come to pass.

    And unconditional love? Oh, it’s there again. Together with my two new cats.

  • Honoring The Death of a Loved One

    Honoring The Death of a Loved One

    “Death is indeed a fearful piece of brutality; there is no sense pretending otherwise. It is brutal not only as a physical event, but far more so psychically: a human being is torn away from us, and what remains is the icy stillness of death. There no longer exists any hope of a relationship, for all the bridges have been smashed at one blow.” ~Carl Jung

    I’m at a dinner party with friends when I begin an engaging conversation with a woman I haven’t met before.

    Music plays softly in the background as our conversation touches on many different topics. She begins to tell me about a difficult situation she recently faced and how her sister supported her through it. I listen intently while she gushes about how lucky she is.

    “Life just wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t have her,” she looks at me and smiles.

    I take a sip of my red wine, her words piercing my heart. There’s a silence and I wonder if now would be a good time to tell her that I too have a sister. But instead, I gently change the subject.

    Often we never know what emotional wound we’ve reopened in others. How could we? The cuts and bruises of our own psyche are concealed so well behind earnest smiles and fake laughs. It makes me wonder how often I accidentally hurt others by bringing up the very thing they are trying to move on from.

    This particular conversation happens to come in October when my heart prepares for another anniversary of my sister’s death. Each year when this date comes around, I feel compelled to commemorate it in some sort of grand, meaningful way. But I struggle to think of anything that could ever be enough.

    Unfortunately, the comforting sentiment “time heals all wounds” doesn’t really apply when it comes to grief. At least not for me, or my parents. Together, we live in a world that still contains my sister. We re-live memories and laugh about the good times while the rest of the world seems to forget. It’s not that we are stuck in a permanent state of agony, we’ve just learned to adjust.

    I suppose the parallel could be like the adjustment to losing a limb. No matter how much time passes you will always remember what it felt like to run and jump and play, and how you can’t do that anymore. Some days you might particularly sad about it, other days it’s a bit more manageable.

    It seems like a human tendency to crave simplicity and a linear, systematic approach to grief. The infamous Elisabeth Kübler-Ross model has been widely misunderstood in assuming that grief passes in chronological order. But anyone who has experienced it knows that it’s a tangled up mess that slides backward and forwards.

    Especially on anniversaries.

    Everything about the time of year when the person we loved died can trigger us. It’s that familiar smell in the air, the change of seasons, a song on the radio—and in an instant, we are back to the day when we found out. It reawakens the shock we experienced all over again.

    The mind always wants a quick fix to move on, but the heart will never forget. So we tell ourselves that we’re fine, everything is fine. Meanwhile, our body surges with depression, guilt, loneliness, anxiety, irritability, anger, as well as physical symptoms from sleeplessness, unusual dreams, headaches, lack of appetite, difficulty concentrating or an increase in distressing memories.

    So, what do we do?

    It’s been six years since my sister died, and I’m still stunned by how powerful a force grief can be. No matter how fine I might think I feel, the pain of loss is still locked inside my body and I can’t quite find the keys to let it out.

    I’ve yet to find something that brings peace and connection to my sister. In the past I’ve tried to force the day by hurrying it along, only to find out that this never works. I’m now attempting to lean into the grief to truly understand it so that one day I can work in bereavement and help others.

    Here are some ideas that could help.

    Do something your loved one liked to do.

    My sister loved many things: animals, hiking, traveling, nature, and most of all, art. She was an incredibly talented artist. She would often spend hours drawing, painting, or collaging.

    I’m currently studying art therapy and while doing a collaging exercise in class, I felt this strong connection to my sister. After about thirty minutes the teacher told us it break for lunch, but I couldn’t stop. While the others left, I carried on as if I was in a trance. I felt so connected to my sister that it just about brought tears to my eyes.

    Create a physical reminder.

    When someone we love dies, it’s only in our minds or in our dreams where we can visit them. Having something physical that you can see can be healing.

    You could plant a tree in their honor. Watching the tree grow over the years allows for a physical reminder of them. Or you could plant flowers (or buy them if you aren’t into gardening) and create your own beautiful bouquet for your eyes to enjoy as a symbolic reminder of the transience of all beings. Flowers, like us, are only here for a short time. Remembering that could help us to accept mortality and enjoy the time we have while we are alive.

    Another idea could be to plant a veggie garden. Every moment would be a chance to connect to the loved one and once the garden is in full bloom, ripe with delicious vegetables, a meal can be enjoyed and you can give thanks for them for ‘helping’ in their own supernatural way.

    Write a letter.

    Often people say they can’t write but everyone can. It’s just the same reaction as handing someone a paintbrush and them saying, “Oh, no, I can’t paint.” Adults tend to hide behind “can’t’s” or “not good at’s” because we were told once that we weren’t good at it.

    But it’s not about being good at anything. It’s about healing your heart.

    A lot of pain from loss is around all the things we want to talk about and all the things that the person we love is missing out on. A friend of mine once said that she has continued to have conversations with her dad who died. It’s helped her immensely to talk with him in her own imaginary way, finding guidance on issues he always helped her with.

    So whether you talk out loud, or want to keep it a letter is completely up to you. Either way, it gives you a chance to release all the things you wanted to say.

    If the thought of it makes you feel uncomfortable, bring it up with your counselor and they will develop a plan that works for you.

    Set aside alone time.

    If you need to, take the day off. If you think, “Ah, I can’t do that…” then let me ask if you would go into work when you had the flu? Hopefully, the answer would be no.

    Grief is similar to the flu but instead of being a contagious respiratory illness, it’s a pain erupting from the heart and soul. Both need some inner tender loving care. Respect your body, respect your healing, and take some time for yourself.

    Accept the sheer power of grief.

    Many people mistakenly believe that grief is a single emotion. In actuality, it’s a powerful response that shakes us emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. It is a natural and normal process that all human beings must face when dealing with loss.

    As much as we may think we can outsmart it by ignoring or pushing it down, it will always find other ways to seep through.

    Accepting these raw and powerful feelings to flow through your body can be unbelievably painful. I sometimes think of it as an emotional storm. When nature breaks down in a thunderous rage with bolts of lightning, we all flee undercover. In these moments, I respect nature’s honest and vulnerable display of despair and pain. For me, it’s a reminder that we are all like nature, we all experience inner hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.

    No matter how extreme, they always pass. But we need to get out of the way and allow it through.

    Moving Forward

    No matter what happens to us in life, it moves on. We can be left with the most earth-shattering anguish and still find that the sun will rise for a new day. I know very well how unbelievably painful it can be to see the world carry on as you are left gasping for air.

    We all walk our own unique paths on the road to healing. No matter how much time has passed, our loved ones will always remain inside our hearts.

    They are the guiding lights that keep us moving forward, and I can’t think of a better way to pay tribute to those we loved and lost than to fill the world with even more compassion and gentle kindness.

  • When People Want to Help but Just Make Things Worse

    When People Want to Help but Just Make Things Worse

    When I was fourteen years old, my family spent a week of vacation in the northwoods of Minnesota. We rode horses, sailed on the lake, sang songs around a campfire, and all the other things most teenagers tell their parents is lame. Even if they are having fun.

    After this week of boring, according to me, my family loaded up into our van and began what should have been a five-hour drive home.

    Except it wasn’t five hours.

    Thirty minutes into the drive we were in a head-on car collision. Triaged and transported to different hospitals around the area, it wasn’t until a few hours later—when my question, “What happened to my dad?” was met with silence from nurses, physicians, and my extended family who found me in the ER—that I knew he didn’t make it out. Not alive, at least.

    Two weeks later, I started high school.

    While I would have liked everything that had suddenly made my life “not normal” to fly under the radar, that was easier said than done. I was walking with crutches. I had crunching, paper bandages around my neck from the seat belt, and the whole story had been on the front page of the newspaper.

    What I was going through was my business, and yet I became surrounded by people offering this and bringing me that and giving me hugs when I just wanted to get back to normal.

    A few weeks later, my uncle showed up at our house and wanted to take us apple picking, something my dad had taken us to do at the local orchard every year.

    This time, when my uncle said apple orchard, he meant the Mecca of all apple orchards near Pepin, Wisconsin.

    As instructed by my mom, I pulled open the door to the garage and loaded into the car, suddenly finding myself sitting behind the driver’s seat. The exact same spot I was sitting during our crash. And not only was I sitting in the driver’s seat for the first time since the crash, I was sitting behind someone who, from behind, looked just like my dad, and who was trying to help by taking me to the apple orchard just like my dad.

    My heart was pounding. I focused on the seat back pocket in front of me, tried my best to breathe and sit facing forward while not looking any longer at the driver and his seat in front of me.

    The longer we drove, the angrier I became.

    My uncle was trying to help, but this, this was not helpful.

    I was tense the entire ride, wrought with worry the car might explode in front of me again, and when we returned home a few hours later, I shot out of the car, slammed the door behind me, muttered, “Thank you,” ran to my room, closed the door, and burst into tears.

    Going to the apple orchard with Dad was our business. Not my uncle’s. Driving that car was Dad’s job, not his.

    While he thought he was doing something so helpful to keep my dad’s memory alive, his one time trip to the Mecca of apple orchards, for me, was the opposite of helpful.

    That’s the thing about any business that’s important to you.

    Whether it’s someone you’ve lost or something you’ve loved and now lost, when things are special to you and other people see those things causing you hardship, they want to help.

    It’s a natural human reaction to want to help. But when you’re the one who’s receiving the help, there are so many times when something that was meant to be helpful turns out the be… the opposite of helpful.

    The truth is just because someone meant well with their actions that does not mean you have to feel good about their actions.

    In fact, most of the time, if someone does something that does make you feel good, it’s because they’ve taken the time to know you really, really well (like asking you if you prefer a compliment during a team meeting or a thank you card in your mailbox), or it’s just luck.

    And all the times when someone means well but it doesn’t feel well are so very normal.

    That’s okay.

    Instead of feeling bitter and angry about what someone did, whatever their intentions, and instead of becoming disillusioned about whether you can do anything to help someone else, it’s important to know the one thing you can know for certain in any interaction: you. Your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and expectations.

    So the next time someone is trying to help with something that is your business. Try this:

    1. Take a time out.

    We tend to use this as a tool for disciplining kids, but honestly, it works just as well, if not better, on ourselves as adults. And it’s not about giving yourself a time out from something you want to be part of. What you do is notice when you are feeling a growing sense of anger, frustration, overwhelm, and use your words to say something like, “I’m going to need some time to think this through. Let’s pick up this conversation at another time.”

    And then take the time away from the situation.

    2. Remind yourself of the intentions in the room.

    Why are you doing what you are doing?

    Why do you think they are doing what they are doing?

    Most of the time, people are doing something because they think it is a good thing or a helpful thing or something that will make the situation better. So, know that the people who are wanting to help are doing so because they care. There is something in it for them to help you and they want to help you.

    Even if the way they are helping now is the opposite of helpful, you can use this reminder about their intention as a key to making the situation helpful for you again.

    3. Speak out. Ask. Use your words.

    You have a person that wants to help you. So use your words. Tell them what would be helpful (or if you don’t know, tell them what is not helpful, and why).

    Say something like, “When you came to take me to the apple orchard, I felt like you were replacing my dad. I already feel worried that I am going to forget him, and I felt even more scared when we did something that made it feel like we were trying to replace him.”

    Notice the “When _______ happened, I felt ________.”

    This is intentional language.

    When you speak this way, you keep the focus on the goal: helping you to feel better, because you have identified a specific situation when that did not happen.

    Then say, “To make this feel better to me, I would need ________.” And say what you would need.

    Is it any apology? Is it that you want them to talk about things more? Do you not want to talk about it more? Do you want to do something you’ve never done before instead?

    It’s your business. So make it your call. And help them help you by showing why unhelpful things are unhelpful and suggesting what would have made the unhelpful things… well, helpful. Because at the root of every relationship is love.

    So, even during times when things aren’t as good, it’s important to separate the actions other people do to help with the intention that’s behind it all: love for you.

  • It’s a Myth That We Can Just “Get Over” Pain and Loss

    It’s a Myth That We Can Just “Get Over” Pain and Loss

    “There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human—in not having to be just happy or just sad—in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.” ~C. JoyBell C.

    “I just feel like it’s never ending… like I should be more over it by now,” my friend says, her eyes looking down at her mug of tea. She lost a loved one three years ago in tragic circumstances.

    Her words make me sad, and there are layers to my sadness: I’m sad for her loss, her grief, for the difficulty she faces daily as she continues her life without this person. Also, I’m saddened by her belief about her suffering; that it’s somehow not okay or normal to still be so sad.

    This is not a woman in ruins. She has a good life. A job she loves, a beautiful home, and family. She’s a wonderful mother to her children. But she is deeply sad. She carries this sadness around with her everywhere she goes—on the train to work, on the sofa while she watches Netflix, out to dinner.

    Her sadness is heavy, yet she carries it with a grace that belies its weight. It’s not ruining her. Yet it’s there, like a psychological shadow, even in her happier moments.

    This conversation made me think more broadly about our societal beliefs about loss, our attitudes toward sadness, and the inherent problems these give birth to.

    My grandmother died over six years ago now. She died horribly and quickly from a brain tumor. From the time of her diagnosis to her death, there were only three weeks.

    Her death didn’t feel real for a long time, and initially I didn’t grieve as I expected I would.

    Months afterward, it started to sink in. As it did, the sadness came. It didn’t consume my every waking thought and feeling, but it was there beside me, wanting me to turn toward it. For a long time, I found this very hard to do.

    My cultural conditioning that sadness was ‘bad’ added a toxic layer on top of the raw experience of sadness and made me feel somehow ‘wrong’ each time I felt sad.

    A Kind of Healing-Perfectionism

    “Get over it.”

    These words suffuse the space around us, deeply ingrained in the cultural lexicon of healing. “I’m over it,” we say to ourselves. We assure others that they will do the same. Worst of all, we hold the belief that we should be over it by a certain time.

    We believe that this is the hallmark of a perfectly recovered loss/trauma/sadness—the gold standard of “I am perfectly okay now.”

    Is anyone ever perfectly okay? Is this really what we’re aiming for?

    Is there anyone who doesn’t walk around with the roots of sadness grounded in their being, even as their happiness exists above these depths? I don’t know of these people.

    What I do know is that the greatest lie we’ve been sold about success and happiness is that these things exist in our lack of sadness or pain.

    The notion of “getting over” a loss speaks more to an ideal than a reality. Like many ideals, it’s alluring, but the closer you move to it, the more you see the danger. It gets in the way of our understanding about loss and grief, and it congests the fullness of our hearts.

    It disconnects us from our emotional truth and gives credence to an expectation about the course of grief that we cannot live up to. When this happens, there is one predictable outcome: We add judgment to our suffering and turn a natural process into a pathological problem, something to be ‘fixed.’

    Certainly, when it comes to dealing with loss, there are times when a normal emotional response can turn into a condition in need of intervention—if our initial sadness fails to abate with the passage of time, and we continue to be obsessed with our grief and unable to function in our everyday lives.

    In such cases, therapy and possibly medication are required. Yet, within the boundaries of what can be considered a healthy reaction to loss, there is a great range.

    What does a normal, healthy response to loss look like? How should it feel? How long is it okay to still experience sadness? When should we get over it? Should we ever? Says who? Why? What does “getting over it” even mean?

    When we think about the need to get over a loss, what we’re referring to is arriving at a psychological destination of being untouchable, unshakable. Reaching a point where we are largely unaffected, even by the fondest memory, or the most difficult one, of that which we have lost.

    It’s a kind of healing-perfectionism that needs to be named for what it is. Such ideals around suffering cause further and unnecessary pain and obstruct the very heart of what it means to be human. When we use the language of “getting over” loss, we are reinforcing the belief that sadness is something that must be overcome.

    Co-existing with Our Sadness

    We are conditioned to move toward things that feel good and to retract from those that feel bad. Primally speaking, it’s about survival. Sadness is one such ‘bad’ feeling; we recoil from it. Yet this retraction isn’t so much based on the inherent quality of the emotion as much as our insidious belief that sadness is, per se, bad.

    Of course, sadness isn’t a pleasurable experience—psychologically speaking, it’s classed as a “negative” emotion. However, we are not simple beings, and the primal drives we have are not so simple either; as such, it is often necessary to go against our basic instincts—to move away from pleasure (as in the case of addiction) and to move toward pain (as in healing).

    In healing from loss, ignoring and resisting our sadness will only send it deeper into our psyche and our bodies. One thing we know for certain is that when we fail to acknowledge our feelings, they continue to affect us anyway—influencing our thoughts, our emotions, and our decision-making beneath the level of our conscious awareness.

    One of the biggest problems with the idea of getting over loss is the implication, and subsequent expectation, that there is a life span to our sadness. A progressively tapering timeline where, after a certain point, the volume of our grief has reached a finite baseline—zero.

    Depending on our unique losses and our personality, the acceptable lifespan might be one year, two years, three years, four. But at some point, as time marches on, we’ll turn to our sadness and ask it why it’s still sitting with us.

    We’ll start to tell ourselves that it’s “been too long.” Yet, try as we might, we cannot force or sadness to leave, so we’ll do the only thing we can: turn our minds away from the sadness that lingers on in our bodies. We’ll disconnect.

    We Can’t ‘Fix’ Our Sadness, and We Don’t Have To

    Whilst Elizabeth Kubler-Ross may have delineated the stages of dealing with death (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), these were originally meant for those who were themselves dying, not for those who were dealing with the death or loss of another.

    An unfortunate consequence of applying the concept of linear stages of grief to our human experience of loss is, again, the expectation of a finite ending; we go through the stages and we reach The End.

    The less convenient truth is that grief is non-linear; there is no one pattern it’s obliged to follow.

    Yet this concept of a finite resolution speaks to our society in a broader sense. Humans are exceptionally good at finding solutions. If there’s a problem, we solve it. If something’s broken, we fix it.

    This way of thinking is part of what makes us great; without it, we wouldn’t have the technological advances we have. But the problem arises when we apply this mode of thinking to our human suffering.

    Our bodies can be fixed; we can give someone a leg when they’ve lost one, sew a deep cut, stop an infection with antibiotics. But what of our sadness in the face of loss? How are we to ‘fix’ that?

    When we’re sad, we are not broken. We are suffering, and this is different. Sadness is a normal response to the experience of loss. Yet in a culture obsessed with fixing what’s broken, the idea of “getting over it” starts to infiltrate the rawness of our experience and dilutes the edifying, tragic beauty of living with loss.

    Making Space for Our Sadness

    It also speaks to our discomfort with ambiguity and paradox, especially in the realm of our emotions. We cling to our separate boxes; we seek the clear delineation of “I’m over it” versus “I’m still suffering.” Such thresholds don’t exist in life, nor in love.

    But rather, two opposing, seemingly contradictory emotions coexist; I am both okay and I am suffering. We must give ourselves permission to be the complex and contradictory beings that we are if we want to be fully human.

    Healing is not a line, but a wave. It’s organic, meandering. It doesn’t always move in one direction with one energy. But the most important thing is that it moves—if we allow it to.

    When we have lost, we must learn to live side by side with our sadness. Attempting to shut it out will shut everything out. There is only one highway where emotions in the body make their way into the awareness of the mind; joy, sadness, frustration, peace—they all travel along this same road.

    There are no alternate routes. Which is why when we judge our sadness and push it away, we inevitably push away our joy also. Rather than wasting our energy on the hopeless eradication of sadness, we must make a home for it. A place where it is welcome to live.

    We, in the West, are not so hot at embodying the truth that our sadness has a right of its own; we can’t really control it, any more than we control our joy. Certainly, we can’t structure our life around it, but we can make a space in our life for it to coexist.

    Its resting place is in the same sweet spot as our deep joy and gratitude. Sometimes I say to myself, “My sadness is a person too.” This is how I think of it. And in this thought, a respect for it arises.

    Side by Side, Sadness and Love

    Our belief in the notion of getting over our sadness also robs us of one of the most beautiful opportunities of healing—experiencing love by the act of remembrance.

    The thing that keeps our sadness close is remembering the love we hold but cannot give to someone we’ve lost. Memories are how we relive a person. They’re a way that we honor the existence of another. They’re also how we re-live a part of ourselves and bring meaning to our life.

    In our remembrance, we suffer. We feel sadness. And there is such poignant beauty in this; it’s an edifying kind of pain because it’s born from the depths of our love. To never feel sad, then, would be a kind of forgetting.

    The last thing we want to do when we’ve lost someone we love is to forget them. And yet, when we buy into the belief that healing means a lack of sadness or pain, we avoid the memories of the people we’ve lost, and in our avoidance, we disconnect from our love. Because to feel this love is also to feel the pain of it.

    Where does the love we hold for someone who is no longer with us go? It lives in us. But to breathe life into it, we have to let it live in our hearts right next to the pain that love and remembrance bring.

    When we do this, we soften. There is a release. We expand. We connect, both to ourselves and also to others.

    Compassion can only exist between equals; when I know my suffering and let it speak to me, I can see and speak to yours.

    You don’t need to overcome your sadness. That is not the measure of your healing.

    The measure of healing lies in the relationship between you and your sadness. You don’t have to make friends with it, but you do have to learn how to allow it to live in you, to respect its right to be there even as you respect your wish that it wasn’t.

    This is no small feat. It is the most courageous and bold thing you will ever do, to live in that dichotomy. To inhabit that space.

    Let this be the measure of your healing.

  • My Favorite Tip to Ease the Pain of Grief

    My Favorite Tip to Ease the Pain of Grief

    “It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now…with its aches and its pleasures…is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.” ~Pema Chodron

    Many people like to think of grief as an emotional experience. It’s something that dominates your internal, emotional space, and that’s it.

    But it doesn’t take long when you’re in the thick of grief to experience grief that isn’t emotional at all.

    You feel heavy. Like there’s a giant weight on your shoulders.

    You feel like your legs are weak and shaking from trying to stand after the ground has been pulled out from underneath you.

    It’s hard to breathe because it feels like the wind has been knocked out of you.

    You feel heartbroken. Like there is literally a hole punched in your chest. Your grief is as much physical as it is emotional.

    Each of the times you experience intense emotional grief you have also been a human being, in your body, experiencing what’s going on.

    When I started to recognize my own body as part of my grieving, I discovered my favorite way to ease the pain from grief for myself and for people around me.

    You see, when I was fourteen I started high school two weeks after my dad died.

    As I walked into that school building, everyone knew what happened, but at the same time I felt like I had no allies. No one that understood. That knew my dad, or that knew where I was coming from.

    The first couple months I just tried to get by.

    I did the motions.

    Didn’t ask too many questions.

    Nodded and shook my head at the appropriate times, making sure each day I came back with the worksheets filled out and ready to turn in.

    I was like a machine.

    My school counselor checked in with me each week to see how things were going. I saw her in homeroom every Tuesday.

    “How’s it going, Kirsten?” she’d ask.

    “It’s so hard,” I repeated again and again.

    So when she sat me down in her office after the first term, she braced herself for the worst. She’d gathered all the paperwork and people she needed to begin a full blown intervention. And then she looked at my grades.

    “Kirsten! What are you talking about?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “You have excellent grades. What do you mean ‘school is hard’?”

    “That’s just it. It’s one thing to fill out a worksheet everyday (this is what I now call “showing signs of life”), it’s another thing to actually do this school thing. I barely feel like I get settled in one class before the bell rings for the next one. I can’t switch my mind from thinking about geometry to immediately conjugate Spanish verbs. My world runs in slow motion, and this place doesn’t slow down.”

    “What can I do to help you?” she asked.

    “I don’t know.”

    Because I didn’t know.

    That’s totally normal not to know.

    Later that week, I found out from my mom that all my teachers had met about how they could help me, and they offered me an extra set of textbooks to keep at home so I didn’t have to carry around heavy books all day.

    “Why would I want that?” I told Mom. I didn’t want any special treatment.

    “Just try it, Kirsten,” my mom encouraged.

    So because she’s my mom, I listened.

    And it was the BEST. THING. EVER.

    On the physical level, it literally lightened the weight on my shoulders. It reinforced the true reality that just showing up to class was more than enough.

    It meant that just being there was all I needed to do, and the rest of the stuff—the logistics—were already taken care of.

    So when you know you’re going to have an emotionally intense day, what’s one thing you could do to lighten your load?

    Maybe it’s setting a timer when you’re cooking so you don’t have to remember how many minutes the pasta has been on the stove. Lighten your mental load so you have space to be with your thoughts.

    Maybe it’s resetting expectations your family has of you, being honest with them about what you are not available to do so you can use that open space for yourself.

    Whatever it is, think about the little things that cause you stress and use those as a source of inspiration for what actions will help.

    The other key part of the textbooks gesture is that it was a gesture that recreated trust.

    You see, in that one small gesture of giving me an extra set of textbooks, my teachers showed me they trusted me.

    They trusted me with these expensive things and they trusted that I would take their gift with respect.

    All the while, I didn’t know if I could trust myself.

    What was even left of me?

    It felt like I was all grief and no me.

    When someone, a whole group of someones who I respected, said with their action, “We trust you,” it was the first time in a long time I was extended a gentle invitation to trust my community again.

    I didn’t have to feel up for every social event or trust the whole world yet, but I could trust my teachers.

    Suddenly, I had a whole group of undercover allies.

    None of the other students knew I had been given “special treatment.” And each day I walked from class to class to class, I knew there was at least one person in the room I could trust.

    That one action was more powerful than any amount of words my teachers said to me over the entire year.

    Here’s what I want you to take away, even if you can’t resolve the pain from a feeling: Try to alleviate some of the physical burden. By doing so, you are creating space for you to heal that would never have occurred if you focus only on words, wondering “What do I say? How can I talk about grief?”

    Pay attention, listen to your body.

    Even if you can’t take away the emotions right now, what can you do to relieve the physical burden?

    How can you relax the gripping around your heart?

    What can you do to release the physical tension in your muscles?

    It might not take away everything, but just a little something can make a world of difference.

  • How I Climbed Out of the Valley of Loss and Healed

    How I Climbed Out of the Valley of Loss and Healed

    “In our lives, change is unavoidable, loss is unavoidable. In the adaptability and ease with which we experience change lies our happiness and freedom.” ~Buddha

    The universe was conspiring against me, I was sure of it. By the time I was thirty-six, I had lost everything in life that I had set out to accomplish—my marriage, my pregnancies, my two dogs, and eventually my house. The perfect family model I was so desperate to create was completely lost.

    Living alone and in fear of the future, I worried about what may or may not come, because everything I had tried up until that point had failed.

    I began doubting myself, as I wasn’t sure if all of my effort was worth it anymore. Anxiety and sadness gripped my heart and I drank to escape, because I really wasn’t up to the task of figuring out how to love myself in spite of my failed expectations.

    Then the universe added insult to injury: I found out my dad had metastatic colon cancer, and it was a total devastating surprise. I don’t know how it could have been, since as a nurse I could already see his sunken eyes, pale and ashen lips and skin, and the lack of energy in his step.

    Everything about him was telling me that he was dying, but when you love someone, it’s easy to see what you want to see.

    Selfishly, I needed to see my dad as the healthy, solid dad I knew. The dad I could rely on for advice and his pick-me-ups of “good job, kiddo.” But most importantly, I needed him to stay the man who helped me when things in my life were most dire.

    The thing is, it was not a white knight on a horse, it was my dad who loved and rescued me. It was he in his black Toyota pickup driving over 800 miles from Seattle to San Francisco to rescue me from my abusive marriage. He literally helped to pick me up off the floor after my husband had thrown me to the ground and tried to suffocate me.

    It was my dad who collected me and what little remained of my belongings, and without any questions or “I told you so’s,” packed me up and drove me back home to heal. And it was my dad who helped me hire a lawyer to file for divorce.

    When I learned that my dependable dad was dying, my mind tried to race against the symbolism of the metastatic invasion into my life that I refused to accept. I was losing again.

    How was I going to survive all of this loss? Would I have anything left or would I harden into a shell of a hollow woman?

    Despite attempts to plead and bargain with the universe, my dad died on a Friday. Friday June 21st. It was summer solstice and a day that not even the longest day of the year could light up. It was my darkest hour.

    At 10:00pm exactly, my dad took his last breath. It wasn’t until the undertaker came to pick him up and placed his lifeless body in their white plastic bag and I heard the sound of the zipper closing him in, that I turned in a childlike panic to face my mom and cry to her in half-truth, half questioning, “I’ll never see my dad again.”

    She looked at me blankly as the tidal wave of panic took over and I was drowning in pain.

    Many people run from the pain when they lose someone they love. They drown out the sound and fury of the feelings by numbing themselves in a variety of ways. I could have easily called my life quits and elected to stay living in the pain of loss, but instead something greater than me began to appear in my life. A spiritual side took over in a true form of resuscitative life support.

    I started to ask myself the bigger picture questions, “What else can I be doing?” “What else does life have in store for me?” “Why am I going through all of this?”

    Over the following months, I developed new hobbies and outlets for my self-care such as writing, meditation, and simply being quiet.

    I told myself it was okay to live in each moment and take life as it was presented to me.

    But the most importantly, I felt I was being spiritually guided through my dreams and my intuition, to my own inner wisdom showing me how to heal and activate my spiritual strength through my loss.

    “You can lose other people without losing yourself.”   

    “You can have loss without being lost.”

    Living beyond grief and loss is an evolution through a set of choices beginning with TRUST.  Trust the process. Trust yourself in the process. Trust that you can heal and flourish again in time.

    If you’re grieving right now…

    1. Know that time is your friend.

    We all learn to let go in our own way, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Sometimes in parts, sometimes all at once. And then all over again. It is a process, and a process worth trusting.

    Choose to be patient with yourself. Give yourself permission to grieve and permission for the times you want to bounce out of it and watch TV.

    It can take months or years to absorb a major loss and to accept that life has changed. In whatever way it has changed, be kind to yourself by taking further pressure off, and don’t purposefully make any more major changes.

    Don’t worry about pleasing everyone else, completing everything on your to-do list, or keeping up with everyone around you. Sometimes it may take all your energy just to get through the day, and that’s okay. Sometimes that’s enough.

    2. Accept yourself and where you are from moment to moment.

    Grief isn’t always linear or convenient. Allow yourself to be sad, to be calm, to laugh, and to return back to being sad again. Lose all attachment to anything happening in a specific way. I remember being at work dealing with sick patients and having to leave the room because the tears and sadness would suddenly take over. It happens—let it.

    While it takes effort to begin to live in the present again and not dwell on the past, remember who you are in each moment—a beautiful soul dealing with transitory feelings—and know that is enough.

    3. Let the tears flow.

    If there is one thing I do well, it’s cry. Do you allow sobbing wails and tears? Allow the feelings of grief to arise and to pass. Emotional expression through grieving is normal and tears are a part of that process.   There is no reason to be embarrassed or try to suppress your tears. Crying is a normal human response to emotion and has a number of health benefits, including pain relief and self-soothing effects.

    Every time you allow an aspect of your pain to be felt and released, you are healing.

    A successful spiritual practice and one that gave me great freedom was to know, regardless of what loss I experienced in life, I can love myself through it all. Remember, you are not your pain and are worthy of love at all times.

    Though I walked through the valley of the shadow of loss, I will not live there. And you don’t have to either.

  • When Someone You Love Is Grieving: How to Really Help

    When Someone You Love Is Grieving: How to Really Help

    “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” ~Henri Nouwen

    It’s hard to stand at the edge of someone else’s grief.

    There’s the awkwardness. You always feel a little like an uninvited guest who arrived late and missed the first half of the conversation—a conversation that turns out to be a wrestle between another person and the deepest parts of their own soul.

    What can you say when you realize you’ve barged in on an interaction so intimate, so personal that you just want to avert your eyes and slink quietly away?

    Then there are the triggers.

    Grief has a way of unsettling everyone in the proximity. It stirs up our own unhealed parts. Is it any wonder that we have the instinct to smooth over the other person’s emotions, to take everything back to normal, before it has the chance to stir up something inside us?

    But here’s the thing: Your friends need you. Your family members need you. When we are grieving, we need our closest loved ones more than ever.

    I’ve had moments of not knowing how to help too. That’s why I’m sharing my insights about what healed, and what hurt, when I lost my husband to cancer.

    Don’t Say Nothing

    It would be easier to say nothing. To bury that whisper inside that nudges you to reach out. To focus on the busyness of your own obligations—your life—instead of drawing closer to my dance with death.

    I get it. But being on the other side?

    It hurts.

    It hurts to be this raw, and to have you look the other way.

    Please don’t ignore me.

    I know it’s a risk. You may get it all wrong. Or you may say all the textbook-right things, only to have me not receive them. My emotions are up and down and all over the place. Some days I’m hard to deal with.

    But this risk, it’s the kind that matters. The kind that deepens relationships, cements love, and humanizes both giver and receiver. When we dance together, you and I, trying to figure out how to be in the presence of so much pain, something magical happens. We open ourselves to meaning and beauty and richness. To the purpose of it all.

    In facing death, we embrace life.

    Don’t Ask How I’m Doing

    Sounds counter-intuitive, right?

    I just told you not to ignore me. And asking, “How are you doing?” is the first thing we say in most situations to show concern.

    The thing, is, answering this question when I’m grieving is painful. It’s so painful that immediately before and after my husband’s death from cancer, our daughters actively avoided going places where people might ask “How are you doing?”

    That cut out a big chunk of their support system.

    “How are you doing?” asked in passing, say by the clerk at the grocery store, isn’t the problem. It’s the soulful, “How are you doing,” said with words drawn out in long intonations, accompanied with deep pitying eyes, yet said in a rushed or crowded setting, that is tough. It’s tough because:

    -Some days going deep enough to give you a genuine answer upsets the emotional balance that’s getting me through the task at hand. Even on a good day, there is so much feeling under the surface. It may be taking all that I have to hold it together. I know you mean well, but please realize it’s hard for me to answer this question honestly and also keep my composure when the setting calls for it.

    -The immediate answer doesn’t mean much anyway. Emotions are fragile and unstable, especially in grief. How I’m doing may be different now than it was an hour ago than it will be in another hour. I’m fine and I’m not fine. Some days I’m really at a loss to explain it all.

    -Both of us know the answer is messy and complicated and multilayered. When the setting is too crowded or the time is too short for a heartfelt conversation, we each feel the disconnect of a partially true response. It creates distance instead of intimacy between us.

    Fortunately, there is a better way to bridge the space between us, and to communicate love and support.

    What to Do Instead: Pretend I Already Answered You

    You aren’t going to be satisfied by a cheerful “Fine!” when you ask how I’m doing.

    You won’t believe me because you can see the grief behind my eyes, despite my smile. And even if you haven’t been through my experience, something deep down tells you that this is big. Too big to be neatly resolved and tucked away in the category of memory.

    Trust yourself. You’re right.

    So what would you say to me if we fast-forwarded past the “How are you doing?” stage? If I actually had the time and space and emotional stability to give you a full response, how would you answer?

    Pretend I just told you that I’m trying in this moment to be strong, but I secretly I wonder if I’m too broken to ever be whole again. That I’m struggling, and it’s so hard. That last night I lay on the bathroom floor and screamed “no, no, no!” to the universe how many times? A hundred? A thousand? That I have to choose, moment by moment, to focus on life and hope. Except sometimes I’m not sure I want to live anyway. That loss is loneliness beyond words.

    Pretend I told you that despite all that, there are moments of happiness. And that part of me feels guilty for that. But the other part grasps for any glimpse of joy and peace with the intensity of a drowning person struggling for breath. Pretend that I asked you to please, please not push me to dig deep if this is one of those rare lighter moments. Let me breathe air for a few minutes before I am submerged again by the grief.

    What would you say?

    Skip the question. Say that instead.

    I have no words.

    You’ve been on my mind.

    I believe in you.

    It’s good to see you.

    I love you.

    Or if you and I are close enough, say it with a hug.

    And then, if you really want me to know that you care, schedule a bigger chunk of time for us to spend together. Maybe in that setting I’ll want to talk about the loss. Or maybe I’ll cherish the distraction of talking about something else.

    Either way, I need you. Isn’t that what you were really wondering?

    Don’t Tell Me That Time Heals All Wounds

    Even if that were true, it still wouldn’t be helpful.

    What I need is for you to see where I am now. To witness for me, and to share with me, this intensity. I want you to understand how raw, how immediate, how overwhelming the suffering is right now.

    But it isn’t true that time heals wounds. At least not always.

    Some pain lessens with time. Other pain festers and worsens. Some people grow from tragedy. They become deeper and stronger and more beautiful. Other people become a withered, gnarled caricature of what they used to be.

    And it isn’t really time that makes the difference.

    It’s heart and hope. It’s choice. It’s victory in this fight against despair and discouragement.

    Don’t minimize my battle.

    What to Do Instead: Stand with Me

    Do you want to help me in the battle? Then stand with me.

    In the center of my pain.

    Don’t rush to hide it or fix it or silence it (you can’t anyway).

    Be brave with me. Accept the discomfort of your own emotions bubbling up when you look at me.

    Accept the helplessness of not being able to fix this. (It’s scary, isn’t it? This realization that you are also vulnerable.)

    Be a witness to what is.

    Choose to stand with me in this place I didn’t choose to stand.

    Don’t Tell Me to Call If I Need Anything

    Once again, I know this comes from a good place, but the reality is, I desperately need you right now. It’s not a matter of if.

    The normal tasks of life are piling up undone around me. Which matter most? It’s hard to focus. To remember. To care.

    Truthfully, I don’t even remember when I last ate.

    I don’t know how to organize what I need when this grief is so large that it blocks my vision and squeezes against me until I can’t even breathe.

    And if by some great effort I did articulate what I need, what if you said no?

    What if I called to you, from this broken place, and you didn’t come?

    The risk is too much, because even more than I need your practical help I need you. I need to believe that you would be there, if only I could say the words.

    What to Do Instead: Help Me

    Think of something you could do to bring sunshine, and offer it. The specifics of what you offer matter less than your willingness to reach out.

    • Can I drop off food for you tonight?
    • Can I come by and mow the lawn/walk the dog/change the oil this week?
    • I have a gift card for you.

    When you reach out in a tangible way, I come to trust your sincerity. I think that maybe I really could ask for your support when there is a specific challenge I need help solving.

    Most of all, I feel you with me. And that was the biggest need all along.

    Don’t Tell Me What to Feel

    Everyone talks about stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

    The truth is messier.

    There are cycles of grief. I cycle back and forth from one reaction to another, sometimes in the same day. All those feelings are part of the process. All are valid.

    I cry. I yell. I laugh. I sink into sadness too deep for words.

    It’s exhausting work, grieving.

    Imagine wrestling a giant polar bear slicked down with Vaseline. Teeth and claws bear down on you as you struggle against an opponent many times your weight and muscle mass. When you try to get a hold, your fingers slide off and you find your hands empty.

    That’s how it feels to grieve.

    So don’t tell me to smile.

    I will, when that is what my healing calls for. For now I’m doing my best against something terrifying and overwhelming.

    Don’t tell me to be strong.

    I already am. I am a warrior, and this is what battle looks like.

    Don’t question me when I smile or laugh. Sometimes I need to stop and breathe during this intense work. When I do smile it doesn’t change the depth of my pain.

    What to Do Instead: Believe in Me

    Believe I can fight this fight.

    Believe it with so much confidence that you don’t rush to fix what you can’t fix or to control a process you can’t control.

    Believe it so completely that you aren’t threatened by my anger or terrified by my despair.

    Believe that I can face the rawness of my life ripped open and gutted in front of me and rise again.

    I will make it not because I am special or chosen or different than you.

    I will heal not because of all the advice and reassurance you give—as much for yourself as for me.

    I will heal because in touching the center of my pain, I have found my own strength.

    You Will Heal Yourself as You Help Me Heal

    You want to help.

    Even though it’s hard, sharing this journey. Thank you for trying. I know it’s awkward and emotional and brings up feelings it would be easier not to feel.

    But there’s something beyond altruism you might not have considered.

    This journey is actually as much for you as it is for me.

    Those broken pieces inside you, the ones that are triggered when you witness my pain? They can also be healed as you share in my journey.

    I’m not saying it’s easy.

    But as you sit with pain—mine or your own—you learn that in a way deeper than words that hope matters. That love prevails.

    And as you feel the depth of those hardest emotions, you start to believe in a way raw and real that life is beautiful—even its shadowy underbelly.

    Most of all, as you watch me stand naked and vulnerable—yet determined as a warrior—in the face of so much grief, you start to believe in me. Not the kind of faith that is padded and comfortable, insulated by layers of platitudes. A faith born in fire. Gritty. Pure. Powerful.

    And as you believe in me, you also come to believe in yourself.

  • Grief Is Really Just Love

    Grief Is Really Just Love

  • Grief Isn’t Something You Live Through, It’s Something You Live With

    Grief Isn’t Something You Live Through, It’s Something You Live With

    “Obstacles do not block the path, they are the path.” ~Zen proverb

    I thought the concept of a “cold sweat” was unreal and paradoxical until the evening of August 27, 2014. That was my first cold sweat. My first of a lot of things.

    My heart jack-hammered in my chest.

    I heard my pulse in my ears.

    I gasped for air on my dorm room floor in New York, while my mom tried to calm me down on the other end of the phone in Los Angeles.

    “It’s just a panic attack, sweetie. Just breathe deep.”

    No, no, no, I thought. Panic couldn’t possibly evoke this kind of physiological response. My arm hurt, my chest hurt. Was it possible to have a heart attack at age nineteen?

    I didn’t sleep for days after that. I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up again.

    Every night, I would set my laptop on my nightstand. A close family friend with insomnia agreed to stay on Skype with me all night long while I slept so that I wouldn’t feel so alone. She stayed up with me three nights in a row.

    I stopped attending classes, social functions, and missed almost the entire first week of my sophomore year of college.

    Finally, on the night of August 31, I decided to take a walk with some friends. Those same feelings as that night in my dorm room came over me. They took me to the emergency room. An EKG, blood pressure test, and Xanax later, the doctor came in.

    “Tell me a little bit about what’s going on with you.”

    “Well, I keep feeling like I can’t breathe, sometimes my heart starts to—”

    “No,” he interrupted. “Tell me what’s going on with you. Not your body.”

    I looked at him perplexed for about ten seconds, and began. I told him that my father died suddenly in a hit-and-run crash in December. I told him I had to come right back to school afterward because my scholarship was riding on my attendance. I told him how heartbroken, lost, and alone I felt living on the opposite side of the country—away from my family—during the worst period of my life.

    He told me what I had been vying to hear for months.

    “You need to go home.”

    Without argument, I nodded, went back to my dorm room, and told my mom to book my flight. I knew I had to go home, but hearing that vocal validation was what I truly needed. Within minutes, months of torment and post-traumatic stress melted into relief.

    Unfortunately, while the doctor told me what I had been longing to hear, he also diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder. Even upon returning to LA, starting a new school, a new job, and a new life, waves of panic continued to ravage my mind and body. And they always hit unexpectedly.

    Although I came home to properly cope with my grief, that task was still put by the wayside. Now, I had to deal with my anxiety and panic first. I had to find the right pills, the right dose. No matter what pills or what dose, I felt emotionally hollowed.

    In attempts to keep my anxiety levels down, the pills were making me tired all the time. I didn’t experience any more anxiety or depression, but I didn’t experience happiness or joy either. I had to try something else.

    In the boredom of a frigid December night, three years into my turbulent grief journey, I opened up the app store on my iPhone. Truth be told, I was looking for a crossword game, but instead I stumbled upon a free meditation app.

    I selected their grief meditation, settled into the plush carpet of my bedroom floor, popped my earbuds in, and began. Breathe in, breathe out. The sound of ambient ocean waves that underscored the guided meditation was like the waves of my grief—coming and going, never knowing when the next one would strike, sometimes dramatic and thunderous, sometimes muted and repressed.

    It wasn’t until the meditation ended and I opened my eyes that I realized there were tears in them. This is what my anxiety pills hadn’t been able to achieve. An actual outpouring of emotion. What I needed was to experience my grief, not silence it.

    But, I also needed to experience it in a place where I felt safe—and that place soon became that very spot on my bedroom floor. So vastly different from the spot on my dorm room floor across the country that was tainted with sadness and anxiety.

    For the longest time, I thought meditation was the silencing of your thoughts and emotions. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Soon I realized that meditation was the observation of these thoughts and emotions, without the heartache and turmoil of getting wrapped up in them.

    Every day, I gave myself ten minutes to meditate, to grieve. A year later, I weaned off my anti-anxiety pills, and never looked back. Two years later, and nearly five years since my father’s passing, I continue to meditate daily. Only now, it is as much a way to celebrate my contentment as it is to cope with my grief and panic.

    My grief and my panic disorder will always be a part of who I am, but I no longer see them as afflictions. Rather, they are facets of my overarching journey.

    Meditation took the place of my medication. But, that’s not to say that there is a right or wrong choice between the two. Without the help of my anti-anxiety pills, I would’ve never been able to see clearly enough to know that meditation is an option.

    There is no shame in needing the help of a pill, much like there is no shame in needing the help of a mindfulness practice. A practice that has taught me acceptance is the most critical part of our journey.

    So I began to accept. Accepting that pain, panic, and pills were part of my journey to peace. Accepting that grief is not something you live through, but something you live with.

    Accepting that all of these things were the path all along, not the roadblocks I thought they were.

  • Moving Through Grief: I’m Strong Because I Feel It All

    Moving Through Grief: I’m Strong Because I Feel It All

    “Grief is the last act of love we have to give to those we loved. Where there is deep grief, there was great love.” ~Unknown

    It’s been almost six months now. Half of a year without my brother and the grief still visits. I’m pretty sure grief doesn’t actually go away; its visits just get further and further apart.

    People continue to ask me how I am so “strong” through all of this, mistaking my happy moments as the full picture.

    I continue to tell them strength comes because I feel it all.

    The story in itself is my therapy, my chance to relive the amazing memories, my chance to show you the waves of grief I ride.

    The last thing I told my conscious brother was “But I believe in miracles, I really do.”

    To be fair, the last thing I really told him was a travel story about me using a Squatty Potty in Thailand, in hopes that humor would bring him back to responsiveness.

    The thing is, I really did believe a miracle was possible, or at least I wanted to believe. Surely it wasn’t his time to go. The all-divine higher power wouldn’t take away my big brother, my role model, my mom’s baby boy. It simply wasn’t time.

    The tumor on his spine seemed to disagree with me, though.

    My brother is gone now, and there is a human-sized hole in the universe that I am living in, and yet I survive; in fact, I am thriving in this life that I have now.

    But let’s back up a little, because I can’t just tell you about how I move through this season of grief without totally and completely honoring the human my brother was. He called me his little buddy, and though my oldest brother was the babysitter, Kirk always whispered into my ear that he was the real one in charge.

    He liked Dungeon and Dragons, donuts, finishing a great book, and writing and doodling in a brown journal probably made of suede or something cool like that. He loved to flip me upside-down or hold me down and tickle me until I was completely sure I would pee my pants. He would say things that didn’t make any sense to me until later when I would sit and contemplate in stillness.

    Something about Kirk’s soul was so playful but inspired me to be still and live in the presence that I have. He did things like build houses out of mud for sustainability and turn medians into produce farms. He took killer photos and made clay statues that I used to think would move in the night and haunt me.

    Kirk told me to “try everything once, unless that one thing will kill you, then skip that one.” Which is why you can catch me building a business that makes zero sense to who I am, traveling to foreign countries when I should probably be building a 401K or something else adults do. But when there’s a human-size hole in your universe, you do things for joy. Maybe it’s to honor them; maybe it’s because you live life to the fullest possible amount there can ever be. Either way, I’ll keep moving only for things that light my soul on fire.

    And then there was the cancer.

    You know how if you endure something just the right amount, it kind of becomes your normal? Repetitive chaos in your life has a way of doing that. And after watching my grandma battle cancer and win, my mom battle cancer and win, and Kirk beating it over and over again, it felt like the norm. Like it was just a thing that plagued my family, but we always moved out of it.

    Everyone handles something like this differently; personally, I’m that “ray of sunshine, glass half full and hey, I’ll help you with your glass too” kind of girl. Sunshine and cancer don’t blend well together. I got really good at smiling, cheering people up, and ignoring the invader in our lives.

    When I opened my phone and received the text that read, “He took a turn for the worse,” my soul didn’t believe it. I hopped on a plane, believing my sunshine would be enough to stop this spiral.

    My sunshine was not enough to bring him back to life.

    My sunshine was dimmed to its darkest.

    My glass was tipped over.

    Grief overwhelmed my soul. Gut wrenching, unexplainable, dynamic grief.

    It has been almost six months now since this hole was created in my universe, and every day someone asks me how I am so “strong” or “positive.” I will tell you exactly how.

    When I’m mad, I get mad. I allow myself to hear why I am mad because I know answers are on the other side of that. I don’t place my anger on anyone or anything. I just let it out as it is, even if it doesn’t make any sense.

    When I’m sad, I get sad. Even if that means I cry in my car because I walked past someone eating a flavor of ice cream that he enjoyed. Even if that means crying on my birthday because I realized it was the first year I wouldn’t hear from him. Even if that means I cry for no other reason besides missing my brother. I let it flow because I am alive and I can feel.

    And when I’m happy, you best believe I’m happier than a three-year-old in between meltdowns. Because of all the human emotions that I get to endure, the one he would want me to amplify the most is wild, epic, unleashed happiness.

    They say grief is like waves, and I honestly couldn’t explain it any more eloquently than that. As a professional beachgoer, the thing I can tell you about waves is that they have two extremes: If you work with the waves, they are flowing and forgiving; if you fight against them, they will pull you under to the depths.

    This is how you move with grace through grief. The fight creates a deep abyss of suffering; the flow creates a space for forgiveness. I’m not saying there won’t be pain; there will be deafening pain to endure on this ride. And on the other side of that pain is forgiving and wild happiness that I like to think our lost pieces are sending to us. This is how I am strong through my grief.

    I am mad, sad, and happy sometimes all in one day. I feel pain and yet I live so passionately, exactly the way my brother would want me to. I am not strong because I am positive; I am strong because I feel it all. Strength hides in the depth of every emotion. Tap into each flow.

  • You Have to Feel it to Heal It: The Only Way Out is Through

    You Have to Feel it to Heal It: The Only Way Out is Through

    “Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal.” ~Vironika Tugaleva

    I plodded up the half-mile hill that led to my house, my backpack weighing heavily on my shoulders in the insistent summer heat. The mild breeze that drifted off the Boston harbor was a cruel joke, hinting at coolness but offering no respite.

    Recently heartbroken, I felt tears streaming hotly down my cheeks for the third time that day as the pain of my ex-partner’s absence crashed swiftly on my heart.

    I reached out to a trusted friend seeking solace. “Sobbing again” I texted her, knowing she would decipher the pain behind my words. She hesitated for a moment before responding: “Duh.”

    I hiccupped mid-sob, surprised.

    She went on: “Feel it. It’s going to hurt. But every moment you’re sobbing, you’re doing the work. Every moment you’re hurting, you’re healing. The only way out is through.”

    I stared at the screen, digesting her words. That was the last thing I’d expected. I’d expected to be coddled or encouraged to look at the bright side. I’d expected to be force-fed an ice cream cone at J.P. Licks.

    This was different. For the first time in my grieving process, I wasn’t told to gloss over my feelings with a coat of rose-colored paint. Someone I trusted was encouraging me to feel my pain in its entirety. Through her eyes, my pain was valid and productive—a necessary step on my journey toward healing.

    Her direct acknowledgement of my suffering was the permission I needed to truly feel my pain instead of avoid it. Instead of worrying that I wasn’t trying hard enough to be happy—instead of worrying that I was taking “too long” to heal—I felt like I was doing everything properly.

    I could celebrate the work I was doing, even when that work was breaking into sobs, for the third time that day, on the half-mile walk home.

    My pain and grief had meaning.

    It could serve a purpose.

    It could serve me.

    Since then, I’ve developed a new way of looking at pain:

    When we allow ourselves to fully experience painful or uncomfortable feelings, we are doing work. Sitting with our feelings instead of disengaging or distracting ourselves is work.

    Once we accept that we are doing work, we can silence our internal critic that believes that feeling pain means we’re “doing something wrong.” Instead, we begin to understand that feeling our pain is important and productive.

    When we understand the true nature of our work, we can summon compassion for ourselves as we move through our uncomfortable feelings on the path to healing, peace, and wholeness.

    This framework has changed my life. I’ve applied it to my most acutely painful emotions, like heartbreak, as well as milder ones, like unease.

    Last month on a stormy Friday night, for example, a tide of anxiety rolled through me. Instead of texting my friends or sweethearts to organize an impromptu rendezvous—a surefire way to distract myself—I turned on my air conditioner, donned the biggest sweater I could find, and cuddled my pillow as I watched the rain streak down my window.

    It felt uncomfortable. I felt the familiar tightness in my chest and shortness in my breath.

    “You’re being anti-social!” nagged my inner critic. “You’re being boring. It’s Friday! You’re not trying hard enough.”

    I took a deep breath and put my hand over my heart. I am doing work, I said firmly into my heart. This is important. I kept my hand on my chest, repeating these mantras in time with the falling rain, until my inner critic’s voice was an echo of an echo.

    When I woke up the next morning to a clear blue sky and a bout of energy, I took pride in how I’d weathered the storm, so to speak. I learned that my anxiety was impermanent and, most importantly, manageable. 

    Then there are those darkest moments of sorrow, the moments when grief shakes even our sturdiest foundations. When we lose a loved one. When illness consumes us. When we experience a tragedy so emotionally excruciating that it redefines our very understanding of pain.

    In these moments, when we can’t find a single silver lining for miles, we can summon the courage to sit with our sorrow. We can find solace in the truth that there is simply nothing else to do.

    Experiencing our grief—if only for moments at a time—is work. This is the work of living on this Earth, of being human, and of surviving the universal rites of passage that mark our lives as we age.

    When I feel existentially lost, isolated, and convinced of the meaninglessness of my pain, I take a moment to witness the people around me. I watch people walking hand in hand at the park, or reading novels on the train, or sunbathing at the beach.

    Somehow, the vast majority of people around me have weathered similarly painful times. The mere fact of their existence, when I’m certain I will shatter into nothingness, is strength enough to soldier on.

    Before I learned the benefit of sitting with my feelings, doing work of this nature didn’t appeal to me. Why wallow in sorrow when you could just do something about it? I wondered. 

    When I felt uncomfortable, I would find a way to occupy my time and distract my heart. I’d burrow my nose in a screen until I was only dimly aware of the world around me; call one friend after another, repeating the same painful story, swimming concentric circles around my pain without ever diving in; grab a pen and scribble a to-do list to feel the rush of purposefulness at the expense of true catharsis.

    In retrospect, it’s easy to see that my “coping strategies” were no such thing.

    When we distract ourselves from our pain with a flurry of motion, we fool ourselves into thinking we’re being productive. We fall victim to the addictive high of the quick fix. But as any hard worker in any field will tell you, there is no substitute for good, hard work. Work that gives us a sense of our own intrinsic worth and yields desirable results. 

    Which begs the question: Given the undeniable difficulty of this brand of work, why do it at all? What is the reward for expending such mental and physical effort?

    Different folks will offer different answers. As for me, I’ve always believed that our purpose on this earth is to live our richest, most beautiful lives. Anything less seems like a terrible waste of the gift of conscious experience.

    I believe that in order to live such lives, we must live our essential truth. Living our essential truth means making the conscious effort to feel the spectrum of our pain, magnificent and minor. It means giving ourselves permission to feel emotions as they are, and rid our lives of the pressures to conform, perform, and self-delude.

    When we act in accordance with our deepest feelings, our lives become simpler. Instead of constantly choosing how to act or what to say—spurring waterfalls of anxiety and self-doubt –there is always one choice: the choice that is true for us. The choice that we feel in our hearts.

    The next time you are hurting, uncomfortable, or lonely, feel your pain. Feel as much of it as you can bear. Your pain is a necessary step on your journey towards healing. And remember:

    You are doing your best.

    You are healing at exactly the right pace.

    You are doing work.

    Your work has meaning.

    It can serve a purpose.

    It can serve you.

  • How Social Media Is Helping Me Cope with Grief

    How Social Media Is Helping Me Cope with Grief

    “Grief, no matter where it comes from, can only be resolved by connecting to other people.” ~Thomas Horn

    We had just landed in Chicago. I had spent the last three hours on a flight from New Jersey sitting next to grown-ups who didn’t ask me fifty questions every two minutes, while my kids watched a movie with their dad, two rows behind.

    I was looking forward to spending one whole week in Chicago, despite the freezing temps. This was my first real break in eight months, and boy, I had plans! Sleeping in, long baths, reading, and no laptop!

    I switched my phone on as soon as we landed. There was a text from my sister in India that she’d sent a few hours ago. My mom had been in the hospital for two weeks now with a serious lung infection.

    That morning her doctor had given us hope that she was getting better. This was good news, and I was relieved. I tried to call my mom and then my dad, but none of them answered.

    I thought, I’ll try her again when we check in our hotel. I sent her a text, telling her the same along with a video of my two-and-a-half year old son running around the airport. These videos were her life.

    We were in the back of a Black Sedan, on our way to the hotel, when my phone rang. It was my dad. He was crying. I couldn’t even understand what he was saying, but my heart was beating out of my chest.

    The only thing I understood were these words, “She was put on a ventilator.”

    I started crying, but I managed to say, “She will be fine, Papa. Don’t cry. Be strong!” I knew whatever “putting on a ventilator” meant, she would be fine! Goddammit, that was my mom! She was always fine. In reality, I had no idea what that meant.

    The next few hours were a battle she fought alone for her life. She gave a good fight, but eventually, my sweet mama lost the battle. I didn’t just lose my mother. I also lost my best friend and my biggest cheerleader.

    The next day, I carried myself and my heavy heart 8,000 miles away to India.

    The last time I saw my mom was over two years ago. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I will never be able to see her beautiful smile again. I will never hear her sweet voice.

    The next few weeks are a blur. The only thing I remember is seeing her lifeless body.

    I remember her slightly parted lips as if she was about to call my name. Her black hair with greys peeking out, and her soft, supple skin. I kissed on her forehead and wished somehow she would wake up.

    I held her hand and said goodbye to the person who brought me into this world.

    After spending a few weeks back in India with my family, I came back home to New Jersey. With nothing but grief and tears to fill my day with, I returned to work.

    A big part of my work involves staying active on social media. I had taken a brief hiatus, but now I was ready to be back. But how could I talk about anything else other than that one thing that consumed my brain?

    I had built a small yet strong community on my social media platform. Yet, I hesitated. What if someone posted a nasty comment? What if someone told me, “Enough already, stop depressing us!”

    I spent most of my days at my home, crying. My husband was at work, and my kids were in school. I started noticing that other than a few friends who I could literally count on my fingers, others had disappeared from my life.

    My phone never rang.  My friends hardly texted me. When I ran into people, they were so awkward around me. Was it just my imagination?

    Was it just a coincidence that my good friends had just vanished into thin air at that exact moment when I needed them the most?

    It’s said that grief is like waves—sometimes it’s calm, and sometimes it’s like a tsunami. On days when it turned into tsunami, I felt like I was drowning and didn’t know if I would be able to come up for air. Ever.

    Desperate for a human connection, I turned to my small but mighty crowd on social media.

    On Instagram, I talked about my struggles and how I was coping with the loss of my mother. I wrote Facebook posts about my mom and how my kids were learning to calm me down when I broke into tears. In Facebook groups, I shared how my grief was affecting all areas of my life, including my work.

    The response was phenomenal! People sent me flowers and handwritten cards. Some shared their experience of how they dealt with the loss of a loved one.

    Some sent me long, beautiful personal messages and some just one sentence: “How can I help you?”

    These were people I hardly knew, some I had never met. Yet together, they opened their hearts and gave me a platform to grieve.

    Social media often gets a horrible rep, and I totally get it. There are some very nasty people out there. But for every one nasty person online, ten people are on social to be social.

    They are looking for a human connection. Perhaps, when they see raw vulnerability, they extend their hand across their screens. When they read about someone who is going through the same pain as they are, they give their virtual shoulder to cry on.

    Humans need emotional connection. Even more when we are grieving. And sometimes you can’t find it near you. Sometimes you aren’t comfortable talking about it to anyone you know. And sometimes, even if you have people around, you feel they just don’t get it.

    Whatever it is, if you are struggling to talk to someone, know that social media can be a great resource. Use it; don’t shun it. Give it a try.

    Join a Support Group

    There are many great support groups online. A lot of closed Facebook groups dedicated to helping people who are grieving have stringent guidelines and zero tolerance policy. If you are new to social media or wary of sharing your personal stories online, start here.

    Since all the members are going through the same pain, there is a very high level of support. I discovered people who had lost a loved one were the ones who could really understand what I was talking about. And sometimes, it’s so much easier to spill your emotions when no one is staring at you in the eye with uncomfortable silence.

    Rule of 3:1

    Give, give, give, and then make the ask. The rule of social media is the same as the rule of life. You give first, and then you ask.

    Although I was received with an open heart from my community, I believe it was because I had built a relationship with them for six months. I had been there for them. I had provided value to their life or work many times before I made my ask.

    Show Up as You Are

    Don’t try to hide your emotions or pretend to be someone you aren’t. Tell your truth. Show up exactly the state you are in.

    If you are new to social media or don’t use it for anything else other than remembering your friend’s birthday, then this will be hard. Start with a safe place first. Maybe it’s a closed online community of known people or five of your trusted online friends. You don’t need thousands, just a few people whom you build an emotional connection with.

    We are very fortunate to live in a time when information and access are available to us at our fingertips. It’s up to us how we choose to use it.

    My grief is nowhere close to being over. It shall never be. It has changed forms, and I believe it will continue to do so. But, knowing that I have a safe space where I can talk about it without being judged or ridiculed is helping me cope with my grief.

  • Grief Never Ends, But It Changes

    Grief Never Ends, But It Changes

  • When You Reframe Your Breakup as an Opportunity, Everything Changes

    When You Reframe Your Breakup as an Opportunity, Everything Changes

    “Sometimes the most uncomfortable learning is the most powerful.” ~Brené Brown

    Seems impossible, doesn’t it?

    How can you look at your breakup as an opportunity when it feels like someone cut your right arm off and ripped out your heart?

    Breakups can be rough. When you open yourself up to another person, love them unconditionally, and compromise your own needs for the “betterment of the relationship,” you put yourself all-in. It’s no surprise that you feel lost, confused, and unwilling to move on when that connection is torn away from you. You gave everything to your relationship and now it’s gone. Forever.

    Breakups have taught me something that I never learned in school: I’ve learned that losing love is hard. Brutally hard. I experienced more pain after the toughest breakup of my life than completing an engineering degree, doing standup comedy for the first time, and walking 400 kilometers in two weeks with 50 pounds on my back. When I lost my soul mate, I didn’t know how I was going to move on.

    At first, I didn’t. I did everything I could do to escape, suppress, and avoid my feelings. I wasn’t nice to my body. I cried in the shower. I hid in the park close to my apartment since I was still living with my ex for a month after the breakup.

    It was my “grieving period.” We all need one after a breakup. But although we all need different lengths of time to grieve, it’s important to put a time limit on it. Since I knew I was going to be living with my ex until we got our arrangements sorted out, I decided that I was going to give myself that month to grieve. And grieve, I did! I was a drunk, unproductive puddle of sadness.

    Eventually I said goodbye to my ex, my cat, and my apartment. I cried on the metro on the way to my buddy’s condo. That first night away from the place I’d called home for years was brutal. But I knew my grieving period was over in the morning. And the next day, I got to work.

    The road to recovery wasn’t easy. There were many ups and downs. But I stayed focused on letting go and moving on in the healthiest way I could.

    That was two years ago, and I’m proud to say that I did let go and move on from the toughest breakup of my life. I’m a better version of myself today than I’ve ever been and I’m still a work in progress. We all are.

    When I was recovering from my breakup, I did a lot of “reframing.” I tried looking at things through new perspectives so I could develop more understanding and empathy, for my ex and for myself. Today, with the advantage of hindsight, I can put my finger on an idea, or reframe, that helped me start moving on faster:

    Breakups are an end, but they are also an opportunity for a fresh start.

    First, a breakup is the end. Accept it. If you’re reading this and thinking, “Maybe I can still get my ex back if I just do this…” then you’re reading the wrong article. Because if your mind is set on getting your ex back, this is not your new beginning. At best it’s a rerun of the same show that’s been playing for too long.

    Because guess what? When a breakup happens and people get back together, usually they break up again. And again. And again. The chances that you’ll get back with your ex and everything will improve and they’ll change into the perfect partner is as likely as me playing first base for the Yankees.

    But just because you accept this as the end of your relationship doesn’t make it a negative experience. Most things come to an end in our lives—jobs, friendships, lives, your favorite Netflix series, the tub of cookie dough ice cream in your freezer (okay, in my freezer).

    When one door closes another opens. You just have to have the guts to lock the old door behind you and walk through the new one.

    I realized that my breakup was my opportunity to:

    • Do things I’d wanted to do for a long time but hadn’t because I had a partner to consider in every decision I made.
    • Peel back the layers and look within myself to see where I was going wrong in my romantic relationships, and most importantly, how I could improve so that I would be better in my next relationship.
    • Reconnect with friends and family who had been relegated to the sidelines for five years because my relationship consumed a lot of time and energy.
    • Meet new people and get excited about a fresh chance at love.
    • Inspire other people to get over their breakups without the typical clichés and bad advice.

    Let’s face it, you’re here on Tiny Buddha because you’re interested in self-improvement and self-growth. You’re on a journey toward becoming a better version of yourself. That’s why if you’re struggling to let go and move on after a breakup, you need to reframe it right now so you can continue on your journey.

    You need to tell yourself this is your opportunity to become better. This is your chance to fix things that went wrong in your past relationship so next time you don’t end up with a partner who isn’t right for you.

    Remember, relationships end for a reason.

    You and your ex had your problems. Sure, you had love and a deep connection, but did you also have rock-solid communication, clear boundaries, and unwavering honesty? Did you share the same core values?

    I’ll say it again: relationships end for a reason. And when it happens, it’s okay. Your ex wasn’t the only person on the planet who is capable of loving you. On the contrary, if you use your breakup as an opportunity to improve things about yourself, you will attract a partner with whom you’ll find so much more love and connection that you’ll wonder how you lasted as long as you did in your past relationship.

    That’s what life is all about. None of us get things right on the first go. Finding a soul mate is no different than learning a new language or getting in shape. You have to practice. Look at your ex and breakup as a practice round. Because of that relationship, you’re stronger, smarter, and more prepared for the next one.

    This is your time. It’s your opportunity to sort through your past relationship issues and figure out how to be better.

    Because no matter what, we all play a role in our breakups. Even if you were lied to, cheated on, duped, or betrayed, you still played a role. That might be hard to hear, but it’s true. My mom always said, “It takes two to tango.” And my mom ain’t no fool.

    I had to get comfortable with my role in my breakup, too. I was no angel.

    I had to accept that I hadn’t been true to my core values. I wanted children, my ex didn’t. Still, I put that to the side because we were in love. I also realized I had a lingering fear of commitment. I was still battling with jealousy and insecurity issues even though I thought I’d left them behind in an earlier long-term relationship. It wasn’t easy accepting those things about myself, but when I did I knew exactly where the nuts and bolts needed to be tightened. And I got to work.

    For you, perhaps there were co-dependency issues or a need for validation. Maybe you stayed for the sake of the children, the dog, or the mortgage. Who knows. But I do know that you played a role and you need to accept that before you can move on.

    Looking in the mirror and accepting the not-so-good things about ourselves is difficult. People resist peeling back the layers of their personality because it means leaving themselves vulnerable and exposed.

    But you’re different. You understand the importance and power of vulnerability. And your breakup is the best chance you might ever have to rebuild yourself in the image that makes you feel like the confident champion you dream of being.

    I know your breakup sucks. I know you miss your ex and still have love for them. I know it’s hard looking to the future and wondering if you’ll ever meet your true soul mate.

    Remember: the greatest opportunities for growth in our lives come when we’re the most uncomfortable. And a tough breakup takes us way outside our comfort zones.

    That discomfort is your opportunity. Accept it, embrace it, and cherish it. Big breakups don’t come around often. This is an exciting time! You’ve proven to yourself that you’re brave enough to take a risk on love. Just because the relationship is over doesn’t take away that bravery. Now it’s time to be courageous in the face of adversity.

    And guess what? If you can shake off your breakup in a productive, healthy way, it’ll build new skills and resilience for the next time a difficult, unexpected life event happens. Jobs will be lost. Friends will drift away. People will die. Change is inevitable in your life. Now is your opportunity to prepare yourself for those times that will come whether you like it or not.

    A breakup is your opportunity to show everyone around you—friends, family, colleagues—how gritty you can be. It’s going to be hard work. It’s never easy coming to terms with our limiting beliefs, fears, and ghost in our closets.

    You have an important choice to make:

    You can choose to sit in your basement waiting for “time to heal” and hoping that by some miracle you’ll get better.

    Or you can choose to look at your breakup as an opportunity to improve the way you show up in your relationships so you can attract the right type of person into your life.

    You will let go and you will move on. But you have to start, today. The last thing you want is to look back on this moment and realize you waited too long to accept this as your opportunity. Time is too precious to waste feeling stuck.

  • How Journaling Helped Me Heal from Grief and How It Can Help You Too

    How Journaling Helped Me Heal from Grief and How It Can Help You Too

    “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” ~C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

    The day I was told that the man I loved was going to die from cancer, I did two things: I made a pact with myself never to have more than one bottle of wine in the house. I knew the risks of numbing pain and I knew that it didn’t work. Then I went to a stationery shop and bought a supply of fine moleskin journals.

    My journey through grief started the day the pea-sized lump behind my husband’s ear was given a name. Metastatic melanoma. Over the course of two years it spread to his lungs, then his brain. A brain tumor the size of a golf ball is what killed him.

    Four weeks after his death, a tightly sealed plastic box containing a dozen diaries was the first thing I grabbed when I had to evacuate my home ahead of a monster cyclone. Seven years after those events, the plastic container, which by now contains several dozen moleskins, is still the first thing I’ll grab at the next cyclone warning.

    Why? Because those journals were my lifesaver at a time when no therapist could help me. Grieving is a very long and lonely journey, and those journals were my most intimate, trusted friends during the most difficult time in my life.

    Grief comes in many forms. Divorce, being made redundant, a stillborn child, the list is long. We all have access to the world’s oldest and cheapest self-help tool.

    Here is how it helped me.

    1. Your journal is your best friend during the lonely process of grief.

    Grief turned me into a depressed mess, which made me feel like an outsider. It’s a common experience. As anybody who has been there will know, one of the most surprising things about grief is how alone it makes you feel. Only those who have grieved will be able to understand what you are going through.

    Your friends and loved ones will offer as much comfort as they can give, but they’ve got their own lives to live and nobody wants to hear your sad story over and over again.

    Writing provided comfort and relief at a time when nothing else did. I lived remotely and didn’t have access to a therapist. My journal became my lifesaver and my best friend. It was the only place where I could speak my truth and where I could safely express all of my emotions.

    My journal was always there for me to listen to the same story, over and over again, without judgment, until I was finally ready to let it go.

    2. Journaling allowed me to tell the story nobody wanted to hear.

    We live in a culture that is averse to grief. In the absence of proper grief rituals, people struggle for words and end up offering platitudes that diminish your grief. Before my bereavement, I too was ignorant about what to say to a grieving person.

    How many times did well-meaning friends, lost for words, offer meaningless platitudes? “He’ll be okay,” some would say, when it was clear that he was never going to be okay again.

    “You’ll be okay,” was just as hurtful. Of course I would be okay. I hadn’t died, even if it felt like part of me had. But I needed people to acknowledge my grief, not diminish it. Writing was a way of giving voice to the story nobody wanted to hear.

    I needed to say the things that I couldn’t say, that even the doctors wouldn’t say, as we desperately clung to hope.

    It was only in the pages of my journal that I could safely and without judgment write this messy story in the raw voice of pain. It helped me understand it and slowly craft a new narrative.

    I knew instinctively that my writing would lead me there, not my well-meaning friends who assumed to know what the appropriate timeframe for grief might be.

    3. Writing allowed me to hold on to memories.

    Journaling was also an effective way to hold on to the memory of him. I recorded the story as it was unfolding. The way he reacted to radiation treatment. The words he said when the word palliative care entered our conversation. The way he looked before and after each operation. The words he whispered into my ear, holding on to my hand as his strength faded during his last days.

    4. Journaling helped me find redemption after loss.

    For several years after my bereavement, the story I told about myself focused on the events that had burnt my life down. It was what defined me at that moment and I didn’t want it taken away from me.

    Writing about my pain allowed me to eventually gain a new perspective. Reading over my words, I became a detached witness of my story and I was able to see how my story is related to the universal narrative pattern of what Joseph Campbell calls “the hero’s journey.”

    Today I am able to tell my story as a narrative of redemption. I stumbled into the dark woods of grief and I came out of it transformed, stronger, and more aware of the preciousness of life. It’s a story I share with those who accept grief as an opportunity for deep transformation.

    5. Journal writing gave me the courage to venture into creative writing, which was healing in unexpected ways.

    Two years after my husband’s death, for my fiftieth birthday, I gave myself the gift of a year-long online creative writing course. I’d planned to write up my story as a memoir. But revisiting my pain in the pages of my journals felt like peeling the scab off a wound. It was still too raw.

    Writing creative fiction on the other hand, turned out to be incredibly liberating. I no longer had to write the story of how my life had exploded. I was free to write anything I wanted. I could create characters with red hair and freckles, I could make them Olympic swimmers or war correspondents. But deep down, the emotions I wrote into my characters were my own.

    By sorting the core of my personal grief story into a narrative arch, I could see how personal growth results from conflict and suffering. I could see how this is fundamental to the character’s journey and I could finally see redemption and envision a new ending for my story.

    I don’t know how I would have coped without my writing, it’s what guided me through my pain and showed me the way forward.

    Here are five suggestions on how to use journal writing during times of grief:

    1. Have your journal always with you.

    I found it incredibly comforting to have my journal always by my side. Sadness catches up with you in the back of a taxi or in the hospital waiting room. Being able to scribble in my journal provided relief.

    2. Do a brain and pain dump.

    On most days I’d do a simple brain and pain dump. I’d free write without editing or worrying about grammar for as long as it took to feel better. I found it helpful to record what was happening in detail and to name my emotions and reactions.

    By writing everything down, I felt like I was sharing my pain. It was liberating, even if it didn’t make the pain go away. It allowed me to see patterns in my thinking and to focus on the positive.

    3. Write a gratitude list.

    A gratitude list is a powerful way to focus on what is positive during a time when it seems that you will never find happiness again. By listing the things I was grateful for, I was able to momentarily reverse the feeling of overwhelming negativity.

    There was the bad test result, sure, but there was also the friend who brought a casserole around. It was always surprising and refreshing to acknowledge the things that made me feel grateful. It put my pain into perspective.

    4. Do timed writing exercises.

    If you are not naturally inclined to writing, you might find it useful to make journaling part of a routine and to set a timer. Timed writing exercises are surprisingly effective. Start small. Ten minutes of free writing every morning is a good start.

    5. Use writing prompts,

    Journal therapists will often use writing prompts. I personally feel too restricted by prompts, since my writing will naturally lead me towards the story that needs to be told. But when I am stuck, I find it helpful to pause and write “How I really feel is …” or “What I really want to say is …”.

    I also found great relief in writing unsent letters to my husband, both during his illness and after his death.

    Here are some writing prompts for you to try:

    I remember when …

    The first time we …

    My happiest memory of you is …

    What was good about today is …

    What I treasure is this …

    Today my grief feels like …

    —

    Back when I went through my grief, I didn’t know that expressive writing and journal therapy are recognized modalities for healing, widely used by psychologists and therapists, especially with trauma victims.

    I’ve always used reflective and personal writing as a way to make sense of the world and my place in it. Faced with my husband’s progressive illness, I’d instinctively reached for my journal to process what was happening. By naming the emotions I felt, I could make sense of what seemed ungraspable and find healing.

    Journal writing really is the cheapest form of self-care there is. I hope you’ll try it, using some of the suggestions above. Or maybe you already have a journal writing practice and have your own favorite prompts. Feel free to share in the comments.

  • 3 Things That Are Helping Me Deal with Stress, Pain, and Loss

    3 Things That Are Helping Me Deal with Stress, Pain, and Loss

    “Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness; but it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.” ~Unknown

    Life has not been kind lately.

    My aunt passed away in October. She had been suffering from cancer, but her family kept the extent of her illness to themselves, and hence I did not have a chance to see her before she passed away. I felt bad about that.

    My father followed her a month later, just after Thanksgiving. He had been ailing from Parkinson’s Disease, but his death as well was not expected when it happened.

    Two weeks after him, a friend of mine who lives abroad informed me of her diagnosis with a rare form of incurable cancer. She has since passed away before I had a chance to visit her. She was not yet fifty years old.

    Right after that happened, the veterinarian diagnosed my dog with heart failure, and his days too are numbered.

    In mid-January, my mother, who had been depressed after my father’s death, collapsed with a seizure. A tumor was discovered in her brain. Though easily removed, it was traced back to her lung. She too has a rare form of aggressive cancer and though outwardly healthy, her life will probably be limited to months or a couple of years.

    The whole ordeal until diagnosis unfolded over the course of an extremely stressful month, and the future is both frightening and terribly uncertain. Because of this uncertainty, I have needed to change my life plans—I had been ready to relocate and change jobs.

    In the last two weeks, I have had another friend in her forties diagnosed with advanced cancer with a poor prognosis, and my sister’s marriage has come apart.

    Every week it seems brings some new tragedy. As just about everyone who knows me has said: “It’s a lot.” It certainly is.

    I can’t put a happy face on this. Life has just been awful, and I wake up each day praying for no more bad news. There has been such a procession of misfortune that I feel more numb than anything else.

    And yet, I haven’t been destroyed. I’m not depressed. When someone is depressed, whether it’s situational or clinical, they often become self-obsessed and turn just about any event, however positive, into a negative commentary on their life. I’ve been there before, and this is not depression.

    I’m scared, but I feel strong. I know I can handle this. And, I’m very thankful—thankful for what gave me the strength to endure these times: my spiritual journey.

    In 2012, after a years-long series of illnesses, bad romantic relationships, frayed friendships, work drama, and general instability in my life, I had a total breakdown.

    By “breakdown” I mean the whole nine yards—massive depression, professional psychological help, medication, and inability to work or even function normally. However, following this breakdown came the clichéd spiritual awakening.

    This spiritual awakening taught me so many things, most of which you’ve probably already read about, for example: the ego, the importance of being present, the power of vulnerability, etc.

    It was such a fragile period of intense learning and growth built atop a well of deep suffering. It felt terrible, but I learned and changed so much. Though it’s unlikely that I will experience such drastic spiritual growth in such a short period of time again, I realized that I had embarked on a life-long spiritual journey with no end.

    Along the way, there have been fewer but no less rewarding “Aha moments” and new realizations made possible by the consciousness I had gained. Furthermore, there have been many spiritual tests, and each time I worry that I will fail to live the lessons I’ve already internalized, I surprise myself and come through.

    And now I’ve reached an objectively extraordinarily difficult time. This is not a crisis of egoic drama or hurt feelings but real pain—physical suffering and death for so many people who I care about in a matter of months.

    While the spiritual journey is a continuum with multiple themes that are difficult to unravel from each other, there are a few concepts that are sustaining me through it all:

    1. Presence and the now

    The weight of all of it has pushed me into a very intense NOW. I try not to hope because hope has let me down a lot recently, but perhaps more importantly, hope is focused on an unknowable and largely inalterable future. Though in the context of a lot of terrible events, rarely is there anything wrong with this very moment. Despite the pain of recent events, right now there is so much going right.

    Choosing to focus on the good isn’t delusional—it’s an accurate reflection of reality.

    My mother is dying. We don’t know when and there isn’t too much we can do, but thinking of that future is enough to ruin every day. And yet, with our time together now so valuable, I have no choice but to be fully present with her as much as I can.

    I have experienced so much loss recently, but bitterly clinging to that loss will distract me from the precious time I have left with my mother and friends, and it will do nothing to bring back my dad, my aunt, or anyone else.

    However, there isn’t much wrong with right now. My mom isn’t suffering, I’m lucky to be free from work to be with her, and my family has come together in support of each other. The birds sing each morning, the weather is fine, and the forest near our house is beautiful. That’s all real too, and there is much joy to be had in each moment.

    Should something arise in the moment, that’s when I’ll deal with it. While I do occasionally find myself worrying over the future, that serves no purpose and only spoils the now.

    2. Boundaries

    In times of extreme stress when so many things are going wrong, it is critical to exercise self-care; you cannot be a positive force in the world if you’re falling apart inside.

    Boundaries are key to protecting your time and energy, which are particularly challenged in very difficult times, from behaviors that drain them. However, most of the time life is much easier, so we allow people to skate by and “go along to get along” as not to be difficult. After all, we don’t want to seem mean or selfish or unforgiving. We aim to please.

    However, while the importance of boundaries is particularly stark in times of crisis, even in normal times they play an important role in self-care and building healthy relationships.  This is clear when we see what can happen when we don’t enforce boundaries.

    Oftentimes, trying to be nice and agreeable, we allow someone to repeatedly cross the line with no repercussions. As our resentment builds, we may act out in retaliation, doing nothing helpful for ourselves or the world.

    A relationship of true intimacy and mutual respect should be able to easily withstand one party making his or her boundaries clear. If the other can’t handle that, then how deep of relationship is it anyway? In fact, establishing a level of trust with someone to feel comfortable enough to discuss boundaries is in itself a sign of a strong relationship.

    Enforcing boundaries involves a level of honesty that can deepen relationships.

    During my mother’s time in the hospital, frustrated with being confined to bed, she unleashed a stream of vitriol at me that were without a doubt the most hurtful words anyone has ever said to me.

    As difficult as it was to do with her health in such a fragile state, I felt I had no choice; I had to enforce my boundaries. If I am to be her primary caregiver, I couldn’t endure a situation in which she directs her frustrations at me—it wouldn’t work for me, and it wouldn’t work for her. Unfortunately, it was a repeated behavior of hers over many years.

    Without getting into the details, we had a very frank discussion about this, and to be fair, it’s something I let her get away with for a long time by not enforcing my boundaries.

    While initially very painful, this talk led to me sharing deep dark memories and thoughts I never would have otherwise said and clearing a lot of what stood in the way of our relationship as mother and son. That very likely would not have happened had I not stood firm, and I never would have established that open a relationship with her.  However long she has left in this world, I know that this issue, my past hurt from her actions, won’t stand between us again.

    3. Having an open mind

    When faced with a diagnosis as dire as what my mom was given, unless you completely give up, keeping an open mind is often the only way to find good news that you would have otherwise overlooked.

    For example, in beginning my research on this type of cancer, I was dismayed to learn that there has been no material change to the standard of care in about forty years. All of those recent breakthroughs in cancer treatment you’ve heard about, they don’t apply to this one!

    However, rather than declaring defeat right away, I did decide to dig a little deeper. What I found was that there actually are a lot of clinical trials going on in our area for this type of cancer, many of which may provide a good second-line treatment option. Moreover, one of the trial drugs is very likely to get FDA approval in the next year, giving us some options where before there was none. Taking advantage of these would require changing hospitals, so these are developments I never would have learned about had I given up.

    I’ve been reminded to keep an open mind about people too. My mother, typically pretty volatile, has faced this all with amazing strength and equanimity—certainly more than I’ve shown! For someone totally uninterested in spirituality, she has shown a remarkable perspective on all of this in the context of her life, with which she is very satisfied.

    My sister, also going through marital problems while taking care of her baby and usually very emotional, has coped perhaps the best of any of us and has exhibited some very healthy habits for staying even. My brother, on the other hand, himself a doctor, has probably been the most scattered and emotionally crippled by the recent events.

    The point is that whatever you think you know about a person, it can change any day, any time. People can surprise you, for better or worse. While it’s totally rational to make judgment calls about people’s strengths and weaknesses, abilities and attributes, you must always realize that you can be wrong, or that the person might change—in fact, people are changing all the time!

    Spirituality is not about finding a happy hiding place insulated from temporal concerns. It’s quite the opposite—it’s about moving through life with eyes and arms wide open to whatever happens. It’s the way we get down in the mud and go through the wringer and remain who we are.

    Spirituality is a muscle. It gets stronger with exercise, and exercise causes discomfort. But once recuperated, you find you’re able to lift even more weight than before.

    I’ve never had to deal with such a painful series of events, and hopefully I never will again. But however insignificant what I’ve already been through seems in comparison, that past started me on a spiritual journey that prepared me for this present time. Whatever happens, I know I’ll emerge stronger from this too.