Tiny Buddha

Tag: mourning

  • The Truth About Grieving: There Are No Rules for Healing

    The Truth About Grieving: There Are No Rules for Healing

    Here’s what I know about grief: There is no measuring stick.

    The loss of a mother, father, sister, brother (or all of the above), the loss of a husband, wife, lover, boyfriend, girlfriend, or life partner, the loss of a best friend, dear friend, or close friend, the loss of a mentor, teacher, guider, inspirer
 Who’s to measure? Who’s to say how profoundly those losses may or may not break our hearts?

    There are no rules.

    The loss of a happy, loving relationship may be far easier to survive than the loss of a troubled one.

    A lover may feel overwhelmed by sadness years after a husband remarries and starts a family.

    A close friend may feel as much loss and sorrow as a best friend.

    When a person dies, they may have 10, 100, 1,000 friends, or even more grieving them. When Judy Garland died, so many people in the gay community grieved her loss that it was a contributor to the Stonewall riots and the beginning of the gay rights movement.

    At first, when you lose someone, friends, distant and otherwise, shower you with messages and cards saying things like “This, too, shall pass” and “You are strong; you will get through this.” The Jewish religion gives you a week to “sit shiva.” You cover the mirrors. (Who wants to look at such a sad face anyway?!) You wear slippers. People bring you casseroles. You are expected to spend an entire week crying.

    Two, maybe three weeks later, no one asks, “How are you feeling?” No more cards come in the mail. No more “May her memory be a blessing” messages on Facebook. Some friends avoid you for months, saying they “want to give you time to mourn.”

    The overwhelming message feels like, “Times up! Move on! Cheer up!”

    No one seems comfortable around grief.

    Two weeks after I lost my mother, my girlfriend at the time decided to break up with me. She said she loved me (is that love?), but she loved the happy, fun, cheerful Rossi she met, not this sad, brooding, blonde mess.

    I love NOT being with her anymore.

    As much as people like to set limits, there is no time limit on grief.

    I lost my mother, Harriet, thirty-three years ago. A Jewish mother’s love can be suffocating, yes, but also like a vast ocean of endless warmth. I wish I could swim in that ocean one more time.

    “Get over it; she was just a friend.”Just?

    I still mourn the loss of my mentor and friend Catherine Hopper, who passed away five decades ago. I was only eight years old when Catherine died. I can still smell the powder foundation she slapped on her face with abandon.

    Some people feel they are in a grief competition. They downplay your grief by talking up their own (far superior) grief. What is this, the Grief Olympics? What is the medal, a lifetime supply of tissues?

    2022 was my death year. I may always think of it that way. I lost my dear friend Kathryn, my best friend since childhood, Suzy, my friend and co-worker BB, and my sister, Yaya. I thought I was done with death after 2022, but I lost my brother, Mendel, on Halloween the following year.

    I’d like to say that I took the time to mourn each loss and move on before the next came, but it felt more like standing in the ocean getting toppled by a wave. Each time I came up for air, I was toppled by another.

    Most people assumed I would have the hardest time losing my sister and brother. I had more trouble losing Suzy. She was the person I most likely would have been talking to about losing my sister and my brother. She’d known them both since we were children.

    At fifty-nine years old, I found myself to be the last surviving member of my family. My mother used to call herself “The Last of the Mohicans.” At the age of forty-six, she was the last surviving member of her family. Yet another thing my mother and I have in common. This is not a baton I want to carry.

    For eighteen years, BB was the person I could lean on professionally. If I were inclined to call in sick (something I rarely do), it would be okay because BB would be there. I think of our van rides to events together like the rings in a tree. I can trace where I was in my life and in our friendship by the depth of our van chats. Our first rides together, we talked about lemons, limes, and rosemary focaccia. Our last rides together, we talked about heartbreak and love.

    My relationship with my brother, Mendel, was problematic and troubled, riddled with the hypocrisy that often accompanies extreme religion. In some ways, his loss has been the hardest. I mourn the brother I never had as much as the brother I did have.

    I watched a movie on a JetBlue flight in which the main character was crying. His son asked him why he was crying, and he said, “Because I used to be a brother.” He had lost not only his siblings but also his identity as a brother.

    I started crying too, much to the discomfort of the frazzled woman sitting next to me. I used to be a sister. I used to be a daughter.

    In all the many words meant to support and comfort me these last few years, the ones that made me feel the most loved were when my partner, Lyla, decided weeks and months later to start each morning by saying, “Good morning, Honey. I love you. How is your heart?”

    All had gone quiet, but not my morning messages: How is your heart?

    These days, when friends have traumatic losses, I offer love, but more importantly, I check in with them a month or months later when society has revoked their permission to keep feeling sad and ask, “How is your heart?”

    Life is hard. We like to say otherwise, because only Debbie Downers walk around saying things like “Life is hard.” But let’s face it: LIFE IS HARD.

    We hope to have a life filled with love. Aren’t the best things in life about love? But the price of love is loss.

    I like inside pockets, always have. Secret little places to tuck a pair of keys, a tissue, a lipstick, and a $20 bill.

    My heart has inside pockets. I carry my mother there. She wanted to take my whole heart over, but I asked her to make room for Yaya, Mendel, Suzy, Kathryn, BB, and Catherine Hopper and her powdery foundation, too.

    Folks talk a lot about the five stages of grief. I tell those five stages to screw off! No two people are alike. No two losses are alike. My grief is like no other grief.

    My sister, Yaya, maintained a childlike abandon all of her life. She loved to put an “S” in front of words that started with “N.” It was one of the adorable Yayaisms I miss the most.

    In the face of profound loss, I hear her voice. “S’NOT SNICE.”

    In some ways, Yaya was the smartest person I knew.

    That’s right, Yaya. S’not S’nice.

  • The 5 Happiness Zappers and What Helps Me Cope with Them

    The 5 Happiness Zappers and What Helps Me Cope with Them

    “Emotion in itself is not unhappiness. Only emotion plus an unhappy story is unhappiness.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    When my mother told me, “Honey, you don’t understand; you can’t,” initially I felt like she was being condescending.

    It was Mother’s Day and, unbeknownst to me, the last time I’d see her before her final hospital visit.

    We’d spent that Saturday updating her computer, watching waves at the beach, and picking up seashells, then eating dinner at a popular local restaurant frequented by travelers, including famous musicians on tour buses because of its location off of the interstate.

    By early evening, we were lying on her bed talking mostly about nothing important. However, when she mentioned that she was organizing all her pictures in zip lock bags for her two sisters, my brother, and me, it sounded strange yet significant.

    “Why?” I asked.

    “I’m not going to live forever,” she said.

    “But you’re doing fine right now,” I responded referring to her health at the moment. Her health challenges in the past few years had made it necessary for her to move to live closer to her older sister.

    The conversation segued to how much she missed her mother, my nanny, who’d passed away twenty-two years earlier. The emotional angst in her voice caught me off guard. I was close to my nanny and missed her too but could tell that my mom missed her at a deeper emotional level than I understood.

    I asked questions, trying to understand exactly what she missed. Did she miss talking to her? Her cooking? Her laugh? But she didn’t or couldn’t answer. Instead, she looked into my eyes with one of those motherly looks that said, “enough of the questions.” Then she said, “Honey, you don’t understand. You can’t.”

    I knew it was time to change the subject, so we watched TV and continued chatting about lighthearted nothings before going to sleep.

    Although the conversation felt unsettling, I did what most of us do when something rattles our gut—I ignored it.

    Three months later, I received a call from my aunt telling me that my brother and I needed to get there quickly because my mom was in the hospital. After two surgeries and almost three weeks in ICU on a ventilator, she passed.

    That’s when the journey started and I’d finally be able to understand the meaning of my mother’s haunting words.

    It’s been almost eighteen years since she passed. Even now, there are moments when grief shows up and her loss feels as painful as the day she left. When that happens, I replay the conversation we had on Mother’s Day in my head and realize how right she was. Then I cry more because I want to tell her how right she was but can’t.

    There are some things you can’t really understand until you experience them. You can imagine how you’d feel in a situation, how you’d react to it. That’s empathy. Or you can just know the experience would feel awful. That’s sympathy. However, you can’t really understand until you experience it.

    As the founder of the Society of Happy People, I’ve spent a lot of time understanding happiness. I even identified thirty-one types of happiness because I wanted people to recognize all of the happiness that they might not notice or take for granted.

    However, after losing my mom, I also realized what is really obvious yet not always acknowledged—all unhappiness isn’t the same. There’s a huge difference in grieving a loss and being stressed because you’re late for a lunch date due to traffic annoyances.

    Although both cause you to feel bad or unhappy in the moment, their lingering effects are vastly different. All experiences that make us feel unhappy are not equal. Yet we’ve been taught to think if we aren’t happy, we’re simply unhappy. It’s an oversimplification of our emotional experiences.

    I started thinking of experiences that took me away from feeling good as Happiness Zappers.

    Then I started categorizing them: unhappiness, stress, fear, chaos, and annoyances.

    Then, depending on the type of Happiness Zapper, I’d decide how to manage it. Some zappers simply didn’t have the same effects as others. However, in all cases if I didn’t acknowledge the zapper, it would manage me instead of me managing it.

    Each day, every single human being on the planet will experience different Happiness Zappers. How we choose to manage them significantly impacts how long they impact us and our lack of happiness.

    The five types of Happiness Zappers are:

    1. Unhappiness

    Unhappiness is most often connected to loss when we must create a new normal over time.

    Obviously, the death of someone or a pet we love is the ultimate loss.

    Yet other losses redefine our lives, too: unwanted career changes, health challenges, friend or family estrangements, and other normal, expected, or even unexpected life changes such as aging, empty-nesting, caretaking, or retiring.

    Unhappiness results from experiences that we rarely have control over and probably didn’t want to happen yet have to learn to live with. It takes time to adjust to life with the missing piece or changes we have to make due to circumstances beyond our control. And there may always be moments even after we think we’ve adjusted or healed from a loss when the void is triggered, and it can shoot a pang in our heart that makes us feel sad again.

    While the ongoing pangs of pain from loss usually reduce over time, the scars they leave can flare up without notice and we feel the sad, hurt, and loss all over again.

    2. Stress

    Stress is when we feel pressure or tension from things that require a response from us that can impact us mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

    Most of us feel stressed more than once most days. Although everyone has different stressors, some common ones include having too many tasks, facing too much uncertainty, making decisions, coping with difficult situations, or dealing with difficult people/events.

    Whatever the source of our stress, it’s important that we learn to manage it because it adversely impacts our overall health when we don’t. Of course, managing stress is different for everyone and every situation. Sometimes, a situation needs to change. Other times, it’s about utilizing tools that soothe our hearts, minds, and souls, such as meditation, exercise, aromatherapy, a thinking walk, a hot bath, or any fun activity.

    The situations that create stress are fluid—which means once one is gone, another one shows up. That’s why it’s important to understand your stress triggers and the tools that help you manage your stressors.

    3. Fear

    Fear creates a physiological change that influences our behavior when we are threatened by a dangerous situation or we believe something may threaten our physical or emotional safety in the future.

    While some fears are real—your home is in the path of a hurricane landing, or you’re being abused, for example—the majority of our fears pertain to “what could happen,” and they’re usually worst-case instead of best-case scenarios.

    When we don’t manage the fears in our mind, they often lead to regret. They stop us from trying new things, meeting new people, and doing things we’ve dreamed about. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “A man’s life is the history of his fears.”

    Sometimes, simply doing something that triggers a fear—like eating at a restaurant alone, applying for a job, or going to a party where you don’t know many people—regardless of the outcome, is our success. And successful is one of the Society of Happy People’s thirty-one types of happiness.

    4. Chaos

    Chaos happens when things are in disarray, unorganized, and confusing.

    Chaos could be anything from your alarm going off late, an unexpected guest showing up, or your boss changing your day’s to-do list, to dealing with an act of mother nature in your neighborhood.

    It’s in those moments when you really aren’t in control that you simply have to move into a triage mode of tasks and priorities based on the current situation.

    The best thing to remember when in the middle of a chaotic situation is that the actual chaotic moments are usually temporary. The chaos will subside. There may be lingering stressors after the actual chaos, but the heightened emotionally charged moments end.

    5. Annoyances

    Annoyances are when someone or something irritates or bothers us to the point that our mood is adversely affected.

    What annoys you one day may not annoy you another day. Annoyances are subjective to what’s going on around you at any given moment.

    However, they have a common theme—you probably won’t remember them a year from now. So you need to ask yourself, “Is this really worth taking away from my happiness now?”

    —

    My mom’s death taught me many things. One of the most important lessons was that unhappiness isn’t everything that makes you feel bad. There are varying degrees of feeling bad. Real unhappiness is usually centered around loss and grieving, and not only deaths.

    Acknowledging loss and grief empowers us to manage it. It gives us permission to feel our myriad of feelings when our grief is triggered. It gives us permission to cry, to be angry, to feel numb, to mourn. Although unhappiness feels lonely, in most cases there are others who’ve been in similar places who can help us navigate our experience if we reach out.

    Our other happiness zapping experiences—stress, fear, chaos, and annoyances—rarely have lingering pains. In most cases we get to manage these Happiness Zappers and to a degree determine how long we will allow them to zap our happiness.

    Unhappiness comes from experiences that most likely changed us and our lives in a way we didn’t want changed. Then it becomes part of us and will revisit our heart from time to time. The more we understand what unhappiness actually is and how it works in our lives, the better we can manage it.

  • Children’s Movies are Obsessed with Death, but Don’t Show Healthy Grief

    Children’s Movies are Obsessed with Death, but Don’t Show Healthy Grief

    “Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ~Jamie Anderson

    I knew my son was watching me. We were inhaling fistfuls of popcorn while Frozen 2 played on the screen above. (Spoiler alert
)

    Anna has just realized her sister, Elsa, is dead, frozen solid at the bottom of a river. Anna must carry on life without her.

    My son turned his body and looked directly at me, ignoring the film. He knew what was coming. I began to weep. This is what he expected. He patted my arm with his little hand, which was buttery from popcorn and sticky from sour gummy worms.

    Anna’s body slumps over, and her broken voice begins a haunting song of grief: You’ve gone to a place I cannot find. This grief has a gravity. It pulls me down.

    I’m frozen, too, within memories of the death of my brother Dave by suicide just months earlier. Cartoon Anna and I together mourned our lost siblings. 

    My young son comforted me while I cried. As I think about it, it is such a twisted scene. Can’t we just go to the movies, eat a bunch of crappy food, have a couple of laughs, and call it a night?

    None of us intended for me to have a grief spiral in an animated film with a talking snowman and a plot line featuring a guy who is enmeshed with his reindeer. But the film is all about grief.

    It is about one daughter’s quest to heal intergenerational trauma and right the wrongs of the past. It is about another daughter trying to learn the stories of her lost parents, and in so doing, she enters a space that is unsafe and threatens her life, too.

    I guess it is completely predictable that this story would remind me so much of my own family.

    Six months before Dave killed himself, our dad had died of esophageal cancer. My son certainly saw my tears coming. He’s nine now. He knows that he has a mother who lives in grief. He knows that his mother has a wound where her brother and father once were and that the wound gets reopened from time to time. He’s seen me cry more than I ever imagined he would.

    Have you ever thought about how many children’s films feature the death of a parent or sibling? Here are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head: The Lion King, Frozen, Big Hero 6, The Land Before Time, Finding Nemo, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Bambi, Abominable, Vivo, Batman, the entire Star Wars franchise. This year’s Lightyear. You get the picture.

    Death is so pervasive in children’s films that a team of Canadian researchers looked at the prevalence of death in this genre and concluded that two-thirds of kids’ movies depicted the death of an important character while only half of films for adults did.

    The researchers also found that the main characters in children’s films were two and a half times more likely to die, and three times more likely to be murdered than the main characters in films marketed to adults.

    So, if my kids watched a movie a week, they’d see thirty-four deaths a year—usually the death of a parent or close family member. What is up with that?

    It is an easy plot device. What better way to thrust a character into a scenario in which they heroically redeem a terrible tragedy by going on a journey, taking back the throne, restoring the family name, and so on? The point of the movie becomes the main character rising again in the face of loss. It is the quintessential hero’s journey.

    I don’t have issues with kids being exposed to death. I’ve had lots of open conversations about it with my kids. When children’s films show children thriving after terrible events, there may be some psychological benefit to that, by helping kids know that there is indeed life after death.

    But I am worried about how the pervasiveness of these stories is shaping our expectations about grief.

    It’s an important conversation to have, especially when more than one million Americans have so far died from COVID. The impact on children has been immense. From April 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, data in Pediatrics estimated more than 140,000 children under age 18 in the U.S. lost a parent, custodial grandparent, or grandparent caregiver.

    Children see death over and over, but there is very little treatment of grief in popular culture. In most instances, a film shows the hero standing with head bowed beside an open grave. The audience may observe a tear or a nod toward a period of sadness, but the character is back in action within sixty seconds, fighting the dragon, building the robot, or saving the world. 

    The other alternative is that prolonged grief drives one to become a villain. If loss is not quickly translated into action, it seems to fester into vengeance and evil. I’m thinking of the Kingpin from Spiderman, Dr. Callaghan from Big Hero 6, Anakin Skywalker (a.k.a. Darth Vader) from Star Wars, Magneto from X-Men, among others.

    These films are telling a story about grief that is a disservice to us all. Our society counts on a bereaved person bouncing back to action almost immediately. And if they don’t, in a prompt, timely manner, the suspicion is that the grief has ruined them.

    These films help craft a society that has no model for the emotion of loss. For the slowness of it. For the darkness of it. Especially in the lives of children.

    During the season of my loved ones’ deaths, my children were twelve, eight, and eight. They were tender and sweet. And young. But also, old enough.

    There was a lot of talk about cancer at our house. The kids knew the science. They shared a house with my dad while he went through his first round of chemo. They knew it was miserable.

    Early on I let them know that this cancer would probably cause Grandpa to die. I explained the size and location of the various tumors. I let them know that our time with him would probably be two or three years.

    I believe in being honest with children in a way they can understand. I didn’t want them to be afraid that Grandpa would die. I wanted to let them in on the secret that Grandpa was going to die. No need to keep anyone in suspense.

    I was with my dad when he died in California. My children were at home in Minnesota. A few minutes after he died, I called them on the phone. My husband, Rob, sat with them, and I told them one by one. I talked to them while Rob held them.

    When my brother died, Rob and I both sat with the children. We told the youngest and the oldest together. They were once again tender and fearful. Surprised. Wide eyed. We held them.

    They didn’t say much. Uncharacteristically, they didn’t ask any questions. They knew that Uncle Dave was mysteriously sick.

    My brother’s death was much more difficult to talk about with my children. They knew that he struggled with alcohol. They knew the word addiction. They knew that he had been in and out of the hospital. The problem with suicide is that there’s no good way to make the logic work for children.

    I can just imagine the torrent of questions: How much sadness is too much sadness? How much pain is too much pain? When the cat dies? When my best friend is mad at me? What makes your heart hurt so much that dying is the logical step? When does one reach that point?

    Psychologically speaking, talking with my children about Dave’s death was so hard because it threatened to dismantle their basic assumptions about the goodness, safety, and predictability of the world.

    In my conversation with my children, I didn’t want their sense of goodness, justice, and safety to be shattered. The world is no longer a predictable, good place when someone kind and loving experiences such darkness and ultimately a horrible, self-inflicted death.

    The world is no longer meaningful when there is no simple, rational explanation for how such a thing happened. The self may no longer be worthy of happiness and joy if someone like Uncle Dave could not find happiness and joy.

    Everything in me is organized against my children understanding this logic. I didn’t want it to enter their minds or their hearts.

    But it has. It will. They will come to know the full story of their soft-spoken uncle with the beautiful blue eyes. They will remember him on our couch and in the park and in the kitchen and at the lake. They will know the truth about him and how he was lost.

    And there is no way around the reality of suicide, the reality that the truth is beyond the careful, thoughtful, simple explanations of their mother. I can’t make it neat or easily digestible for them. It is too messy.

    My children have been up close and personal with grief these past years. They’ve held human ashes in their hands. They anticipate that I will cry during a movie scene in which a character loses a sibling. They know all about cancer. They’ve attended memorials

    It isn’t what I would have chosen for them—to be in a movie theater, comforting Mommy because the cartoon reminds her of her dead brother. That isn’t what I ever pictured when

    I first held their tiny baby bodies in my arms and my heart swore to protect them with every cell in my body. Sometimes I apologize to them in whispers: “I’m sorry that our lives have unfolded like this.”

    There is a way to use the deaths of children’s movies to facilitate conversations about grief and loss.

    A 2021 study in Cognitive Development found that animated films may provide the opportunity for parent-child conversations about death, because parents often watch these films with their children. However, according to researchers, few parents take advantage of this opportunity to talk about death with their children. I encourage parents to take advantage of these teachable moments.

    For my children, who have seen grief up close, my only hope is that they are learning about the reality of grief. They are seeing a more realistic picture than Disney will show them. They’re seeing me go to work, make pancakes, drive the carpool, laugh with my friends. They are seeing me live. And they’re seeing me cry.

    They are also seeing that the duration of grief is not five minutes of screen time but that it is years.

    When they came into my world, I didn’t anticipate that grief would be such a prominent lesson in their childhood. But after watching Dave implode, alongside the loss of our dad, perhaps grief, real grief, is a more essential lesson that I anticipated.

    Perhaps watching me slog through it will help my children navigate out of their own darkness one day. Disney is introducing them to death. It’s my job to show them the reality of grief.

  • The Circle of Love: How I Paid It Forward After My Mom’s Death

    The Circle of Love: How I Paid It Forward After My Mom’s Death

    “If you feel like you’re losing everything, remember that trees lose their leaves every year and they still stand tall and wait for better days to come.” ~Unknown

    Years ago, I was a young housewife, raising two children, and still practically a child myself. When my mother fell ill, we realized it was chronic and I felt the blow.

    Mom had been my closest friend and supporter throughout my entire life. I was still her baby, even though I had babies of my own. And it was a point of pride with me.

    As Mom gradually diminished into a shell of her former self, I tried to help take care of her. There were months of dialysis, hospitalizations, home health care, and finally, both of her legs were amputated.

    To say this was devastating is an understatement. Mom had always been active, a go-getter, and a great tennis player. And how she did love wearing her pretty shoes!

    My dad, brothers, and I grieved with Mom, along with everyone else who loved her. The core of our family was heavily damaged. We did not know which way to turn.

    As time passed, the wonderful nurses of East 3 showed us how to care for Mom. We brushed her teeth, fixed her hair, tempted her with treats, and whatever else we could do to make her happy.

    Nothing worked. As Mom grew sicker, we finally realized what was coming. The overwhelming sense of loss when she passed was indescribable.

    It was a double loss for me. Not only did I lose my mother, but also my best friend. How would I survive without her?

    Would my babies remember her? Would I forget her? What would happen to our family?

    However, the loss pulled my family together and we planned a funeral, burial, and dealt with the onslaught of family and friends.

    On the day of her funeral, I informed my dad I wanted to go to nursing school. He was not encouraging. In fact, he informed me how much he hated to hear it because he had seen how hard nurses worked and the way they were treated.

    I was adamant. Even though I was not known for my science knowledge or my people skills, I went to school.

    Along the way, I experienced another pregnancy and the birth of a daughter. The following day, I was back in class to take an Anatomy and Physiology test.

    My test score was 86. I discovered I was an extremely determined individual. Nothing was going to stop me from getting that nursing diploma!

    After four years of classes and clinical rotations, I graduated as co-salutatorian of my class. Thank heavens for my husband, who kept the home fires burning while I studied!

    Upon graduating, I went to work on South 10, in Oncology, the treatment of cancer patients. We had a lot of patient overflow from other floors. So the clinical experience during my time there was amazing!

    However, the challenges of being short-staffed, overwhelmed with too many patients and insufficient support, did not help my anxiety level! As a result, I did not feel that I handled my job very well.

    I was nervous around others in the workplace, even though I wanted to help them. It was terrifying to think I could make a mistake and end up harming someone or lose the nursing license for which I worked so hard.

    And I did make some mistakes. Thankfully, none that resulted in significant harm. Of course, this did nothing for my fledgling confidence and anxiety.

    I thought about quitting. I hated feeling trapped. In the mornings before work, I would throw up from nervousness.

    I was outside my comfort zone. But I kept returning to work. After the schooling, hours spent studying, and monetary investment involved, how could I throw it all away?

    Undoubtedly, I was scared. It was horrifying to feel so frightened in such a noble profession. The anxiety almost crippled me. I became fatigued. Irritable. My self-esteem, which had been a struggle my entire life, was at an all-time low.

    Then came a very busy day when I was nearing the end of my shift. I was mentally and physically exhausted and looking forward to going home soon.

    When the charge nurse informed me that I was getting an end of shift transfer, I wanted to cry. In this particular case, I needed to perform end-of-life care. And would also have to complete a ton of paperwork.

    The patient was an elderly man coming from MICU (Medical Intensive Care Unit). His end was near, and he was coming to me to die.

    Obviously, I was not thrilled to be dealing with such a patient at the end of the day. Notably, my attitude was not good.

    Yet I had made an oath to care for others and I was committed to that oath.

    So I did not show my bad attitude to anyone and instead hid it inside my heart.

    Shortly afterward, the patient was transported to his new room on South 10. He had a nasogastric tube going into his nose, down his esophagus, and into his stomach. It was to suck out the toxins and poisons building up in his system.

    Also present was a catheter, which drained the urine from his bladder.

    As the man’s family wanted to continue feeding him, IV nutrition was still in place. This meant blood sugar checks were to be performed four time a day. These checks measured the sugar content in his bloodstream to see if it was a healthy level.

    In other words, my new patient required a lot of care.

    The man’s wife and daughter were with him and not quite ready to let him go. But the patient had been made a DNR. (Do Not Resuscitate). This meant no life saving measures were to be used.

    It was simply his time to go.

    The patient was unresponsive, and the daughter convinced her weary mother to leave for a while and get some rest.

    Meanwhile, I monitored the patient, kept him comfortable, and answered his daughter’s many questions carefully and thoughtfully.

    Unbidden, this was a reminder of a painful situation years earlier when it was my mother in that bed. At that time, it was me depending upon the nurse to take care of my dying mother.

    Those nurses had offered comfort. They had helped me cope with Mom’s pain and end of life. Now, it was my turn to do the same thing for someone else.

    I was with another patient when my new patient’s emergency alarm went off. I walked out into the hallway where the charge nurse met me and instructed me to go into his room. Sure enough, my new patient was gone.

    His daughter was beside him when he left his tired body behind. She looked so forlorn and alone. My instinct was to reach out and give her a hug.

    She hugged me back and kept holding onto me as if I were her lifeline. I suppose I was in that moment.

    So for a long time, I sat and listened to her while she talked. She told me about her dad and how much she loved him

    When I eventually rose to leave the room, the daughter said to me, “God brought my dad to this floor to die because he was bringing us to you.” Then she added, “Thank you.”

    Her words filled me with pride. Sometimes, you just instinctively know the right words to say in a situation and when to listen. I learned that I have this skill in the very darkest moments of life.

    And it is a skill of which I am very proud.

    With my self-confidence restored, I, once again, was proud of myself and of my profession. I had eased one of the most painful times in a daughter’s life and brought her comfort.

    I had come full circle.

  • Don’t Wait to Open Your Heart: There Is Only Time For Love

    Don’t Wait to Open Your Heart: There Is Only Time For Love

    “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.” ~Iain Thomas

    Looking back, my most cherished childhood memories can be traced back to my rosy mother.

    Intricate forts in the backyard with Spice Girls playing in the background. Sleepovers using Limited Too’s finest sparkly lotion, eyeshadow, and lip gloss. Rainy afternoons filled with friendship bracelets and Lisa Frank activity sheets. Children and teachers showing off their wild side at my mothers’ signature talent shows at the local theatre. Arts and crafts in a room surrounded by floral couches and mauve wallpaper. Flea market field trips to select the perfect charm bracelet. And, loads of buttery birthday cakes with the words Be With Your Dreams written all over them.

    Sadly, we grew apart during middle school when she abruptly uprooted our sunlit lives in exchange for a nomadic lifestyle. After traveling with her to two states, I grew tired of the “new kid” title and moved in with my father.

    With each of her subsequent moves, my resentment morphed into a towering boulder that blocked her love to seep through. Our tug-of-war relationship continued for six years into early adulthood.

    I still remember the day that everything changed.

    I was at a work conference when I received an unexpected call from her. I grudgingly called her back in a crowded hallway.

    “What?!” I said in a pompous tone.

    She whispered, “I’m so sorry to hound you but I need to tell you something. I have cancer. ”

    “What do you mean?” I said as my throat sealed.

    “I’ve been diagnosed with ovarian cancer—I am so sorry.”

    A few days later, I visited her home in Key West, Florida. I can still picture her galloping towards me as I exited the puddle-jumper. She had a mop of loose curls, a wide smile, torn army green cargo pants, and a swollen belly that resembled pregnancy.

    For the first time in years, we bonded without the heaviness of the future.

    We became giggly movie critics. We strolled the shoreline in search of magical conch shells. We frequented our favorite Cuban restaurant and oohed and aahed over zesty soup. We bought vintage aqua blue tea sets for future tea parties. We swapped stories that were once forgotten.

    Instead of cowering in embarrassment, I encouraged her roaring laugh in public. I embraced her hippy lifestyle as we basked in the sun, with Key Lime Pie sticks in hand. I co-directed one of her renowned talent shows featuring local YMCA kids. Her trailer became a treasure trove filled with wispy white pillows, the aroma of velvety hazelnut coffee, and new beginnings.

    With each day that passed, the towering boulder of resentment I once had dissipated into raw love.

    She didn’t have standard health insurance, but she saved black pilot whales in her free time. She didn’t have a steady job, but she made others smile as she sold handmade bottlecap jewelry at Mallory Square. You see—if you’re fixated on expectations of who someone should be according to your standards, you can’t love them for who they really are.

    My mother once wrote me:

    “Those stressful days are gone, and I don’t think I’ll ever see them again. I don’t have the meetings and high-powered days like I used to. I drift to work somehow gazing at the blazing sun, aqua blue ocean, hibiscus blossoms, and the marshmallow clouds. I wear island dresses in the endless cool breezes with my hair in a wet bun. Most of the time, I hide my bathing suit underneath it all so I can hit the beach right after.  I’m dreaming of my toes in the sand, laughing, giggling, and snoozing while listening to music and chirping birds. Remember, life is beautiful. You need to find your happy – promise?!

    My mother appreciated every moment, even if the highlight of her day was glancing through a window in a sterile hallway. She described the hospital’s cuisine as divine. Although she could barely walk, she somehow dragged her flimsy wheelchair through sand, just to inhale a whiff of the salty ocean air. And at every opportunity, she looked up at the clouds in awe of being alive.

    As her soft body turned into brittle bones, I learned the importance of her famous motto, Be With Your Dreams. She taught me how to live an idyllic life filled with nature, wonderment, and positivity. She proved that having a raw, openhearted approach to life was superior than any cookie-cutter mold I once envisioned for her.

    In my mother’s last days, she shared tenderly, “Britt, I think of how I left you behind sometimes. I know I wasn’t a perfect mother, but I’ve always loved you so much, baby girl.”

    I waited for that moment for fifteen years. And in that moment, I felt nothing. Zilch. Nada.

    Time was the only thing I longed for. As tears streamed down my face, I wondered how many more memories we would’ve had, had I learned to appreciate her for who she was years ago.

    Most of us wait to resolve our conflicts “later.” The unfortunate part is that minutes and days turn into months and years. There’s a good chance we’re missing out on a relationship right now that could change our entire lives. So…

    Open the door to your heart and choose love. Be kind instead of right. Remember the good times. Let go of pain disguised as indifference. Take responsibility for your part. Stop the judgment. Be the bigger person. Forgive the small things.

    For goodness sakes, say or do something! Pick up the phone. Write an apology letter. Drive to their house. Plan a trip. Text a nostalgic memory.

    Don’t you see… there’s only time for love. And, who knows—if you’re lucky enough, they might just show you how to Be With Your Dreams.

  • My Dad Died From Depression: This Is How I Coped with His Suicide

    My Dad Died From Depression: This Is How I Coped with His Suicide

    “Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ~Jamie Anderson

    When I was seventeen, my dad died from depression. This is now almost twenty-two years ago.

    The first fifteen years after his death, however, I’d say he died from a disease—which is true, I just didn’t want to say it was a psychological disease. Cancer, people probably assumed.

    I didn’t want to know anything about his “disease.” I ran away from anything that even remotely smelled like mental health issues.

    Instead, I placed him on a pedestal. He was my fallen angel that would stay with me my whole life. It wasn’t his fault he left me. It was the disease’s fault.

    The Great Wall of Jessica

    But no, my dad died by suicide. He chose to leave this life behind. He chose to leave me behind. At least, that’s what I felt whenever the anger took over.

    And boy, was I angry. Sometimes, I’d take a towel, wrap it up in my hands, and just towel-whip the shit out of everything in my room.

    But how can you be angry with a man who is a victim himself? You can’t. So I got angry at the world instead and built a wall ten stories high. I don’t think I let anyone truly inside, even the people closest to me.

    How could I? I didn’t even know what “inside” was. For a long time, my inside was just a deep, dark hole.

    Sure, I was still Jessica. A girl that loved rainbows and glitter. A girl that just wanted to feel joyful.

    And I was. Whenever I was out in nature. I didn’t realize it at the time, but whenever I was on the beach, in a forest, or even in a park, I’d be content and calm.

    Whenever I was inside between four walls, however, I felt restless, lonely, and agitated. This lasted for a very long time. I’d say for about twenty years—which, according to some therapists, is a pretty “normal” timespan for some people to really make peace with the traumatic death of a parent.

    But during that time, alcohol and partying were my only coping mechanisms. I partied my bum off for a few years. I’d drink all night until I puked, and then continue drinking. Couldn’t remember half of the time how I got home or what happened that night.

    Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

    Unfortunately, all that alcohol came with a price. I had the world’s worst hangovers—not only physically but also mentally. At twenty-one, hungover and alone at home, I had my first panic attack. Many more followed, and I developed a panic disorder.

    I became afraid of being afraid. I didn’t tell anyone, because I was scared they would think I was crazy.

    Those periods of anxiety never lasted longer than a few months. But they were usually followed by a sort of winter depression. In my worst moments, I felt like the one and only person that understood me was gone. I felt like nobody loved me, not as much as my dad did. And I did think about death myself. Not that I actually wanted to die, but at times, it seemed like a nice “break” from all the pain.

    Acceptance and Spiritual Healing

    Finally, in my mid-twenties, I went to see a therapist. She helped me tremendously and made me realize that the panic attacks were nothing more than a physical reaction to stress. Yet, it wasn’t until I did a yoga teacher training a few years later that I finally learned how to stop those panic attacks for good.

    Wanting to know more about the mechanisms of the body and mind, I dove into mental and physical well-being, and started researching and writing about mental health.

    I understand now that self-love, or at least self-acceptance, and a solid self-esteem are crucial for our mental health. And I know that people with mental health issues find it so, so hard to ask for help. Their lack of self-love makes them think they are a burden.

    I understand that, at that moment, my dad didn’t see any other solution for his suffering than stepping out of this life. It did not mean that he didn’t love me or my family.

    The pain from losing my dad actually opened the door for me to spiritual healing. It brought me to where I am now. It taught me to live life to the fullest.

    It taught me to follow my heart because life is too precious to be stuck anywhere and feel like crap. And it made me want to help others by sharing my story.

    I have accepted myself as I am now. I know that I’m enough. I’ve learned what stability feels like, and how to stay relaxed, even though my body is wired to stress out about the smallest things due to childhood trauma.

    Let’s Share Our Demons and Kill Them Together

    But honestly, the pain from losing him will stay with me for the rest of my life. And sometimes it’s as present as it was twenty years ago. I don’t feel like covering that up with some positive, “unicorny” endnote.

    I feel like being raw, honest, and open instead. Depression and suicide f@cking suck. What I do want to do, however, is to help open up the conversation about this topic. I want to make it normal to talk about our mental health, as normal as it is to talk about our physical health.

    There are way too many people living in the dark, due to stigmatization and fear. Life is cruel sometimes. And every single human on this planet has to deal with shit. It would be so good if we could be real about it and share our stories so other people can relate and find solace.

    I do hope that my story helps in some way.

  • How I Healed My Mother Wound and My Daughters Are Healing Theirs

    How I Healed My Mother Wound and My Daughters Are Healing Theirs

    “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself
 You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow
” ~Kahlil Gibran

    Now that my daughters are in therapy trying to heal their relationship with me, I have more compassion than ever for my mom. I haven’t felt angry at her in years. But when I was a teen, I earnestly desired to kill her more than once.

    I was in my forties when my mom died. Afterward, I had frequent dreams about her chasing me around, telling me I wasn’t good enough. The dreams lasted nightly for about six months and occurred for a few more years when I felt stressed. The last one I remember, she was chasing me under the covers of the bed, screaming my worst fears—that I was unlovable and unworthy—reinforcing my wounded child.

    About twelve years after she died, I was able to come to a place of comfort with her. While in deep meditation I saw a vision of her spirit bathed with light and love. Freed from her mental and physical sufferings, I saw her as I had seen her when I was a child—my universe.

    Unfortunately, she couldn’t see herself as I did in those days. I knew that she was beautiful. I remember thinking about it as a young child, and when she was dying. How often I’d searched her face, looking for her to see me.

    Like my dad, I have prominent facial features. I wished I had her cute small nose and her pretty lips that always looked beautiful in her Berry Berry Avon lipstick. She had blue eyes, which I rarely saw straight on. She was uncomfortable with her looks. I don’t remember any direct eye contact with her unless she was angry, though I realized there must have been.

    She was born with a crossed eye. Her story was that her parents were accused of having a sexually transmitted disease that caused it, which brought great shame. My mom was also dyslexic. Sometimes at school, she had to wear a dunce cap and stand in the corner or hall because she couldn’t spell. These challenges shaped her self-worth from a young age.

    I loved looking at pictures of her in her twenties with long dark wavy hair, stylish glasses, and a beautiful smile.

    When she died, I didn’t cry. I proclaimed that her reign of terror had ended, and I held on to my anger for twelve more years. That day in meditation, when I was able to break through the veil of outrage that kept me in my darkness, I saw her as a bright light in my life. 

    I had known for years that some of my healing depended on letting go of the story of my time with my mom—one of mental health issues, abuse, and unhappiness. I needed to take time to process our relationship and see her beyond her earthly life. When I was finally able to, I felt better than I expected.

    Through my experience and my work with other women, I’ve learned that the mother wound—our unresolved anger at the flawed woman who birthed or raised us—is two or threefold.

    Our first challenge is processing the actual events that happened as we were growing up.

    The second is letting go of our reluctance to be fully responsible for our mental and physical health as adults.

    And, if we have children, the third is not wounding ourselves—realizing that there was never a scenario where we could be the perfect parent we had hoped to be, no matter how self-sacrificing we were.

    Processing Our Childhood

    Our work as adults is to make a conscious effort to process the hurt, anger, and betrayal that we endured from the female authority figure that raised us (or the figure who was our primary caregiver).

    Even if we resolve that our mother did her best, we are still left to sort through our shame over not feeling loveable or good enough, and the feeling that we missed out on the experience we should have had growing up. Processing and healing could mean seeing a therapist, journaling, or even stopping all contact with our mother.

    I moved far away from my mom, which minimized my contact and gave me space to process. But I kept the past alive in my thoughts. Now when I look back, I see that holding on to my anger well into adulthood added to the years of feeling like I was missing out on a normal life. In the end, I was responsible for my own healing, and it didn’t happen overnight.

    Now, at this place in my life journey, I see the hard parts of my life as the foundation for my life’s purpose, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out.

    I’ve met enough people to know that even those who had the perfect parents—like we all wanted—also have challenges as adults. My work to heal has led me to a deep understanding of the human condition and fueled my passion to love and to help uplift the suffering of all.

    How Our Commitment to Self-Care Helps Heal Our Mother Wound

    We looked to our mother to provide emotional and physical nourishment. Her inability to do this (or do it consistently) created our feeling that we were wronged by our mother. Now, as adults, we need to let go of thinking our mother will take care of us and do our own nurturing work for ourselves. That might seem like a harsh statement, but it enables us to move on.

    The second part of healing my mother wound was letting go of the part of me that doesn’t take care of myself. That little voice in my head that apathetically whispers, “I don’t care” about little things that would improve my health, help me sleep better, or feel successful.

    That little voice doesn’t have as much power over me anymore. So instead of overeating in the evening, which would affect my ability to sleep well, I can override it—most days. I’m also able to notice that when I don’t take care of myself, I open myself up to being the wounded child again.

    We didn’t have a choice when we were young, but now the choice is ours. We need to decide when and how we take up the torch.

    When Our Mother Wound Becomes a Mothering Wound

    My mother wound turned into a mothering wound when I didn’t live up to my hopes of being a perfect parent. Of course, I had intended to be the loving, nurturing, protecting mother, who produced adults without any challenges, but alas, I was not. How could this happen? I tried so hard. 

    I was able to find alternatives to the punitive, violent punishments, shaming, and blaming tactics that my mother used, but as a young parent, I was still challenged with low self-worth issues and an eating disorder.

    Although some of the things that occurred during the three marriages and two divorces that my daughters and I experienced together were horrific, we were luckily able to process a lot of them in real time with therapy and tears.

    Now, with their adult awareness, my daughters are processing their childhood, including my addictions, insecurities, and mistakes. It is almost torture to watch them do that, even though I know they must. And they are so busy with their lives now—as they should be. I miss them.

    To weather this time of my life and continue to grow, I need to employ my practices of understanding, compassion, and detachment, and take deep care of myself. Continuing to love my daughters deeply, to be on call whenever they need me, and at the same time be detached from needing them, has called me to deeper depths of my character.

    We all deserve to be treated respectfully and kindly. As daughters and mothers, we can role model compassion—empathy in action—and boundaries with our mother and our children. We can strive to create relationships that mutually nourish loving-kindness.

    We can focus on healing our past and taking care of our future. We all need to communicate this clearly to our mothers, partners, and children. And, although we can’t walk away from our underage children, we can set boundaries that facilitate healthy relationships now.

    We can be clear—our children don’t need their lives or their mother to be perfect. They need to know that they are loved, and they need to see us love ourselves. Holding on to this love for them and for ourselves when our children are troubled, distant, or even estranged is one of our biggest tests as parents. My heart goes out to any mother dealing with these challenges, especially if you are dealing with them alone.

    I never stopped wanting my mom to be happy. She is now at peace, maybe even joyful. I strive to let myself be at peace. I let myself live in this place of deep tenderness for her—and now for me. I understand that my experience is universal. I needn’t feel alone.

    I realized that this confident and peaceful version of me is the best I can do for my daughters as they heal their mother wounds and take care of themselves, as I am doing for myself.

    To heal our mother wound is to remember that it is ultimately a spiritual journey. Not only are we trying to figure out the depths of our own purpose, but we are bound to the journeys of our kin.

    As with all spiritual journeys, there will be rough passages that tear our heart open and ask us to become more. The journey of the mother is the journey of love. We need to remember, no matter what rough journey is behind us, we are the designers of the path ahead.

  • Living a Meaningful Life: What Will Your Loved Ones Find When You Die?

    Living a Meaningful Life: What Will Your Loved Ones Find When You Die?

    “At the end of life, at the end of YOUR life, what essence emerges? What have you filled the world with? In remembering you, what words will others choose?” ~Amy Rosenthal

    Most people believe sorting through a loved one’s belongings after death provides closure. For me, it provided an existential crisis.

    After glancing at the angry sky in my father’s driveway for what seemed like hours, I mustered up the courage to crack open the door to the kitchen. The eerie silence stopped me in my tracks. Wasn’t he cooking up a storm in this cluttered kitchen just a few days ago?

    I started with the mounds of clothes and cuddled them gently before pitching them. The sweet aroma of his fiery cologne still lingered. The air smelled just like him.

    My father’s belongings served as physical reminders of how he spent his time on Earth. Some of my favorites included:

    A weathered yellow newspaper clipping of his parents. Cherished family photos, with him grinning ear to ear. A collection of homemade cookbooks. Framed quotes such as Mi casa es su casa. A prestigious Pottery Barn leather chair, distressed by puppy claw marks. Nostalgic t-shirts from the early 90’s.

    Chipped and heavily-used Williams-Sonoma platters. An entertainment center that mimicked a NASA operation center, with 70’s CDs left in the queue. Invitations to neighborhood block parties. An embroidered apron which read “World’s Best Grill Master” paired with still fresh barbeque sauce stains.

    Homemade recipe cards with quirky quotes like “It’s good because it’s cooked on wood.” An entire closet of camping gear. Leftover birthday celebration goodies. Glazed pottery from local North Carolinian artists. Entertaining sports memorabilia on full display. And a tender card from me:

    Dear Dad,

    You’re the best dad ever! I hope you have a birthday filled with tasty BBQ, blaring seventies music, and a pepperoncini pepper to start the day off right. Thank you for being there for me. You are my hero. I can’t wait to celebrate with you this weekend!

    My father collected items that brought him joy, and, clearly shared them with others.

    While you may not know him, or think you have anything to do with him, you do.

    You will be him one day. We will all be him one day. At some point, someone will rummage through our drawers. Scary, isn’t it?

    Weeks later after organizing his possessions, I returned to my lavish apartment with cloudy judgment. As soon as I arrived, I dropped my luggage near the door and waltzed into my closet. The items that once made me proud, made me nauseous. If someone rummaged through my keepsakes, they would find:

    A closet full of color-coordinated designer brand clothes. Scratched CDs listing my favorite nineties bands. An entire drawer filled with vibrant, unused makeup. A high-end collection of David Yurman rings, necklaces, and bracelets. Wrinkled Nordstrom receipts. An assortment of gently used designer handbags. And, pictures of fair-weather friends scattered throughout.

    Do you know what they all had in common? Me.

    ME! ME! ME!

    Comparing my life to my father’s led to a life-changing decision. Should I continue to splurge on meaningless items or start completely over?

    After a moment of contemplation, my life mirrored a blank slate. Products related to “keeping up with the Jones’s” were no longer my jam. Instead, my money was reserved for incredible moments that produced long-term joy and warm memories.

    My new spending habits derived from the following financial values:

    • Seek experiences that make me feel alive.
    • Purchase life-changing products.
    • Invest in creative hobbies that I’m proud of.
    • Provide others with joyous moments.
    • Initiate celebratory activities.
    • Make financial decisions out of love.

    With a little trial and error, I traded in frivolous shoulder bags for top-rated camping gear. Saturday shopping days transformed into baking Sundays. And most importantly, I went from feeling not enough to experiencing fulfillment.

    Twelve years later, I’m happy to share that I continue to evaluate my purchases using a “Will this make a good memory?” lens. In retrospect, mending my financial habits was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

    Why? I’m no longer impressed by status. I prefer art, learning, and the outdoors over any invitation to shopping. In return, my life is filled with purpose, meaning, and long-term satisfaction.

    What I know for sure is that most commodities on their own overpromise and underdeliver, unless we intentionally create an evocative memory with them. Materialistic purchases provide us with fleeting moments of happiness. On the contrary, curating beautiful moments with others delivers long-term joy.

    While you won’t find many luxurious products in my house now, you will find:

    A four-person picnic backpack for sunny days at a park. Bird feeders galore. A fine assortment of tea to share with others. Homemade bath bombs for birthdays. Color-coordinated self-improvement books. Aromatic sea salt exfoliants that replicate a spa experience. Cheery holiday decorations.

    An assortment of various vision boards and bucket lists. Seasonal candles galore. A bathroom drawer filled with citrus soaps, shampoo, and lotions for overnight guests. A collection of homemade scrapbooks featuring beloveds.

    An emerald green trekking hiking backpack for outdoorsy adventures. Crinkled Aquarium tickets. Handwritten family cookbooks. Seeds for a blooming garden. Hygge and cozy themed library nooks. A bright blue hybrid bike, for nomadic quests. A closet full of board games. And my most prized possession of all, a sentimental card from my darling father, John:

    Happy Graduation, Britti!

    I am proud of who you are and proud to be your dad. I like how you hold your head high. You are becoming a beautiful young woman and fun to be around. You have taught me things. You are so important to me. I treasure our time together and will always be here for you! It’s not always easy, but, you have a lot of love around you. I hope that life keeps blessing you. Keep spreading your wings and following your dreams!

    Love, Dad

    The real question is, when someone organizes your belongings, what will they find?

  • 5 Questions I Ask Myself Nightly Since My Father’s Sudden Death

    5 Questions I Ask Myself Nightly Since My Father’s Sudden Death

    “Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.” ~Langston Hughes

    Nine years ago, I was sitting mindlessly in my office cubicle in Omaha, Nebraska, when the receptionist called to inform me that my dad was in the lobby.

    I walked out to greet him: He was happy, smiling, and donning one of his favorite double-breasted suits. He was there because he needed my signature on some tax preparation forms before he handed them over to his accountant. My dad always took care of things like that.

    It was a Friday in February, late morning. We briefly discussed getting lunch but ultimately decided not to in the interest of time. We would see each other over the weekend, anyway. After all, we were planning a trip.

    A week prior, my dad told me he wanted to take me to Vegas for my thirtieth birthday. I’d never been to Vegas. There were things to discuss, hotel rooms to book, concert tickets to buy.

    I signed the tax forms, thanked my dad, and walked back to my cubicle. I don’t remember anything else about this day. It was, in fact, just like any other day. It was ordinary. Humdrum, you might say.

    But the next day…

    The next day is forever seared into the pathways of my hippocampus, every detail a tattoo on my mind’s eye.

    Because the next day


    That’s the day my dad died.

    I remember the morning phone call I got from my sister.

    9:38 a.m.

    I remember running to my car, half a block up Howard Street, and then another block down 12th. I remember the whipping wind and the stinging cold. I remember the saplings lining the streets of downtown, their branches brittle and bare, scratching the ether like an old lady’s fingers.

    I remember the seventeen-minute drive to the hospital.

    I remember the hospital, the stairs, the front desk, the waiting room, the faces, the hugs, the tears, the complete and utter shock.

    I remember that my mom wasn’t there.

    Three times we called. Where is she? Why isn’t she answering? Who’s going to tell her?

    It seems like our lives are defined by days, even moments, like these—the most joyous or the most unbearably tragic.

    I miss my dad.

    I miss his ridiculously big heart, which we were told was the thing that killed him.

    I miss the lingering scent of his cologne, a sort of woodsy, leathery blend that comes in a classic green bottle. I miss his laugh, which could range from a barely discernible chuckle to a jolly, high-pitched guffaw. I miss seeing him in my clothes—the shirts and shoes and jeans that I wanted to throw away because they were clearly going out of style.

    I miss the things I never thought I’d miss, the quirks and ticks and peccadillos that drove me crazy—like the way he’d crunch his ice cubes or noisily suck on a piece of hard candy in an otherwise quiet movie theater.

    I wonder if I chose to write this today instead of tomorrow because writing it tomorrow could prove too difficult. Or if I chose to write this after nine years instead of ten years because ten years is one of those nice, round numbers we use for milestone birthdays and anniversaries and other such occasions we’re supposed to celebrate. Or maybe because ten years is a whole decade and a whole goddamn decade without my dad just seems too strange to fathom.

    When I think of the last time I spoke with my dad, I can’t help but also think of that Benjamin Franklin quote—the one about how nothing is certain except death and taxes.

    But only one of those things comes with any sort of predictability.

    Studies have shown that our brains are wired to prevent us from thinking about our own mortality. Our brains shield us from the existential thought of death and view it as something that happens to others but not ourselves.

    So, most of us, perhaps because of our biological wiring, rarely even think about the unfortunate truth that we’re going to die, and we have no idea how or when.

    On the other hand, some of our greatest ancient philosophers actually practiced reflecting on the impermanence of life—otherwise known as Memento Mori, which literally translates to Remember you must die.

    “You could leave life right now,” wrote Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations. “Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

    Personally, I don’t think about my own demise a whole hell of a lot.

    But there’s a reason I decided to pack up my things and move to a new city six years ago.

    There’s a reason I decided to make a career pivot five years ago.

    There’s a reason I decided to quit my day job at almost forty years old and start working for myself two years ago.

    Because nine years ago, death did a number on me. I had one of those unbearably tragic days that seems to define our lives.

    And now, before I go to bed each night, I ask myself:

    Was I a decent person today?

    Did I challenge myself today?

    Did I have any fun today?

    What am I grateful for today?

    If I were on my deathbed, would I have regrets?

    Asking myself these things helps me live a more fulfilling life—the kind of life that I want to live. And I’m proud of what I’m doing here, right now. I think—at least I hope—my dad would be too.

    I still haven’t been to Vegas, though.

  • The Enduring Pain of Losing Someone You Love to Suicide

    The Enduring Pain of Losing Someone You Love to Suicide

    “The reality is that you will grieve forever.” ~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler

    March is always hard for me. Has been since March 21, 2017. That’s the day my eldest son, then twenty-seven, found his father hanging in our basement. I apologize for being so brutal.  But it was.

    What no one tells you about grief, what catches you by surprise, is the fact that you can be five years out and still, when March comes around, you can find yourself in a fetal position on the ceramic floor of your kitchen—howling like a wounded dog because a memory slashed unbidden across your brain and cut you so deep that your legs couldn’t hold your heavy, heavy weight. And you wonder—no, you know—that this will go on for the rest. Of. Your. Life.

    How to describe what it’s like when your heart breaks
 It’s something I’ve been trying to do for five years. Not out loud anymore because others tire of it. More so, I try to describe it to myself. Hoping that by describing it I can move forward, categorize it, and store it; put it away, out of sight, out of mind.

    Sure, I’ll go on. Most of us do. Muscle memory accounts for 90% of how you go on, trust me. In those first days I would say the percentage is even higher. Sleep, get up, make food, eat, feed the dog, put clothes in washer, clean the dirty dishes, put out the garbage, sleep, get up, make food


    Suicide loss, I’ve found, is unlike any other loss. Oh, this is not a contest of feelings. No, every loss of a loved one is felt deeply, profoundly. No contest. Suicide loss, however, results in countless unending ripples of devastation for the survivors every single day of the rest of their lives.

    I think of my sons. Always. The oldest is forever altered. His father was his best friend. Their relationship had just achieved that rewarding maturity of mutual respect. They enjoyed each other’s company. The youngest, twenty-three, was still working out childhood resentments, but I could see the potential for closeness. He was spared seeing his father’s lifeless body.

    We all now live with the special baggage of suicide survivors: guilt (why weren’t we there? I could have prevented it.), shame, anger (how could he?!), rage, trauma, fear (will my sons, will my mother, will my brother
), regret and deep sorrow for yesterday, today, and what will never be. Every anniversary, every milestone, every holiday, every celebration will rip the Band-Aid off again and again.

    Sometimes, the full impact of a loss takes time. For me, the first year was a “roller-coaster of emotions”—a common, but completely accurate phrase.

    To the outside world, I was pretty darn normal: keeping house, inviting people over, laughing, going about my business. Few, if any, noticed the cracks: gradual isolation, bathing only twice a week, forgetting things more than usual, horrible financial decisions, sudden breakdowns, crying in the grocery store, in traffic, in the shower, on the phone, in the middle of a conversation. Five years out and many of those symptoms remain.

    By year two the full weight of not just the loss, but the way of the loss, the reasons for the loss, the eternity of the loss hit me—a full body slam of something too heavy to survive. Or so it seemed.

    I found a therapist. She let me talk and weep. I was prescribed antidepressants. Nothing helped. I moved through days, functioned at a primal level showing the outside world only the version of myself that made them comfortable.

    No one, I don’t care how well-meaning they are, can understand this loss other than another suicide survivor. It’s true. Just as the surviving parents of a lost child know a uniquely singular, searing pain, so, too, does the suicide survivor.

    It’s important to seek out those who understand our pain. I recommend it. And grief counselors. And therapists who are especially trained in PTSD. Seek them out.

    I found a group of suicide survivors that met monthly. Hearing about their losses, especially the loss of sons and daughters, allowed me to appreciate the importance of finding a community of people who understand. In the hollowness of these survivors’ eyes, however, even as we embraced, I could see the singularity of their respective journeys. We may share, but we are alone in our pain.

    Memories do sustain me, as others so helpfully say. Sunny days at the beach are calming (unless the crashing waves remind me of past vacations with my husband and sons years ago).  Drinks and drugs provide a temporary escape (when I can resist the deadly seduction of blissful nothingness). The company of others can keep my mind from the endless cycles of black thoughts. Music can be helpful. Or dangerous.

    “Stay active! Meet new people! Get out and do something! Time to move on! Get over it!” I can hear the words of concerned family and friends.

    People mostly mean well. Time will pass. Things happen. Kids grow. Other cherished loved ones will die. I have come to understand that death is relentless, and that I must bear other cruel deaths as well as this one. 

    My sons are my reasons for living. Period. In my most desperate times the thought of their pain has been the only thing between me and oblivion. I will never do that to them. And they, in turn, know that either one of their deaths would mean my end. I have no doubt that I could not survive that. I need for them to be okay.

    I will, as they say, put one foot in front of the other every single day, if not for myself, for my sons. Even though they are grown. Even though they have their own lives of which I am but an infinitesimally small part. I have to stay alive because they have already suffered enough.  Suicide survivors understand that.

    And so, I hate March. I begin to dread it in January. By February I am coming up with excuses to stay home. And, on any given night in March, I am balled-up on the ceramic tile of my kitchen floor howling like the wounded animal that I am. But I get up the next day and I try again.

  • How I’m Coping with Grief by Finding Meaning in My Father’s Death

    How I’m Coping with Grief by Finding Meaning in My Father’s Death

    “Life has to end, love doesn’t.” ~Mitch Albom

    Before we dive into the dark subject of death, let me assure you, this is a happy read. It is not about how losing a loved one is a blessing but how it can be a catalyst to you unlocking big lessons in your life.

    Or maybe it is—you decide.

    To me, this is just about a perspective, a coping mechanism, and a process that I am personally employing to get over the loss of a loved one.

    My dad and I were best buds till I became a teenager. Then my hormones and “cool life” became a barrier between our relationship. I became busy and distant, and so did he. It continued until recently.

    My dad’s health went downhill fast in a couple of months.

    I could see him waning away, losing himself, losing this incessant war against so many diseases all alone. We (my family and friends) were there for him, trying to support him with whatever means possible.

    But maybe it was his time

    The last time I saw my father he was in a hospital bed, plugged into different machines, unable to breathe, very weak. It felt like I was in a movie—one of the ones with tragic endings. And the ending was indeed tragic.

    I clearly remember every single detail of the day my dad passed away. I remember how he looked, what the doctor said, who was around me, how my family was, and how fast it all happened.

    It shattered me. Losing a parent is something you can never prepare yourself for, ever.

    I was broken. I had people around holding me together, but I could only feel either of the two feelings: anger or sadness.

    Where did he go? How fragile are we humans? Did he want to say something to me that day? Was he in pain? Was there something I could have done for him? Why is death so bizarre? Why do people we love die and leave this huge vacuum in our lives?

    It’s been four months since he passed away. And now, I think I see why.

    I have come to the realization—due to the support of my therapist, my family, my partner, and my friends—that death is meaningless until you give it a meaning.

    Let me explain that.

    Usually, after experiencing the loss of a loved one, we go through a phase of grief. How we deal with death and experience grief is a very personal and subjective experience.

    I cannot outline tips for all; maybe your therapist or a mental health professional can guide you better on this.

    But, in my experience, grieving and dealing with death come with a bag full of opportunities. I don’t mean to give death a happy twist. To set the record straight, I believe death sucks.

    Losing a loved one feels like losing a part of yourself. It is a difficult, painful, deeply shaking experience that no one can prepare you for.

    However, in my experience, grieving is a process with many paths. A few common paths are:

    • I experienced losing a loved one, so I will now respect life even more.
    • I experienced losing a loved one, and it was awful, everything is awful, and I wish I was dead too.
    • I experienced losing a loved one, and I don’t know how to feel about this yet.

    I was on the third path.

    I constantly felt the need to be sad, to grieve, to lie in bed and cry all day

    But interestingly, there were also days when I felt that I needed to forget what had happened, live my life, and enjoy it as much as I could, because #YOLO (You Only Live Once).

    I felt the pressure to behave and act a certain way. Now that my dad was no more, I needed to act serious, mature, responsible. Now that my dad was no more, I needed to stop focusing on going out, partying, and taking trips with friends and instead save money, settle down, and take better care of my family’s health.

    I did not know how I was supposed to feel or to grieve.

    Then one night, the realization hit me. (Of course, all deep realizations happen during nighttime, you know it.)

    Maybe death is meaningless until I provide it a meaning—a meaning that serves me to cope, to grow, and to let go.

    After reading several books, sharing this with loved ones, talking to my therapist, and journaling about this realization for several days, I realized another significant thing.

    The process of finding meaning in death is like any other endeavor—you try several things until one works out.

    So, I laid out all possible meanings that seemed logically or emotionally sound to me.

    And here came the third great realization: Our loved ones want nothing but the best for us. Honoring yourself, investing in yourself, making yourself a better version of yourself is the best way to honor your lost loved ones.

    No matter how complicated our relationships with them were, people who genuinely loved and cared about us would want us to love and take care of ourselves.

    My dad cannot say it to prove me right on this, but I am pretty sure all he wanted was to see his family happy. See me working on myself, getting better at taking care of myself, and growing into a better human being.

    So, after this perspective shift, things became simpler.

    Now, death is no longer meaningless to me.

    My dad’s death brought me the golden realization that it’s time to upgrade myself, make myself better, and maybe implement some of his best values into my value system.

    I have reflected upon this for weeks. I have started working on this too.

    On a micro level, I am aware and conscious of how sucky death is. I saw it pretty close, but I now grasp the value of life. I am grateful for this newfound respect for life, however cliched that might sound. And on a macro level, I also know that even my death can also serve a purpose to someone’s life; it could help them ponder, reflect, and probably set things right for themselves.

    The moral of the story is that death is dark and sad but can also be beautiful. It is just a matter of perspective.

    It can be the storm that rocks your boat and makes you drown, but it can also be the light that guides you back to your purpose.

    This last section is for people who are grieving right now. I am aware that I cannot fathom what you are going through; losing a loved one is personal and subjective. But I wish to help you out in whatever little capacity I can.

    Here’s a quick list of things that are helping me. If you do decide to give these things a try, please share your experience in the comments.

    Write everything down—your memories, your frustrations, your feelings.

    Every time you think of that person, pull that thought out of your mind and put it onto the paper, even if it is just in one line. When faced with a loss, we often shut down and avoid our feelings instead of acknowledging how the trauma of losing a loved one is affecting us. Putting your feelings onto paper will help you work through them so you’re better prepared to handle the next set of challenges life has in store for you.

    Seek professional help in whatever form you can.

    Why? Because a professional is much better equipped than your friends and family. You can see a therapist and reach out to your friends for help too.

    Do what you feel more than you feel what you do.

    There will be times when you feel like doing something unexpected and fun, but once you start doing it, you will feel guilt, shame, and self-judgment. Doing what you feel like doing and not overthinking about how you are feeling while doing it allows you to let go. Read this again to understand it better.

    Keep track to remain patient.

    Grieving and getting over a loved one’s death requires a long process for many of us. It can get frustrating to constantly and consciously work on it. But if you can maintain a log of your progress— your tiny steps like making an effort to socialize, sitting with your feelings, or writing about your thoughts and sharing this with someone you trust—this can keep you aware, grounded, and patient for the long ride.

    Lastly, live your life.

    Circling back to the original theme, your loved ones just want you to be happy. So do things that make you happy. This could be as simple as getting an ice cream from the same place you used to visit together and reminiscing on the good times. Or as radical as getting your ducks in a row, showing up for that job interview, taking care of your body, joining the gym, and working on your mental health as well.

    At the end of the day (or life), we are all going to be floating in a pool of our memories, so make memories and enjoy life.

    And try finding the meaning of death. Ensure that meaning makes you rise one step above and closer to the person your loved ones imagined you to be. #YOLO

  • The Chaos of Life After Loss and the Love That Never Dies

    The Chaos of Life After Loss and the Love That Never Dies

    “We need to grieve the ones we’ve lost—not to sustain our connection to suffering, but to sustain our connection to love.” ~Jennifer Williamson

    Ken was only forty-seven years old when he met his untimely death.

    It was surreal, my brother-in-law was gone from our physical world.

    As a family, we felt the motions moving through the initial telephone call summoning us to the hospital to the time we surrounded him as he took his last breath. It was if we were all caught between two worlds, one of cruel reality and one of complete disbelief. You read about it happening to other people, not to us.

    My chest felt like a dense, cold stone had been dropped abruptly on it aimed at my heart after hearing those words hit my ears: “He’s not going to make it…”

    When it’s your family lying in the wake of such a painful experience, you soon realize the profound effect that death has. It causes an enormous ripple in all our lives that reaches out for miles, days, weeks, and years.

    It’s such a deep wound for an entire community that surrounded him—his young family left behind, extended family at work, concert traveling buddies, camping friends, and countless other people who enjoyed his presence.

    Ken embraced fun, passion, and laughter, whether he was tearing up the dance floor, creating his culinary signature dishes for our family gatherings, harvesting his perfect tomatoes, or taking pictures of his lovely wife, kids, and all their adventures with his “fancy camera”. Ken was such an amazing soul that brought light wherever he shone.

    A fall down a set of stairs changed our world completely. Ken suffered multiple bruises on the front and back of his brain as well as a significant fracture to the base of his skull. Black circles surrounded his eyes that look liked two large shiners. Contusions littered his arms and head.

    The next week was steady but slow progress. His alertness grew and conscious awareness slowly trickled back. A conversation with the physician’s assistant was frank. Despite the best-case scenario, it would be a long recovery.

    Questions loomed in the back of our minds. If he recovers, will our Ken ever be whole again? What challenges will this new version of himself present for our family?

    It was clear that Ken would more than likely suffer from cognitive behavior issues associated with a traumatic brain injury. While in the hospital, some of his behavior was unusual but typical of a patient with his condition and prognosis. Initially, he had to be restrained to ensure he wouldn’t pull out his vital monitors or attempt to leave the hospital.

    Eventually, he became calmer and more stable. A couple of days before he died was the last time my husband and I saw him smile and laugh again. A little of Ken was still in there, and it gave us hope.

    We soon learned that brain injuries are unpredictable. Twelve days in and without warning, Ken suffered a massive stroke. The night before, he sat and watched the Jets hockey game with his son and wife. The next morning changed everything.

    The nurse found him unresponsive. The doctors advised us that they would have to place Ken into a medically induced coma for three days.

    The next morning our immediate family was summoned to the ICU. For reasons unknown, the pressure on his brain suddenly escalated. Medical intervention could not save him. Ken would have to be taken off life support. The doctors ensured us that he would pass peacefully.

    All our family rushed to be by his side for his last moments. That day was the toughest day of my life. I witnessed the life leave his body as his skin turned from a beigy pink hue to a flush of gray in an instant when death gently urged life to leave him. We said goodbye to Ken as he took his last breath on this earth.

    The hospital was a stark reminder of the gravity of our situation. Patients and families in intensive care. The noises of the machines and sight of numerous tubes. The nurses and doctors. Conversations and updates. Decisions. Sandpaper Kleenex from the waiting room. The beeps and syringes. It was so much to soak in with your eyes and ears.

    The hospital is not a pleasant and serene place to die. It was out of medical necessity. For his children’s sake, it was a bitter lesson of mortality. There was no real goodbye. Memories of their father motionless, tubes parading from his body surrounded by an army of machines. My heart sank for them. It was their dad’s final moment of life, and unfortunately death doesn’t let us choose our departure.

    The next day after he had passed, we gathered at my mother-in-law’s house. A service needed to be planned. Food was ordered, notice in the paper submitted, cremation arrangements and so many other details were handled in a few short hours. A celebration of life at the local community center, where my husband’s family grew up.

    Simple and incredibly warm would be his final goodbye to everyone. It told a story of his passionate essence that was his life. There was an incredible outpouring of support by those that attended and were touched by Ken’s being.

    A collection of Ken’s favorite things and pictures of precious moments throughout his life was on display. His fishing rod, lures made from his daughter’s nail polish, guitar, sport jerseys, and the leg lamp Christmas Story movie lights I gave him for his birthday, among other things, were included.

    Ken’s wife gave the eulogy (the only speech), and it was moving. He was the love of her life since she was eighteen years old, father of her children, and the guy that was supposed to be alongside her till they were both old and grey.

    Despite the sorrow, she spoke of the time they had and her gratitude for having found her soul mate. I was held back by the shimmer she refused to let go, despite the world she knew was crumbling all around her. I expected that the service would provide some closure, but despite the reality growing around his death, it made it harder to accept that he was really gone.

    The wave of responsibilities in the aftermath of death is overwhelming. It is astonishing the volume of family and friends that contacted my sister-in-law, his mother and father, my husband. It left little time to feel lonely let alone mourn. Constant phone calls, food deliveries, visits.

    My sister-in-law knew that it was an unavoidable truth to the whole situation. People mean well; it’s the process that follows that is daunting. Paperwork, death certificate, cremation, insurance, calling the kids’ schools, and all the little things tacked on create an enormous to-do list.

    You steadily move without pausing and push through during the most profoundly impacting moment of your life. I’m still amazed at how well she pulled it all together. I knew in my heart she wanted to just collapse once all of this chaos settled. Once the mayhem calmed, the mounting grief would follow in its footsteps.

    I watched my family fall apart and try to make sense of it all. The cruelty of holding onto the idea of someone that once was. Hope heartlessly taken abruptly away from us.

    It wasn’t just his death alone; it was the rollercoaster of preceding events in the hospital that would damage us. Desperately holding onto the side of a boat without paddles, helplessly letting the river take us down its path etched into the earth. It is futile to stop it, you have to let it to carry you along its rough waters till they are calm once again. Like the river, living is really just control relinquished. It was never our duty to try and harness it.

    The heavy gravity of loss and pain we all felt was slightly dissipated as we reminisced about Ken. Our faces would be painted with smiles amid a round of laughter as we fondly remembered his antics and told stories amongst ourselves.

    We would be delicately reminded of how much we love him and his incredible passion for living. Death may take our physical being, but his memory and energy will live on within each of us.

    Grief and love are so intimately intertwined. Without grieving we would never know love so deeply. It’s the beauty of love and sorrow twirling around us in this constant dance we call life. I realized that our hearts are meant to be broken only to be reborn and rise time and time again.

  • 5 Important Life Skills I Learned in Grief After My Husband Died

    5 Important Life Skills I Learned in Grief After My Husband Died

    “Sit with it. Sit with it. Sit with it. Sit with it. Even though you want to run. Even when it’s heavy and difficult. Even though you’re not quite sure of the way through. Healing happens by feeling.” ~Dr. Rebecca Ray

    When my husband died from terminal brain cancer in 2014, I learned all about deep grief. The kind of grief that plunges you into a valley of pain so vast it takes years to claw your way out. In the beginning, I didn’t want to deal with grief because the pain was too intense. So, I dodged grief and circled around the pit of despair, trying to outrun or outwit it.

    My biggest grief fault was imagining an end. In my naivetĂ© I figured I’d reach a point where I could wash my hands of it and claim, “Whew, I’m done!” But that’s not how grief and living with monumental loss works.

    Grief doesn’t like to be ignored. The hardest lesson for any griever is learning that grief never goes away. You just figure out how to make room for it.

    A few years after my husband died, I kept seeing the quote “what you resist persists.” It was like grief sending me a message to stop running and pay attention.

    This message reached me at a critical time because I was exhausted from avoiding the pain, so I decided to let myself feel the sadness and see what happened instead. I stopped asking, why me? and started asking, what am I supposed to learn from this? Instead of evading grief, which was too grueling anyway, I let grief teach me what I needed to know.

    Much to my surprise, amid the discomfort and sorrow and suffering, I learned a whole new way of living.

    I didn’t realize I was morphing into a new, more self-actualized me because it’s hard to see the changes happening in real time. You can’t possibly appreciate your progress until you look back at how far you’ve come.

    With the benefit of hindsight, I can see how grief’s guidance taught me the following important life skills I never would have learned without it.

    How to Accept My Feelings

    Prior to my husband’s death, I didn’t have time to feel my feelings. I kept busy with distractions, and whenever a tsunami of emotion surrounded me, I shut down.

    The mistake I used to make was thinking my emotions meant something about me as a person. I convinced myself that sadness meant I was weak, and I couldn’t possibly be healing if I still cried over my husband’s death years later. I thought, I must be an angry person because I get angry so often, or something must be wrong with me because I feel overly judgmental sometimes.

    Because grief brings with it a whole slew of emotions, it forced me to get better at feeling everything. With practice, I started naming my emotions, and I uncovered what I was feeling and why. Instead of labeling my feelings as good or bad, I accepted them as nothing more than the brief emotional surges they are.

    I took a deep dive into all the self-help guides I could find to determine that every emotion has its place. We feel things so we can process what’s happening in our lives, learn from it, and eventually express its meaning. None of my feelings were better or worse than the others. None of them meant anything about my healing or how well I coped.

    I learned I’m not an angry person, I’m just a person who occasionally feels anger. I’m not a judgmental person, I just feel judgmental sometimes. And sadness doesn’t mean I’m weak. It means I’m a human being experiencing a human emotion.

    It took me a while to believe that my feelings were nothing more than blips on the radar screen of my human existence. If it weren’t for grief, I might not have uncovered the secret to accepting all my feelings –they mean nothing about me as a person.

    If I’m being honest, I still get angry way more than I want to. But I don’t keep busy with distractions anymore. I feel my feelings when they come up, let them pass through and thank them for giving me an opportunity to understand myself on a deeper level.

    How to Be More Vulnerable

    In the past, I rarely admitted when I made mistake, when someone hurt me, or when I was afraid. As far back as I can remember, people viewed me as strong, brave, and determined because that’s what I portrayed. Few people ever saw the anxious, disappointed, or terrified side of me.

    So, it was no surprise after my husband died, when card after card poured in with the same sentiment: “I’m so sorry for your loss. But I know how strong you are. If anyone can get through this devastation, you can.”

    It comforted people to think I was “strong” enough to endure my loss. As if “strong” people grieved less than their more fragile counterparts. But their condolences were of little comfort to me after I learned a very basic principle of grief; it doesn’t discriminate. It tests the mettle of everyone’s soul.

    Grief forced me to expose myself emotionally. I had to show my vulnerable side because fear took over and I didn’t know how to conceal it anymore. It seeped out of my pores

    The upside of exposing my vulnerability was building deeper, more authentic relationships. I never knew how much people craved to see the real me until I noticed a favorable shift in my personal connections after I admitted my fear, shame, and regret. When I was honest about the intense stress of grief and the toll it took on me, others trusted me with their innermost secrets too.

    I much prefer letting others in now. I never want to go back to keeping people at arm’s length and pretending to be someone I’m not. I did a grave disservice to myself by appearing so aloof for so long. Before my husband died, I got away with it. After he died, there was nowhere left to hide.

    I’m not afraid of being afraid anymore. I can readily admit now when I’m scared. I also admit that I cry and break down and throw an occasional temper tantrum when life gets to be too much.

    If it wasn’t for grief, I would’ve never known the benefit of letting others see the real me.

    How to Ask for Help

    As a person who avoided feelings and shunned vulnerability, I never knew how to ask for help. Not that I didn’t need help. I just hated asking because I assumed people would say yes when they secretly wanted to say no.

    I didn’t want to be a burden on anyone.

    After my husband died, I needed help with lawn maintenance, household repairs and childcare, among other things. I realized quickly I couldn’t do it all on my own and it took everything I had in me to ask for help because it was such a foreign concept.

    One of the biggest things I learned on my grief journey is that healing requires honesty. And honesty requires practice. When people said, “let me know what you need” I understood what they really meant was, “I have no idea what to do! I feel so helpless and I’m begging you to please just tell me what you need, and I’ll do it!” People aren’t mind-readers, so I practiced being as honest and explicit as I could.

    It took me a while to get good at asking for help. But I appreciate how wonderful it is for the person on the receiving end to get specific instructions. People want to help and now I let them.

    My healing heart and relationships have vastly improved by implementing this one simple change.

    How to Settle in with Uncertainty

    I used to think I controlled the universe—until my husband died. Control is an illusion, and that truth smacked me upside the head the day his doctor diagnosed him with terminal cancer.

    I’ve never liked uncertainty. I’m not a spontaneous person. My world works better when I know what’s going on and no one has any surprises up his or her sleeve. But after my husband’s diagnosis, we lived each day with uncertainty because we knew for sure he would die from his disease—we just didn’t know when.

    The twelve months between his diagnosis and death were pure torture. However, we settled in with uncertainty anyway because we had no choice. Instead of focusing on the when of the future, we made the most of the present.

    After he died, I learned that grief and uncertainty go hand in hand. When you’re grieving, you don’t know what emotional wave will hit you from day to day. You go through life without the security of knowing what will happen next because something terrible already happened and it could happen again. And you can’t control it. This is both a blessing and a curse.

    The curse is the uncertainty, of course, but the blessing is you get to take the responsibility of the world off your shoulders. You surrender because you understand you were never in charge, anyway.

    Now, I welcome the peace of surrender and not knowing. I discovered it’s easier to live in the moment instead of focusing on things outside of my control. Talk about lifting an enormous burden! I ride the emotional waves as they come and remind myself to stop forcing things and just let them be.

    Whenever the control urge starts to churn and makes me think I have a chance to influence an outcome, I imagine my husband tapping me on the shoulder and whispering, “remember how we used to surrender? Please do that with me until this feeling passes.”

    How to Allow Others to Have Their Own Feelings

    When I got better at feeling my feelings, allowing vulnerability, and settling in with uncertainty, I also learned one of the most important life skills—how to let other people have their own feelings, too.

    Because I know I’m not in charge and I don’t control the Universe, I know I can’t control what other people think or feel either. If grief has taught me anything, it’s that everyone has their own way of doing things and thinking about things and expressing their feelings about things. And none of it means anything about me.

    I used to get upset when someone else was upset or get offended if someone else offended me. I tried to fix people and things to make everyone happy because I thought it was my responsibility to help others live in harmony.

    Death put the kibosh on that distorted way of living.

    I no longer had the time or inclination to teach everyone how to live in harmony because my world was one breath away from potential collapse. I had to concentrate on myself. When I focused on getting my mind right, making peace with grief, and learning how to handle my feelings, I understood it was an inside job. No one else could do it for me. And I couldn’t or shouldn’t try to do that for anyone else. Everyone comes from their own level of understanding about themselves and the world.

    It took me a long time to understand this because it took me a long time to understand me.

    Now I don’t pretend to know what or how or why someone else should think or feel a certain way. When other people tell me how they feel, I believe them.

    It’s not my job to try and change someone else’s feelings any more than it’s their job to try and change mine.

    The Way It Is Today

    I don’t wish my monumental loss on anyone, but looking back now, I see how my crooked, confusing, and soul-crushing path taught me essential life skills I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.

    Even though I’ve had my fair share of hard days and months and years, I became a more compassionate and considerate person with grief’s guidance. I changed my worldview because pain changed me. And these days, I surrender to what is instead of trying to change circumstances outside of me.

    It’s only after spending time with your pain that you develop an understanding of its purpose. I never thought I’d find an upside to grief because I thought grief was all about death. But I found out that grief teaches you about more than just death and surviving loss.

    It teaches you how to live.

  • 4 Powerful Lessons I’ve Learned from Grief Since My Mom Died Suddenly

    4 Powerful Lessons I’ve Learned from Grief Since My Mom Died Suddenly

    “Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul. But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here.” ~Mariska Hargitay

    At 6:07 pm on July 18, 2020, I was sitting on the couch with my boyfriend. It was a Saturday night, and I had canceled plans with my friends because I had a migraine. I had eaten dinner already, and I was in my pajamas, watching TV. My phone rang—my dad. “I’ll call him back later,” I said, flipping the phone over on the couch and returning my attention to the television.

    Three minutes later, I received a text from my dad to my sister and me.

    “Girls, I do not want to alarm you, but I am at the emergency room in Asheville. Your mother and I were riding our bikes, and she was hit by a car. An ambulance came very quickly, and they have her right now. I am doing some paperwork at the front desk, so I don’t know her condition. I will keep you posted. Love.”

    I read it to my boyfriend, concerned. I worried she had broken an arm or perhaps even a leg. My mother had never broken a bone before. I answered my father’s Facetime. I could see the hospital waiting room behind him. Crowded. I looked back at his face. My stomach tied itself into knots, and my migraine pounded.

    “God almighty, shit.” My dad’s refrain.

    I looked at my sister’s face. I stared at her, a tiny square on my phone. As my dad described what had happened, my eyes bore into my twin’s, as if I could make everything okay if I just looked at her hard enough.

    My dad told the story, occasionally stopping to speak to doctors or the hospital chaplain, Jim, who remained close by. That was the first sign to me that something was very wrong. All those people in the waiting room, and the chaplain was only speaking to Dad.

    I’ve heard this story thousands of times by now. I know every detail by heart. So I’ll tell it in my words, not his.

    Around 3:32 pm, Jane and John Beach left their cabin in Saluda, North Carolina, with their mountain bikes hitched to the back of their twenty-one-year-old Toyota Four Runner. They drove to Pisgah National Forest near Asheville, where they planned to go on a bike ride before stopping by their favorite brewery for dinner.

    At 5:21 pm, Jane and John were finishing their ride. They took a right on Brevard Road. John went first. And Jane followed.

    At 5:22 pm, twenty-five-year-old Hannah was driving down the road. If Jane had turned right seconds later, at 5:23 pm, Hannah would have sped right past. Instead, Jane was hit from behind by Hannah’s tan Buik Sentry.

    John heard the impact, skidded to halt, and threw his bike across the road. Sprinting to his wife, who was now lying in the street. Her bike was destroyed. Her helmet split in two. At the same moment, Hannah, with blood on her hood and a cracked windshield, drove away as quickly as she came.

    At Mission Hospital, Jane was intubated and treated with attention and care. At 7:18 pm, I learned over FaceTime that my mother had died. My father was crying.

    “God almighty, shit.”

    He continued to repeat.

    That day, the moment my mom died, I joined a community of hundreds of thousands of others who were grieving. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably part of my community, or maybe you love someone who is.

    During the months after my mother’s death, I would lie in bed at night and think about everyone I was connected to, everyone else who was lying in bed, unable to sleep because they were thinking of someone they loved and lost.

    Since then, I’ve learned a lot about grief through articles, books, podcasts, and speaking to other people who were going through similar experiences. I wanted to understand grief because I wanted to know how to recover from it. But what I learned along the way is that grief is not something you heal from. When you lose someone, you carry that around with you forever, and it becomes a part of you.

    Grief can actually mold itself into something beautiful that reminds you of your strength and your capacity to love and be loved so fiercely that it hurts.

    Dumbledore said it best when he said, “To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.”

    If we can learn how to live in harmony with grief, it can teach us so much and help us grow. Here are four powerful lessons I’ve learned from my grief.

    Lesson 1: Love yourself harder.

    After my mom died, I was a mess. Not only was I in physical pain, but I felt as if all of the mental health struggles I’ve wrestled with for most of my life (anxiety and hypochondria, to name a few) were bubbling back up to the surface and threatening a takeover.

    Grieving can bring up old wounds and make other emotions seem unbelievable overwhelming. That’s why self-love and self-compassion are essential to ease the suffering that comes with grief.

    Self-compassion isn’t an easy thing to learn, but a good way to begin is by making a list of things that comfort you and making time for those things. Put in an effort toward just showing yourself some love.

    Grief taught me the importance of nurturing myself. I like to take baths, curl up with a good book, and take long walks. I’ve found that these moments of stillness and calm help me get through the moments of chaos and sadness and fear and frustration.

    Lesson 2: Fully feel your emotions.

    Grief often stimulates an overwhelming range of different emotions. People who are grieving feel their emotions very strongly, whether it’s sadness, joy, fear, or relief. Even a year and a half after my mom’s death, my emotions still hit me like bricks, and sometimes I really don’t see them coming.

    It’s natural to try and avoid the more uncomfortable emotions, like anxiety or fear, but that just makes them stronger. Instead, try sitting with your emotion. Fully feel it, and allow it to exist without any avoidance.

    Mindfulness, or grounding yourself in the present moment, can really help when you find yourself pushing an emotion away because it’s too painful. Try sitting quietly in an empty room. Imagine your emotion sitting beside you. Remember, you are not your emotion. It doesn’t have to control you. You don’t have to push it away out of fear.

    Another thing that’s important to remember is this: it’s okay to feel things. It’s okay to feel sad or angry or frustrated. Don’t push away any feelings because you think they’re “wrong” or “not helpful.” When you’ve gone through the trauma of losing someone, all feelings are valid. Let emotions live freely and recognize that you’re going to have good days and bad days.

    Lesson 3: Rituals and reminders can be therapeutic.

    When my mom died, I struggled to think of her without feeling pain. I hid everything that reminded me of her and took down all of my photos. Remembering her felt like staring directly at the sun. But eventually, I started to take comfort in reminders. I wanted to talk about her and see her face.

    Now, I wear her wedding ring every day and think of her often when I look at it. I drink earl grey tea and remember the days we used to spend sipping hot drinks in the Barnes and Noble coffee shop. I wear her favorite sweatshirt and think about the day she got it when she wasn’t much older than I am now, and she was pregnant with me and my sister.

    Staying connected with your loved ones after they’re gone can be tremendously comforting. There are many rituals that can help you accomplish that feeling. Here are a few of my favorite ideas:

    • Read their favorite book
    • Sit in a spot they loved in the house
    • Talk to their childhood best friend and ask to hear stories about them
    • Look at old photos
    • Listen to the music they loved
    • Plant a tree or flowers in their memory
    • Donate to a charity your loved one supported

    Lesson 4: Find people who understand you.

    Talking to other women who have lost their moms in their twenties has been an essential part of my healing process. I’ve met so many strong women who have overcome loss and trauma and used their grief to become better versions of themselves.

    One of my most meaningful connections formed through an organization called The Dinner Party. A few weeks after my mom died, I signed up without thinking that I would really get anything out of it. A few weeks later, I got an email saying that I had a new “buddy”—a girl only a few years older than me who had lost her mom in a biking accident just one month before I lost mine. A year and a half later, we still facetime regularly and are a big part of each other’s lives.

    Talking to someone who shares such a huge life experience with you is a relief, and it feels great to be able to express your full range of emotions to someone who understands because they are feeling all of those things too. From how to support our newly single dads to how to bring up your dead mom to a new friend, we’ve talked through so many things that are meaningful and important to me. We’re close friends, and she has been a great joy to come out of this difficult tragedy.

    Losing my mom has undoubtedly been the most difficult experience of my life, but I’ve learned to love my grief throughout my journey. It has made me stronger and more compassionate, and I know myself and my purpose better now than I ever would have without my grief. I would trade it all to have my mom back, but I know she would be proud of me if she were here right now.

  • Why I Blamed Myself for My Ex’s Suicide (and Why It’s Not My Fault)

    Why I Blamed Myself for My Ex’s Suicide (and Why It’s Not My Fault)

    “No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future.” ~Umar Ibn Al Khattab

    I don’t remember the exact day the message came through. It was from my son, Julian, and he needed to talk to me. It sounded pretty serious. He never really needs to talk to me.

    His father was found dead earlier that week. He’d hung himself.

    While this news hardly affected Julian at all, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I cried.

    Our Marriage

    We met in a taxi thirty-three years ago. He was the driver, I was a drunk passenger. He was super handsome and flirty. He brought me home, and we exchanged numbers and instantly began a relationship.

    Within six months of dating, I found out I was pregnant. Since I didn’t want to be an unwed mother, we were married within a month and began our lives. We both had good jobs. I worked at a bank, he was an HVAC technician. Life was pretty good in the beginning.

    Then his job took us to a different city. We moved and for the first time in my life, I was alone with no friends and no family. I was twenty-six years old. Our marriage was okay, and we got along well.

    About six months after we moved to this new city, he started coming home later and later from work, some nights not until 2am. He always told me he had to work late. I believed him. He was on call a lot. I was home alone a lot.

    A few months later I made the decision to return to our hometown. He was to find a job there, which wouldn’t be hard. I didn’t want to be alone in this big city anymore, and I was just about to give birth. I wanted my family around.

    Life After Our Move

    We stayed at my parents’ house when we returned, and within a month had found our own apartment.

    He found a job almost instantly, and I delivered Julian two days after we got home. Life was going well.

    About a year into our lives with the baby, things started to get bad. He was out “working late” an awful lot. He would come home around two or three in the morning, smelling of alcohol. By the time Julian was eighteen months I had had enough and asked him to leave. This wasn’t the life I wanted for my son.

    He moved out and for the next six months, my life was a living hell. He would come over drunk at night, force sex on me, threaten to take my baby away from me, threaten to kill us both. He threatened me almost daily. Many nights I’d stay at a friend’s house just to feel safe. Many times the police were called.

    He finally moved out of province, and it was years before we heard from him again.

    The Divorce Agreement

    The day had come to file for divorce and put this whole marriage nightmare behind me. I filed for sole custody with no visitation allowed to him. He was unstable, dangerous, and violent, and I was not taking any chances with my son. The fact that he lived far enough away was my saving grace.

    Also stated in the divorce agreement was no child support payments. I wanted to completely cut all ties with this man. So I did just that.

    Twelve Years Later

    It may have been longer, maybe thirteen or fourteen years later, we received a package from him via his brother. It was sent to Julian. A picture of himself and a silver chain with a St. Christopher pendant.

    It meant nothing to Julian. He didn’t even know who this person was. I questioned his gesture. Was he trying to make amends? Was he trying to prove that maybe he’d changed and he wanted to start a relationship with his son?

    I never got the answer to any of those questions. He never reached out again after that.

    When my son moved away to university, he lived only a couple of hours away from his father. He made an attempt through his uncle to maybe meet up with his dad, but his dad wasn’t interested and declined the offer.

    And life simply carried on.

    Every now and then, throughout the years, Julian’s uncle would update us on what his father was doing and how he was doing. It seemed alcohol and depression were major parts of his life.

    I couldn’t help but feel responsible for this.

    Was he depressed because I took his only child away from him? Was this my fault? Whenever we got another update, I just felt guilty. Did I do this to him?

    The Call

    When I got the call, I was in complete shock. I had no idea his depression was that bad. How would I have known? Were there other factors that played a part in his suicide? Or was it just years of anguish knowing he had a son who was never a part of his life
 because of me?

    Could this have been prevented if his son had been a part of his life? Did I do this??

    I cried for a week. I had never felt so much sorrow, and guilt. SO much guilt. Was I responsible for someone’s suicide?

    Dealing with My Grief and Guilt

    It took me a while to wrap my head around his suicide. It also took me a while to convince myself I was not responsible for it, nor should I feel guilty about it. I didn’t talk to anyone about this. No one would understand my feelings, and they were hard to explain.

    I realized, though, that he had been battling demons that had nothing to do with me. I made the best choice for my son, and that was the most important thing to me.

    He had made his choices as well. And I had nothing to do with them. Me not allowing him any visitation to his son was a result of his actions and choices. He chose his behavior. Not me. I chose to not have his behavior damage my child.

    I had to talk myself through that. It’s not your fault, Iva. He could have chosen to change his life, improve his life, reach out to his son more often, anything. And he chose not to.

    It’s not your fault, Iva.

    There is a tiny part of me inside that wishes things would have been different. If only he got help for his depression and alcoholism. If only he could have been a part of Julian’s life. If only he could have tried to help himself.

    I’m sorry his life ended so tragically. I’ll always feel sorry for that. But I won’t feel guilty about it anymore.

    It’s Not Our Fault

    It’s so easy to take responsibility for a loved one’s suicide, especially when you set a hard boundary for your own well-being. “If only I had done this or done that” or “if only I would have not done that,” but the reality is, it’s not our fault.

    We are not in control of how people think, act, react, or live their lives. We can only control our own lives. What people do with their own life is out of our hands. We can offer them tools and help, but it’s up to them to accept it and/or use it.

    If they don’t, that’s not our fault either. It’s easy to think that we should have/could have done more, but we did as much as we could. The rest was up to them.

  • Lessons and Gifts from Grief: What I Learned After Losing My Baby

    Lessons and Gifts from Grief: What I Learned After Losing My Baby

    Today marks the twenty-year anniversary of when I lost my first baby.

    I was, at the time, happily married and we were excited to start our family. My pregnancy was planned, wanted, and blissful. I was six months along. I was showing, and the baby was kicking vigorously. We had just moved into a wonderful house only a few blocks from my parents. Everything was absolutely golden.

    It took me a little while to find an OB-GYN in the area, so I was about a month late for my baseline ultrasound. We were very excited to get a clear view of our baby and find out the sex.

    The tech performed the ultrasound and was very quiet while my husband and I chatted excitedly. She told us it was a boy and then rushed out of the room to get the doctor.

    At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We discussed painting the nursery blue and confirmed our choice of name. But then I turned to my husband and said, “Did she seem weird to you?” It suddenly struck me that she was kind of abrupt.

    The next thing I knew, the radiologist was there delivering news that sucked all the air out of the room. Our baby was not viable. He had severe brain defects: Dandy-Walker malformation, an absent cerebellum, and extreme hydrocephalus. 

    I wailed. My husband stared blankly in shock. And then came the next news. We had to do something.  We had to end our baby’s life…and do it that day.

    Because of the laws governing “late term abortion,” I was right at the deadline for a procedure called a Dilation and Extraction. If I was past the deadline, I would have to be induced, labor, and deliver a dead baby. The doctor fudged my gestation by a week, just to be on the safe side.

    I called my mom to tell her. I will never forget the sound of her scream. I went straight to her house and my parents, my husband and I all piled into the car.

    I remember being shocked by what a lovely sunny day it was. How could the sky be so blue when this was happening?

    I went to a clinic to begin the dilation process. And they euthanized my child in my womb.  I won’t get into details, but it was so painful, I threw up from the pain and couldn’t get out of bed for hours afterwards. At the hospital a day later, I was put under and they took my baby.

    Sometimes, you have to make a decision without a choice. It didn’t seem right to me to continue with the pregnancy knowing my baby could die at any time. The doctors were shocked he had made it so far. I didn’t feel right about bringing a baby into this world to suffer and die. I was also mindful that I needed to preserve my own physical and mental health because I wanted to be a mother. In fact, eight weeks later, I was pregnant with my older son. He will be nineteen on December 19th.

    The grief was horrible. The shock amplified it. The happiest time of my life was turned into the saddest. 

    My family and friends rallied around me. My next-door neighbor, who is a yoga teacher, told me to “just come” to class. I did. Every day.

    I covered all the mirrors in my house because I couldn’t stand the sight of my body. I looked postpartum. My breasts were ready to nurse. But no baby.

    I made recovering from grief my full-time job.

    I painted an oil painting every day. I spent time in my rose garden. I prayed. I cried. I worked my way through the grief as expediently as I could so I could continue on my journey to motherhood. And I did.

    On the one-year anniversary of losing my first baby, I was just about full term with my older son. I was terrified I would lose him too. My pregnancy was fraught with anxiety, and it culminated at the end. But of course, the joy of delivering my son insulated me from the grief. It wasn’t until the second anniversary that I was finally able to process what had happened.

    Grief finds a way. There is no around, only through. Fighting it only makes it hurt more.

    I can remember feeling like shards of glass would come flying at me, and I needed to just let them pass through. There were times when I felt absolutely fine, and then the grief would overcome me. I called them cloudbursts. These were lessons I took into other experiences. I always say grief brings strange and beautiful gifts.

    I was with my grandfather as he died. I was one of my grandmother’s caregivers as she moved toward death. I was at my father’s bedside the moment he passed. Grief is different, but also the same every time you go through it. It will not be denied.

    I remember telling a family friend that as I healed from losing my baby, I could feel it becoming a part of me. I knew it would always be there, like a vein running through me.

    On this day, two children and two decades later, I honor my experience. I bless it for the lessons it taught me—not only about grief but about life in general.

    I had very black-and-white thoughts about abortion. I was raised Catholic. I was pro-choice for other people while “knowing” there were no circumstances under which I would have one. I was certain.

    And then something literally unimaginable happened. I learned that a huge portion of life is grey. 

    I learned that ambivalence is common.

    I learned that you don’t really know what you will do until you are faced with a situation. It’s not a question of knowing your own mind or having faith or holding certain values. It’s a question of the circumstance. It’s a matter of not having all the information until you are faced with it directly, in the moment. This has served me well.

    I have come to understand I will feel discomfiture, and it’s alright. I realize I will not always know what to do. I now know that sometimes I will do what I believe is “right” and I may never, ever be okay with it. Ever.

    And I also realize that judging someone else’s circumstances is nonsense. We all have struggles, and we all do the best we can. None of us can ever understand someone else’s challenge because it’s for them. The best we can do is be kind, supportive, and respectful.

    These are the lessons my lost baby taught me.

  • One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

    On September 23, 2015, Loukas Angelo was walking to his after-school strength and conditioning class just a few hundred yards from Archbishop Mitty High School.

    He was approaching the outdoor basketball courts when he ran out into the street and was struck by a car traveling around thirty miles per hour. The impact sent Loukas flying down the street, and he was immediately transported to the closest hospital where he remained in critical condition.

    I remember sitting on the couch later that afternoon when my phone started blowing up. Feeling curious, I shoved aside my history homework and decided to see what was going on.

    Multiple people had sent some variation of the same text, “Yo. This is so sad. Did you hear about what happened with Loukas
?”

    Confused and a little bit scared, I turned to Twitter and started looking through my feed. I was absolutely floored by the tweets that were being sent out by my friends and our high school’s Twitter page.

    Similar to tragedies like the Boston Marathon, or 9/11, it was one of those moments in life where you’re always going to remember exactly where you were when you found out the news.

    It was almost inconceivable to think about the fact that I had walked across the same exact crosswalk where Loukas was hit just fifteen minutes prior.

    All throughout the night, support poured in from social media sites. The hashtag #PrayForLoukas was trending #1 on Twitter in my local area for several hours. I’m not a particularly religious person, but for the first time in years I said a prayer for Loukas before going to bed.

    The next day at school was one of the most eerie, heart-breaking days of my life. I arrived at Archbishop Mitty High school that day to a campus that was completely silent. Although there were plenty of people walking through the campus, no one said a word to each other

    As I walked toward my homeroom class, I remember seeing one kid carrying a ridiculously oversized backpack. It looked like he was at the airport preparing to leave for a month, and I let out a slight chuckle imagining what it was like to carry that thing around all day.

    However, my smile was wiped off my face completely when I stepped through the door of the classroom.

    Every one of my classmates was sitting there emotionless. Stone-faced. Not saying a word to each other. I sat down and did the same, as we were all preparing for an assembly in the gymnasium that was set to take place in about fifteen minutes.

    The 1400 students funneled into the gymnasium and took their seats. You could hear a pin drop.

    Our principal got up and gave a very powerful speech, which concluded with him leading the entire school in a prayer for Loukas. After a few others got up and spoke, the assembly concluded with a one-minute-long moment of silence.

    The day after the assembly, the news broke that Loukas had passed away after being in critical condition for around forty-eight hours.

    On September 25, 2015, Loukas Angelo lost his life at the age of fourteen years old

    Coming To Terms with Your Mortality

    As we go about our day-to-day lives, we are inundated with thousands of thoughts, most of them the same thoughts that ran through our head the day before.

    But very few of these thoughts, if any, are about our own mortality.

    It’s a little scary to think about the fact that you and everyone you know will perish from this world.

    No one knows when, but one day you will draw your last breath on this earth. Some people have the luxury of preparing for it, while others like Loukas have no idea that it’s coming.

    But at some point, death comes for each and every one of us.

    We all know this deep down, but it seems like so many of us live like we have unlimited time on this earth.

    We put off spending time with family even though they can be taken from us at any given moment.

    We refuse opportunities to get out of our comfort zone even though we have no idea how many of those opportunities we’re going to be given.

    In other words, most of us go through life without coming to grips with our own mortality.

    When Loukas passed, I obviously felt sorrow for his friends and family, who have to carry that burden around for the rest of their life.

    But mainly, I thought about Loukas.

    Given the nature of his death, he didn’t have any time to reflect back on his life. And given how young he was, if he did have that opportunity there wouldn’t be much to think about compared to someone on their deathbed at seventy or eighty years old.

    Yet, I couldn’t help but imagine what he would be thinking about in his final moments had he been given that opportunity. What regrets would he have? What moments would he replay in his head over and over again?

    Eventually, I started asking myself those same questions. It was a pretty cruel exercise that I was putting myself through, but it felt like a way to extract some meaning out of a terrible tragedy.

    As I imagined what it would be like to contemplate my existence at the end of my life, I didn’t feel happiness or satisfaction. I felt regret and shame.

    One common theme that permeated my consciousness was fear. I was only seventeen at the time, but I realized that essentially all of the regrets I’d have on my deathbed were a direct result of being afraid.

    Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. Fear of judgement.

    It was a brutal wake-up call. For the majority of my life, I had missed out on opportunities and experiences due to fear.

    I was here alive and breathing, but I wasn’t truly living. Merely existing, acting as if the end was never coming.

    How to Let Fear & Death Guide Your Actions

    I’m twenty-two now, and since then my approach to life has been simple.

    Twelve times per year, I do a monthly check-in with myself and ask myself one simple question:

    At this very moment, what am I avoiding in life because I’m afraid?

    The answers to this question inform me of exactly what changes that I should be making in my day-to-day life.

    Most people run from fear, but my suggestion is to lean into it. It’s actually an incredibly accurate predictor of the changes that you should be prioritizing in your life.

    It’s different for everyone.

    Some of you may be afraid of changing careers and pursuing something that you love because of the uncertainty that comes with changing professions.

    Some of you may be afraid of improving your social skills because that involves battling with the fear of rejection.

    Some of you may be afraid of moving to a different city because you’ll have to leave friends and family that you care about.

    If you have the courage to actually ask and answer the question, your fears will tell you exactly where your focus should be. It’s almost as if they’re calling out to you, saying:

    “Don’t forget about me. If you don’t take action, I’m going to torture your thoughts when you get to the end of your life.”

    Facing your fears is hard. Staying somewhere you don’t belong is even harder. But nothing compares to the pain of getting to the end of your life and knowing that you let fear stop you from doing the things you truly wanted to do.

    Just like Jim Rohn said, “We all must suffer one of two pains. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is that discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

    So I highly encourage you to ask yourself the question above each month and write down whatever comes to mind.

    Pick one of the things that you write down and make it the biggest priority in your life. You can’t fix everything about your life at once, as focusing on everything is the same thing as focusing on nothing.

    But once you’ve narrowed your focus, you can start taking small steps every day to overcome that fear.

    If you’re afraid of social interactions and have been for years, start saying hello to people as they walk by each day.

    If you’re afraid of starting a workout routine, start by walking for two minutes each day.

    These initial bursts of momentum that don’t seem like they make any difference are ultimately the foundation upon which your biggest changes take place.

    Do the things that you think you cannot do. Let the pain of not facing your fears override the pain of letting them fester for years and decades.

    Your future self will smile down at you.

    #LiveLikeLoukas

  • Honoring Lost Loved Ones: How I Carry My Son’s Memory into the Future

    Honoring Lost Loved Ones: How I Carry My Son’s Memory into the Future

    “Keep all special thoughts and memories for lifetimes to come. Share these keepsakes with others to inspire hope and build from the past, which can bridge to the future.” ~Mattie Stepanek

    I stood over a pile of my son’s t-shirts, scissors in hand, my breath ragged. I reached for a plain, dark blue one that I didn’t remember Brendan ever wearing. My fingers trembled. The first cut would be the hardest.

    I’d packed away his shirts eight years ago, within weeks after he’d died. He was only fifteen—an unbearable loss. I’d spent days washing and drying and folding his shirts into tiny perfect squares. My daughter Lizzie watched me put them inside my grandmother’s wooden hope chest.

    “When you go to college, I’ll make you a quilt out of Brendan’s shirts,” I said. “And one for Zack too.”

    I didn’t know how to make a quilt. I’d never sewn more than a straight line before. But I had time. Zack was thirteen, Lizzie ten. But the years passed. I walked by the chest every day and yet couldn’t seem to open it.  I was afraid of opening the lid and unleashing the pain hidden inside, like a Pandora’s box. I wasn’t sure if I could ever open it. When it was time for Zack to go to college, neither one of us mentioned it.

    But now, Lizzie was leaving for college in a week. I’d already bought her towels and dorm decorations and twinkling lights to chase away the shadows in her room. But she wanted the one thing I couldn’t buy. She wanted to take something of Brendan with her, something more than a collection of photos. There wasn’t time to make her a real quilt, but I could piece together blocks of his shirts for a blanket. That would be enough for her.

    I opened the chest and stared down at the shirts. So many blue ones. I couldn’t remember if that was my favorite color or his.

    He never cared about fashion, only comfort. I picked through the shirts and carried an armful down the stairs. A pajama top fell to the floor. It was gray and red fleece with a penguin applique near the bottom. At fifteen, he’d long outgrown animals on his clothes, but he still wore this one because it was so soft. I watched him once, falling asleep on the couch. As a toddler, he’d rub his fingers through his hair, but now his fingers rubbed across the penguin’s belly.

    I stared down at his shirts, seeing beyond the colors and patterns. I saw the stories of my son.

    I picked up his buttoned-down shirt with splotches of red on it. I only smelled the woodsy scent of the cedar-lined chest, but I closed my eyes and went back to the day when there was red sauce bubbling on the stove as I fried chicken cutlets in garlicky oil. Brendan snatched a piece of chicken and dipped it into the sauce, dancing away when I shooed at him with the wooden spoon. He never noticed the drops of red falling onto his shirt. I bent over the shirt now and took a deep breath, as if oregano and basil were still in the air.

    I unfolded a turquoise shirt, the one he wore on our last beach vacation. I could hear the ocean waves crashing against the sand and see the wind ruffling his hair as he held a giant crab dusted with Old Bay seasoning. He’s wearing it in one of our last pictures of him, the one we used for the funeral. I love that he’s holding this crab, with a smile of anticipation as he waited, savoring the moment.

    My hand shook as I cut through the penguin top, but the scissor moved through the fabric easily. I reached for another and then another as I cut the shirts apart until I had twelve squares. I saved every scrap, even the skinny ones that curled. I cupped them in my hands, and they spilled over like ribbons of memory.

    My daughter walked into the room, and I shrugged through my tears. “I’m not sure if I can do this.”

    She nodded. “It’s okay.”

    But it wasn’t. I desperately wanted to give her this gift. I imagined her sitting in her dorm room, wrapped in memories while making new ones.

    His stories lured me back to the table the next day. I arranged the squares on the kitchen counter, moving the blues and grays around. I was still overcome with emotion, but something shifted.

    Seeing the blocks of fabric shaped into something new filled me with hope. I played with the pieces, moving the penguin around, first next to the flag shirt and then next to the blue-striped one he wore for special occasions. I kept moving them around, playing with possibilities until I found the perfect combination.

    I sewed the pieces together, feeling a wave of excitement as the blanket grew. When I finished it, I smiled and held it up. This blanket was so much more than just a block of memories. I’d taken pieces of the past and transformed them into something new.

    I smiled, seeing Lizzie in her dorm room, snuggling beneath the quilt. I saw her moving into her first apartment, spreading it out on her couch. I pictured her years from now as she rocked her baby girl, the quilt wrapped around the two of them, their fingers tracing the outline of the penguin.

    I love looking through old pictures, but something special happens when we play with the memories of our lost loved ones. It doesn’t have to be a quilt. Perhaps a collage of photos arranged in different ways. Or a playlist of songs that spark a memory. Maybe a collection of recipes filled with their favorite foods. Or a tablecloth where everyone writes down a story of a loved one that makes them smile. When we create something new, we build a bridge of love that forever connects us to a loved one.

    Zack wants his own quilt now. He wants something different than Lizzie’s, one that has both his and Brendan’s shirts joined together. A quilt for brothers. I’m excited to start it. I’ll make one for me and my husband as well.

    Tomorrow, I will open the chest filled with memories. I will cut the t-shirts into pieces and pin them together.

    I will stitch my son into the present, so we can carry him into the future.

  • Life is Fragile: Love Like Today Could Be Your Last

    Life is Fragile: Love Like Today Could Be Your Last

    “I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.” ~Steven Pinker

    He was splayed out in the middle of the road. The paramedics had yet to arrive. That was the scene on our way to meet some friends.

    Over dinner, they relayed the tragic story of their neighbor’s twenty-something son who was killed recently in a motorcycle accident.

    Two others lost their lives in an instant on a nearby suburban road.

    An acquaintance told me about the fatal hiking accident of a young man who was making his mark on the world and left it with so much more to give.

    My friend’s father is fighting for his life against COVID.

    All of this in the past week.

    I know what you are thinking. This is SOOOO depressing. I know. But it’s life. Life is fragile. It can end in an instant. I know from experience.

    My parents were taking care of our young children while my husband and I were on a company-sponsored trip on the other side of the Atlantic. We were so excited to catch an earlier flight for the last leg of our return so we could surprise our kids as they got off the school bus. 

    As we pulled up, our home was eerily quiet. No one was home. We entered and found a note on the counter saying, “Bridget we are sorry for your loss. There is food in the fridge.” 

    Panic ensued as we made frantic phone calls that went unanswered. What in the hell happened? Where are our kids!? Finally, the phone rang. “Bridget, Dad died.” 

    If you are like me you probably don‘t spend time thinking about your mortality. It’s uncomfortable. Yet, it’s one thing that is certain in this life. That, along with our choice of how we show up and navigate each day.

    As I reflect on the years since my dad died, I think of all the missed milestones that have marked my children’s lives, both big and small. From the fun, everyday moments to the can’t miss celebrations. This year in particular is bittersweet. It marks the high school graduation and college start of my youngest; another important milestone that we will celebrate without him, and it makes me sad.

    But he’s been with us all along the way in spirit. Sometimes I hear his voice. Sometimes I sense him around my house. I can still feel his warm hugs. And see the twinkle in his eye when he really saw me for me. 

    We continue to tell the stories. To remember who he was as a dad and a grandpa. We share his goofy idiosyncrasies, like his love for peanut butter, lettuce, and mayonnaise sandwiches. I know. But he loved it!

    It’s the little things that we remember about people. How they make us feel. Whether they are friends, family, or strangers. 

    Recently, before a class I taught, a student bolted in the door and stormed past me. No check-in. No hello. She kept going when I asked her to stop. She eventually made her way back to me and all was good. Yet, I could feel the frenetic energy oozing from her.

    I’ve been her. Many times. And I don’t want to be like that. I consciously choose to live with no regrets. To acknowledge the people I encounter with care and kindness. To be aware of the energy I am putting out there.

    I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. I hurt others. But I continue to try to do my best to be intentional and thoughtful in my interactions and make amends when I falter.

    When our mind is wrapped up in work, bills, responsibilities, to-do lists, kids, grandkids, and more, it’s easy to go through the motions of life. Sometimes the days become routine, and one rolls into another. We’ve got things to do and little time to get it all done.

    It can be challenging to quiet the chatter in our head, to look at the person in front of us, and to speak, listen, and interact with them like they matter. Often with strangers, and even more so, with our loved ones.

    They are the ones we take for granted. They understand our moods. They know our shortcomings. They forgive us time and time again. But is that what we want?

    If you died today, what do you want those closest to you to know? Do they know how you feel about them? How much they mean to you? Do they understand how important they are to you?

    Tell them. Leave nothing unsaid. You never know if today is your last.

  • What’s Really Important: 3 Things I Realized When I Lost My Grandmother

    What’s Really Important: 3 Things I Realized When I Lost My Grandmother

    “We forget what we want to remember and remember what we want to forget.” ~The Road

    “Okay grandma, we’re going to run away!” I wheeled my grandma Jeanne in her wheelchair into the sunlight, through the courtyard, after we exited her nursing home. She knew though that she couldn’t leave, but she went along with the game. She knew she was stuck there. But we had fun with it, nonetheless.

    I really did want to run away with her. I’d had a dream the night before that she told me, “I’m at the end of my life. You will be judged for how you take care of me.” That shocked me. I felt fear and worry about the potential of losing her and not doing a good enough job at helping her through her last days. She’d had a stroke and then was diagnosed with dementia. I wanted to care for her and make her proud of me.

    “Do you work here?” My grandma looked at me, and suddenly I felt like I was failing her. It wasn’t my fault she didn’t recognize me. But I still felt like it was, like I wasn’t doing enough, especially due to that dream.

    “No, it’s me. Your granddaughter, Sarah.” I pleaded in my heart that she would recognize me. She looked confused then said, “Oh.” I knew she felt ashamed she didn’t know it was me.

    It was bittersweet when I left her. We had so much silly fun together. I knew I brightened her day. But it was darkened by her dementia and not knowing who I was at the end. It made me feel sad and defeated. Life’s unfairness hit me. Why did it have to be so hard for so many?

    Losing your memories seems like the worst thing to happen, and that was at times her reality. She could only escape it with me so much.

    If I could go back in time, I would visit her every day. I had already lost my other grandparents. She was the one who was there through to adulthood. I missed her so much after she passed.

    It made me think of what would happen to me as I got older. Would I look back and be proud of myself? What would my future self say to me now? Who would I become?

    Would I be an old woman wheeled around in a wheelchair by her granddaughter in a silly way? Was that success? That moment of love we shared was everything.

    And like that, it was also gone. Little moments like this can be so fleeting. Happiness can be so hard to hold onto. But her spirit stayed with me.

    That was also a time when I truly let go. I’d had a guard against love all my life due to the trauma of abusive boyfriends and more. I didn’t know how to truly feel it. But my grandma’s love sent me wisdom.

    Her love made me realize that I was special, worthy, and enough. I didn’t have to try to become someone. I was already someone. I was loved by her, and it was the type of love that changes you.

    I may have lost her to dementia and then death, but she taught me my value when I couldn’t see it myself. Even when she didn’t recognize me in the end, I knew that she was guiding me in this realization.

    That day with my grandmother made me think about life and what was really important. Here’s what I found.

    Life is a Gift

    And one day, you have to give it back. You’ve heard this a thousand times, but it’s short too. It goes by fast. This makes you think you have to hold on tighter, fight harder, and become better. What you should be doing is the opposite of that: letting go.

    Let go of the reasons you are afraid to be real in a relationship, go somewhere new, or be happy with yourself.

    Embrace the fleetingness of it all so you can make the most of your life while you have the chance. It’s okay to feel like things are not in your control. None of us can truly control anything or the outcome of a life.

    I couldn’t control my grandma losing her memories, but I made each moment with her count. That’s all I could do.

    Instead of trying harder, try softer. Release and surrender to the fact that you can’t make everything last. But some things do. The most important things do.

    Love is what stays when everything else has left us. Love is what we know even when we lose our memories of the past. The feeling remains even when the knowledge of it is lost. At least, that’s what happened with my grandma. I knew she felt my love even if she didn’t remember me. And that’s why I was able to see the impact of our time together anyway.

    You Are Enough

    When we look back at our lives, we will not say, “I should have had more achievements, greater wealth, more popularity, higher status, or a perfect body.”

    So why do we focus on these things?

    Society makes us feel like we have to be a celebrity or a massive success to be important. It makes us feel like we have to have a huge Instagram following to be an influencer. It makes us feel like we have to perform at all times on social media, only showing the highlight reel of our best moments. It makes us feel like we have to be thinner, richer, younger, more successful…

    Where is authenticity in all of this? Where are the poets, the artists, the ones that heal a hurting world?

    That’s what it really means to be important: to embrace our authentic selves so we can make a genuine difference in our sphere of influence, however big it may be. We don’t need to reach millions. We just need to reach into the hearts of the people we encounter knowing that truly is enough.

    Don’t feel like that’s enough—or that you’re enough?

    Do it anyway.

    Love anyway.

    Risk being yourself anyway.

    Forgive anyway.

    Show kindness (despite having experienced cruelty) anyway.

    Choose happiness anyway.

    Surrender anyway.

    That’s what saves the world. It’s not about being known and admired by everyone. It’s about being authentic in a world that makes us think we are not enough. Because authenticity connects us. And genuine connection is what heals.

    Very Little Matters in the Grand Scheme of Things (and That’s Okay)

    The missed opportunities, the exes you had to leave behind, that perfect situation you thought you had to maintain… none of it matters. I’m not saying these things didn’t matter to you, or that they shouldn’t have mattered. Just that in the grand scheme of things, our circumstances aren’t as important as our character.

    What really matters is who you are in those moments in between waiting for the next best thing to happen to you. It’s how you treat the people in your own little world when you’re wishing your world would change.

    What really matters is your attitude when you feel lost and confused. It’s letting yourself find reasons to smile even though you’re not sure where you’re going or what you’re even doing. It’s being happy with what you have, even if you aren’t where you want to be. And it’s loving life even when you don’t know what to live for.

    Cherish each second you are alive. Muster the strength to comfort and to be comforted. Inspire and lead whoever you can, help others through shared problems, and remember to talk about that which is hardest to talk about.

    Forgive who you can, most of all yourself, and remember that it is the small moments that make up our lives. It’s the little joys we share with the people who take up the biggest place in our hearts. I may not remember everything at the end of my life, but I know I’ll remember I loved, and that I was loved in return.