Tag: wisdom
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What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone Who’s Grieving
“Remember that there is no magic wand that can take away the pain and grief. The best any of us can do is to be there and be supportive.” ~Marilyn Mendoza
My mother, an articulate and highly accomplished writer, began to lose much of what she valued a few years ago. Her eyesight was compromised by macular degeneration, her hallmark youthful vigor was replaced with exhaustion, and many of her friends began to die. Finally, and cruelest of all, her memory began to go, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed.
Her struggle and her suffering in the last two years of life were excruciating to watch, and I was helpless to stop what felt like an avalanche of cruel losses.
Sometimes in that last year, she would call me several times a day with distress and confusion. When she finally died, after five ambulance trips to the hospital in six weeks, my first response was thankfulness that she was out of the struggle and, to my surprise, relief. I had been grieving the mother I had known for the last year of her life, and she had already been gone a long time.
It would be another month before I found my grief, and I suspect that it will be there forever; but my immediate feeling was not sadness.
People feel so many things at so many different times about the death of a loved one: loss, anger, devastation, confusion, guilt, and fear, to name a few. If we assume anything about how they are experiencing their loss, we can make them feel worse. Here are a few suggestions about how to reach out, starting with what not to do.
Don’t assume you know what I am going through.
I was surprised by how many people came up to me and said, “I know just what you’re going through.” Even worse, they would tell me, “This will be the saddest thing that will ever happen to you,” or “You won’t know who you are for years after this.”
We all know that losing a mother is a major life event and it changes many things. What we don’t know is how. It is different for each person; we cannot overlay our own experience on someone else’s and assume it’s the same. For me, whose first feelings were that her death was that of a reprieve, it caused me to doubt the validity of my response.
Don’t use religious clichés about this life or another.
Religious clichés such as “Jesus called her home,” “God needed another angel,” or “it’s in the hands of the Lord,” were infuriating. For one thing, my mother was not a Christian, nor am I. I love the Jesus story, but it doesn’t resonate for me as the only true story, and it sure doesn’t help me feel better about my mothers’ death.
Don’t say “there is a reason for everything.”
Then the cards began to come filled with familiar clichés: the worst was “there is a reason for everything.”
That feels to me like a way to do a “wrap up” on something that is fragile, personal, and unknown. How do you know there is “a reason for everything?” It insults grief by trying to dilute it into a rational cosmic plan.
You cannot explain, rationalize, or sum up my loss in a tidy little cliché. My reaction to those messages was not to feel more comforted, but to feel more isolated.
Don’t talk about her “passing.”
Talking about people who have “passed” feels like minimizing what happened and avoiding the word “death.” It is a tough word, it is final and irreversible and filled with loss. But it is a true word. It is what we have to manage, and the hugeness of the word, death, in its finality and brutality is what allows us to find our necessary grief.
There were people who said things that did comfort me.
1. I wish I had the right words, just know I care.
2. I don’t know how you feel, but I am here to help in any way I can.
3. Would you like me to bring you some enchiladas on Tuesday?
4. What was this like for you? I’d love to listen if you would like to talk about it.
Here is the most important thing for you to know.
Each of our relationships has a bubble around it. Within that bubble is the history of what we have shared. Grief is a part of the human experience, and we grieve not just for the person who has died, but also for the part of our history they take with them.
Losing a mother is a major life change regardless of what the relationship was like. But we don’t know what that is like for anyone but ourselves. When we assume we do, we belittle their experience and lose a chance to know them better.
Although we may intend to connect with the other person, sometimes the opposite happens and what we say makes them feel worse. When we invite them to share their own experience, we help to break down the isolating walls of loss and inspire a true connection.
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The Simplest Way to Make More Time for What Matters
“We’ve all heard the saying, stop and smell the roses. But it would be far better to be the gardener who grows the roses and lives with them constantly.” ~Deepak Chopra
What would it take to befriend time? To see time as an ally, a friend even—an opportunity?
Most of us have a much different relationship with time. One that is based on scarcity. The chorus of “I don’t have enough time” reverberates through conversations, social media channels, and personal mutterings.
Redefining our relationship with time isn’t like flipping a light switch. But it is a bit like pumping gas in your car.
I am one of those people that forget to make time to stop at the gas station as the fuel gauge in my car starts to veer towards the red E. I’ve never run out of gas, but the fuel light comes on more than I’d like to admit.
Why exactly would I ignore this gauge? Because of time. I see that the meter traverses from ½ a tank to ¼ of a tank, and I find myself thinking, “I don’t have time to stop and get gas right now. I’ll stop tomorrow.”
But tomorrow becomes the next day, and then the day after that. And by that point, the taunting orange light has been activated. Even then sometimes I ignore it, believing that I’m in a rush.
Except that something funny happens when eventually I pull into the gas station and stop long enough to fill up. The process of putting gas in my car doesn’t take very much time. Though I haven’t timed it, my guess is that from inserting my credit card to activate the machine to replacing the nozzle when I’m done, less than five minutes have passed.
Five minutes is forever. Minds can be changed in five minutes. Heartbeats can be elevated (or slowed) in five minutes. Smiles can be shared, laughter can fill a belly, and bodies can be hydrated in five minutes.
In fact, it seems to me that filling up my car with gas offers the perfect reminder of why we need to make time an ally. Cars need gas to function. We, like cars, have our own fuel needs to not just survive, but thrive.
Beyond food and water, we need play, we need sleep, we need connection, we need love. But too often, we tell ourselves we don’t have time.
We rush and scramble through the day, moving from one thing to the next, trying to check things off our lists as if productivity is the ultimate indicator of joy. And, more importantly, we tell ourselves that the things we crave will take too much time—time that we do not have.
What if we did have time? What if the things we crave could fill us up, just like gas fills a car, in just a few minutes? What if we could give ourselves permission to savor the unexpected moments instead of just the big, fancy, planned out ones?
Maybe instead of needing an hour long nap or workout, we could find fulfillment in a shorter power nap? Or instead of a trip to the gym for a workout, we could feel strong from mini-bursts of movements throughout the day?
What if we saw time as an opportunity for fulfillment like a friend that invites us to be present rather than using the hours on the clock as mile markers for productivity?
When I think back to the most heart-filling, nourishing moments of the last few months—or even the last few days—they are the ones that I had to allow myself to receive outside the boundaries and constraints of a schedule. The moments where I allowed myself to move slowly, so slowly in fact, that I had the opportunity to notice the dance of life around me.
Like when my heart smiled from pausing before I left my home office to hear my daughter singing out loud in the shower. Or when I made time for a thirty-minute yoga practice one evening and remembered that sometimes all it takes is a simple twist to let go of whatever I was holding on to. Or the evening that instead of making a run for it, trying to avoid the rain, my daughter and skipped and jumped in puddles on our way home.
None of these moments took any great length of time. And yet, had I been rushing, or listening to my thoughts run amok with reminders of how much I had on my to-do list, I would have missed them completely.
In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks offers the question: “Am I willing to increase the amount of time every day that I feel good inside?”
So many of us use clocks as measures of progress. How long can I meditate? Can I beat my 5k pace? How many clients can I fit into one day? But these measures ignore all the smaller indicators. The goosebumps on your skin from noticing a sign that reminds you of something you love. Or the peaceful scene that you witnessed that reminded you to take a breath.
Instead of worrying about a spillover of gas when we pump those few last gallons in our car, how might the day be different if saw time as a way to top ourselves off with fulfillment?
The Easiest Way to Make Time a Friend Is to Create Space
Think of it like de-cluttering. What can you release to create more moments to see time as an opportunity? Maybe you need to release expectations or assumptions. Or perhaps you could let go of judgments around what it means to be successful or productive.
Amplify Abundance
Just like de-cluttering and release creates space, a focus on what needs to be amplified cultivates abundance. If you are releasing expectations, can you amplify being guided by intuition? Could you amplify stillness by allowing yourself to stop throughout the day to take three breaths? Or six? What might it feel like to amplify nourishment for the mind, body, and soul?
I’ve heard all of it before. Parents who feel like time isn’t on their sides with schedules and carpools. Or individuals who feel like they are at their best when they are trying to beat the clock. I’ve been there. In my early adult years, I often felt like I was most focused when my schedule was packed and had little time for distraction. But now I wonder.
Time and fulfillment seem inextricably connected. And I don’t know about you, but life feels much more delicious when you practice time management with your heart and clarity of purpose instead of a to-do list.
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I Will Not Be Put in a Box: I Am Not What I Do, Own, Think, or Feel
“All that I seek is already in me. “ ~Louise Hay
My world collapsed the day I became unemployed. After a successful thirteen-year career in a multinational company, working across different countries and cultures, I ended up with no job. I wasn’t an expat leader in Shanghai any longer; from that day, I became an expat housewife, and this big status change came like thunder.
Whenever people asked me about myself when I was working, I used to explain what my job was all about. Or give them a business card and let that speak for me.
Being left with no work was a very painful experience, one I will never forget. It came like a trauma, and I felt like a failure: lost, stuck, miserable, and depressed.
All of a sudden, I had no business card to show the world to validate my self-worth. There were no more international projects, company sales, and fantastic team achievements for me to talk about and feel proud.
They say true growth mostly comes from pain, and I believe that’s true. Today I see that moment as a gift from life, a real blessing in disguise that helped me stop for a moment and, for the very first time, ask myself who I was and what made me really happy.
So here’s what I didn’t know at the time and what I know to be true today:
1. I am not what I do.
From an early age we’ve been conditioned to value ourselves through how well we do things in life. Most of us were raised to achieve and deliver results, always running somewhere, always busy.
Work is part of life, and money is a much-needed instrument that we need to survive. But is life supposed to be all about work? What if the purpose for us being here were just to be happy?
Whenever I fail at anything, that doesn’t make me a failure because I am not what I do. My job is part of life and not life itself. I am not my profession, no matter how much I might love what you do. Today I am a coach, in the same way I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, or someone’s friend. I wear many hats, and so do you.
For so many years I thought I was my job. And when the job was not in my life any longer, I wasn’t.
Wayne Dyer was right: “You are a human being, not a human doing.”
2. I am not what I own.
I grew up in Eastern Europe. After the Romanian revolution in 1989, money got depreciated at such a level that, with the same amount of money my parents could buy a car, they ended up buying a new TV.
If you think you are your money or your possessions, think of bankruptcy. Think of those people who suddenly lose what they have in their accounts.
I grew up thinking money was evil and being rich was bad. That’s not what I believe to be true today, since we can’t feed the poor from an empty plate. Financial stability helps us feel safe and secure, and that is a basic human need. Money is as it is: not bad, not good, not evil. What people do with the money can be either right or wrong; it’s all about how we use it.
But if we let the money own us, we turn into hostages. We start running a never-ending rat race toward happiness and project it into an imaginary future, and forget to be grateful for everything else we have.
We often think thoughts like: When I make that much money, I will be happy. When I buy that car, I will be happy.
In reality, that’s a trap because it will never feel like we’ve gathered enough.
“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation of all abundance.” ~Eckhart Tolle
3. I am not my physical appearance.
In today’s society, the concept of beauty often gets associated with youth, or having no wrinkles. Social media, women magazines, Photoshop, beauty contests—they all put tremendous pressure on people (and women especially) to fit particular requirements and parameters that sometimes are not even real.
For many industries, that’s an excellent source of income. That is why anti-aging cosmetics sell well and plastic surgery is booming. It’s all based on fear.
If I identify my human value through my physical appearance, the process of aging turns into a burden. If I attach my happiness to my young years, I risk disliking or even hating myself once I grow older.
My body is the temple of my spirit and the only one I’ve got. It’s the vehicle that helps my soul move into this world. And still, that’s not who I am.
“Your body regenerates in an environment created by your thoughts, emotions, and expectations. Make sure they are positive.” ~Christiane Northrup
4. I am no one’s thoughts.
If I perceive myself as not good enough, stupid, intelligent, ugly, annoying, gorgeous, slim, or fat, that’s not the absolute truth; it’s just what I believe to be right. That’s nothing but thought, a representation of my opinion of who I am.
The same thing is valid when I let people tell me what they think about me. In reality, I am as I am. What people see in me is a matter of self-perception, filtered through their own lenses, and it has nothing to do with me.
Take beauty, for example. It’s a norm. In the Eastern-European culture that raised me, beautiful generally associates with being slim, so some people could think I am overweight. However, during my trip in India years ago, I was suggested to gain some weight. We are all shaped by cultures and the societies we grew up in.
Blaming others for the way I feel is disempowering, and it turns me into a victim when things are imposed on me. If I say “You make me angry” or “you make me sad,” I am giving my power away. I know I can never control what people say or do, but I can always self-manage how I respond to that. No one can upset me, stress me, or depress me unless I allow it.
“No one can hurt me; that’s my job.” ~Byron Katie
5. I am not what I feel.
We tend to define who we are by the way we feel: I am sad, depressed, confused, excited, anxious, happy, and so on.
I have learned how to detach myself from my emotions and witness them with no judgment.
Instead of “I’m sad,” I say, ”There is sadness in me right now.”
Instead of “I’m angry,” I say, “There is anger in me right now.”
Instead of “I’m worried,” I say, “There is a worry in me right now.”
Acting as an observer helps me take my power back. I’ve learned not to let my feelings control me, knowing that, just like my thoughts, they are transitory. This way, energy-consuming emotions that used to torment me do not own me any longer, and I own them instead.
“Feelings are just visitors; let them come and go.” ~Mooji
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I am not what I do or own, or how I think, look, or feel. I just am. My spirit refuses to be put in a box and labeled. I am a soul who is here to learn, grow from new experiences, and be happy.
“When you know that you are not flesh and blood, that you are the eternal spirit, than nothing will trouble you. Even death you will not know it is just a change of state.” ~Mooji
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20 Inspiring Gratitude Quotes and Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal Giveaway
Update – the winners for this giveaway are:
- Marc Remington
- Kittenpants13
Hi friends! Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate.
I’m so grateful to all of you who share your experiences and insights on the blog, and to those who you who give your time and energy to help others in the comments and community forums. I am endlessly inspired by your openness, your empathy, and your kindness.
To celebrate this day, I gathered some of my favorite gratitude quotes (mostly from anonymous sources), and I’ve also put aside two copies of Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal for a special giveaway.
About the Journal
Including questions and prompts pertaining to both your past and present, the journal will help you see your life through a new, more positive lens.
The book also includes fifteen coloring pages, depicting awesome things we often take for granted, like nature and music.
With space for written reflection, these pages provide all the benefits of coloring—including mindfulness and stress relief—and also guide you to recognize the beauty in the ordinary.
Whether you’ve been gratitude journaling for years or you’re just giving it a try for the first time, Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal will help you access a state of inner peace, contentment, and joy.
The Giveaway
- To enter to win one of two free copies of Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal, leave a comment below sharing something you’re grateful for today.
- For a second entry, share this post on one of your social media pages and include the link in a second comment.
You can enter until midnight, PST, on Thursday, November 30th.
If you’ve already received your copy, I would appreciate if you’d leave a review on Amazon here. It doesn’t need to be long—even a tiny review can make a big difference.
The Quotes
Yes, that last one is my own quote, so it’s probably kind of odd to include it in a list of my favorites. But I wanted to add this one in case you’re going through a tough time right now and not feeling all that grateful. Be good to yourself. Take care of yourself. And know that you are loved and appreciated.
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**One request before you go! Tiny Buddha has been nominated for Healthline’s Most Loved Blogs contest. If Tiny Buddha wins, the entire $1000 prize will be donated to Operation Smile to give new smiles to four children with cleft lips and palates. You can vote once daily until December 6th here. Thank you so much in advance for voting!
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Why You Need to Embrace “Beginner’s Mind” to Live a Life of Adventure
“The don’t-know mind… doesn’t fear, has no wish to control or foresee, steps off the cliff of the moment with absolute trust that the next step will land somewhere, and the next step somewhere else, and the feet will take us wherever we need to go.” ~Byron Katie
I am fifty-five years old. I’ve raised a family, been through two divorces, bought and sold four houses, and had a successful professional career. And right now I’m doing one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, which is learning to host in a busy restaurant.
My coworkers range from mid-twenties to early thirties. They are smart and hardworking. I feel like my brain is about to explode.
Why am I doing this? Well, money, for one thing. For better or worse, I can’t go back to my original profession after taking two decades off to be a mom. But another large motivator is that I want to do something totally new and out of my comfort zone, to experience what Buddhists call the “not-know mind” or beginner’s mind.
In my experience, adults older than about twenty-five are exceptionally good at stacking the odds in their own favor. We like to do what’s familiar, what’s comfortably in our wheelhouse.
Let’s face it: It feels good to know what you’re doing—especially when you’re the oldest one in the room!
Throughout childhood and young adulthood, avoiding new experiences is not optional (however much we might resist them). Every year in school we get a new teacher, perhaps new classmates, and continually new material to learn.
Starting a new career, moving into new social roles and responsibilities, all require us to be a beginner, to not know for that uncomfortable initial period.
Our goal in life is usually to reduce this sense of uncertainty and vulnerability as quickly as possible. Resisting new experiences, even the ones we actively desire, makes them still more uncomfortable. If we could crack this nut and truly embrace the vulnerability (and excitement!) of being a beginner, our lives would be more interesting—and a lot less stressful.
The discomfort we feel is pure ego. Ego is the part of us that needs to look large and in charge at all times. It is not a fan of beginner’s mind. Ego tells us we’re in danger when we’re not in familiar territory. Its job is to keep us “safe,” and if that means living a small and boring life, so be it.
I have to actively calm and soothe my ego each night when I report to work, filled with unfamiliar butterflies. I use self-talk that sounds exactly like what I say to my daughter when she embarks on a new experience:
“Just do your best. No one expects you to know everything right off the bat. New things are always scary, but you learn more every night.”
One of the keys to beginner’s mind is humility—a characteristic not highly regarded in this society. We are mostly about pumping ourselves up (there’s ego again). Humility requires us to acknowledge and honor what others know that we do not. For instance, I never knew how challenging restaurant work was before this, but I will never take a server for granted again!
Humility and humiliation are not the same thing. Recognition isn’t a zero-sum game: Genuine admiration of someone else’s ability or expertise does not automatically make me “less than” as a person. In fact, it makes me stronger! To be humble in this sense is a mark of maturity and real self-esteem.
Humility isn’t about falsely running ourselves down, but about seeing ourselves—our strengths and weaknesses—clearly. In this job, it doesn’t matter that I have a master’s degree (there are lots of servers with master’s degrees, I find) and no one cares what my previous profession was. What matters is that I’m willing to learn from anyone with the time to teach me.
Beginner’s mind is all about being willing to learn, which can (and should) happen at any age. But you can’t learn something new if you only do what you’re already good at. You can’t learn if you insist on being the expert. You can’t learn if you’re not willing to get it wrong for a while, to make mistakes—even in public.
The pay-offs are many, although it might be hard to convince yourself of that when you’re full of butterflies and dread. Life is an adventure, and adventures require us to step out of our comfort zones.
Ask yourself: Am I really ready to settle for more of the same for the rest of my life? Isn’t it worth a little discomfort (even a lot) to learn a new skill, meet a new person, or discover a new aspect of myself?
We can ask the ego to take a back seat for a while, and no one will be the worse for it. We can take our courage in our hands, and step out into the unknown, over the cliff, trusting that the next step will land somewhere.
Usually, the worst that can happen is that we will feel uncomfortable, maybe even embarrassed. Maybe we’ll actually fail! I’ve considered that outcome and decided that I’ll survive if it happens. I’d rather try and fail than wonder if I might have succeeded.
I hope that I’m providing a positive role model for my younger coworkers; maybe when they’re fifty-something they won’t hesitate to step out on a limb either. I know that I’m providing a good role model for my daughter. She texts me good luck almost every night on my way to work, and says things like, “I’m proud of us, Mom.”
We lose touch with what our children are going through when we get too comfortable with our lives. They don’t put much credence in our advice to “just try it” when they never see us taking a risk. We can’t model courage, or how to handle mistakes and survive failure, if we always stay safely ensconced in our comfort zones.
And the fact is, change will come even when we do our best to guard against it. The safety of a comfort zone is temporary, at best. In embracing humility and beginner’s mind, we really have nothing to lose and everything to gain. We’ll either succeed, or we’ll learn something—or, most likely, both. It’s a win/win (although you might never convince your ego of that)!
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How Surfing Helped Me Turn Fear and Anxiety into Confidence
“If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” ~Dale Carnegie
Not too long ago I went through an extremely chaotic and emotional two-week period. Anything that could go wrong or be difficult did and was. I thought it would never end.
When it began, the little hiccups were easy to let roll off my shoulders. After about a week, I was feeling pretty worn down and was in tears daily. At the end, I felt numb, and when things kept going wrong I would say to myself “Sure… Okay …what’s next?”
These two weeks were filled with miscommunications, the realities of parenting a teenager, negative art critiques, the end of a three-year business relationship, technical difficulties with my social media accounts, a shoulder injury, and an art block, and none of my efforts seemed to put any of the proverbial fires out.
Not to mention that we were surrounded by literal fires here in Southern Oregon, which brought oppressive smoke and stress.
I was tired, scared, tired, hurt, tired, irritable, and physically taxed. And did I say tired? Usually getting into the art studio and painting is the best way to bring me back around, but that wasn’t working either. I would stare at my painting and just not know what to do, so I would do nothing.
About a week in, I drove myself to the coast to surf for the day, thinking that getting out of the smoke and into the ocean would wash away the negativity. But the conditions were not in my favor, and the day was frustrating as I paddled my way from one side of the beach to the other searching for waves. I drove back into the smoke feeling defeated, complacency of the crapolicious period of time setting in.
The next week, I decided that there was nothing left to do but treat myself with some kindness and compassion. I rested, ate a carton of ice cream, and watched schlocky movies. I thought that maybe by just not fighting it anymore, the procession of poop would lift. But no, the hits just kept coming.
I felt the depression creeping in as it has a tendency to do after anxiety has beat me into submission.
For me, anxiety and depression have a way of cultivating more anxiety and depression. As the challenges arose in continuum, seeing the positive became harder and harder. The negativity took the lead and thus started a downward spiral of adversity and uncertainly. It is a horribly stagnant and uncomfortable place to live.
So, I decided to participate in a surfing competition. Wait… wha?
I had actually planned to compete months before. It was not something that I had ever done prior, and it is generally an activity that I would consider completely out of my comfort zone.
I’ve never been interested in competitive sports; I’m nervous when put on the spot and I am not comfortable being the center of attention. A friend who competes annually told me it would be casual fun, but it didn’t necessarily sound like a good time to me. It sounded nerve racking.
Nevertheless, I had registered to compete. The timing couldn’t have been worse. I already felt like I had been hit by an emotional mac truck, and the physical ailments were tagging along like uninvited hitchhikers.
I decided that I would go, but if I wasn’t feeling it, I would back out and just be there to enjoy the beach and support my husband and our friends. And so, we prepared for a long weekend at the coast.
The day before our departure my husband got a cold and I could feel one coming on. The morning we left I woke with a migraine.
“Oh, this is starting out fantastic,” I thought to myself, but I kept my snarky remarks to myself, climbed into the van, and off we went. Hubbie sniffing and sneezing and me unable to keep my eyes open for very long.
I have to admit that I was glad to get out of my art studio. Staring at my painting that I was stuck on had been a source of irritation that I was relieved to take a vacation from.
We arrived at the beach to find almost non-existent waves, which would make a surf competition pretty difficult. Then, I received a not such fantastic report from a friend whose father is in poor health and I realized that my parents had missed my daughter’s volleyball game because I had told them the wrong time. And my shoulder was killing me. Would it ever end?
The more it came, the more indifferent I felt. The apathy was only interrupted by sporadic bursts of tears followed by the need to collapse and sleep.
I swear the sole reason that I didn’t back out of the competition was simply because I just couldn’t walk back up the beach one more time to get to the registration table again. Plus, I started to question if I would be disappointed in myself and regret it if I surrendered.
So, I went on. My heat was at 11:40 the next morning. I would have twenty minutes to catch as many waves as I could, only two of which would count toward my score. The waves were ankle height. How on earth was this going to work? I ate some chocolate and went to bed.
The morning of the competition, I woke with small butterfly flutters in my stomach that in the hours leading up to 11:40am turned into a swarm. I was nauseous, shaky, and terrified. At least I had seemed to have beaten the sickness and my migraine was gone. Focus on the positive, right?
I paddled out in to the water with my six competitors and sat for what seemed to be an eternity. Then the horn blew and my twenty minutes began. I caught as many waves as I could and it was actually going okay.
The horn blew again ending my heat and I came out the water with the biggest smile on my face. I had done it. I was happy with how I had surfed but mostly, I was just psyched that I had gotten out there. All of the crap from the previous two weeks melted away and all of a sudden, my problems didn’t seem like such a big deal.
“Look what I just did!” I exclaimed. I felt proud and accomplished, the sky seemed bluer, and the world brighter. I felt ready to tackle anything. I found out that I came in dead last in my heat but it didn’t matter. I had gone through with it.
I brought that feeling home and immediately was able to resolve the painting I had been stuck on. The technical problems I was having got fixed, and harmony seemed to be on its way to restoration. I, once again, felt I could take on the world.
I am a highly sensitive person who struggles with anxiety. When things are going well, it feels like the good will never end. When life is not working in my favor, I feel as though I’ve been sucker punched and then repeatedly kicked when down. Like all of the warranties have just expired. Like I’m making all the wrong choices and doing all the wrong things.
It can be hard to stand back up again when I’m questioning every option. The fear is overwhelming and paralyzing. But I now realize one way to effectively shake off these negative cycles, which are inevitable: I can turn fear on itself by doing something that intimidates me.
I can fight fear with action.
During this particularly bad negative cycle, I became scared of everything and it was hard for me to move forward, as I was petrified by all of the possible outcomes. It destroyed my confidence.
My everyday coping methods of dealing with anxiety were not working. But by doing something that scared the crap out of me, something completely out of my comfort zone, I showed myself that I am strong.
Also, I am aware that surfing, skiing, hiking, and mountain biking are all activities that force me to engage with the present. I can’t think about what’s happening in other areas of my life when I’m dropping into a wave or flying down the side of a mountain. It’s like jet-fueled mindfulness. I am reminded that there are things that I cannot control, and I become aware of the smallness of my problems.
In this particular instance, I was so lost in doubt and confusion that merely going to the coast for a surf didn’t boost me. However, by surfing in a competition, something that was completely foreign to me, I was able to not only get outside myself for a minute through the physical act of surfing, but I was also able to prove to myself that I can accomplish things that I interpret as out of my reach.
Sure, I may not have ended up on the winners’ podium, but in non-existent surf and with every eye on the beach watching, I competed. And when I walked out the water, I was cheered.
Want proof of how doing something terrifying changed my outlook? Take a look at the photo to the right. That’s me coming out of the water after my heat. That smile is genuine. I felt like a winner.
For me, there is nothing more debilitating than being fear-driven. It is a barrier to progress and I, for one, feel I have come too far to let anxiety sit at my table for long.
Don’t get me wrong. There is such a thing as healthy fear. If I would have shown up to the competition and the waves were fourteen feet high, I don’t think I would have surfed. But if I would have backed out because things had been going poorly and so, “this will probably be a disaster too,” well, I just plain refuse to adhere to that mind set, even if that’s where my brain wants to go.
We all go through periods of time when the world just seems to be working against us. Cycles when we feel we are swimming against the current. Sometimes the best way to break the cycle is to show ourselves that worry and doubt have not taken total control.
We can take the power away from fear and stock it back into our arsenal by taking action.
We set ourselves free by proving that we can do the very things that scare the bejesus out of us and that life will still go on, possibly with a renewed confidence, even greater than it was before. So, go out and do something that scares you. I double dog dare ya’!
Photo credit for Marigny’s surfing picture: Chris Goodyear
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How to Enjoy the Holidays When Grieving the Loss of a Loved One
This post contains an excerpt from GETTING GRIEF RIGHT: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss, by Patrick O’Malley, PhD with Tim Madigan.
It was spring 1980 when my wife, Nancy, and I received some of the best news of our lives—she was pregnant with our first child.
On a Tuesday morning that September, we found ourselves sitting in her obstetrician’s office. Nancy, not due to deliver for three months, had been awakened the night before by a strange physical sensation.
She had wanted to get checked out, just to be safe. But after the examination that morning, her doctor said we needed t0 get to the hospital. Labor had begun. I remember how Nancy’s voice trembled.
“Can a baby this premature live?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” the doctor said. “We will try to buy time. He will be a pipsqueak of a kid.”
Thirty-six hours later, on September 3, 1980, Ryan Palmer O’Malley was born, weighing a little over two pounds. You couldn’t have imagined a more fragile looking creature. He had been far from ready to leave his mother’s womb, yet there he was.
In the first few moments of his life, I was aware of the great risk of loving my son, but I was powerless to resist. From the first glimpse of Ryan, I knew he would have a place in my heart forever.
His early life was a succession of seemingly endless days and nights. We hovered over the side of his crib in the hospital, looking down at our boy who was hooked up to all this noisy equipment. His life was measured in minutes and hours. On several terrifying occasions, Ryan stopped breathing, and his medical team would rush in to resuscitate.
All this time, Nancy and I yearned to hold him, but his frailty and the equipment made that impossible. The most we could do was touch a tiny finger, rub a tiny arm.
Instead of cooing, the sounds around my son were the mechanical beeping of intensive care machines. Instead of that wonderful new baby smell, there was the pungent scent of antiseptic soap we had to use to scrub up before seeing him. Despite not being able to hold him, despite all the machines between him and us, we loved him deeply.
Early fall turned to Thanksgiving and then to Christmas. Our son gradually grew stronger. One day in January his doctor weaned him from the respirator. We could now hold him without the tangle of tubes and wires.
On March 9, 1981, our seventh wedding anniversary, we were finally able to bring our baby home to hold him, bathe him, kiss him, dance with him, feed him, and rock him. He smiled for the first time in those days. Though he was still fragile and underweight, we allowed ourselves to start imagining Ryan’s future. No parents loved a son more.
And then he was gone.
On Saturday night, May 16, 1981, we were treating him for a cold but not particularly concerned. We had been through much worse. But early Sunday morning our precious son suddenly stopped breathing.
I started CPR. Ryan’s doctor and an ambulance were at our house within minutes. His doctor administered a shot of adrenalin to his heart as the medical technicians continued CPR. Nancy and I silently prayed as we followed the speeding ambulance to the hospital.
The next several hours are a series of snapshots forever imprinted in my mind.
- His physician coming into the waiting room with tears in his eyes, saying, “I could not save him.”
- Holding Ryan’s body
- Returning home without him
- The heartbreak of our family and friends as we broke the news of his death
- The dream-like, adrenalin-fueled rituals of visitation and funeral
- The faces of all those who filled the church
- The sight of his tiny casket by the altar
- Seeing construction workers removing their hard hats as the funeral procession drove by
- Leaving the cemetery on that sunny spring day
I have taken off work on the anniversary of Ryan’s death every year since that first year. I go to the cemetery to think about him and the years now behind me. Powerful feelings rise each time I see my son’s name on the grave marker: RYAN PALMER O’MALLEY. It grounds me in the hard reality—this really happened.
In my experience as both a grief therapist and bereaved father, the holiday season can be one of the most difficult times of the year for those grieving.
Many who have experienced the death of a loved one wish they could lie down for a nap on October 30 and awake again on January 2. This season can be challenging when the shadow of loss is present.
The collision between the cultural expectations of happiness and the personal reality of grief can create stress, confusion, and an increase in emotional pain for those who mourn. The gatherings of family and friends during this season may shine a brighter light on the absence of the one who has died.
If this is the first holiday season after the death of a loved one, there can often be a buildup of anxiety, anticipating how it will feel to be without the one who is gone. And, even if the loss occurred many years ago like mine, the holidays are always a reminder of what was and what might have been.
Confusion, yearning, exhaustion, sorrow, and all the other feelings that come with grief are absolutely normal during this time. Difficult but normal. Painful but normal. Grief is not a psychological abnormality or an illness to cure. Grief is about love. We grieve because we loved. Holidays may be a strong emotional connection to special times of remembering that love.
Here are eight ideas to help you enjoy the holidays while also honoring your loss.
Both And
Enter into this season in a state of mind of “both and” rather than “either or.” Sorrow does not exclude all joy, and celebration does not eliminate all sorrow. Yet, it can be confusing to experience opposing emotions at the same time or feel your mood vacillate between light and dark.
Joy may transition into sadness in the blink of an eye. Contentment may suddenly shift into yearning. Both experiences have value because both are part of your grief story.
Be present to the moments of enjoyment, and at the same time, respect your feelings of loss.
Sights, Sounds, and Scents
Most who grieve prepare themselves emotionally for those significant moments during the holidays, such as sitting down for a holiday meal and attending parties; yet, some triggering experiences can occur when you least expect it.
A sight, sound, or smell may zip right past your defenses and cause an intense surge of sorrow. And sometimes, that surge may happen in public. To this day, certain Christmas carols I hear while shopping elicits a sudden sense of melancholy because of the strong identification they have for me with the first and only holiday season my son was alive.
We knew our loved one in a shared environment that is full of these sensory experiences that can provoke feelings of loss in an instant because of this connection created from past holiday seasons. This is perfectly normal and doesn’t mean that you’re going backward in your grief. Value these moments as important connections to the one who has died.
Social Splitting
The transition back into your work setting and your social groups after a loss can create a strain because you may have to act better than you feel in order to appear socially appropriate. This social splitting can be exhausting. Add to that the cultural expectation of being “up” for the holidays, and the exhaustion may be compounded.
This type of fatigue is normal. Monitor your energy, and be willing to moderate your social engagements, if needed. To recharge yourself from the drain of social splitting, spend ample time with those with whom you can fully be yourself and who will support you without judgment.
Approach and Avoid
Our most basic nature is to approach pleasure and avoid pain. Our more evolved nature can approach pain if we know there is an ultimate benefit in doing so. Our natural resistance to the pain of grief can create more pain.
Be intentional about scheduling time during this hectic season to approach your pain. Create rituals that represent the unique relationship you had to the one who died, such as listening to his or her favorite music or reading a favorite poem.
Light a candle or ring a bell to mark this special time of remembering and reflecting. Visit the cemetery or mausoleum if that provides a connection for you.
I’m grateful to our Japanese daughter-in-law who requests each holiday season that we participate in the Japanese custom of taking food to the gravesites where our son and other family members are buried. Her ritual has now become ours.
Seek Heathy Distractions
In a season fraught with overindulgences, be aware of the risk of numbing the feelings of loss through unhealthy escape behaviors. Also, know that it’s not possible to stay in the emotional intensity of grief without some relief, so give yourself permission to engage in healthy distractions.
The key to a healthy distraction is a behavior that allows you to pause your feelings for a moment so that you may come back, and be truly present to them later. My ritual of watching comedy holiday movies has served me well through the years.
Reach out to a trusted friend if you’re concerned about harmful escape behaviors during the holidays. Ask if you can be accountable to them for these behaviors and if they will participate with you in heathier activities that provide you with some respite from your grief.
Tell Your Story
My professional training taught me that grief is a series of steps and stages to work through, which will lead to a conclusion called closure. My experience as a grieving dad did not at all match up with this psychological model.
Through my own grief and by working with so many who mourn, I came to understand that grief is an ongoing narrative of love, not an emotional finish line to be crossed.
Stories help us stay connected to those who have died and help us create meaning about what we have experienced. Finding a place for that story to be received is an important part of the grief journey.
Tell the story of your loved one as it relates to the holiday season to someone who listens well. Or spend some time writing specific memories related to your loved one and the holidays.
Acknowledge Someone Else’s Loss
Those who grieve want their loss and their loved one remembered, so consider making contact with someone who is grieving, as well. It doesn’t matter how long ago that loss may have been. Offer the compassion to others you desire for yourself.
Compassion literally means to suffer with and calls us to enter into the pain of another. Listen with gentle curiosity and an open heart. Consider making a donation to a cause that is relevant to the person who is grieving.
Be Forgiving
Let self-compassion replace any self-criticism as you do your best to balance holiday enjoyment with your grief. Be forgiving of well-meaning others who may try to help you with your grief by “cheering you up.”
How you measure what’s significant and what’s trivial may have changed as you grieve. Patience may be needed when you’re in the midst of others during the holidays who experience the trivial as significant.
As you reflect on your loss, you may also benefit from reviewing your history with the loved one who has died, and offering and accepting forgiveness for the human flaws you each had that affected your relationship.
Remember always, you grieve because you loved. May you have peace and light as you embrace your story of love and loss this holiday season.
Adapted excerpt from GETTING GRIEF RIGHT: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss, by Patrick O’Malley, PhD with Tim Madigan. Sounds True, July 2017. Reprinted with permission.
