Tiny Buddha

Tag: loss

  • He Left, But I Will Not Give Up On Myself

    He Left, But I Will Not Give Up On Myself

    “I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do. “ ~Brené Brown

    He just left our home.

    After eighteen years together, fifteen of them being married, he left as we had planned, as we had gently and lovingly discussed.

    We are on a break, a trial separation. What you hear about separation and divorce is all so achingly true. It feels like a death, a chasm where all the worst feelings imaginable pile in on you, where you can’t quite breathe right.

    The pain is visceral—like someone sliced right through your core, the heartache deep enough to make the bones ache, the weariness that makes your head feel heavy and weighted, the primal twists in your gut that cannot be fully appreciated until they are forced upon you unexpectedly.

    My eyes are completely dried out and sore, begging for a reprieve from the ocean of tears.

    I did not see this coming. I wasn’t blindsided completely, as there have been whispers and ghosts of unpleasant truths that had been squashed down for years: all those inner, intimate workings of a marriage that didn’t always flow smoothly, undetectable to the outside world. The ebbs and flows, the dark thoughts that sprout up on a sleepless night, a human experience in all its shared, bumpy glory.

    Through all that, there was purity and goodness, what makes a marriage so rewarding and rich: a deeply rooted friendship, strong as anything I have ever felt with someone in my life. I was connected, heard, understood.

    I had a witness to my life’s journey in all its madness, monotony, and triumph. My person. My love. The person who got it without having to say a word. That steady presence even when we were physically apart. I felt secure and safe, and my feet were firmly planted on the ground.

    So much time, so much history, so much togetherness feels like it has been wiped out in the span of a few months. It disappeared up in smoke with only the ashes to remain. I am untethered, rudderless, a sail desperately trying to right itself in the tempest.

    There is no faultfinding, no hatred, just a crushing sadness with a generous dose of regret. Regret for all the times we didn’t tune into each other or communicate when things urgently needed to be said and handled with proper care. Care that would heal wounds instead of allowing them to fester.

    Regret for retreating into our respective corners and hiding, survival skills carried over from tumultuous childhoods. We landed in the gray area of life where feelings subtly shift over time and don’t course correct in healthy ways.

    That dreaded place where human emotions get murky, cloudy, and raw, allowing vulnerability and disconnect to cause you to do things you never thought you would. In turn, you make futile efforts for control when there is none. You don’t want to let go but you must. Your hands are too raw and bloody from the struggle to hang on for dear life. I know what it means to surrender now.

    It is gone. I am unsure it will ever be back. If it comes back, I hope it is stronger and more lovingly powerful than before, impenetrable from any slings and arrows that may try to dent and poison it. We will nourish and nurture it to make it right, whole, solid—not let it wither away so easily on the vine.

    I won’t mind the battle scars, as they will serve to remind me of what we can endure, how we cope, how we survive, and what loss really feels like in your soul. It will remind me to cherish the feeling of home, the safe haven of togetherness. We will mourn the death of our old marriage and pave a path for a new one that is healing, bright, and hopeful, permanently altered for the better.

    Right now, I am alone, terrified, vulnerable, standing on the edge of an abyss. All I have is myself, and I have to believe that I am enough. My mantra is “I will get through this,” and I repeat it often. It comforts me sometimes.

    I know there are things I didn’t want to acknowledge about myself: I became complacent, didn’t take full advantage of my days of freedom, chose the easy way out on many occasions, ignored my creative leanings, and became more dependent than I would ever care to admit.

    I numbed myself with monotony, allowing seemingly benign things from the past to insidiously take root and work their way to the surface, infecting everything in its path.

    Now it is all there, right in front of me, not so much taunting me but in my face, reminding me I have some work to do. Life lessons that need to be understood and imbibed to my core so I don’t keep repeating them. Not to put myself in such a place of insecurity ever again. I must own all of this, my part. Digest it painfully and slowly but knowing it will fortify me in the future.

    Where will I be in six months, a year? How will this unfold? Will I make hugely gratifying changes that smooth everything over? Will he? Will I take this time to get back to myself? Will I be all too human and fail miserably? Will I numb myself yet again to all of this? Maybe. Maybe not. It is unknowable right now.

    I know what I will be doing every day until the answers come. And they will come whether I like them or not. I will get up each morning. I will take care of my body and mind. I will shower, wash my hair, put on makeup, and get dressed.

    I will face the days, whether they feel short and uneventful or impossibly long, full of loneliness, despair, and isolation. I will cry until I feel depleted and then cry again. I will not sleep well. My stomach will feel like someone is gripping it tightly in their fist.

    But I will take long walks, and inhale clean, fresh air. I will try to eat well, be kind to myself, stay open, soft, and not wear bitterness like a mask or feel my chest constrict with impotent rage. I will remember that it is okay to be afraid. I will reach out to people when I need to and be alone when I need to.

    I will try to laugh every day and remember all the good things I have. I will drink red wine and dance spontaneously to remind myself I am alive in this body. I will not give up on myself, though I will want to. I will not break even though I am fragile as fine china. I will throw many balls in the air and see if one lands on a treasured feeling of possibility.

    I will let this exquisite pain be my greatest teacher. I will give it time—that magical elixir that taunts and teases on its own schedule. I will become the woman I know I am deep inside, even though she got lost along the way—the woman of my dreams, who is capable and strong. It has been eighteen years of building one life, and now I will begin building a new one.

    The most important thing I have learned through this period of profound change is that you need to show up for yourself—always. To be your own champion and best friend. To know with absolute certainty that you are the only person you can count on in order to move forward and build the life of your dreams, with or without someone else. And knowing that is worth everything.

  • The Most Powerful Way to Help Someone Through Emotional Pain

    The Most Powerful Way to Help Someone Through Emotional Pain

    “When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.” ~Unknown

    I walked in for my monthly massage and immediately sensed something was off.

    A layer of desolation hung in the air like an invisible mist, ominous and untouchable, yet so thick I felt as though I could reach out and grab a handful in my fist, like wet cement, oozing out between my fingers.

    I’d been seeing the same masseuse once a month for three years, repeating the same routine each time. I wait in the hallway just outside her rented studio, a large walk-in closet size room in a building filled with hundreds of similar rooms, each rented to private individuals running their small passion businesses. Across from her, a wax studio. Down the hall, a hair salon.

    The building houses the manifested dreams of men and women who finally had enough of the daily nine-to-five grind, fired their bosses, and defiantly forged their way into their own businesses, renting space big enough for their hopes yet small enough for their start-up pockets.

    The appointment started unlike any other. When her door’s closed, it means she’s with another client, so I sit in the hallway, in one of the two wobbly wooden chairs the building provides for each tenant, and wait.

    When the door opens and the previous client leaves, we greet with hugs and smiles, expressing mutual joy in seeing each other again. As she closes the door, I take off my clothes and lie on the table face down, exchanging small talk about any happenings since we last saw one another.

    Except this time, on this fateful day, the door opened and I was greeted by an overwhelming sense of sorrow spilling out of the room with a vengeance, as if it had been trapped for decades.

    Standing in place of my masseuse friend was a lifeless, hollow shell of a person with empty zombie eyes. I hardly recognized her.

    Jen (not her real name) was clearly not her usual self.

    I’ve seen her in several bad moods throughout the years but this was beyond moods, and bad was too kind a word.

    Like me, Jen’s an introverted, sensitive soul, and neither of us have tolerance for inauthenticity or meaningless chit chat. We had long established that she didn’t have to be “on” around me, that she was allowed to take off her professional mask and I my client mask and we could simply be ourselves with each other, neither of us having to endure the torture of polite pleasantries if we didn’t feel like it.

    One of my pet peeves is society’s constant pressure and expectation to put on a happy face and pretend everything’s okay while inside things are desperately broken.

    So I said “hi” and walked in, neither expecting a return “hi” nor receiving one. She closed the door behind me and tears suddenly welled in my eyes as I undressed, as if sorrow no longer had the means to escape through the open door and found another way out by hitchhiking my tears.

    I wanted to respect the present moment, even though I didn’t understand it, so I stayed silent and lay on the table, face down, as I’d always done.

    Ten minutes in, between deep long strokes on my back, I heard a soft, almost inaudible, “I lost the girls.”

    Jen had been pregnant with twin girls. I remember the day she told me. She could barely wait for me to get through the door before blurting out, “I’m pregnant!” She and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for a while and finally, she was not only pregnant, she was pregnant with twins!

    And now, she wasn’t anymore.

    I sunk into the massage table as the enormity of what she said dropped into me. And then, I started to get up and tell her that she didn’t have to massage me. We could talk if she wanted, or she could take the extra hour to herself, I’d still pay her. She gently nudged my shoulder back down and said she needed to work; it kept her mind from self-destructing.

    She told me that her soul had been emptied along with her womb, and there was nothing left, let alone tears, inside her.

    I had enough tears for both of us so I told her I’d cry, for her, her girls, and her loss. For the next forty-five minutes, as she released my knots, I released tears, wails, and guttural sobs. It came and went in waves and I became acutely aware of the rhythm of her breathing as it converged with mine and became one.

    Between waves, there were moments of talking.

    Like with me, she had met many of her clients with the exciting news that she was pregnant, and like with me, she also had to tell them she was no longer pregnant. Client after client, spread out over weeks, she had to repeat the same story over and over until every client who knew had been caught up.

    It was a devastating loss for her, and one she had to retell to each client, all hearing it for the first time, all with similar questions and the same sympathetic side tilting heads in response.

    She said her days have been filled with well-intentioned but stale advice like “everything happens for a reason,” and “they’re in a better place now,” and “you’ll get pregnant again.”

    She told me each time she heard these statements, it felt like another jab in her weary stomach. She didn’t care about getting pregnant again, better places, or higher reasons. When a mother’s unborn babies have been ripped away from her, no reason could ever make it right.

    She wasn’t in the headspace to feel better or think of a brighter future, she simply wanted to be acknowledged for the pain she was going through now, but no one had remained with her in the pain. They had all tried to make her feel better, which only made her feel worse.

    In our own discomfort of feeling painful emotions, we try to help others not feel theirs. It’s difficult for us to see someone we love suffering, and naturally, our first impulse is to try to make it go away, whether it’s through reason, logic, distraction, faith or any other means.

    We feel helpless, so we desperately reach for what we know, what we’ve been taught, and what others have done to us in our own moments of suffering. We offer trite words that deep down we know won’t help but we hold onto the hope that they will anyway because we don’t know what else to say or do.

    The more powerful choice is to simply be with someone, accepting and embracing the painful moment as is, without trying to fix or make it better. It goes against our natural urge to want to help, but often, this present moment acceptance of the deep emotions flowing through a person is exactly what they need to help them move through it, in their own time.

    As powerful as it is to shine a light for someone who’s ready to emerge, it is equally powerful to sit with them in the darkness until they’re ready.  

    After the session, Jen told me she felt relief for the first time since it happened, as if a weight had been lifted from her. She hadn’t realized it, but with each client, friend, and loved one who tried to make her feel better, she felt a mounting sense of pressure to feel better, as if there was something even more wrong with her for not being able to.

    She hadn’t been conscious of the constant pressure until it was gone, in our session, when she was finally allowed to feel exactly as she’d been feeling and was fully accepted in her pain.

    Stepping out into the hallway and turning back for a long melting hug, I sensed the profound shift in her energy, vastly different from when I had walked in an hour ago. She was still wounded but there was an element of acceptance in her pain, a faint glow of light within the darkness.

    This sacred, healing light only comes as a result of fully embracing the darkness. It can’t be forced, manipulated, or pushed into existence.

    This is the true power of accepting our own deep pain and sitting with someone in the dark as they feel theirs.

  • The Betrayal of Expectations: Coping When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan

    The Betrayal of Expectations: Coping When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan

    “What will mess you up most in life is the picture in your head of how it is supposed to be.” ~Unknown

    I expected to get into college. I expected to have a career after a lot of hard work, and that one day I’d meet a nice man and we would get married. We would buy our first house together and start a family, picking out a crib and the baby’s “going home” outfit and organizing a drawer full of diapers. We’d have more babies and go on vacations and grow old together.

    I expected that one day I’d take care of him until he took his last breath, and then I’d join a travel group with other retired women. My adult children would come over for dinner, and we’d take a family vacation with the grandchildren every year. That’s how it all played out in my mind.

    I had a linear view of life. You go to point A, B, C, and so on. You do what you’re supposed to do and you work hard. It was very simple, life with these expectations. Follow the recipe and then eat your dessert.

    Spoiler alert: Life was only that simple until the universe pulled the rug out from beneath my feet.

    It was an ordinary school day when my life fell apart. These sort of things usually happen on ordinary days.

    My husband and I were both teachers, and we woke up before the sun rose to begin our assembly line of breakfast and lunch preparations. Afterward we’d wrangle children and get them dressed and ready for departure, which was basically like herding cats. Then, he dropped them off at their respective places. I picked everyone up after school.

    In between all of that we worked and went to meetings and ran errands and bathed children and cooked dinner and tended to all the usual moving parts of domestic life.

    Except on that ordinary day, none of it happened.

    On April 27, 2016 I woke up and found my husband dying on the living room floor. Out of left field, in an instant, the life I expected was gone.

    I never considered the possibility of becoming a thirty-four-year-old widow with a one-year-old who I was still nursing, a three-year-old barely talking in sentences, and a six-year-old only two months away from his kindergarten graduation.

    I was thrust into an alternate reality of gnarled, tangled grief, and it was in this new place that I had the painful realization that the life I knew, the one that was familiar and most comfortable to me, was over.

    My husband and I planned each of our children down to the day. We even had number four, the one who would never be, scheduled in the calendar.

    But now I was a single mother. A widow.

    It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but during this time I wasn’t only mourning the loss of my husband. Sure, I missed him so much that I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I lived my days in exile, not knowing where I belonged. The tediousness of my new life as a single mother wore me down to the bones. The loneliness that festered inside of me created a painful hollowness that felt hopeless; the unfairness of this cosmic roll of the dice made me want to give up more times than I would like to admit.

    But there was something else I was grieving: the loss of the life that I expected to live. My dashed expectations. The trajectory of my life that was forever altered, now headed in an unknown direction that felt like it would surely kill me.

    We expect our lives to materialize the way we envision them in our hopes and dreams. When life doesn’t go as planned, it can be difficult to reconcile the disappointment of our new reality. Resistance is the first defense. We don’t want to believe or accept the change.

    This wasn’t the life I chose. I deserved something better, I thought. “This” seemed so patently unfair. Surely there were worse people who were more deserving of this kind of lightning to strike them instead—so why me? I clung to those thoughts and let them bury me deeper and deeper into the abyss. The resistance might have been the catalyst to the darker parts of grief.

    It’s such a disappointing, embarrassing revelation when you realize that you never actually had complete control. It feels like you were lied to. All of those years you spent with your first-world blinders on, thinking that you could plan every detail. It was cute while it lasted. Now it just felt stupid.

    I realized what expectations really were.

    Nothing.

    My expectations were never real. They were nothing more than thoughts in my head. Assumptions. Desires. Never guarantees.

    It was always like that, but for me it had been on a micro level. Micro-disappointment, like not getting the job I thought I wanted. A relationship that ended. Losing a bid on a house. I never prepared myself for the real disappointment in life. Earth-shattering disappointment that makes your world crumble and introduces you to your new constant companion: pain.

    We usually think the bad stuff we hear about only happens to other people. We’re aware that it exists, but not in our reality. Just an abstract thing somewhere else in the world.

    Until it happens to us.

    I remember how mad my husband used to get when I’d be surfing Facebook, bemoaning that so-and-so got a new car, or how in love a couple seemed to be, and why can’t we go to Hawaii like so-and-so?

    “Everyone puts their best on Facebook,” Kenneth told me. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

    “No,” I insisted, shaking my head. “So-and-so and so-and-so are madly in love. Look at how passionate they are with each other. Why don’t we hold hands like that?”

    “We have three kids under five,” he said, rolling his eyes.

    I wish Kenneth lived long enough to know that the so-and-so’s got divorced. He would have told me “I told you so.” And for once, I would have gladly told him he was right.

    It’s memories like those that I like to lean into. Life can’t be as horrible or as wonderful as it appears in my head. There has to be middle ground.

    When I’m feeling an extreme of any emotion, I have to remind myself of this. It’s just thoughts in my head. Sandcastles built out of feelings, and sandcastles get washed away when the tide rises and brings in a new day. It’s not a matter of being a good or a bad thing. It just is.

    My expectations have been a thing that I’ve had to live with my entire life. I’ve always had high expectations for myself. Failure was not supposed to be a thing. As a widow, I found myself floundering in a new reality where I felt like I was constantly failing. Legitimately not capable of doing what I once could.

    I wasn’t the same mother to my children. This new me had less time and patience. She was more tired and overworked and in pain. I had to learn to live with the limitations of my new life. My disappointment pooled inside of me like poison. Nothing I could do was enough. I wasn’t enough. Those are all very toxic feelings to carry around when you are already drowning in grief.

    But there is only so much time you can spend falling deeper into your pit of despair. One day you realize that you are no longer falling and have in fact reached the bottom. There you are, alone with your despair, so sick of yourself that you can’t even handle your own negative thoughts anymore. You can’t take one more second of it.

    This is your moment to get up and wash yourself off and start over.

    When the despair stops roaring in your ears and you have a moment of quiet, you can begin to think objectively about your life. Your new life.

    I realized what was wrong with me. My problem, I decided, came from my expectations. They were the root cause of my despair.

    I expected a long life with my husband, even though he was always a mortal being who was never promised to be mine forever. I expected a lot of things, except for the only thing that was true about life: We are only guaranteed today. Yesterday is over. Tomorrow is unknown.

    I knew I wanted to live as best as I could. I wanted a fulfilling life that was hopeful, joyful, and meaningful. I’d have to change my expectations if I wanted all of that. It was impossible to get rid of the expectations completely. I’m only human. Besides, expectations do serve a purpose. They’ve helped me in life. They’ve also hurt me.

    The middle ground, I decided, was finding “flexible expectations.” I couldn’t be rigid in my thinking. I wanted to have standards and goals, but I needed to have wiggle room for the inevitableness of life not going as planned.

    I had to become more resilient and strategic about my setbacks. I needed to have long-term perspective and not feel like individual moments in my life were the be-all, end-all. I needed to be less attached to a prescribed way to live.

    You realize that in a world full of uncontrollable circumstances, the most powerful line of defense that you have completely in your control is how you think.

    Your attitude.

    Your perspective. Is that glass half-full or half-empty? You decide.

    How you think is your resilience. Your ability to get back up and dust yourself off. The way that you know life is worth living, not only during the moments of joy, but also during the challenges and pain and heartbreak, and this is the reason you persevere.

    Maybe my expectations never betrayed me after all. Maybe it was actually supposed to be one of my greatest teachers in life.

    Around a year after my husband died, I sat down and made a list of “good” and “bad” from the past year. It had gone by in such a blur that I felt like I needed to go back over the details. I anticipated a pity party as I recalled all of the terribleness.

    The bad: my husband died. Single.

    The good: new friendships, a loving community who showed up for us when we needed them, trips to Japan and Italy and Denmark, saw an old friend for the first time in eleven years, more productive than ever with my writing, my kids were happy and adjusted little people, we had a nice roof over our heads, I loved my job that didn’t feel like a job, we were healthy, I worked on the election (even if it meant precinct walking with the toddler on my back as a single mother—but I did it!), and so much more. I kept thinking of new things to add to the list.

    It was very telling. We tend to focus on the negative. My mind wanted to go back to the dark moments of the past year. But after re-reading the list, it was clear that the year wasn’t all bad. There were many bright spots in the hardest year of my life.

    Mooji said, “Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go.”

    I try to always remember that.

    It’s okay to feel terrible. You aren’t broken for feeling that way. You just can’t let yourself get attached to the feelings. There will be days when life feels too hard. You will feel pain and loneliness and fear that will make you suffer. None of it reflects who you are, nor are they any indication of what your future looks like. They are merely the temporary visitors.

    When the feelings visit me, I acknowledge the pain. Hunker down. Maybe clear my schedule. Lower my expectations of productivity. Give myself permission to rest while I let the thoughts pass. Then I move on. It’s not that you ever forget the pain, but moving on is a way to compartmentalize it so it does not destroy you.

    Eighteen months later, I’m a different person than who I was before my husband died. It’s not the life that I initially chose, but in many ways I am living a more intentional life with a lot more choice. There is some degree of excitement in what I call my “renaissance.” There are no rules. You just live as authentically as you can, with what you have, doing the best you can, and that’s it. No secrets.

    Everything that you need to persevere is already inside of you, and this truth is liberating.

  • A First Aid Kit for When Life Falls Apart

    A First Aid Kit for When Life Falls Apart

    “What if pain—like love—is just a place brave people visit?” ~Glennon Doyle

    It’s one of life’s greatest paradoxes: When life is easy, everything seems easy. When life is hard, everything seems hard.

    This one keeps coming back to me and I keep trying to figure it out. Why do we end up in these spirals of “all good” or “all bad”? How can we get out of the “all bad” faster next time we get trapped? How can we help ourselves get out of there?

    I’ve had periods in my life when all seemed lost. When I haven’t been able to fathom ever getting out of bed with ease again. When I’ve thought my current situation would go on forever or I’ve been convinced that suffering was my destiny.

    My struggles have often been linked to physical illness. With six different autoimmune diagnoses, I truly felt my life was over. Before even turning thirty years old my life prognosis was far from optimistic.

    I call this period, and others like it, the black hole. I managed to get out of there at that time via some major lifestyle changes, involving my body, mind, and spirit.

    But I’ve also realized that most of the time, it’s the internal, silent struggle that challenges us the most. And, sure, I’ve visited there again in the recent five years, and I know I probably will in the future. I think it’s part of the human experience.

    So, how do we do it? How can we translate the tools that are so obvious to us when we’re on a roll to be accessible to us also when life is on a downward spiral? This is the first aid kit I’ve created for myself. I hope it can help you too.

    1. Feel your feelings. 

    If you’re a highly sensitive person, like me, you’re likely aware of your emotions. You know you have them. They never leave your side and you’re constantly reminded of what state you’re currently in. So, how do you deal with this fact?

    Well, one solution is to embrace it. Be with your feelings. Sit down, welcome any emotion that needs to come forth, and feel it. You don’t always need to understand. You don’t need to analyze. You don’t need to fix anything, just be with it.

    2. Let people in.

    Who in the world told us that being human in this day and age is easy? Where did we get that crazy idea from? It’s not easy. Not always anyhow. Life can be hard.

    Talk to someone that you trust. Remind them in advance that all you need from them is to listen, no advice needed in this stage. Just let it out, all of it. Just having someone to listen can take you a long way.

    3. Remember you’re not alone.

    Whatever you are feeling or experiencing right now, you are not alone. You are unique and special, but your experiences and emotions are not.

    You didn’t invent the feeling you’re experiencing right now. Someone else, somewhere in the world, is experiencing exactly what you’re experiencing right at this very moment. It may be triggered by different things, but the emotion is the same. You’re not alone.

    4. Write it out.

    Our mind has this nasty habit of getting stuck on repeat. Same thought looping, over and over again. Grab a pen and paper or sit down in front of your computer and write. Let it all out. Don’t censor yourself. Take the pressure off by dumping it all out. Truly cathartic.

    5. Move outside.

    Nature has amazing healing abilities. Every time I go to it for solace, I’m reminded. Yes, this is amazing and I get to tap into something that’s beyond what my mind can comprehend. I don’t need to understand it. I just need to sit down by the water, lean on a tree, or feel the wind on my face. Trust that this is healing you. If you can move your body while tapping into this wisdom, do this too.

    6. Maybe you’re not dying?

    Our mind sometimes has a tendency to exaggerate, just a little bit. Are you really in mortal danger right now? Is your life about to end or is that just the emotion you’re experiencing?

    If you’re breathing, your heart is beating, you have two feet on the ground, you are essentially all right. You are okay. Your mind might be telling you a false drama about something that is not really playing out right now, at this very moment. Be with the present and rest there for a while.

    7. This too will change.

    This is my favorite mindfulness quote. Being alive is accepting change as the only constant.

    “Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).” ~James Baraz

    Know that whatever you are going through right now, it will change. It might not all be good and fine tomorrow, but it will be different, if ever just slightly. Things will change.

    I wrote this poem to myself a few years back, to remind myself. I think it sums it up quite perfectly.

    To me, if I ever end up there again, and to anyone else, who’s ever been there, or are right now, in the black hole:

    It will get better. There is a meaning to what you’re going through.

    You will feel like living again.

    If you can’t do anything else but breathe, do just that; you don’t have to do anything else.  

    Don’t fight it. Let it be. It is as it should be and it’s okay. Just be. Don’t judge. Let go.

    Look at what’s beautiful. Listen to what gives you peace. Eat what tastes good. Do what feels nice. Even if it feels pointless right now, it’s good for your soul.  

    Ask for help.

    Let other people help you. Let other people take care of you.

    Cry. Scream. Wail. Laugh. Sleep. Close your eyes. Do whatever you need to do. Let it out. And embrace.  

    It will get better. I promise.

    Those are not just words on a piece of paper for me. They are well-experienced truths. And maybe your life isn’t falling apart in the first place. Maybe it’s just rearranging for something better to come.

  • What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone Who’s Grieving

    What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone Who’s Grieving

    “Remember that there is no magic wand that can take away the pain and grief. The best any of us can do is to be there and be supportive.” ~Marilyn Mendoza

    My mother, an articulate and highly accomplished writer, began to lose much of what she valued a few years ago. Her eyesight was compromised by macular degeneration, her hallmark youthful vigor was replaced with exhaustion, and many of her friends began to die. Finally, and cruelest of all, her memory began to go, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed.

    Her struggle and her suffering in the last two years of life were excruciating to watch, and I was helpless to stop what felt like an avalanche of cruel losses.

    Sometimes in that last year, she would call me several times a day with distress and confusion. When she finally died, after five ambulance trips to the hospital in six weeks, my first response was thankfulness that she was out of the struggle and, to my surprise, relief. I had been grieving the mother I had known for the last year of her life, and she had already been gone a long time.

    It would be another month before I found my grief, and I suspect that it will be there forever; but my immediate feeling was not sadness.

    People feel so many things at so many different times about the death of a loved one: loss, anger, devastation, confusion, guilt, and fear, to name a few. If we assume anything about how they are experiencing their loss, we can make them feel worse. Here are a few suggestions about how to reach out, starting with what not to do.

    Don’t assume you know what I am going through.

    I was surprised by how many people came up to me and said, “I know just what you’re going through.” Even worse, they would tell me, “This will be the saddest thing that will ever happen to you,” or “You won’t know who you are for years after this.”

    We all know that losing a mother is a major life event and it changes many things. What we don’t know is how. It is different for each person; we cannot overlay our own experience on someone else’s and assume it’s the same. For me, whose first feelings were that her death was that of a reprieve, it caused me to doubt the validity of my response.

    Don’t use religious clichés about this life or another. 

    Religious clichés such as “Jesus called her home,” “God needed another angel,” or “it’s in the hands of the Lord,” were infuriating. For one thing, my mother was not a Christian, nor am I. I love the Jesus story, but it doesn’t resonate for me as the only true story, and it sure doesn’t help me feel better about my mothers’ death.

    Don’t say “there is a reason for everything.” 

    Then the cards began to come filled with familiar clichés: the worst was “there is a reason for everything.”

    That feels to me like a way to do a “wrap up” on something that is fragile, personal, and unknown. How do you know there is “a reason for everything?” It insults grief by trying to dilute it into a rational cosmic plan.

    You cannot explain, rationalize, or sum up my loss in a tidy little cliché. My reaction to those messages was not to feel more comforted, but to feel more isolated.

    Don’t talk about her “passing.”

    Talking about people who have “passed” feels like minimizing what happened and avoiding the word “death.” It is a tough word, it is final and irreversible and filled with loss. But it is a true word. It is what we have to manage, and the hugeness of the word, death, in its finality and brutality is what allows us to find our necessary grief.

    There were people who said things that did comfort me.

    1. I wish I had the right words, just know I care.

    2. I don’t know how you feel, but I am here to help in any way I can.

    3. Would you like me to bring you some enchiladas on Tuesday?

    4. What was this like for you? I’d love to listen if you would like to talk about it.

    Here is the most important thing for you to know.

    Each of our relationships has a bubble around it. Within that bubble is the history of what we have shared. Grief is a part of the human experience, and we grieve not just for the person who has died, but also for the part of our history they take with them.

    Losing a mother is a major life change regardless of what the relationship was like. But we don’t know what that is like for anyone but ourselves. When we assume we do, we belittle their experience and lose a chance to know them better.

    Although we may intend to connect with the other person, sometimes the opposite happens and what we say makes them feel worse. When we invite them to share their own experience, we help to break down the isolating walls of loss and inspire a true connection.

  • How to Enjoy the Holidays When Grieving the Loss of a Loved One

    How to Enjoy the Holidays When Grieving the Loss of a Loved One

    This post contains an excerpt from GETTING GRIEF RIGHT: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss, by Patrick O’Malley, PhD with Tim Madigan.

    It was spring 1980 when my wife, Nancy, and I received some of the best news of our lives—she was pregnant with our first child.

    On a Tuesday morning that September, we found ourselves sitting in her obstetrician’s office. Nancy, not due to deliver for three months, had been awakened the night before by a strange physical sensation.

    She had wanted to get checked out, just to be safe. But after the examination that morning, her doctor said we needed t0 get to the hospital. Labor had begun. I remember how Nancy’s voice trembled.

    “Can a baby this premature live?” she asked.

    “I don’t know,” the doctor said. “We will try to buy time. He will be a pipsqueak of a kid.”

    Thirty-six hours later, on September 3, 1980, Ryan Palmer O’Malley was born, weighing a little over two pounds. You couldn’t have imagined a more fragile looking creature. He had been far from ready to leave his mother’s womb, yet there he was.

    In the first few moments of his life, I was aware of the great risk of loving my son, but I was powerless to resist. From the first glimpse of Ryan, I knew he would have a place in my heart forever.

    His early life was a succession of seemingly endless days and nights. We hovered over the side of his crib in the hospital, looking down at our boy who was hooked up to all this noisy equipment. His life was measured in minutes and hours. On several terrifying occasions, Ryan stopped breathing, and his medical team would rush in to resuscitate.

    All this time, Nancy and I yearned to hold him, but his frailty and the equipment made that impossible. The most we could do was touch a tiny finger, rub a tiny arm.

    Instead of cooing, the sounds around my son were the mechanical beeping of intensive care machines. Instead of that wonderful new baby smell, there was the pungent scent of antiseptic soap we had to use to scrub up before seeing him. Despite not being able to hold him, despite all the machines between him and us, we loved him deeply.

    Early fall turned to Thanksgiving and then to Christmas. Our son gradually grew stronger. One day in January his doctor weaned him from the respirator. We could now hold him without the tangle of tubes and wires.

    On March 9, 1981, our seventh wedding anniversary, we were finally able to bring our baby home to hold him, bathe him, kiss him, dance with him, feed him, and rock him. He smiled for the first time in those days. Though he was still fragile and underweight, we allowed ourselves to start imagining Ryan’s future. No parents loved a son more.

    And then he was gone.

    On Saturday night, May 16, 1981, we were treating him for a cold but not particularly concerned. We had been through much worse. But early Sunday morning our precious son suddenly stopped breathing.

    I started CPR. Ryan’s doctor and an ambulance were at our house within minutes. His doctor administered a shot of adrenalin to his heart as the medical technicians continued CPR. Nancy and I silently prayed as we followed the speeding ambulance to the hospital.

    The next several hours are a series of snapshots forever imprinted in my mind.

    • His physician coming into the waiting room with tears in his eyes, saying, “I could not save him.”
    • Holding Ryan’s body
    • Returning home without him
    • The heartbreak of our family and friends as we broke the news of his death
    • The dream-like, adrenalin-fueled rituals of visitation and funeral
    • The faces of all those who filled the church
    • The sight of his tiny casket by the altar
    • Seeing construction workers removing their hard hats as the funeral procession drove by
    • Leaving the cemetery on that sunny spring day

    I have taken off work on the anniversary of Ryan’s death every year since that first year. I go to the cemetery to think about him and the years now behind me. Powerful feelings rise each time I see my son’s name on the grave marker: RYAN PALMER O’MALLEY. It grounds me in the hard reality—this really happened.

    In my experience as both a grief therapist and bereaved father, the holiday season can be one of the most difficult times of the year for those grieving.

    Many who have experienced the death of a loved one wish they could lie down for a nap on October 30 and awake again on January 2. This season can be challenging when the shadow of loss is present.

    The collision between the cultural expectations of happiness and the personal reality of grief can create stress, confusion, and an increase in emotional pain for those who mourn. The gatherings of family and friends during this season may shine a brighter light on the absence of the one who has died.

    If this is the first holiday season after the death of a loved one, there can often be a buildup of anxiety, anticipating how it will feel to be without the one who is gone. And, even if the loss occurred many years ago like mine, the holidays are always a reminder of what was and what might have been.

    Confusion, yearning, exhaustion, sorrow, and all the other feelings that come with grief are absolutely normal during this time. Difficult but normal. Painful but normal. Grief is not a psychological abnormality or an illness to cure. Grief is about love. We grieve because we loved. Holidays may be a strong emotional connection to special times of remembering that love.

    Here are eight ideas to help you enjoy the holidays while also honoring your loss.

    Both And 

    Enter into this season in a state of mind of “both and” rather than “either or.” Sorrow does not exclude all joy, and celebration does not eliminate all sorrow. Yet, it can be confusing to experience opposing emotions at the same time or feel your mood vacillate between light and dark.

    Joy may transition into sadness in the blink of an eye. Contentment may suddenly shift into yearning. Both experiences have value because both are part of your grief story.

    Be present to the moments of enjoyment, and at the same time, respect your feelings of loss.

    Sights, Sounds, and Scents

    Most who grieve prepare themselves emotionally for those significant moments during the holidays, such as sitting down for a holiday meal and attending parties; yet, some triggering experiences can occur when you least expect it.

    A sight, sound, or smell may zip right past your defenses and cause an intense surge of sorrow. And sometimes, that surge may happen in public. To this day, certain Christmas carols I hear while shopping elicits a sudden sense of melancholy because of the strong identification they have for me with the first and only holiday season my son was alive.

    We knew our loved one in a shared environment that is full of these sensory experiences that can provoke feelings of loss in an instant because of this connection created from past holiday seasons. This is perfectly normal and doesn’t mean that you’re going backward in your grief. Value these moments as important connections to the one who has died.

    Social Splitting

    The transition back into your work setting and your social groups after a loss can create a strain because you may have to act better than you feel in order to appear socially appropriate. This social splitting can be exhausting. Add to that the cultural expectation of being “up” for the holidays, and the exhaustion may be compounded.

    This type of fatigue is normal. Monitor your energy, and be willing to moderate your social engagements, if needed. To recharge yourself from the drain of social splitting, spend ample time with those with whom you can fully be yourself and who will support you without judgment.

    Approach and Avoid

    Our most basic nature is to approach pleasure and avoid pain. Our more evolved nature can approach pain if we know there is an ultimate benefit in doing so. Our natural resistance to the pain of grief can create more pain.

    Be intentional about scheduling time during this hectic season to approach your pain. Create rituals that represent the unique relationship you had to the one who died, such as listening to his or her favorite music or reading a favorite poem.

    Light a candle or ring a bell to mark this special time of remembering and reflecting. Visit the cemetery or mausoleum if that provides a connection for you.

    I’m grateful to our Japanese daughter-in-law who requests each holiday season that we participate in the Japanese custom of taking food to the gravesites where our son and other family members are buried. Her ritual has now become ours.

    Seek Heathy Distractions

    In a season fraught with overindulgences, be aware of the risk of numbing the feelings of loss through unhealthy escape behaviors. Also, know that it’s not possible to stay in the emotional intensity of grief without some relief, so give yourself permission to engage in healthy distractions.

    The key to a healthy distraction is a behavior that allows you to pause your feelings for a moment so that you may come back, and be truly present to them later. My ritual of watching comedy holiday movies has served me well through the years.

    Reach out to a trusted friend if you’re concerned about harmful escape behaviors during the holidays. Ask if you can be accountable to them for these behaviors and if they will participate with you in heathier activities that provide you with some respite from your grief.

    Tell Your Story 

    My professional training taught me that grief is a series of steps and stages to work through, which will lead to a conclusion called closure. My experience as a grieving dad did not at all match up with this psychological model.

    Through my own grief and by working with so many who mourn, I came to understand that grief is an ongoing narrative of love, not an emotional finish line to be crossed.

    Stories help us stay connected to those who have died and help us create meaning about what we have experienced. Finding a place for that story to be received is an important part of the grief journey.

    Tell the story of your loved one as it relates to the holiday season to someone who listens well. Or spend some time writing specific memories related to your loved one and the holidays.

    Acknowledge Someone Else’s Loss

    Those who grieve want their loss and their loved one remembered, so consider making contact with someone who is grieving, as well. It doesn’t matter how long ago that loss may have been. Offer the compassion to others you desire for yourself.

    Compassion literally means to suffer with and calls us to enter into the pain of another. Listen with gentle curiosity and an open heart. Consider making a donation to a cause that is relevant to the person who is grieving.

    Be Forgiving 

    Let self-compassion replace any self-criticism as you do your best to balance holiday enjoyment with your grief. Be forgiving of well-meaning others who may try to help you with your grief by “cheering you up.”

    How you measure what’s significant and what’s trivial may have changed as you grieve. Patience may be needed when you’re in the midst of others during the holidays who experience the trivial as significant.

    As you reflect on your loss, you may also benefit from reviewing your history with the loved one who has died, and offering and accepting forgiveness for the human flaws you each had that affected your relationship.

    Remember always, you grieve because you loved. May you have peace and light as you embrace your story of love and loss this holiday season.

    Adapted excerpt from GETTING GRIEF RIGHT: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss, by Patrick O’Malley, PhD with Tim Madigan. Sounds True, July 2017. Reprinted with permission.

  • Seeing Rejection As Redirection: What We Gain When We Lose

    Seeing Rejection As Redirection: What We Gain When We Lose

    “Every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better.” ~Steve Maraboli

    Rejection hurts. Whether it is from family, friends, co-workers, or a new company, when we experience rejection it hits us right in the heart—the control center to our emotions.

    We may wonder, what is wrong with me? We might begin pulling ourselves apart with self-criticism. However, rejection also has a way of teaching us, redirecting us, and ultimately making our lives better.

    I have learned to look at rejection differently these past couple of years. Actually, many of my greatest blessings have come out of what I perceived as rejection. Yes, there have been many painful experiences, but then again, I always have been one to learn more through pain than through pleasure.

    When I was younger, I faced rejection daily. I was an overweight teenager with crushes on any boy who looked at me. Other kids would constantly make fun of me, and no boys dared to show me any bit of interest. I was bullied and rejected simply for being me.

    I experienced rejection around relationships several more times as I grew older. There was a period when I was so afraid of rejection, I clung onto friendships and relationships that I intuitively knew were not healthy for me.

    Unsurprisingly, these relationships eventually died out. This, of course, validated my beliefs that I was unworthy and that I would always be rejected. More so, it led to significant feelings of loneliness, even surrounded by bodies of people.

    As I got into my career, there were several times I did not get the job I had hoped for.

    I did not receive my professional counseling license in the time I wanted and planned for. I did not get that promotion I had worked so hard for. The rejections just kept piling on.

    Finally, it was like a light bulb went on. These things were all happening for a reason, and they were all perfectly timed.

    I began to spin the way I viewed rejection. I started to see it as an ability to reassess and become more acquainted with different parts of myself. In some situations, I was able to see that maybe I was not on the right path. Or, if it still felt I needed to be there, I was able to look within and see where I needed to improve in order to make it happen.

    My perspective became clearer. Every job I was denied for, opened the door to new (and better) opportunities. Every relationship that hurt me, led me to my true love (and husband-to-be). Every mistake I made, guided me to look within.

    I was able to learn, grow, and ultimately make changes. I forgave myself for not knowing what I did not know until I learned it. I found myself thanking all of the people, places, and things that rejected me. They led me on a process to being the person I am today, a woman of integrity, grace, resilience, and strength.

    But, let me warn you, this epiphany did not happen overnight. Slowly, I began to see my perception and my beliefs were no longer serving me. I started to look at situations differently, and began searching for the blessing in disguise. I know, it sounds easier said than done, but there are some tools we could use to help quiet the inner critic that shows up during these times of distress.

    1. Treat yourself with compassion.

    If there’s anyone that knows the dialogue “You deserve bad things because…” it’s me. But, research shows negative self-talk is destructive and ineffective.

    If I believe I deserve bad things, I will start to attract people or things that validate that belief. What we feel on the inside, manifests itself on the outside.

    We need to work on responding to our inner critic with kindness and compassion. A helpful way of doing this is communicating with yourself like a dear friend.

    When a girlfriend went through a job denial, I encouraged her to trust that new opportunities would evolve. I also acknowledged her courage for just showing up and interviewing. I would never have said she’s hopeless and she ought to give up.

    When friends have gone through terrible breakups, I have always done my best to remind them they are worthy of love, and to help them find the lesson in the situation. I wouldn’t have told them it was their fault because there was something wrong with them.

    2. View rejection as getting outside your comfort zone (where all the magic happens).

    If we never experience rejection, we are probably not taking many chances, and therefore, not making many changes.

    When we get rejected, we can at least be comforted in knowing that we are taking risks. These risks help us better understand who we are and where we are going. More so, they help us build strength and develop skills to deal with inevitable adversity life brings, which helps us build up resilience.

    I worked hard to obtain a professional license, which was denied to me when I first applied due to a history of being dishonest. At the time, this broke me. I felt so ashamed and scared. However, this allowed an opportunity to really challenge and get honest with myself.

    My use of alcohol was starting to have consequences that I attempted to hide. It was beginning to slip into other areas of my life. Ultimately, this rejection directed me to a life in recovery, which constantly gets me out of my comfort zone.

    Not only am I living present and sober, it has taught me to get out of myself and be of service to others. Fast forward a year, I got my license. Boy, did it mean way more to me then than it would have the year before, as I put in a lot of hard work to making changes and re-aligning my life.

    3. Don’t let rejection define you.

    Many times when we face rejection, we personalize it. We make the event of rejection far more than the event. We begin to identify with it. This is a failure, therefore I am the failure. It is important to separate what happened to us from who we are.

    Rejection isn’t always personal. Oftentimes when someone rejects us, it has nothing to do with faults on our part; it just means we weren’t a good fit for that person, job, or opportunity.

    If we take rejection to mean we’re unworthy or unlovable, it’s likely because the rejection is triggering an existing belief formed earlier in life—which is a good thing, since this points toward something we may want to address and release.

    I had a tendency to put my worth into external things, and in a sense, abandon myself. After patterns of rejection, it became apparent I wasn’t meeting myself with compassion. I was meeting myself with shame and attempting to shame myself into making changes.

    I worked on consciously being mindful of my thoughts and shifting them to be more supportive. I learned that failure was an event, but not me as a person. Furthermore, I practiced trusting that things will work out at the right time. If it was not working out right now, I still had something to learn even if that was just to be patient.

    4. Find the lesson in rejection.

    We could easily focus on what we have lost when we experience rejection, but it’s more useful to ask ourselves, “What have I gained?” This way we can learn from the experience. Rather than beating ourselves even more over the head, we can turn our adversity into self-growth and self-exploration. With each experience, we can grow stronger.

    Personally, I have learned to look inside and identify what I need to work on. I have begun to see I am more capable to handling loss than I have credited myself. I have also found the ability to use rejection as an opportunity to humble myself, and move forward with wisdom to do things differently.

    At twenty-five years old, I was divorced from my first marriage. I was in a space of regret and shame. I felt I’d deeply let down my family and friends. I found myself isolating from others and alone. I lost a relationship, a home, friendships, and predictability. But in hindsight, I gained much more.

    I began to see I was codependent in the relationship. I was stagnant and not evolving as a person. Slowly, but surely, I began to learn to truly depend on myself.

    I gained wisdom about healthy boundaries in a relationship.

    I then learned to cherish true friendships. Friends who saw me at my lowest and still loved me without conditions.

    Most importantly, I gained a relationship with myself. I learned to love the woman I am unconditionally. In doing so, I finally attracted real love. I learned to value, respect, and love my now fiancé unconditionally.

    Our thoughts have a strong impact on our emotions. Our emotions, in turn, have a strong impact on our decisions and our behaviors. If you find yourself experiencing failure or rejection, ask yourself what is your interpretation of the situation. What meaning are you giving it?

    If you have a tendency toward negative self-talk, you will find your energy draining quickly. This will eventually take you away from what is important. When we are in a battle with ourselves, we cannot possibly be present for others.

    It could be helpful to create a new belief about the situation. On the surface, I may have a loss of relationship, but deeper down I am gaining a better understanding of myself. Train your brain to look for the blessing, not the curse. I, personally, believe I am always being protected. If you don’t believe in a higher power, you could still choose to understand rejection as redirection to something better.

    I choose to trust the universe and that things are happening as they should for my highest good. It is crucial for me to have that faith in order to be with the sense of peace, I feel, we all yearn for in life. And, to be completely honest, I am extremely grateful for things not working out the way I once hoped they would.

  • 6 Things My Heroes Taught Me About Overcoming Hard Times

    6 Things My Heroes Taught Me About Overcoming Hard Times

    “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” ~Christopher Reeve

    It all happened so suddenly that it felt just like a flash flood. One minute the road was clear and drivable, and the next it was a raging river. Before I knew what happened, my life went from being only slightly a mess to being a complete mess, my car teetering on the edge of the water, ready to go for a swim at any minute.

    I had left a job I liked and found a job I thought I would love, but didn’t end up loving at all.

    I had hurt a good friend who was extremely important to me, and is now out of my life for the most part.

    I felt like a financial mess from constantly playing catch up and living paycheck to paycheck, and I was going to have to move out of an apartment and town I really loved.

    It’s funny how when even just one thing is going great, all the other things that aren’t going so hot are manageable. But if nothing is okay, then everything seems insurmountable and completely overwhelming.

    Faced with more doom and gloom than I could stand, I wanted to melt into my bed and never get back up. And honestly, for a few days I did.

    I didn’t want to talk to anyone about what was going on. I didn’t want to admit defeat or ask for help. Even my very best friends only knew bits and pieces of what was going on inside my head. And honestly, the one person I would have bared my soul to, the person who I always ran to with stuff like this, was no longer speaking to me.

    So now what? I realized that if I didn’t want to talk to the people who inspired me most, I could still apply what I had learned from them. They had taught me so much over the years through their advice, and their example, that through them, I found my way.

    1. You can cry for five minutes and then you have to put your big girl pants on and deal with it.

    One of my best friends, and someone whose strength I really admire, taught me that life isn’t going to wait for you to have a pity party; it’s going to go on without you.

    She always says to her kids and friends, “Where does crying get you? Nowhere.” So, while it’s okay to cry a little and allow yourself some much-needed time to wallow, eventually that has to end.

    Spend a weekend in bed with some feel-good movies and junk food, journal your feelings, take a long hot bath, cry and scream into your pillow, and indulge in some self-care and pampering. But don’t get stuck there. It is so easy to get stuck there.

    Give yourself a cut off time to pull it together and start to figure out how you are going to get through this bump in the road. Becoming a blubbering mess isn’t an option, as tempting as it is.

    2. Laughter is the best medicine.

    You have to have a sense of humor about your situation. Laughter can bring down blood pressure and relieve stress. You’d be doing yourself and your health a favor to find some humor each day in the ridiculousness that you are going through. There’s even something called laughter yoga, which in and of itself is funny, but honestly, they are on to something. Have you ever felt bad after a good laugh?

    If you’re so miserable you can’t think of anything funny, don’t go it alone. Hang out with a friend who can usually make you laugh, or call someone who does the same. I usually call my mom because she inspired this advice, and every time we talk about the crazy stuff going on in our lives, we always end up laughing about it.

    3. What you did before won’t work now if you want a different outcome.

    These next three pearls of wisdom, about taking action and setting goals, come from a mentor and dear friend who’s advised me over the years.

    You have cried, you have laughed, and now it’s time to think about how you got here.

    True, some situations are completely unavoidable, and life can deal us some horrible blows we could not have anticipated. However, if you contributed to your current situation, even in the smallest way, you have to reflect on what got you there.

    That shouldn’t take long—it should be glaringly obvious where you went wrong—but the key here is to actually change that behavior. That’s the hard part, and honestly, something that has to be continuously worked on.

    I eventually realized that I needed to change my impulsive decision making after it caused me to lose a relationship that was very dear to me, among other things. Consciously making the decision to work on it daily, and seeing the change that choice has made in my life gave me back a sense of pride, and makes the sting of that mistake more bearable.

    However, it’s easy to do this while in the midst of dealing with the fallout of a miscalculation or mistake. You think, man I’ll never do that again, what was I thinking? I’m going to change! But then when all is right with the world and these troubles are a distant memory, you can slip back into old habits.

    Unless you make a commitment to stay aware and work daily to change, and stay changed for the better, you will find yourself back here again, and again, and again.

    4. A plan is only good if it is actionable, and you take action.

    As you start to feel better, you will want to come up with a plan. It’s amazing how empowering it is to tackle the problem head on and figure out what outcome you want and what you need to do to get there. But is it realistic? Is it something that will make your current situation and your future better?

    Here’s a tip: It shouldn’t be the first plan you think of. Usually that one is the easiest, “the quick solve,” and it won’t get you where you want to be in the long run. You have to think long and hard about what you really want, how you feasibly can get there, and if it is doable at this time with the resources you have.

    Make sure your working toward what you want every day, and tweaking as you go if it starts to look like you aren’t making any headway. Checking in with yourself and staying grounded will help you stick to the plan and see success.

    Usually when I make a plan I think a lot about what I want, not necessarily what I need. I decided to keep my head out of the clouds this time, and made a more realistic plan then I usually would have.

    I had to accept some unwelcome changes (moving, new financial situation, loss), but knew those things were necessary to be successful this time around. In the process I found a new career I love, and am on my way to overcoming months of remorse over past situations.

    5. Suck it up and do what you have to do to get where you want to be.

    A few years ago, the good friend and mentor I mentioned earlier suggested that, to catch up on bills and get out from behind my current financial situation, I should give up my car. That way I would save money by not having a monthly car or insurance payment. After a few months of saving and catching up I could buy a used car outright. She suggested taking the bus and getting rides from friends when needed in the meantime.

    Aghast, I told her there was no way I could do that.

    “Why not? Because it would be too hard?” she had pointedly asked.

    I just told her I wasn’t willing to give up my car, and instead, decided on a quick solve that fixed the problem for the moment, but not in the long run. I never got to exactly where I wanted to be financially.

    Now looking back, I see the wisdom in what she was suggesting. Sometimes we need to make a sacrifice and do something unpleasant to get to a better future.

    Nothing worthwhile comes by walking an easy, breezy path, and it shouldn’t. I thought about this a lot when recently deciding to move somewhere much cheaper so I could save money and catch up. Sure, it wasn’t what I wanted to do, but it was necessary to get on the right track.

    It can be really hard to decide to bite the bullet and do something difficult that you really don’t want to do, but once you’re through it on the other side you will be glad, and proud, that you did.

    6. Keep believing that the best is yet to come.

    It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how wrong things have gone, there’s always potential for a better tomorrow. It’s not going to stay this way forever; it can’t. Don’t get so bogged down in the misery of today that you forget to get excited for the future, and what you’re doing to make it a good one.

    A close friend and soul sister of mine had a bumper sticker that read: Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen. She helps remind me that you have to keep the hope inside you alive, because nothing is so far gone that it cant be fixed, or grow into something new and better. In the meantime, life is passing you by.

    Find some good in your day and appreciate it in between all the wallowing, planning, and doing. You don’t want to miss out on months of your life because something bad happened and now that has become your entire focus.

    It could even be something as small as a walk with your dog, or the smell of fresh air blowing in through your window. Every day has something to enjoy, even for a moment, before we get back to going hard after our goals.

  • How a 10-Day Silent Retreat Helped Heal My Grieving Heart

    How a 10-Day Silent Retreat Helped Heal My Grieving Heart

    “In a retreat situation, you are forced to come face to face with yourself, to see yourself in depth, to meet yourself.” ~Lama Zopa Rinpoche

    When I was at university, doing a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat was considered a hardcore rite of passage only the toughest among us attempted. Those who lasted the distance referred to it as a “mind-blowing” and “life-changing” experience.

    “Think of how you feel after an orgasm,” a friend said when I considered finally doing a Vipassana meditation retreat to reconnect with myself after a decade in full time employment. “Imagine feeling for two months like you’ve just had the most powerful orgasm.”

    I couldn’t. I really couldn’t imagine how ten days of enforced intimacy with my own messy mind would result in two months of post-coital bliss. Nor could I imagine sitting still and keeping silent for ten days. Nor was I prepared to sacrifice half of my annual leave to find out.

    What finally got me to commit to the meditation cushion for a ten-day marathon of silence was a shattered heart. I needed a radical act of self-care.

    I had just spent two long years caring for my terminally ill husband. His funeral was followed three weeks later by the largest cyclone in Australia’s living memory. It made landfall within meters of my veranda, destroying an entire community. In the confusion that followed, I found things out about my husband that would have been best buried with him.

    I was shell-shocked, as if a bomb had detonated inside me and ripped my heart to shreds. A psychologist suggested happy pills. But I wasn’t interested in medicated happiness. I didn’t even want the post-coital bliss my friend had spoken of.

    I just wanted to feel whole again. The psychologist advised against a ten-day silent meditation retreat. It was too dangerous, she said. There wouldn’t be anybody there to catch me should I crash hard.

    But I knew that only I could pull myself up from the abyss. Avoiding my grief was not an option. I needed to confront my pain head on.

    Two months after my bereavement, I took myself off to an austere meditation center in Sri Lanka to follow the teachings of S. N. Goenka.

    Here is what I learned:

    Impermanence is the foundation of everything.

    When I showed up at my first ten-day silent meditation retreat, I had just witnessed the impermanence of everything, and it had left me devastated.

    Sitting in meditation for ten hours a day, continuously scanning my body, becoming aware of the rising and falling of my physical discomfort, I learned to accept that everything in life is constantly changing.

    In the afternoons, when the meditation hall turned into a sun-drenched hothouse, the physical discomfort of sitting still became almost unbearable. Resisting the urge to shift my legs or scratch my sweaty head taught me to become a detached observer.

    Every day a cool evening breeze would follow the intense afternoon heat. The tickling of my scalp, the tingling in my legs, the stiffness in my hips, all of it fell away as day turned into night and I stretched out on my rock hard mattress.

    By observing what was happening to my physical body, I learned to trust that emotional discomfort and pain rises and falls in the same way as physical pain does.

    Meditation teaches you how to become a detached observer.

    I learned to focus on my breath, to feel it rising and falling. I practiced watching my mind fill with dark clouds, like a lake with storm clouds reflected on it. I glimpsed brief moments of clarity as I allowed the clouds to drift by. I learned to label my emotions and set them free rather than stay attached to the pain.

    I learned to train my mind to be in control of those dark storm clouds that kept on brewing. They didn’t magically disappear as I sat in meditation ten hours each day. But I learned not to chase after them and become swept up in every little tempest that flared up.

    I learned to simply watch what was going on in my mind. It felt like watching a giant movie screen from the back row of a cinema.

    Meditation teaches us that we can control our emotional pain. By focusing on the breath, we are able to step back, assume the position of a witness, so that it doesn’t overwhelm us.

    It’s a lesson I’ve taken with me into everyday life. When a friend says something hurtful or when someone cuts me off in traffic, I know how not to be reactive.

    Meditation gives you a new perspective on who you are.

    As I sat and listened to the constant chatter in my head for ten days, I realized that our identities are a product of the stories we tell ourselves.

    Old stories from the past showed up. The tortured narrative of my dysfunctional family suddenly made sense. My parents had remained attached to the narrative of their suffering as deprived war children. Unable to craft new stories for themselves, this victim narrative defined them in adulthood.

    Sifting through the details of the aftermath of my husband’s death, trying to make sense of his unfaithfulness, I understood that I had been given the tools to rewrite that story.

    I couldn’t undo what had happened. I’d never be able to have another conversation with him to set the record straight. I couldn’t give our story a happy ending. But I had the tools to use what I had learned to craft a new narrative for myself.

    One stifling hot afternoon, focusing on the beads of sweat forming on my forehead, my focus became laser sharp.  I understood that if I didn’t want to live my life by the victim narrative, if I wanted to be in charge of myself again, if I didn’t want to turn into a bitter woman with a prematurely aged face, I needed to forgive those who had compounded my suffering.

    Writing to the women whom I had considered my worst enemies was profoundly liberating, both for me and them. We were able to make peace with ourselves and with my philandering husband.

    Suffering is an inevitable part of life.

    All of life is suffering. It’s one of the key principles of Buddhism. Human nature is imperfect as is the world we live in. The Pali word Dukkha means suffering, discontent, unsatisfactoriness. We all experience varying degrees of suffering all the time.

    Some of us had come to the retreat feeling stuck in life, stressed by our jobs, frustrated in our relationships, directionless and ready for some kind of transformation. I wasn’t the only who had brought a deep feeling of grief to the retreat.

    I was the only one who had lost a loved one, but grief has many faces. Some of us were grieving collapsed marriages or failed relationships. It made me aware that we will all experience deep sadness in our lives, not once, but many times. It made sense to learn how to deal with it.

    Life had just dealt me an overdose of suffering as if to hammer home this important point. Sitting with my physical and emotional pain for ten seemingly interminable days forced me to make friends with it.

    I was able to put it into a new perspective. I hadn’t died, I hadn’t lost a limb, I had no permanent battle scars. My adopted hometown would recover, the ravaged landscape would heal, and so would I.

    I realized that being able to hold my husband in death, to comfort him on the journey through his terminal illness, had been a chance for deep transformation. I understood that we are in charge of how we respond to suffering.

    Suffering arises from attachment.

    Burying my husband and sorting through the debris after a category five cyclone had shredded my hometown to bits, I had glimpsed how suffering is linked to attachment. Sitting on my meditation cushion for ten days, I grasped the core of the Second Noble Truth that all suffering arises from attachment.

    We are all driven by our desires and cravings. Our unhappiness is a result of our tendency to cling to or grasp at what is unattainable. We become attached to material things; we want to hold onto happiness; we chase after pleasure and we are in denial about the impermanence of everything.

    As expected, I didn’t explode in multiple orgasms, nor did I crash into the bottom of the abyss, both of which would have been a form of attachment.

    On the last day of the retreat, when we were at last released from our vow of silence, everybody was experiencing some kind of high. Something fundamental had shifted for all of us.

    Endless chatter quickly replaced our noble silence. Having sat side by side, experiencing the full rainbow of emotions, we were keen to share our experiences.

    A small group gathered around a self-confessed retreat junkie, who glowed like a 3D postcard version of the Buddha, sitting in full lotus pose for most of the retreat. He had made it his life’s purpose, he explained, to go from retreat to retreat so that he could stay permanently within that blissed out sate.

    I was tempted to quote one of our teachers that it’s just as dangerous to get attached to bliss as it is to get attached to pain and suffering. The aim of meditation is to let go of any form of attachment. But I bit my tongue, because I knew that he would need to find that out for himself.

    Meditation is a personal self-care tool we all have access to.

    Of course the ten-day meditation retreat didn’t magically cure my pain. It took many more weeks, months in fact, on the meditation cushion to heal my heart. But with every retreat I was inching a little further away from the abyss.

    Six years on, I have found love again. My house has been repaired and my garden has grown back into a lush jungle. Life continues to ebb and flow, oscillating between moments of happiness and suffering.

    You don’t have to be at your personal rock bottom to experience the life-changing benefits of a silent meditation retreat. What I learned has stayed with me. Meditation remains my personal self-care tool that allows me to negotiate the inevitable ups and downs of life, from the trivial to the tough stuff.

  • To Be AND Not to Be: Honoring a Life Lost to Suicide

    To Be AND Not to Be: Honoring a Life Lost to Suicide

    “To be, or not to be—that is the question.” ~William Shakespeare

    This Sunday marks one year since my friend took his own life. It both is and isn’t a big deal. It is in the sense that we like to commemorate things: one-year-old, one year at a new job, one year since 9-11, one year sober.

    It isn’t in the sense that my to-do list that day includes “thaw and marinate chicken.”

    When a person takes his own life, it creates a cosmic shift in the universe.

    It also doesn’t.

    The first few days after a person takes his own life are the weirdest. He was here. Now he’s not.

    The disappearance of a human being is beyond comprehension. A whole human vanishes. Six feet one inch tall. One hundred and sixty pounds. Blue eyes. Salty blonde hair. Brilliant veterinarian. Father of two young daughters. Husband. Son. Friend.

    Perhaps the coroner has determined that the cause of death was self-inflicted gunshot wound. But it is equally as believable that he took a last minute trip. He had to go unexpectedly, but he will be back. He is out running errands. His flight was delayed.

    But as time passes and the person doesn’t come walking up the drive and through the door, his favorite hat bee-bopping up and down with steady gait in the yard, deep sadness swells around the supernatural weirdness of it all. The sadness makes it difficult to breath, at times. It is life altering and universe shifting. It is monumental.

    Except that it isn’t. No matter how deep our grief, schools continue to meet. Clients continue to call. Crimes continue to be committed. Babies continue to be born. Cars still need oil changes.

    Neighbors still drive out of their driveways in the mornings. They still look carefully before exiting their driveways into the street. They still stop to check their mail, which keeps coming by the way, even when someone we love is suddenly gone.

    Just as our own serious injuries may frantically send us to the ER, once we are sitting in the waiting area, we look around and realize we are merely one of many. Death is plain.

    The ordinariness of it all can make it seem like our person didn’t mean very much. Sometimes it feels like he never even existed.

    Except that he did. His half-used soap bar remains in the shower. His razor sits on the counter with tiny hairs embedded in its blades. His cell phone rests on the nightstand with three unread text messages. His bills sit an unopened still-life on the kitchen counter. His half eaten banana slowly turns brown.

    His stuff suggests he was real. That he was here despite his sudden disappearance.

    As his loved ones tasked with cleaning up what he left behind begin to eradicate the trail he left of his final days, when the soap has cracked and the fruit has become rotten, it can feel as though all evidence of his existence has vanished.

    Still, even if every shred of evidence of a person’s existence is lit on fire and turned to ash, our memories, or experiences, and our love for people who disappear will live on. Those memories, intangible ghosts in our minds that cannot be touched, seen, or proven, both are and aren’t real.

    For me, the best space within which to honor those we have lost is to live in the in-between, a place where they both did and did not exist. Where they both did and did not die. Where their loss both is and is not extraordinary.

    This Sunday, I plan to commemorate the day by getting what is and is not meaningful: a tattoo. The experience will and will not be important. It will be important in the sense that I am getting a semi-colon tattoo to represent mental illness and suicide awareness in honor of my dear friend. It isn’t in the sense that millions of people get tattoos every day.

    This Sunday, I will be sad. The sadness that comes with suicide doesn’t ever truly disappear. Because it is always there, I suppose the sadness left over after a person takes his own life both is and isn’t important. It is in the sense that it lives down low beneath the joy, laughter, excitement, and other emotions that continue to be felt despite the life altering loss.

    But it isn’t all that extraordinary either. Sadness is not exclusive to me. And despite my sadness, this Sunday will be regular. We will laugh when it makes sense to laugh. We will watch our usual TV shows. We will wash laundry for the week. We will return emails. We will grade papers.

    When someone we love dies, we swear we will never take our lives for granted. Every moment will count; every day will be lived fully. Similarly, we swear we will never take for granted our friends, our spouses, our children. We will keep our eyes on the big picture. We won’t sweat the small stuff. We will stop drinking, stop smoking, stop yelling, start meditating.

    Except when we don’t. And that is okay. Because although we aim to see the death of our loved ones as a monumental turning point in our lives—one that will push us to live our best life—the fact also remains that life is ordinary. Death is common. Our health will fail one way or another. We will yell again. We will take things for granted.

    Because the finite nature of our capacity for understanding pushes us into the realm of “either/or,” we believe that we either appreciate our lives, or we don’t. We are either happy or we are sad. We are either healthy or we are sick. We are either alive or we are dead.

    I suspect that, if we could hear the voices of ghosts, they’d tell us that our finite view causes us much suffering. That Hamlet’s contemplation of his own being when he asks “to be or not to be?” is the wrong question with no real answer. For even when one takes his own life, he does not cease “to be.”

    After all, my friend is gone, but his memory lives on. I can see his sweet spirit in the eyes of his children. I can feel his love for nature as the wind blows through the leaves of trees, dancing alive. He is here, and he is not. His ashes will return to the earthen ground from which he came. Perhaps he will become part of a cloud, a stream. Perhaps his remains will enrich the earth that grows the tea we drink.

    The sooner we accept that the universe is infinite and that our capacity to understand is finite (despite whatever technological advances we believe humans have made), the sooner we will find the peace that can only come from living outside of the duality of either/or.

    For me, I accept that my dear friend died because he took his own life. I also accept that he did not die.

    This sort of wild, fantastical thinking is not the kind one might see in popular culture movies depicting communication with the deceased in the afterlife. It is the kind of thinking that arises from acceptance of the infinitesimal universe that is beyond our own finite understanding. Once we accept this truth, the spirit of those we have lost is freed beyond the grave.

  • The Miscarriage: Why My Heart Feels Full In Spite of My Loss

    The Miscarriage: Why My Heart Feels Full In Spite of My Loss

    “Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and it’s spectacular.” ~Joseph Campbell

    They say all feelings have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

    The truth is that I’m still in the middle part, but I felt like it was time to share this story with you—not just for me, but for all women who have faced this and for all women who have made a plan and then surrendered as the plan changed.

    Two months ago, I had a miscarriage.

    The pregnancy was a little bit of a surprise. We’d been talking about it, but weren’t “trying.” (Sidenote: I got off birth control pills years ago when I quit drinking alcohol—best decision of my life, but that’s a different story.)

    Over the years, I really learned my body and I’d been able to sync up with my cycle, except for this one time a few months ago when I miscounted the days. Whoops.

    I took a pregnancy test. Two lines. I took three more pregnancies tests. All four said the same thing: two lines = pregnant.

    Were we excited? Were we scared? Do we celebrate? Did we just mess up our entire lives? Do we move? Do I cancel my work trips in the fall? All the plans. All the feelings. All at once. But the excitement was incredible—we made a baby!

    I started telling the women closest to me.

    My husband started calling and checking in more than normal.

    We were preparing in our own way.

    I was early. Only eight weeks.

    And I was eager to tell my family in person because I just so happened to have a trip already planned to see them.

    But before boarding the plane a few weeks ago, I could sense something was going on. I called a close friend and told her that I was starting to feel attached to the little creation growing inside of me and that I was scared I would lose it. Part of me already knew, even though I wouldn’t find out for another week.

    My wise friend said something I’ll never forget. She said,

    “Julie, no matter what happens, you’ll be okay.”

    She was right. She’s always right.

    A week later, when I started spotting, I was in my mother’s bathroom in Louisiana. I had told her the news the night before. I immediately called that same friend, then my husband, then the doctor. Tears and more tears. I knew what was happening.

    Emergency ultrasound.

    My sister (my closest friend and a nurse) moved into action, told me what to do, and pulled all the strings for my appointment.

    My mother sat on the couch with me, held my hands, cradled my face, and prayed with me.

    My father rushed to my side with fierce strength and held back his tears with loving tenderness.

    My husband, thousands of miles away, held strong—mentally and emotionally—and kept telling me that everything would be okay. One step at a time. Always, grounding and anchoring me.

    They were all strong for me, which allowed me to be soft.

    The ultrasound showed no heartbeat and a tiny little thing measuring only six weeks. It wasn’t time.

    I walked out of the doctor’s office and paused at the door before meeting my parents on the other side. I cried and held my womb and cried some more.

    I cried for the loss of the plans we’d made.

    I cried for the loss of what could have been our baby.

    I cried for myself, for my husband, for our family, and for all the women who have been initiated into this phase of life.

    My parents rose to their feet the moment they saw me. We stepped into the hallway so I could tell them the news without disturbing the pregnant women waiting for their appointments.

    I told them what I saw and what I knew. I cried and they cried. My mom cried for her baby and her baby’s baby. My dad cried for his little girl. My sister called fourteen times waiting for the news. My husband remained peaceful, hopeful, and calm on the other end of the phone.

    They were steady in the midst of my storm.
    My body released everything naturally. It was intense and beautiful. My hormones started to regulate. My heart is starting to heal.

    I say this again and again in the work I do, but I believe it to be truer now more than ever….

    In order to be fully alive, we must feel it all.  

    My heart was torn open into a hundred piece two months ago, but not just because I was sad. It was torn open as I learned to feel even more.

    My heart held grief and love in a way that I never knew could co-exist. To witness the miracle of my body, the beauty of being a woman, and the strength and resilience of my spirit blew me away.

    I am different.

    Clear. Focused. Fierce. Tender.

    I am more me than I’ve ever been.

    A new rite of passage. A new opportunity to deepen within myself.

    In many ways this little spirit baby birthed me. I am no longer the same.

    Life isn’t meant to be easy, or perfect, or happy all the time. Life is meant to confront us. It will get in our face and push our boundaries and stretch our limits.

    Life doesn’t do this to be cruel. It does this to remind us of our strength and bring us closer to our spirit.

    In the midst of grieving in a way I’ve never done before, I feel stronger than I ever have before. It’s such a weird paradox.

    That’s the beauty of life.

    With every twist and tug and pull, with every heartache and break, life is making us all. Making and molding and polishing our soul so that we may one day shine even brighter.

    This is life.

    I continue to welcome all of life—the heartbreak and hope, the pain and the joy, the smiles and the tears. There is room for it all.

    Above all things, I trust more than ever before that life is completely and utterly holding me. I don’t have to do a thing. Life has got me and if it’s not this, it will be something else because that’s the way life works.

    I feel a deep sense of peace and openness as I finish this note to you.

    My heart feels full. Full from love. Full from pain. Full from life. And that is a beautiful gift.

  • Lost Everything? 8 Tips to Help You Get Back on Your Feet

    Lost Everything? 8 Tips to Help You Get Back on Your Feet

    “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” ~Robert H. Schuller

    About two years ago, I was working in a professional career that I had been building for nearly twenty years.

    I had been at my company for thirteen years, and had been generally commended and given positive reviews and regular bonuses and raises for most of that time.

    I had just left a terrible and traumatic relationship, and due to two years of criticism, gaslighting, and conflict, was experiencing severe depression. I was on medication that made it hard for me to focus and which gave me anxiety attacks.

    My manager let me know that I was on probation at work, something that had never happened to me in my entire career.

    One of the few lights in my life was an arts community that I had been very active in for several years, and I had just applied for a volunteer position working for the overseeing organization, which meant a great deal to me.

    Though every day seemed like an incredible struggle, I was trying to pull things back together, do better at work, get on different medication, and continue to heal from the trauma of the relationship. I felt down but not out. I felt I was on the cusp of something.

    It turns out I was right, but that the cusp wasn’t the something I thought it was.

    I was informed I didn’t get the volunteer position. Gossip tells me part of that was due to me sharing on Facebook how I was feeling in my depression and recovery from trauma.

    Due to “performance issues” stemming from my severe depression and anxiety, as well as institutional problems not of my making, and despite the fact that I told my manager that I was in treatment for depression, I was fired from my job (ironically, this company was a psychology-focused media company, run by a psychologist) and walked out of the office by co-workers with boxes of my stuff.

    I wasn’t even allowed to gather information for the professional contacts I had made and nurtured. Meanwhile, I was still experiencing PTSD symptoms from the abuse in my relationship. And then, a relationship I had entered into a year after the breakup, which in retrospect was not a good decision for me at the time, ended. Though we’re still friends, the breakup was very hard for me, especially on top of everything else.

    I felt I had just been forced to set up housekeeping in Rejection City; like everything I had been working for had crashed and burned, all at the same time. My feelings of self-worth and competence took a major dive. My identity as a successful, professional woman was crushed.

    As a result of losing my job, I lost my health insurance, including mental health care, and had to stop taking my medication. I couldn’t pay my mortgage on the house I had bought when I was making decent money. I fought for a year to get back on my feet, got on Medi-cal, the state-sponsored insurance, and worked with my mortgage company through incredible frustration and red-tape.

    I was determined that I was not going to collapse into a pile of sorrow, though that’s what I desperately wanted to do on most days.

    I walked away from the arts community, which I realized wasn’t supportive of me or my efforts, and walked away from most people except the ones in my life who I knew to be steadfast in their support and care. I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone except the few people who had always been there for me. I spent most of my days alone, worrying and fretting, and numbing myself when I could.

    That was about fifteen months ago.

    I’m now still in my home, working part-time, studying, networking, working with a career coach, and am on the edge of starting my own marketing business in a new industry, while also taking on freelance clients. This is the cusp life was preparing me for, way back then, though I didn’t know it.

    How do we get back on our feet and forge a new, even better path when life kicks us off the one we were on? Here are some tips:

    1. Allow time to grieve.

    This is really important. I had to take the time to sit with what had happened, to cry and get angry and talk to my close friends about my feelings, and to work through the sense of betrayal in many ways. I couldn’t afford therapy, so I just talked to myself when I was alone, which was a lot of the time. After about nine months, I finally reached a point where I made a conscious choice to move on from swimming in sadness and resentment.

    Rumination is normal in this kind of situation, though eventually, you’ll need to stop. But at first, sit with all those awful feelings and be your own best friend. Acknowledge them, know they’re normal, and be there for yourself in this difficult transition. If you journal: journal. If you create: create. If you walk: walk. Do what works for you to get centered again.

    2. Remember that things won’t always be this way.

    When I thought I was going to lose everything I had tried to build, I panicked. I felt like I was sinking, and had nothing to grab on to. It was really scary, and I had more than one panic attack in the middle of the night. But as I kept working for what I wanted, things calmed down and I could see that, though the waves were choppy, I wasn’t going to sink.

    The ship will right itself, once it’s time. Think of it like a painful breakup. You (hopefully) know that you’ll get over the sadness and all the other hard feelings. Practice mindfulness of your thoughts, and compassionately bring yourself back to the present when you start to feel that despair that your life has been destroyed. What has been destroyed is an old way of being; the intense feelings mean you are still very much alive.

    3. Know that things won’t go back to “the way they were,” and this is okay.

    One thing I knew instinctively right away is that I didn’t want to do the same thing I’d been doing for nearly twenty years, and I certainly didn’t want anyone ever again to have the hold over me that my old company, my ex, or the arts community had.

    I spent (am still) spending a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do next and how I can hold power over my experiences in my own hands without giving that power away to anyone else.

    Explore your own interests: What really lights you up? Now is the chance to do that thing! Try not to get derailed by “what ifs” or worries that your dreams aren’t realistic. There are ways to do what you want to do. Brainstorm, talk to compassionate people who know you well, ask yourself questions, observe what you enjoy doing or who you want to be around and ask yourself: Can I do this more?

    4. Use language carefully.  

    When all this happened, somehow I knew that I didn’t want to introduce myself—or to think of myself—as someone who had just lost everything. I would tell people who asked me what I did for a living that I ran a freelance business, even before this was true, and often consoled myself with the fact that I was strong enough to walk away from a bad relationship.

    Think of empowering ways to describe your new reality, and use them, even when you think thoughts to yourself. Feeling sad, worried, angry, stressed, and regretful is normal. But you need to create a link between yourself and your new future. Using the language of growth and new opportunities will help you when it’s time to start taking steps to move forward.

    5. Network and connect.

    I needed to work to pay my bills, and wasn’t getting any of the professional-level jobs I was applying for, so after many months of 4am wakings worrying about money, I posted to Facebook about what I had to offer in terms of skills, and a friend offered me a job. I’m very grateful, and, though it’s not what I had been doing, I can use the skills I have, can learn new things, and it has given me some breathing room to set myself up in life again.

    Even if you don’t need a new job as I did, you may still need a new community or new friends. The important thing is to figure out what happened that wasn’t working, and to pursue new paths, not to just do the same things you were doing before.

    There are so many opportunities to meet new people online and through community organizations. Identify the people you need in your life to help you get back on your feet, and go to them. And don’t forget to keep connecting with people in your life who are encouraging, welcoming, and compassionate.

    6. Make your main priority taking care of you.

    To the extent you can, make sure you’re taking good care of yourself. Get enough sleep. Move your body. Allow time to rest and relax and enjoy the things you love. Take naps. Spend time with people who uplift you, not ones who tear you down.

    One thing I finally allowed myself to realize is that I was incredibly burned out and stressed at my old job, which likely contributed to the depression. Now I understand that, as I move forward, I am not interested in a new life where stress accompanies me every day, and a job where the goalposts are constantly being moved. This was an important realization as I explore ways to make a living.

    What does your experience teach you about what’s important to your well-being, and how can you create a new life where well-being is a priority?

    7. Ask for help.

    I am very lucky to have family and friends close by who were and are able to be there for me in many important ways, including financially. I was able to get back on a medication that worked by going to a family friend who is a doctor, and who agreed to see me at no cost. This was vital to my turnaround. If it weren’t for my support network, I’d still be depressed and would probably have lost my home.

    Hopefully, you have people in your life who are supportive and kind, and you also have other resources, whether it’s an alumni group of your college, a local job resource center, a library, or friends who are connected to different networks that might be able to help.

    Think about what you need in order to get to where you want to go, and ask for help from those around you who can help. It’s not embarrassing to need help from others. A drowning person doesn’t reject a flotation device that a rescuer throws into the water!

    8. Learn from the experience.

    Though I had been through a lot of painful situations in my life, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a year as awful as that year. Part of my recovery was to sift through everything that happened and figure out what went wrong, including my own contribution to the situations. When we make meaning out of our experiences, we recovery more quickly. When we feel we have no control over a situation, we tend to feel depressed and hopeless.

    Whether you journal, talk to a therapist, talk to supportive friends, or just think, be brave enough to look at the situation and understand how, going forward, you can prevent a similar thing from happening again.

    Do you need to choose your friends or relationships more carefully? Do you need to avoid certain employment situations? Do you need to change some of your own habits? Once you’ve understood what happened, you’ll have the tools to create a new kind of life for yourself.

  • How I Forgave What I Couldn’t Forget

    How I Forgave What I Couldn’t Forget

    “Forgiving someone doesn’t mean that their behavior was ‘OK.’ What it does mean is that we’re ready to move on. To release the heavy weight. To shape our own life, on our terms, without any unnecessary burdens. Forgiveness is pure freedom—and forgiveness is a choice.” ~Dr. Suzanne Gelb

    I remember the feeling of blood rushing through my veins, my head pounding, and my heart beating faster. Every time I remembered what happened, I either cried or felt a wave of depression. This guy was someone who’d hurt me in a way that I never thought would happen. His deeds affected my family and me for years afterward.

    It was a complicated mess that he created, but he still managed to overtake the business we’d worked nearly twenty-five years to build. He took from us the ability to get back hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of which we’d been loaned against our home. He stole all this in a highly manipulative way.

    We met this man, a realtor, at my husband John’s parents’ auction. Since the house didn’t sell then, he was able to talk John’s parents into listing their house for sale with his small real estate company.

    Through this time we got to know him and his girlfriend, and shared a few visits with them. We went to their wedding, and he came to John’s dad’s funeral. Soon he and John started talking about how they could work on a big project together, since it involved investing, and more people would mean less money for each to put in.

    John, being a builder, would both invest and work on the construction of dozens of homes. Both the realtor and John would stand to make a good profit.

    The realtor never showed us the paperwork between the developer and the former owner, but he told us that the bank needed four lots as collateral for a loan for the land. We took a loan against our house for the lots, and also borrowed from John’s mom. It was an opportunity of a lifetime. What could go wrong?

    We were excited because this meant continuous work for quite a while, and John’s business stood to make a million or more within two to three years. Finally, we got the break we needed to make the business bigger.

    After investing much time and money, we began to worry about why the homes weren’t selling, and why the realtor always put off paying John.

    We decided to take a drive to the development. Maybe the realtor needed to hire new salespeople who could get something sold.

    While there, I looked at the table full of information on the choices of homes to build, the specs, and the info about the builder. I was shocked to see that the realtor had a new building company named on all the literature we’d provided. It was a building company the realtor had started himself.

    When we left the open house, John called our realtor friend. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation! We knew there was trouble, but we didn’t know to what extent.

    Our contract with the developer stipulated that we had to have sold a certain number of homes within a certain amount of time, or he had the right to hire a different builder. So the realtor just didn’t sell any homes for John to build because the realtor wanted to be the builder and the realtor in the development! We were asked to sign a release form so that our contract would be over.

    Sadly, our meetings with lawyers didn’t help us. The realtor had his assets in his wife’s name, so there was no money to get if we sued him. There were no houses sold. We thought we deserved at least a piece of future homes sold, but the developer’s and realtor’s lawyers simply said no.

    Our only option was to go to court. Our attorney estimated it would cost $30,000. and we would probably win. The downside was that the realtor could appeal the ruling. Then it would cost us another $30,000 to try to win again!

    If you remember, we’d borrowed against our house to invest in the lots, and we had no extra money because the realtor hadn’t paid John for a few months. We also had no work because John knew he would be devoting his time to this development. There was only one thing we could do: We signed the release and decided to move on.

    We could report him to the district attorney’s office. Hopefully, they would be able to prosecute him for the criminal acts he was doing. But there would be no money back for us, at least not for a long time.

    Since we had no work and a huge mortgage, which, amazingly, this realtor had found for us so we could buy the lots, we fell behind on our house payments. Thankfully, within a year John had found enough work to pay the mortgage, but if we fell behind again, our home would move directly into foreclosure.

    Looking back, we thought we were friends with the perpetrator. When we realized what he’d done and how he’d manipulated us to push us out of the project so he could benefit, we were furious!

    How does a person move ahead in their life when every day they experience something that is a direct result of something the perpetrator did?

    Even today, if I ran into him in public, I would avoid talking to him or even being in the same room. I wanted to forget what he did, but I realized that was impossible.

    I had the thought of hurting him back, physically, which was a thought I never had before. It scared me. But I knew it wouldn’t be worth the consequences.

    My husband also mentioned some unsavory ways of getting him back. But he also knew he couldn’t do that. I could understand how violence occurs in situations where the person who’s hurt can’t get the perpetrator out of their mind. It’s tough to forget! Am I right?

    John worked hard for three years with the hopes that an engineer we hired would be able to subdivide our land and sell a piece to lower our mortgage payment. We didn’t lose hope but pushed ahead. We weren’t quitters and we loved where we lived, so we did everything possible to keep our home.

    At the end of those three years, John was diagnosed with stage 3 throat cancer. He would be incapable of working for a year because of the intense treatment. I was not able to earn enough money to pay the mortgage.

    We had to move from our beloved home that we’d built and lived in for eighteen years. It was on thirty-two acres and held the memories of the time we spent there with our four children. We’d worked hard and put everything we had into the property.

    It was devastating to lose everything in our fifties! It was a big move backward, and I was overwhelmed at the thought of John being sick and leaving the home without his help.

    When you realize that you will never forget what someone did to you, you realize how enormous the job is going to be to forgive.

    There were many days that I had to push away the angry thoughts and tears. I had to work and be emotionally available for my kids. But somehow, eventually, I began to think of things in a different light.

    The struggle to give up hating someone for the pain they put you through is very intense. It is a battle deep within our very soul and minds.

    I had no answers for all the questions haunting me in my mind. Why was this guy so careless about negatively affecting the life of a whole family? How could he spend the energy it took to manipulate us to where he needed us to be so that he could pounce and move in for the steal? How could he sleep at night?

    Some people’s answer to forgiveness is that you just have to do it! We don’t want to live in hate purposely, but forgiveness takes time. If you deny the real feelings you have in order to forgive, just because it’s the right thing to do, your buried feelings could cause your emotions to backfire and come out differently later on.

    I moved ahead in my life, but not without feeling the pain and working through the emotions.

    Somehow I had to figure out how to move on. After all, everyone told me that I just needed to do it! Impossible? Could I forgive him and still dislike him?

    I struggled but somehow realized how to forgive. I had the thought one day that people don’t always understand the massiveness of influence and hurt they bring upon people. Plus, certain mental disorders cause people to not care about others. Only months or years of therapy can help this kind of illness.

    Even when we think someone doesn’t deserve mercy, could it be that they do? When I started thinking about why this man would deserve mercy, some of the following ideas came to mind.

    Maybe his family treated him badly when he was a child.

    Maybe he was taught how to scam people as part of his upbringing or influence from others.

    Maybe this person witnessed other adults thinking of themselves first, and he was just doing what seemed natural for him.

    Was he desperate for money?

    Did greed overtake him?

    Could he be mentally ill?

    Maybe he had never seen a single ray of true love and emotional well-being in his life. How sad is that?

    All these things are the sign of someone who is lost and not able to enjoy real peace in life. Did anyone ever genuinely care for him? Imagine what he has missed out on in his existence. Is he in bondage from adverse actions of those around him?

    We have no way of knowing why a person does what they choose to do. However, I believe there is a reason.

    I eventually realized, if I could let go of hating this person and what he did to me, by remembering the possible misery of his life, I’d be free from the very bondage that he was also in!

    It’s a vicious cycle, and I had the option to break it or continue in misery.

    I realized that I couldn’t live with myself, or love myself, as a person who couldn’t love others. And the kind of love for others may only seem like a tolerance at first, but it eventually goes deeper.

    I needed to open my eyes to the “why” of this person’s actions. If it was hate, jealousy, or selfishness, then I needed to be sad for that person who was unable to overcome those toxic feelings. That sadness for him is what enabled me to forgive and move on.

    However, forgiveness doesn’t mean I will never have negative thoughts or memories of him. I would have to remember why I wouldn’t remain angry toward him. I didn’t have to like him, spend time with him, tell him, or think of him. I needed to replace the bad memories in my mind with new plans and experiences for my future. It was a new way to live, and I had to accept it to get through it.

    I credit my husband for explaining it this way. When I would bring the situation up, he would say, “I’m finished with that, and I’ve moved on. That is in the past.” In other words, don’t let yourself keep repeating the experience in your mind over and over.

    Did you ever see loved ones of murder victims, for example, tell the murderer, “I forgive you?” I always wondered why in the world would they do that? But I think I get it now.

    We have to ask ourselves: Are we going to give this person the power to ruin our joy?

    We see the violence of unforgiveness all over our world today. When people hold on to the resentment, they get angrier until they eventually act out in some way. It can be deadly.

    We can hold on to the smallest things that family members and friends do and allow it to ruin the relationship. Maybe the person didn’t understand why they offended you. Maybe they were struggling with something you didn’t know about and were unable to be a better friend. Is it worth it? On our deathbed will we regret it?

    I don’t know about you, but I would like to be the person that says, “Hey, I’m not perfect, either. I forgive you.”

    So forgiveness is possible. The secret? Try to realize the sad state of mind that person was in when they hurt you.

    We are empowered when we are aware of the emotions that can get out of control and make us miserable. The emotions themselves are not wrong. When you feel something, it is real, and it should be acknowledged. But you need to let the anger go.

    I know I’m healthier, both physically and mentally, since I’ve learned to forgive this person and have moved on.

    My wish for you is that you take the time to work through your emotions and develop the ability to forgive others. We will always benefit when we let go of anger and embrace forgiveness. If enough people do this, our world will be a better place to live.

  • Love Hurts: Buddhist Advice for the Heartbroken – Interview and Book Giveaway

    Love Hurts: Buddhist Advice for the Heartbroken – Interview and Book Giveaway

    Note – The winners for this giveaway have been chosen. They are:

    • Jennifer Moore Hardesty
    • Margie Lynn
    • Dr. Mac
    • Ryan
    • RB
    • Justme
    • Rogério Cardoso
    • Fernanda Garza
    • Benjamin E. Nichols
    • Terri Cross

    When you’re dealing with heartbreak, it can feel like the pain will never go away.

    You may know, intellectually, that everything heals with time, but in that moment, when you’re suffering, it’s hard to hold onto hope.

    Like all humans, I’ve experienced my fair share of loss, and I’ve felt scared, depressed, alone, betrayed, rejected, regretful, and angry—with other people, with myself, and with the world.

    Losing someone or something that has become a part of your identity can feel like losing a limb, and how do you go on when you’ve lost a part of yourself?

    I’ve learned that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to that question. There’s no magic solution that helps us grow, let go, and move on. There are, however, lots of things we can do to help ourselves when struggling with the many nuanced emotions that come up when we’re grieving a painful loss.

    Tiny Buddha contributor Lodro Rinzler has tackled these varied challenges in his new book, Love Hurts: Buddhist Advice for the Heartbroken. 

    This “short and compact first-aid kit for a broken heart” offers simple, practical wisdom to help you take good care of yourself and work through your pain. 

    With chapters that offer advice based on what you’re feeling, Love Hurts may just what you need to get through your hardest days and find a light at the end of the tunnel.

    I’m grateful that Lodro took the time to answer some questions about his book, and also that he’s provided ten free copies for Tiny Buddha readers.

    The Giveaway

    To enter to win one of ten free copies of Love Hurts: Buddhist Advice for the Heartbroken:

    • Leave a comment below (you don’t need to write anything specific—“count me in” is sufficient)
    • For an extra entry, share this interview on one of your social media pages and post a second comment with the link

    You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, March 19th.

    The Interview 

    1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to write this book.

    I’m a meditation teacher and author. I grew up in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, started meditating at the age of six, and have been teaching meditation for the last sixteen years under the guidance of my teacher, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. I’ve written six books on the topic and co-founded the network of meditation studios known as MNDFL.

    On an outer level, I wrote this book because I work with a lot of people who are suffering from heartbreak and I wanted to talk to them directly, knowing that I couldn’t sit down and have tea with everyone.

    On an inner level, for a man in his thirties I have known a lot of heartbreak. Yes, the romantic kind, but also from too many people who have died, many around my age, and from every day reading the news and my heart breaking anew, seeing how many people are perpetuating horror and terror on others due to discrimination.

    On a secret level I wrote this because I needed to understand how heartbreak works, and writing is how I process information. That’s why I birthed this book.

    2. Your book isn’t just for people who are healing from a breakup or divorce; you define heartbreak in much broader terms. Who is this book for?

    It’s for humans. We all experience heartbreak. It might be personal, such as a breakup, sure, but it might also stem from job loss, the death of a loved one, or just not feeling like we’re living up to our potential. It might also be more societal, in reaction to hatred playing across the news.

    It’s odd because in some sense, I’m constantly rooting against my own book; I don’t want people to need a book on heartbreak—I want them to feel happy—but so many of us are experiencing heartbreak right now so I’m glad it’s available as a resource.

    3. I love how you sectioned the book based on what readers may be feeling or experiencing. What made you decide to write the book this way?

    When you’re heartbroken, you can’t sit down and read a ten-step plan for healing; heartbreak is messier than that.

    It’s this simple term that encapsulates so many strong emotions, including anger, despair, frustration, loneliness, and more. The underlying emotions of heartbreak—despite what caused it—are all too similar, so I knew I could address those, even though I could never dream of all the scenarios that might spark heartbreak.

    In that sense it’s a bit like a choose-your-own adventure book, where you can read about whatever you’re dealing with on that particular day.

    4. The section heading that most jumped out at me reads “If you feel like you have no right to be heartbroken.” Why do you think some of us feel this way, and why is this not true?

    So many of us feel ashamed of our heartbreak. When I would meet with people to hear their heartbreak stories, people were so shy at first. They would come in and think they would be talking to me about their last big relationship.

    I would ask the question, “What is your experience of heartbreak” and the flood gates would open. They would then start talking about their dead cat, or their high school sweetheart from decades before, and at some point note that they felt totally confused as to why they were heartbroken about this thing that was ages ago or, based on societal standards, “not a big deal” but it was their honest experience.

    Whatever breaks your heart, breaks your heart. It’s quite simple. The last thing we need to do when we feel heartbroken is judge ourselves for feeling that way.

    5. What, in your experience, are the most important things we can do to take care of ourselves when dealing with heartbreak?

    Even the simplest of self-care acts make a big difference when we’re struck down by heartbreak. I recommend:

    • getting more sleep than you think you need
    • eating well, or at least eating (we often forget to when we’re depressed)
    • meditating
    • exercising in whatever way makes sense to you

    6. How does meditation help us cope with our losses and heal?

    There are many types of meditation out there. To get going, I often recommend mindfulness, where we are bringing our full mind to one thing such as the breath.

    There have been a lot of studies done in recent years about this form of meditation. It’s proven what the Buddhists have known for 2600 years: Doing it for even short periods every day increases focus and resilience and leads to a better memory and reduced stress.

    While I appreciate science backing up the practicality of meditation, here’s what it has done for me:

    It has helped me show up fully for every aspect of my life.

    It has helped me wake up to where I get stuck and shut down my heart.

    It has helped me be more present with simple activity in my daily schedule.

    It has helped me get to know, befriend, and ultimately love myself.

    Having established that foundation of love inwardly, I have been able to be kinder, more compassionate, and loving toward others. When I am with friends or on a date with my spouse, I am there, fully. When I am in a painful situation, going through a break up or holding my father’s hand as he died, I am there, fully. It has allowed me to be present with the wide variety of pleasures and pains that life brings.

    Meditation has been an incredible gift to me, particularly when it comes to showing up for my own and others’ heartbreak.

    I’ve discovered that the main way to move through heartbreak is to look directly at it and not flinch. To stay with our discomfort is the best way to move through our discomfort. For me, the best way to learn to stay with all the difficult emotions that come up around heartbreak is meditation.

    7. What do you think is the biggest mistakes most of us make when healing from heartbreak?

    Whenever I would meet with people about this topic, I would ask them how they take care of themselves in the midst of heartbreak. Indubitably, every single person would answer by saying, “Well, the thing I do that I know I shouldn’t is…” and then they would fill in the blank. “I over-eat sweet foods.” “I reach for a bottle of alcohol.” “I go online and find someone to hook up with.”

    When strong emotions come up, we don’t necessarily want to look at them; we want to run away from them and act out in a similarly harmful and habitual way. When you feel like that, I recommend taking a breath, coming back into your body, and seeing if you can stay with the energy of the emotion itself, as opposed to the storylines around it.

    8. What has helped you let go of anger and forgive after being hurt or rejected?

    In my own experience, one thing that helps me when I am suffering is simply to be heard, to be witnessed. When we sit one-on-one in the presence of each other we experience one another in a very human and honest way.

    Sometimes the best way to see ourselves through our heartbreak is to be with our heartbreak, and being with other people who can hold the space for that really helps.

    9. What is the main message you hope people take from this book?

    That you will heal. It may take more time than you would want it to take—and that’s the nature of heartbreak—but even the seemingly devastating emotions that come with this experience are impermanent and that is extremely good news. Because when you do heal, you will love again.

    You can learn more about Love Hurts: Buddhist Advice for the Heartbroken on Amazon here.

    FTC Disclosure: I receive complimentary books for reviews and interviews on tinybuddha.com, but I am not compensated for writing or obligated to write anything specific. I am an Amazon affiliate, meaning I earn a percentage of all books purchased through the links I provide on this site. 

  • How Losing My Father Helped Me Become A Happier (and Better) Person

    How Losing My Father Helped Me Become A Happier (and Better) Person

    “In every loss there is a gain, as in every gain there is a loss, and with each ending comes a new beginning.” ~Buddhist Proverb

    Four years ago, on a typically cold and overcast day in upstate NY, I found myself scurrying around preparing for a two-week trip to Kenya and Tanzania, which left the next day.

    My father, a strong and soft-spoken sixty-two year old, had aspired to experience the great plains and animals of east Africa since childhood, and was deeply proud that he was able to pay for me to accompany him on his bucket-list adventure.

    Though I had been looking forward to the trip for months, I felt stressed, as I hadn’t yet packed and was struggling to ensure that everything was in place at work and at my new home before venturing off to seek adventure.

    After tying up loose ends with my boss and direct reports, I hurried home to double-check that my new sump pump was working before finally turning my attention to packing. At this point I was rushing, as I was trying to beat traffic en route to my uncle’s house, where I was staying in preparation for an early flight.

    I packed as fast and as thoroughly as I could and, as I finished, received a phone call from my girlfriend (now wife).

    “Babe… have you talked to your mom? I think something’s wrong.”

    Kerrin informed me that she had received two vague texts indicating something happened, though she wasn’t able to get a hold of my mother to get details. I thought nothing of it, but decided to check-in with my parents just to be sure.

    I tried calling my father, who always picked-up his phone, and got his voicemail twice before trying my mother, whose line was busy. On my third try, I got through and asked her what was going on.

    “Honey, there’s no easy way to say this. Your father just died.”

    She explained that he had passed out in the shower, that she had found him in a pool of blood, and that neither she, nor a team of paramedics, were able to resuscitate him. We later found out it was a heart attack.

    That night, after shedding many tears and conversing with a few family members, something profound happened: I experienced a deep feeling of gratitude for having had such a great father, a feeling that trumped my grief in a way I never could have imagined.     

    In the days to come, I found myself dealing with powerful emotions in highly constructive ways (a personal first). I also focused on celebrating my father’s fabulous life rather than cursing his untimely death, as my family hosted two wakes, a funeral, and two separate receptions that were surprisingly celebratory in nature.

    Though everyone was grieving the sudden loss of a healthy and happy family man, the ceremonies were peppered with a sense of gratitude and hopefulness that were inspiring.

    As strange as it sounds, no singular experience in my life has shaped or informed my ever-optimistic outlook more than my father dying. The experience completely reoriented my worldview and helped me appreciate the importance of gratitude, mindfulness, and my own emotional capacity at deeper levels.

    Interestingly enough, it also set me on a path toward balancing some of my worst tendencies—particularly impatience, self-doubt, and the need to always be “right”—and endowed me with more gratitude, more present-moment awareness, and a more Zen-like appreciation for life’s ups and downs.

    Here are a few takeaways from my loss and resulting growth, which have helped me become a happier, all around better human being. Perhaps something from my experience will help you become happier too.

    Mindfulness: More Than Just Meditation

    I still remember how busy I felt that day, and how insignificant each detail of my work, home, and packed suitcase came to be minutes later when I learned my father had passed.

    Like many, I’ve long struggled with managing my own inner-dialogue and negative self-talk, and would all too often let those negative scripts run unchecked.

    Going through the loss of my father forced me to live in the moment for the weeks and months to come, as it required me to be strong, supportive, and empathetic for the hundreds of people who were shocked and mourning the loss of Big Ed.

    Although I still don’t meditate as much as I could (something I’m working on), I’ve found that being more mindful has helped me stay sharper in meetings, more time consciousness, and even more focused and effective in my work.

    More importantly, though, it’s helped me feel happier. So many of us rush through our days, stressing out about getting everything done. But it’s impossible to be happy when we’re not fully present because you have to live in the moment to enjoy it.

    To cultivate a greater sense of mindfulness, all I did was start paying attention to my thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. I eventually added meditative practices to reinforce my present-state focus.

    I’ve also taken the time to integrate a minimum of one mindfulness practice into my daily routine. Sometimes, it’s as simple as repeating a single word or phrase while working out, or actively listening to a podcast on my drive home; redirecting my focus to the author’s voice every time my mind wanders.

    This simple trick has helped me become more aware and accepting of my thoughts, feelings, and emotional triggers, and less reactionary. It’s also helped me become less hurried and more conscious of the activities I say “yes” to, while cultivating a deeper appreciation for life’s little moments.

    Never Stop Growing: Your Abilities Are Not Fixed  

    Right before my father died, I had hit a wall both professionally and personally. At the time, I was managing a team of eight people on two separate job sites—a great gig given my field and age.

    My staff and I had worked really hard the previous two years to build out our programs, services, and resources, though I started to feel our efforts weren’t being replicated elsewhere in the organization. I felt slightly resentful, and had a hard time selling my staff on working hard and continually improving, as our efforts seemed to go unnoticed and underappreciated.

    On a personal level, I felt that I was running myself ragged. In addition to our busy work schedules, my wife and I were fostering dogs, volunteering in different capacities, and regularly commuting between upstate NY and Long Island to attend family functions.

    Despite how busy I was, I stopped growing personally and professionally, and found myself becoming more quick-tempered and close-minded. I was angry, frustrated, and depressed at work, and unknowingly developed a fixed mindset—thinking that my intelligence, abilities, and even station in life were stagnant rather than fluid.

    When my father died, every good deed I’d ever done, and then some, were repaid in the form of countless hugs, flower arrangements, meals, warm messages, and unexpected visits from people I hadn’t talked to in years. The support was incredible. It helped me detach me from my own self-pity, get out of my own head, and resolve to live a fuller and happier life.

    I began challenging and bettering myself in every aspect of my life. I started eating healthier, drinking less, and working out with a new vigor. I also resolved to be a more emotionally available friend and romantic partner, and completely changed my attitude on the job, knowing that my staff and I could improve.

    Six months later, Kerrin and I eloped in Hawaii and I received an offer from one of the best college’s in the country—direct bi-products of my new attitude and outlook.

    I’ve learned that no matter what is happening in life, we always have room to grow. And I’ve learned to ask those around me how I can get better—as an employee, a husband, father, and friend. This practice has helped make me become more self-aware and humble, while strengthening relationships with those closest to me.

    Gratitude: Practice May Not Make Perfect, But It Does a Lot of Good

    While I certainly wouldn’t characterize myself as “ungrateful” prior to my father’s death, the experience of losing him reinforced the importance of appreciating what you have while you have it.

    The night he died, I was hit with a wave of emotions and the deep sense of loss you’d expect from a surprise death. The feeling of immense gratitude came shortly thereafter, though, and helped carry me through the challenges of the weeks and months ahead, while putting me on a trajectory toward cultivating a deeper appreciation for everything positive in my life.

    Since then, I’ve made gratitude a daily practice. Every day, I find and name a few specific things or memories I’m thankful for.

    I’ve found that practicing gratitude during challenging times has helped me build my resiliency because no matter what happens, I can find things to take solace in. I now see happiness as something I control rather than a byproduct of life circumstances.

    Regardless of what’s going on in life, we can always name a few things we’re grateful for. If starting a gratitude journal is too blasé for you, do what my wife and I did and start your own “Jar of Awesome.”

    Every few days, write down one or two specific memories that you’re grateful for and place them in the jar. In just a few weeks, the jar will be filled. When you’re feeling down, pull out a few memories, read through them, and see how you feel. I’d be surprised if it didn’t help you reframe whatever setback you’re experiencing.

    Comfort with Your Own Emotions

    I used to be really uncomfortable with my emotions, and had a really hard time showing vulnerability. Going through the experience of having my best friends, former neighbors, and family members watch me cry in a semi-public setting humbled me, and set me on a path to being more aware of and comfortable with my own emotional range.

    What I realize now is that there’s strength in showing vulnerability. I’ve also learned that mindfully acknowledging and embracing my emotions has made me a much happier person.

    Four years removed from that experience, I default to hugs over handshakes, warm smiles to cautious head nods, and vulnerability to apprehension. In doing so, I’ve forged deeper bonds with friends and family members and have created more meaningful relationships with many of my colleagues.

    —

    I still think about my father every day. As much as I miss him, though, I’m deeply grateful for the time I had with him, and appreciative of the personal growth I’ve experienced as a byproduct of his death. I like the current day version of myself better than any previous iteration, and have him to thank for it.

  • When Life Feels Hard and Unfair: 4 Lessons That Helped Me Cope

    When Life Feels Hard and Unfair: 4 Lessons That Helped Me Cope

    “Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.” ~William James

    Two years ago, I gave birth to my second daughter via a planned C-section at thirty-seven weeks.

    My first daughter had been born via emergency C-section after seventeen hours of unmedicated labor. I had very much wanted a natural, intervention-free birth. Due to a number of issues, the surgery was so complicated that I was told it would be dangerous to ever go into labor, much less have a natural birth ever again.

    Of course, this was devastating for me.

    Still, I went into surgery on the morning of my daughter’s birth with hope and excitement. My second pregnancy had been extremely difficult and I was glad for it to be over. I was still heartbroken that I would never get the chance for a natural delivery, but at the same time there was a piece of me that was a bit relieved the decision had been taken away from me.

    My second C-section proved to be even more complicated than my first. The surgery went at a snail’s pace as the doctors tried to navigate the extensive scar tissue created by my first C-section. The spinal anesthesia made me unable to feel myself breathing even though I was breathing just fine, and I panicked and repeatedly questioned whether I was suffocating and going to die.

    Still, pictures of me and my daughter in the recovery room right after the birth show me smiling in a highly medicated but contented glow.

    It was a few minutes after those pictures were taken that the nurse noticed there was something wrong with my newborn’s breathing. It was labored and staggered. The medical team decided that they would take her to the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) to make sure everything was okay.

    In my post-surgical stupor, I didn’t think much of it. I figured they would observe her for a few hours, and she would be back in my arms by the time I made it out of recovery.

    I was wrong.

    My daughter spent the next ten days in the NICU with a diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension secondary to transient tachypnea. She was kept alive by various tubes and machines, and I got a crash course in C-PAPs, oxygen monitor readings, and feeding tubes.

    I wasn’t allowed to hold her for the first five days because her situation was so precarious and unstable.

    I knew it was extremely serious when her NICU roommate, a baby born three months early, was wheeled to another room because my daughter was going into crisis every time someone turned on a light or spoke too closely to her.

    It killed me to watch her covered in tubes and machines, unable to hold her, much less breastfeed her. I stood by, helplessly pumping milk every three hours and putting her life in the hands of the NICU nurses, who were clearly angels sent directly from heaven.

    I struggled with massive guilt that my body had failed me in my first childbirth experience, leading to the mandatory early C-section and all of its complications for my second daughter. I also felt guilty every time I left the NICU to spend time with my older daughter and every time I left my older daughter to go to the NICU.

    I was angry. Angry that this happened. Angry with myself for not appreciating how much worse it could have been when I was surrounded by parents and babies who would be spending months, not days, within the NICU’s walls.

    Despite the severity of her condition, my daughter’s story was one of mighty strength and resilience, and she left the NICU with no lasting complications—a major blessing for any NICU baby.

    My story was one of lessons learned: how to forgive myself, how to let go of what I want to be and embrace what is, how to truly live in the moment, and how to practice unconditional gratitude. Most of all, I discovered new depths to the meaning of the word love.

    Though it took me spending ten days with my daughter in the NICU to learn these lessons, they are universal and certainly don’t require a crisis to integrate them into even the most mundane aspects of our lives.

    I share them with you in the hopes that if you’re dealing with pain in your life, you will bring to it the knowledge that while the pain may be unavoidable, the suffering is always optional.

    Here’s what ten days in the NICU taught me:

    Focus on the present.

    For several days, my daughter’s condition seemed to get progressively worse before it got better.

    This made it very easy for me to get lost in a never-ending maze of what ifs, each more terrifying than the next.

    And yet, when I forced myself to focus on the moment, somehow things were always manageable.

    Yes, she was hooked up to a lot of scary and unpleasant machines, but she was surrounded by a nest of soft blankets, and for all she knew, she was still in the womb.

    Yes, she turned blue when she cried, but the nurses and doctors always got things stable quickly, and with no drama. They knew what they were doing, and I knew I could trust them.

    I learned quickly that the future was a place where the worst loomed both possible and probable. The present was a place where my daughter was safe, loved, and receiving some of the best care the world had to offer.

    If you find yourself in the middle of a crisis, you probably feel like you’re trapped in a whirlwind that’s pulling you in so many different directions, you’re having a hard time figuring out which way is up.

    Instead of picturing yourself as powerless against the chaos of the situation, try thinking of yourself as the eye of a storm. While chaos may reign around you, the present moment is always manageable.

    Remember that while the future seems scary with all its unknowns and possibilities, the future also doesn’t exist yet. All we have is this moment. And in this moment, there can be peace.

    Gratitude is always an option.

    When you’re in a place like the NICU, it’s not difficult to embrace gratitude. Everywhere I looked were babies and their families in situations far more dire than ours. I met parents who would be in the NICU for months, who had years or possibly lifetimes of lasting effects of premature birth and other complications to deal with.

    And then there were the parents whose baby would never get home, whose entire life would take place within the NICU walls.

    Gratitude helped me process my guilt and anger. It’s impossible to be angry and grateful at the same time, and so I would spend hours sitting next to my daughter, writing lists of all the things to be grateful for in this situation and imagining that my positive energy was surrounding her and helping her heal.

    When you feel like you’re drowning in guilt and anger, take your sense of internal power back by sitting down somewhere quiet and making a list of every positive aspect and every reason to be grateful for the situation that you can find.

    You may find that it’s hard to get started, but once you do, I guarantee you’ll find a sense of peace that no one and no situation can take away.

    Wanting life to be fair is a major block to peace.

    I have never suffered from the delusion that life is fair, but even as an adult, I have occasionally suffered from the delusion that it should be.

    My daughter’s time in the NICU freed me of that childish fantasy.

    I quickly realized that as long as I believe the universe is doing something unfair to me, I am giving away my power. And when I give away my power, it’s not the universe that’s being unfair to me, it’s me that’s being unfair to myself.

    I couldn’t change the fact that I was a mom with a baby in the NICU. What I could change was the kind of mom I was going to be for my daughter when she needed my presence and my peace, and not my indignation and my anger at the world.

    Was I going to be a mom who fell apart when something happened that I felt was unfair? Or was I going to be a mom who felt her feelings but didn’t allow them to determine her ability to be her best self in any given moment?

    The choice was always mine.

    As easy as it would be to feel powerless and therefore become powerless, I knew that this time the stakes were too high to do that. My daughter needed me, and I needed me to be the best version of myself.

    Fairness is a fluid thing, and I came to realize that I had the power to stack the “fairness” greatly in my daughter’s favor by letting go of “unfair” and empowering myself with thoughts of love and gratitude.

    If you feel that something unfair has happened to you, ask yourself these questions: Do I want to use my limited energy resisting reality, causing myself pain in the process? How could I use that energy in a more constructive way?

    You may be surprised at what you come up with.

    We can’t always see the whole picture.

    As painful as it was to watch my daughter struggle physically and not be able to hold her or comfort her in any real way, I had to admit to myself that I couldn’t say for sure this experience wasn’t intentional from the perspective of her soul.

    Who was I to say that her soul didn’t pick a body that needed intensive care for the first ten days of its life on purpose because it had a larger plan that I had no capacity to understand?

    The truth, I realized, was that I couldn’t possibly understand how the universe works and why seemingly bad things happen to innocent people. I could say for sure that all of the difficult, challenging, and painful experiences in my life—this one included—had ultimately made me a stronger, wiser, and more peaceful person.

    So how could I see my daughter’s experience as all bad?

    If you’re struggling, consider the possibility that you don’t have all the information needed to make an accurate judgment of the situation. Realize that there might be more to it than meets the eye. This doesn’t require you to hold the same spiritual beliefs I hold; it just means considering that sometimes life’s hardest struggles end up being blessings in disguise.

    If you’re like me, doing this will help you to look at the situation with less interpretation and indignation, and less inflamed thinking and aversion. In other words, it will give you more peace, and with peace comes your ability to be present with the ones you love.

    Sometimes you have to let go of what you wanted so you can focus on doing what’s needed—and so the pain can let go of you.

    I wanted to love my newborn my way: by holding her in my arms, cuddling and kissing her, and feeding her from my breast.

    These were not the ways that she was able to receive love in her first days of life, and so I needed to let go of my desires and focus on the ways I could love her given the present circumstances: by pumping milk for her to receive through a feeding tube, touching her arm with my finger, praying for her, and giving her unconditional loving energy.

    Loving my daughter without boundaries, without my own preconceived notions of what that love should look like, required keeping my heart open at the exact moment I wanted to close it. I wanted to prepare for the worst, to problem-solve and plan. I wanted to control the situation in any way I possibly could.

    But I also realized that doing this would cause me to dissolve in a puddle of fear; to close myself off to the opportunities that existed right in front of me, in that moment, to love my daughter.

    And so, for her sake, I learned to surrender in order to keep my heart open and keep her surrounded by the presence of love.

    If you find yourself clinging to how you wanted things to be, ask yourself if this is limiting your ability to do what’s needed. Your current situation might not be what you wanted, but it’s more likely to improve if you accept what is, show up fully, and do what you need to do to be your best self regardless.

    —

    As I write this today, my daughter’s second birthday, I share with you the lessons I believe she came into this world knowing: that love, truth, peace, and inner happiness are always available to us no matter what happens in our lives.

    What have the painful or traumatic events in your life taught you?

  • Surviving Loss: You Always Have Choice

    Surviving Loss: You Always Have Choice

    “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” ~Stephen Covey

    One ordinary night after an ordinary day of work and family, I went to bed a mother, wife, teacher, writer-person.

    I remember falling asleep between sentences exchanged with my husband after an evening spent with just the two of us on our patio, something we rarely seemed to find the time to do in our busy lives. We promised each other that we’d make a concerted effort to have more of these “dates.”

    The next morning, on what was supposed to be another ordinary day, I got out of bed and found my husband collapsed on the living room floor.

    Our three young children slept in the nearby bedrooms as the 911 operator guided me through chest compressions.

    Our babies, ages six, three, and one, slept as the firemen wheeled their father out of our home. They were sleeping when my parents rushed over so I could follow the ambulance to the hospital. I imagine they were still asleep when I was told by a doctor that there was “nothing they could do.”

    The moment I officially became a thirty-four-year-old widow.

    Widow.

    It’s a word that sticks to your tongue, something you want to knock on wood to prevent. It makes people avoid eye contact with you. It undermines your entire identity, forcing you into a new existence filled with the brutal realities of a life you didn’t sign up for and would never want.

    Yesterday I was me. Today I am somebody else. I felt like a child protesting sleep before nap time. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna.

    Maybe it wasn’t real. If I didn’t look at it, it might go away. 

    Except it wouldn’t.

    I never contemplated this scenario as an option and I wasn’t prepared for the devastation. I don’t know if advanced warning would have helped, but something about the unexpectedness felt like even more of an injustice.

    In a moment, my life was ripped in half and I felt a total loss of control of body and mind. I didn’t recognize myself. My brain felt like it was floating away and I couldn’t remember details.

    I couldn’t sleep or eat.

    But the pain I will never forget: a deep, searing kind that transcended anything physical.

    There are practical matters to consider when one becomes a widow. Decisions nobody wants to think about, particularly when you are numb with grief. I found myself immediately bombarded with choices.

    Mortuary choices. Funeral service choices. Financial choices. Parenting choices. Even stupid, little choices, like where to buy gas after having a husband who took care of that chore for the last ten years.

    Humans generally dislike hard choices. Inconvenient choices. Sad choices. Uncomfortable choices. Confrontational choices. Too-many-choices.

    When you are used to making decisions with another person, you might feel nervous and unsteady venturing out into the world alone. I remembered that once upon a time I lived alone and made decisions by myself, but now I felt out of practice.

    I questioned my skills and capability. The grief made me forgetful, emotional, angry, sad, empty, and scared.

    I frequently questioned my reality. I wondered if everything was always just a mirage in my head. Perhaps I was never married. It had to be a dream, or maybe a cruel trick, and now the rug was pulled out from beneath my feet.

    In the days after my husband passed away, my six year old was moping around the house. I knew in my gut what choice I had to make. For him. For me. For all of us.

    On a whim I grabbed a pen and paper and scribbled this down:

    We have two choices: 1) Lay down and crumble, or 2) Get up, do great things, and make Daddy proud.

    I circled the second choice. My son listened as I explained. He hung on to my every word and facial expression.

    I knew I had to channel everything inside of me to convey to him that we would be okay, even if I wasn’t convinced of it myself. I knew I had to lead.

    We didn’t choose this path.

    But this was our life now and we still have a lot of good years left to live.

    Nobody prepares us for the sludge in life, but this is exactly what being human is about: the good, the bad, the painful, the happy, the sad, the everything-in-between.

    We can choose to sit down and surrender to our current circumstances, or we can get up, dust ourselves off, hold our heads up high and move forward.

    It will hurt.

    We’ll feel wobbly at first.

    But we can do it. We are capable. We are strong. We still have a lot of love inside of our hearts to do great things.

    The only other option was not an option for us.

    People often say that good things can happen out of the bad. I’m here to tell you that it is true.

    In the horror of it all, buried in the pain and the raw emotion, there was something magical and enlightening about loss. It exposed a side of life that I never previously experienced. It’s a strange, curious feeling that shocks you to the core and simultaneously makes you realize that there is still so much more to learn and discover about life. It can’t be over yet.

    Your perspective will change. Everything about your thinking will forever change.

    This is good and bad.

    You will mourn the loss of your innocence and the days of naivety, but in return you will discover that you have newfound empathy, an ability to feel other people’s pain deep in your bones. You become sensitive to everyone else’s losses: the person going through a divorce, the couple who lost a baby, the child in a dysfunctional home, the person struggling to fight cancer.

    You know what suffering feels like. You’ve walked through hell and your calloused feet are stronger because of it.

    Nobody escapes this life without suffering, and now it is your turn. Tomorrow it might be someone else’s. But the universe doesn’t keep score, so you shouldn’t either. Acknowledging that you can’t control everything is part of your liberation process. It isn’t personal. It just is.

    When life doesn’t go as planned, we must hold on to the knowledge and hope that we still have choices, and that we are strong enough to make them.

    There is always Plan B. Plan C. Plan D.

    I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but this is what I’ve learned about making choices and how to navigate through difficult times.

    Invest in Your Health

    The temptation is out there to drown your sorrows in unhealthy habits that temporarily make you feel good. A quick fix always sounds great, but you’re in this for the long haul. There are no quick fixes to help you rebuild the rest of your life.

    Sleep may feel impossible. Or maybe you’re sleeping too much. Exercise may not be a priority. You might eat horribly.

    Choosing healthier habits—working out, getting enough sleep, eating well, and staying away from substance abuse—will promote good health. If your body isn’t well, it will permeate all aspects of your life in a negative and destructive way.

    Strive for balance, reflect regularly, and readjust when it seems you are going astray. Staying healthy will help make the mental agony of loss a little easier to overcome.

    Avoid Isolation

    It is vital to maintain connections with the people who love you. Even when you don’t feel like seeing anyone, it’s important not to isolate yourself. Your friends and family will form a chain of love around you in the early days of loss and help you get through the rough patches.

    Sometimes they won’t know what to say. Actually, most of the time they won’t know what to say. Forgive them. Know that they have good intentions.

    Everyone is bumbling their way through this experience. Most people want to help, they just might not know where to start. Don’t build walls around yourself. Let them in. You won’t regret it.

    This doesn’t mean you become a doormat. It is important for your mental health to establish boundaries with people, particularly with family who can have a tendency to become too comfortable with us and inadvertently cause us pain. You must enforce these boundaries, even when it feels uncomfortable.

    Express your feelings and don’t apologize for them. Most people in your life will not understand firsthand what you are going through. They won’t even know when they have crossed the line. They may even blame you for getting upset.

    People are not perfect, so don’t hold on to their mistakes and don’t hold it against them. It will only drive you crazy. Forgive soon and often. Also, you will learn who your closest allies are, who you can trust with your innermost feelings, and who you can lean on. These people will play a tremendous part in your healing process.

    Figure Out What You Love

    Our passion is what keeps us afloat day in and day out. Doing what you love will help your sanity during the most tumultuous times. It is imperative that you remember or discover what makes you happy.

    For me, it’s writing fiction. Creating characters and getting lost in story worlds is my escape. It’s what nourishes my soul on my most painful of days. I also enjoy traveling, music, exercise, reading, and staying busy in my community.

    You must determine your own personal interests. Make a list. Go out and do them. Do not let the loss define you. You are so much more than that. You get to define yourself. You make those choices.

    Make Time for Yourself

    I’m now an only parent of three young children. Time is a rare commodity, but it’s not extinct. I have to actively pursue it and I’ve become skilled at scheduling and time management. I share with others that if I can have a full-time job, remain active in my community, parent my children without a spouse, and still find time to write and do the things that I love, then they can too. We all can.

    I don’t have any superpowers. I figured out how to make time. I used my choices to prioritize. I make mistakes and I adjust. I make more mistakes and I adjust again.

    Banish “I can’t” from your thoughts and vocabulary. Eliminate “I don’t have time.”

    Choose to make time for yourself. Even a little bit of time will help. Sometimes I have to get creative about making it happen, but I am committed to loving myself.

    Stay Busy

    Don’t stay home and allow yourself drown in sorrow. One of the worst things to do in the midst of surviving loss is to have time to twiddle your thumbs and wallow in self-pity. There will be a time and a place for the wallowing, but you don’t want it to consume your life. You don’t want to get stuck there.

    Acknowledge the feeling, make space for it, feel it, and then move on.

    Being a young widow with small children is both a curse and a stroke of luck. Children don’t have time for wallowing. They still need to eat, be changed, entertained, and cared for every single day. There is no such thing as taking a break from those responsibilities. It is what kept me going during my toughest times.

    If you don’t have this in your life, then you’ll need to create the “busy-ness.” An object in motion stays in motion. Keeping your mind occupied is healthy and important.

    Forgive Yourself Soon and Often

    You’re going to have good days and bad days. I have great weeks when I feel like I’m on top of the world and doing an amazing job. The next week I might feel like a hysterical mess. The waves come and go. That’s what they do. Ebb and flow. It’s normal.

    Allow yourself time to cope with the bad days. Recognize the negative feelings and understand that they are only visitors in your mind. Temporary visitors. They will go away.

    When the bad thoughts visit, take a bubble bath. Splurge on nice sheets and comfy slippers or whatever little comforts you want to indulge in. Read something fun instead of tackling work. Give yourself permission to relax.

    Ride out the bad wave and wake up the next morning with a fresh start.

    Forgive yourself. This is the most important advice I can give you. On some days you may feel your loss morph into a three-headed monster in your head. You’ll hate yourself. You’ll hate the universe. You’ll hate the person you lost and you’ll start feeling hate backing you into a corner. That’s when you have to push it back. Acknowledge it in the room, compartmentalize, and then choose to not let it consume you. It will be a struggle.

    I often ask myself at the end of a day: Did I do my best? Did I do everything I could’ve done?

    If the answer is yes, then that’s it. Nothing else I could’ve done.

    If the answer is no, then I make a concerted effort to do a little bit better tomorrow.

    But in that moment, it’s okay to pause. Reset. Take a break to do something happy. There are many more chapters left in your story.

    At the end of the day, everyone has to go through their experience of surviving loss in their own way. Life doesn’t always go as planned, but that doesn’t mean your life is over. You get to choose what is next. That is your power. Remember, you are not alone.

  • To Fully Heal Your Broken Heart, Make Sure You Do This

    To Fully Heal Your Broken Heart, Make Sure You Do This

    Broken heart

    “Grief is healthy and it is healing.” ~Richard Moss

    When I was a little girl there was this belief floating around in my head that there was only one person. One person who was my soulmate. One person who could love me. I think the belief was formed by some concoction of Disney movies, religion, and American culture.

    What’s worse than this belief is that I somehow found myself afraid that I wouldn’t even have one person. I was afraid I would be alone. Forever.

    I don’t know when I adopted the belief that I wasn’t enough, that I might not find someone, that I was unlovable. My mom did her best to reassure me, but it didn’t quite do the trick.

    Self-love is the work we have to do ourselves. No one else can give us that gift, no matter how young we happen to be. 

    Into my third decade of life I did the deep work that led me to discover what it actually meant to love myself. My life transformed in so many incredible ways, and then I no longer worried about whether there was someone out there who would love me. I knew I was lovable, and by more than one person.

    At some later point I met a man. I liked him, but there were some red flags. He was a bit flaky, and he lacked the ability to communicate maturely. I was about to walk away, and then suddenly everything changed. The red flags turned green, and we pranced off into the moonlight.

    That red lack-of-communication flag never really turned green. Nothing had actually changed. He just hid who he really was until he felt suffocated and invisible. After almost a year of living like this he left me with no warning.

    For a long time I felt so much pain that my entire being melted into sorrow. I fell into a deep depression and reached out to a spiritual teacher who wrote me this:

    Please do not indulge any thought that attacks yourself or even your ex-boyfriend. Grief is healthy and it is healing.

    I wrote back to this teacher that I wasn’t indulging in negative thoughts, that the pain was so overwhelming that I felt no anger, just the deepest sadness I’d ever felt.

    I spent a lot of time in bed feeling my pain, crying, and thinking. This was a man who I was building a life with. This was a man I opened my whole heart to. This man showed me love and support like I’d never experienced before. And then he swiftly took it all away. As I lay in bed for days with a churning mind the stories began to surface in whispers:

    See, I am unlovable. He didn’t think I was worth loving.  I’m not enough.

    And the stories grew louder.

    “Please do not indulge any thought that attacks yourself.”

    The stories we tell ourselves that deny the essence of who we are may be so deeply rooted that we’re unconscious of their presence. I was attacking myself. Each time I allowed these beliefs to hold an ounce of truth I was attacking myself.

    So I worked on loving myself instead. I worked on seeing the truth of who I was in each moment. The truth I found was this: I am worth loving. I am enough. I am lovable. I am beautiful. I am whole. All of this is true right now, in every single moment I am living. 

    A few months into my grief, the anger began to surface, and I started to vilify him. I was tired of feeling the pain, so my mind created stories about him to make me feel better. I told myself he was incapable of loving me, that he couldn’t allow me to be fully me. I thought about how he was a selfish person for treating me the way he did.

    “Please do not indulge any thought that attacks yourself or even your ex-boyfriend.”

    My teacher was right. Those stories didn’t do my ex justice. They didn’t honor the time we shared together. And they didn’t actually serve me. They were a weak tool to help me avoid my pain.

    The truth is simply that he wasn’t my person anymore. And that didn’t make him wrong. It didn’t make him bad. I didn’t have to turn him into a villain to heal my wounds. I didn’t have to diminish my pain or justify his actions. I could simply allow for the pain and allow for the healing.

    “Grief is healthy and it is healing.”

    That breakup took me down, down, down. It made me forget who I am so I could find myself again. It was the greatest gift I have been given in a very long time, and it took me many months to recognize the gift at all.

    Grief is healthy and it is healing. I didn’t need to make up stories to ease my pain because the more I hid from it the more it had a hold on me. Instead, I chose to let the pain wash over me. I allowed it to teach me. That’s how grief can become a gift.

    We don’t need to hold on to old lovers, torturing ourselves with “what-ifs” that don’t serve us.

    We don’t need to condemn ourselves for being imperfect, for being too much, for not doing all the right things.

    And we don’t need to denigrate the people we have loved because they hurt us.

    I have never been more confident that I will have an incredible partner in life one day. You can too. But first you have to let go of that story, whether you’ve adopted it as a child or created it to feel less pain as an adult. Stop shrinking yourself down because you won’t let go.

    Allow for the grief so you can begin to truly heal. Through healing you will grow more fully into yourself, and from that place you will discover the truth. Release the burdens of storytelling. You don’t actually need them. You are strong enough to heal on your own.

  • Coping with Suicide Loss: 9 Lessons for Hope and Healing

    Coping with Suicide Loss: 9 Lessons for Hope and Healing

    Man watching the sunset

    “It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” ~Marianne Williamson

    “That boy is one in a million, Jill. He’s one in a million.”

    These were my grandfather’s words to my mum about my brother, Mitch, when he was just a kid. He really was one in a million—a light that shone so bright as a child and early teen, only to then fade into shadows of desperation and defeat as he grew into adulthood.

    No one really knows what’s going on in someone else’s mind, especially when a person refuses to let you in. Mitch never let anyone in. On October 1st, 2002 he decided to leave at the age of twenty-six. We were one short on our team now. Our family puzzle was missing a vital piece.

    That night, I woke up around 1am to my mum sitting at my bedside in her robe. She sobbed and said, “He was such a troubled, troubled soul.” Right then I knew what had happened.

    I held my mum in an embrace that never wanted to end. And as the tsunami of shock and fear crashed over me, I prayed that this was all some bad nightmare I’d wake up from.

    At the time, I thought my world had ended. Little did I know, it had just begun.

    In the beginning after Mitch took his life, I wanted to run and hide. I couldn’t shake the shame and guilt. The societal and cultural stigma attached to suicide as a horrible, selfish act stuck to me like glue.

    I felt like our family had caught some bad disease and any one of us could be next. Like we had the suicide gene and it was only a matter of time another family member or I chose to go against the “normalcy” of a life lived.

    Even though the past eight years of Mitch’s life were shrouded in depression, the guilt of not doing enough kept replaying in my mind.

    I’d imagine saving the day and bursting into the hotel room where he spent his final hours and convincing him there was another way. Grief whispered to me, there had to be another way for him to be happy. I didn’t realize at the time that the only person that can heal you is you.

    Then there was the anger. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror. The bathroom became a torture chamber.

    However, in the midst of my grief something else happened. I felt a closer connection to my own energy at the core of my being. I believe this was due in part to the loss of the physical relationship with Mitch; organically, I switched gears to reconnect on a different level.

    Feeling broken after such a loss, funnily enough, cracked open a channel within me that lay dormant and ignored.

    It was an odd feeling, and one I didn’t welcome because of my inner resistance to change. At the time, I preferred to remain stuck in suffering, but the invitation was there.

    The better part of my twenties was awfully confusing because I allowed myself to wallow in pain. As a result, I lacked intimacy in relationships, I was financially dependent, I lacked commitment to my career, and I lost my old zest for life.

    However, the beauty of confusion is that it allowed me to seek the answers I was looking for. The key was to ask the right questions.

    The right questions led me to lean into my pain head on, address it, and acknowledge the energetic essence within me rising to the surface. Asking the right questions led me to a shift in thinking and helped me learn some valuable lessons.

    At the end of the day I had a choice to make: Was I willing to genuinely look inside? Did I wish to grow from the experience? Did Mitch want me to carry the weight of his loss upon my shoulders until my dying day? Did I want to swim in the continuity of life or sink in my own sorrow?

    Along your own path to healing after suicide loss or personal crisis, these nine suggestions might help.

    1. Be willing to change your concept of yourself.

    This means changing what you believe to be true about your outer and inner self-concept. It means letting go of the old stories, beliefs, thoughts, and patterns that don’t serve you and keep you stuck in the past.

    For me, the old stories, beliefs, and thoughts centered around suicide loss being my eternal crutch to bear, something that was going to forever limit my capacity to find joy in anything I did. I told myself I didn’t have the power to heal my life—that included being successful in whatever I placed my attention on.

    When you redefine what you are capable of on the outside and when you reconnect to your higher power on the inside, you begin to unlock what is authentically you.

    When you honor what is authentically you, void of all past luggage and conditioning, you unlock a greater love within. A connection that self-heals and plants you in the present with gratitude in your heart—that includes the life you have lost. By honoring you, you honor them. There is no separation.

    2. Be willing to externalize your grief.

    Your grief has intelligence. Let it tell you know it knows. Vomit it all up, don’t wretch. Open the latch and let the dam spill over. Sometimes when all the tears are cried there is no room for anything else except a smile and laughter. There is strength in vulnerability and healing in releasing. Talk, cry, write, shout, exercise, and help others.

    3. Be willing to go within.

    This lovely world of ours is a mirror. Your outer state is a reflection of your inner state. Self-healing and self-love start with connecting to your inner source, your higher power.

    Meditate. Meditation will create a clear, open channel between the heart and the mind allowing for them to work in synchrony. Anxiety, addiction, and obsession over your loss will slowly melt away because you are grounded in the loop of life. Where there is grief, there is also relief.

    You don’t have to be spiritual or religious. If you are a skeptic and don’t buy into what ancient traditions and great masters have known for thousands of years, and you rely on scientific fact, then look no further to what the world’s leading neuroscientists and physicists are saying.

    There is an underlying intelligence that binds this whole place together. You are not separate from anything else that exists on this planet. You are made of the same stuff! To think you are any different is the height of arrogance. To tap into its power, sit with it in silence. Join with it.

    In terms of healing after a loss, consistent meditation, day and night, is one of the most powerful practices, if not the most powerful, for self-healing and overall well-being. I have witnessed dramatic shifts in awareness within myself with consistent meditation after loss.

    I have come to recognize that I am not the thoughts in my head. I have become more aware of my own thoughts, as opposed to becoming attached to them.

    Thoughts are neither good nor bad, but the moment I place an emotional attachment to them, that’s when they become problematic. With practice, I’ve learned to step back behind the negative chatter and catch myself buying into thoughts that are rooted in the past. By no means am I master of this, but I am far better than I used to be.

    4. Be willing to process and clear the pain.

    Again, you have a choice. I’d suggest being brave and honest. A whole new world awaits you when you are willing to do the work.

    That is, be willing to externalize your grief, to self-inquire, and feel to heal. To face your hurt head on instead of ignoring it for years. That, I can tell you now, will come back to bite you at some stage.

    You can run, but you can’t hide; sooner or later your hurt will spill out into your relationships, finances, family, health, or career. The wiser choice is to work with it, not against it.

    When you are willing to process the guilt, shame, blame, anger, depression, isolation, and loneliness, you begin to unlock your authentic self. You strip away the layers to your greatness.

    The opportunity to view yourself and this world through a new lens is available to you. You will begin to see that with grief there is also relief. You may not witness it straight away, but life has a way of balancing itself out. It’s always the end of life that gives life a chance. This greatest loss of yours can become your greatest gift. My life is proof of that.

    5. Be willing to see your life beyond your loss.

    A question that needs to be asked after we have grieved our loss: Now that this has happened to us, what are we going to do about it?

    Am I going to use this loss to grow, learn, share, give, create, and love more? It’s up to you. I’ve chosen not to do these things in the past and it led to a depressive state. Swim with life as it continues on and grows or sink in the past that doesn’t exist?

    There is something great for you in the horizon. This loss is your trigger, your catalyst to peel back the layers and discover what music dances in your heart.

    6. Be willing to accept the value of challenge.

    What if life’s greatest challenges and voids were windows into living your most inspired, creative, and authentic self?

    In the words of Dr. John Demartini, “Your greatest voids create your highest values. And your highest values lead you to feel grateful for the synchronous balance in life—both pain and pleasure, challenge and support—that brings you closer to fulfilling what is most meaningful.”

    There is potential value in every situation. Grief is not exempt of this. Grief is a part of life, and to exclude the balance of death leaves us in this lop-sided view of the world.

    Today we constantly seek pleasure, we seek support, and we desire acceptance. The trouble is that grief leaves us with deep pain and with a perceived greater challenge, and if you have experienced a suicide loss, the challenge cuts deep within a family context. In our case, a family of six becoming five felt like a gaping hole deeper than the Grand Canyon.

    I now look at the sadness of losing my brother as the most instructive thing that has ever happened to me. His death didn’t have to remain in the way of my life, but more so, on the way to unlocking how I wanted to live my life and what I wanted to share and contribute.

    Mitch taught me that my time here is limited and to go after what really makes me happy. To find my joy and share it with the world. His death was a reminder to have fun and not take it too seriously. No one knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, so you might as well enjoy the moment—all that we have! For this, I can’t thank him enough.

    I have no doubts he is celebrating with me. I know this because for him to not want me to seek the benefits, opportunities, and inspiring lessons in his passing would be to deny the significance and meaning I have found through the life he lived, and in his passing.

    7. Be willing to generate energy.

    You have to generate it in order for you to have it!

    That’s why in these times of challenge you need to remember to do the things that you love. For me, I needed to swim in the ocean daily, go on long bush walks, hang out with friends even when I didn’t feel like leaving the house, and set aside time to write whatever it was they wanted to spill onto the page.

    You must endeavor to feed yourself joy. Things you love to do and things you loved to do with your loved one that’s passed.

    Don’t become the stale water in the pond. Seek to sit in that rubber tube and flow with the current of the river.

    8. Be willing to forgive yourself and your loved one.

    Their death is not your fault. It’s very easy to blame yourself and others around you. We should have done more! How did I not see the signs? I can’t live with myself—what kind of mother/father am I?

    Hold up! Drop it. Have some compassion for yourself. You did what you could with the awareness you had at the time. It was their choice to go—an end to their own pain and suffering they unfortunately could see no way out of.

    As you forgive others, you begin to forgive yourself. When you stop focusing on their choice to go, you will stop punishing yourself for your own.

    To quote Marianne Williamson, “Forgiveness releases the past to divine correction and the future to new possibilities. Whatever it was that happened to you, it is over. It happened in the past; in the present, it does not exist unless you bring it with you. Nothing anyone has ever done to you has permanent effects, unless you hold on to it permanently.”

    9. Be willing to surrender.

    Here’s a simple equation: Open mind = open heart = living authentically you.

    When you absorb and take action on the other eight lessons, you will become more open to something much bigger than you could have imagined for your life after your loss. You must be willing to give up your attachments to the outcome of your life after suicide loss.

    I does get better. There is light at the end of the tunnel. You will be okay. In fact you will be better than okay. But you must keep moving. This loss has left a giant scar, but scars tell stories. Make this scar the catalyst for you to know and love yourself more than you have ever have before. In the words of Anita Moorjani, “Love yourself like your life depends on it, because it does!”

    There is hope and there is happiness. Life isn’t the same without them, but that’s okay. You’re here now and it’s up to you what you want to do with the precious time you have been gifted.

  • Why We Shouldn’t Rush or Feel Guilty About Emotional Pain

    Why We Shouldn’t Rush or Feel Guilty About Emotional Pain

    Deppresive Man

    “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

    In July 2012, a conversation changed my life.

    Prior to this, I had been struggling to right myself after a difficult loss. Several months had passed, yet I continued to revisit the same sad, angry place again and again. I believed the presence of these difficult emotions meant I was “doing it all wrong.”

    I thought, if I could figure out why these feelings were so persistent, I could make them vanish altogether. To assist in the quest, I enlisted the help of a spiritual mentor.

    I very carefully explained to him that, despite reading books, exercising, spending time with loved ones, eating good food, working, and indulging my passions and hobbies, the daily waves of sadness were still so strong it seemed as if I would drown in their undertow.

    “If I am doing all of the ‘right’ things,” I implored, “why am I still feeling this way?” If I had the answer to this question, surely I could be free of all of this nonsense and get my life back to normal (or something close to that).

    With the kindest eyes and gentlest smile, the man explained to me that the problem wasn’t anger, sadness, or loneliness—these were normal, healthy reactions to loss. The real issue was my erroneous belief that pain could be controlled with logic.

    What the…what now?

    Instinctively, I wanted to resist his rendition of my predicament. First, because my life’s work up until that point had been helping others “make sense” of their suffering. So, if pain could not be controlled, how could I help console those seeking pain relief?

    Secondly, my shame filter translated his gentle statement into, “What’s up, control freak?!”

    Shame does not allow for kind discourse.

    Once my resistance subsided, I realized the guru was right: False ideology was preferable to being with sadness, anger, and loneliness, the end date of which could not be predicted or scheduled. Further, I just plain old didn’t like how I had been humbled by loss.

    As the words left my mentor’s lips, something inside of me shifted. I did not feel angry, sad, or scared. A little annoyed, yes—sort of like a child being invited to part with her favorite blankie.

    The predominant feeling in that moment was relief.

    Once fully felt and accepted, the guru explained, emotional states will naturally dissipate over time. The determination to find out “why” was an unnecessary resistance to a tide that simply needed to ebb and flow on its own course. Thus far, swimming against the current did was doing little more than making my arms tired.

    I set a conscious intention that day: to do my best to let the waves of grief carry me wherever I was meant to go.

    It wasn’t all sunshine, rainbows, and Oprah Winfrey moments after that. In fact, it pretty much sucked for a while. But, after two or three months of swimming with the current, I felt more confident in my ability to survive the tide.

    Anyone who has lived or loved has been privy to emotions that seem to come and go without explanation. I believe we cannot control how we feel, but we can control how we choose to respond to these feelings when we have them.

    Healing resides in how we choose to respond to pain.

    Here are some things to keep in mind the next time the waters feel turbulent:

    1. Feelings do not have brains.

    Logic cannot “fix” feelings because feelings are not broken. Sometimes we are lucky enough to see a clear path between our heads and our hearts. For example, when someone says something hurtful, we understand why we may feel angry or hurt.

    There will also be times when feelings don’t make sense. They don’t need to. Whether your feelings have a logical explanation or not, recognize them as valid and trust that, when given permission to exist, they will eventually pass. (I promise they will.)

    2. The presence of pain is not an indication of failure.

    There will be times when pain persists, even though we are doing all of the “right things.” This does not mean that you have failed at anything. It just means you may need more time (see #3).

    Failure is the voice of shame. Shame simply heaps suffering on top of preexisting pain. No one deserves this, including you, so try to talk to yourself as you would a beloved friend when shame surfaces.

    3. There is no timeline for things that cannot be scheduled or controlled.

    Give yourself time and take as much of it as you need.

    4. Instead of fixating on why, ask what and how.

    Shift your attention away from why and ask yourself what’s happening in the present moment and how you feel about it. Loving acknowledgement is the first step toward acceptance.

    More often than not, “why” is a signpost for the inner child who falsely believes pain should not be part of life. Your feelings are a testament to your aliveness. The next time you hear yourself asking “why” you feel the way you do, I invite you to breathe, lean back, and let the tide carry you wherever you were meant to go.