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Posts tagged with “loss”

How to Safely Enjoy the Pandemic Holidays

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“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 …

What Helped Me the Most When I Thought My Life Was Over

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“What I’m looking for is not out there, it is in me.” ~Helen Keller

I used to think that life should be easy, and if it wasn’t easy, then I was doing it wrong.

I’m older and wiser now, and I’ve learned that if it is hard, that means I am probably doing something right.

I had a good childhood. I had a loving family, plenty of opportunity, and I excelled at whatever I put my mind to. But I was a high-anxiety kid, and a relentless perfectionist. As I grew older, that need to have everything flawless impeded my …

What Helps Me Get Strong When Life Gets Hard

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“It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.” ~Marcus Aurelius

In 2016 I was about to graduate with high honors from a top university. I had mastered Mandarin. Eleven months before graduation, I had secured a job from a reputable accounting firm. I was in a stable relationship with one of the most gorgeous girls on campus. Life doesn’t get any better than this for an international student 1o,000 miles away from home.

Slowly, things began to change. Three months before …

How to Best Comfort Someone Who’s Grieving

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“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 …

Healing From the Painful Cycle of Loss and Abandonment

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“You have not been abandoned. You are never alone, except by your own choice.” ~Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Loss is never an easy experience. However, it is a part of life, so we need to accept it and find ways to cope with it in order to keep moving forward.

Whether someone dies or chooses to end a relationship, loss hurts and can leave us feeling abandoned and potentially leave deep wounds and scars.

I recently read something that suggested abandonment is a type of trauma, and it can cause symptoms similar to PTSD when the abandonment issues from our …

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

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“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 …

How to Come Out Stronger After Heartbreak

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“And when I thought ‘I can’t go on,’ the universe expanded, mother earth hummed and the moon whispered, ‘Yes, you can’.” ~Wicked Words

Heartbreak. The feeling that so many of us would pay big (BIG) money to skip through. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard (and heard myself say), “I just want to skip this part and fast forward to when I feel better.”

I fell in love unexpectedly, but when is it ever expected? I had just gotten through an awful breakup and this perfect man for me fell from the heavens. He made me feel …

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

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“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 …

Honoring The Death of a Loved One

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“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. …

You’re Reminding Them That They Lived

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Everything Seems to Be Falling Apart
 Because It Is

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“A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch, but in its own wings. Always believe in yourself.”  ~Unknown

If you’ve ever stopped and thought, “What the hell am I doing?” or “How did I end up here?” believe me when I tell you that you are one of many—including me.

Feeling lost is stressful enough, but what about when we disappoint ourselves more than anyone around us? What do we do when we have no sense of direction or purpose, and dwindling confidence in ourselves?

I …

When People Want to Help but Just Make Things Worse

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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 …

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

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“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 …

My Favorite Tip to Ease the Pain of Grief

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“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 …

Why I’m Grateful for Accidents, Pain, and Loss

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“If you have nothing to be grateful for, check your pulse.” ~Unknown

I couldn’t feel my legs.

There wasn’t any pain, just this odd “sameness” of non-sensation.

My body was frozen as I turned my eyes downward to scan down my nineteen-year-old body. Below my knees, my legs were splayed out in a very peculiar way. I was halfway underneath my car, pinned down to the dirt and gravel of the road by the back right tire.

The tire had caught my long, curly hair and the puffy left sleeve of my new white peasant blouse, miraculously missing my face.…

How I Climbed Out of the Valley of Loss and Healed

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“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 …

When Someone You Love Is Grieving: How to Really Help

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“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 …

How to Replace Body-Hate with Self-Compassion

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“Loving yourself is the greatest revolution.” ~Unknown

I’ve spent most of my life struggling with my weight and trying desperately to fit the idealistic image of beauty that our culture celebrates.

As a young teen, I was obsessed with magazines and all their secrets to be prettier and have a better butt and get your crush to notice you. I see now how desperate I was at such a young age to feel beautiful. Nothing seemed to work, though, as years passed and my need to fit the ideal beauty image only increased.

In high school I learned to skip …

How I Lost 30 Pounds by Meditating (and All the Things I Gained)

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“Clear your mind. Your heart is trying to tell you something.” ~Unknown

I recently lost thirty-plus pounds without trying or intending to. I remember excitedly sharing this news on social media one day, after stepping on a scale in my hotel room and being shocked. I don’t own a scale, so between the time when I had last weighed myself and this day, I’d lost over thirty pounds without being conscious of it.

After my public announcement, people from all directions contacted me asking me questions. Everyone wanted to know how I did it and what could they do to …

Love Them Today, Before Their Tomorrow’s Taken Away

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“Before someone’s tomorrow has been taken away, cherish those you love, appreciate them today.” ~Michelle C. Ustaszeski

Last year, my grandfather passed away.

He had gone to the hospital many times before. Sometimes he went for a minor sickness, sometimes for a severe condition. Unfortunately, the last time he went, we found out that he didn’t have much time left. He was diagnosed with last stage bladder cancer.

It was a shock to our family. My grandfather had always been a survivor. He’d survived the war, the darkest moment of the country. We couldn’t imagine he would lose his life …