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Posts tagged ‘Grief and loss’

May 7

Soul Work (Revisit)

In the next few weeks, this blog will do some revisiting of earlier posts. This first one is an author’s pick. I’ve selected it because I’d like to have people think not only about therapy but also about doing the work that goes along with it: soul work.

This post was originally published on February 14, 2023.

-Gail

During my early years of working through grief and loss, I was in survival mode. That is where we all go in the beginning. We revert to the lower levels of survival. We go to the base where we can best survive. Hopefully the house gets cleaned, food gets eaten, and we manage to stay somewhat healthy, both physically and mentally. That is baseline grief. Baseline grief looks ugly. It isn’t a place that most would willingly go to, and when we’re there we want out. 

As time moved me forward, I began to change, to grow, to search for something deep inside. None of this made sense, but then what I was living no longer worked for me. I’d grown into a new place, and it required a new beginning—a new base level to grow from. 

I’ve discovered my mystical side. I fell into the mystical in a most unexpected manner: a former nun and clinical psychologist who led a spiritual life and showed up just when I needed her to do so. She entered my life at a time when I was exploring new things and new options. She walked with me as I engaged in the Ignatian Prayer Exercises. Through his process, I found something that I needed: the ability to sit in silence and contemplate. It was grounded, and it opened up avenues of new understanding, leading me to do the deeper inner work of the soul. This is where East meets West. 

This is where I found out that I needed to chuck what didn’t work because it would never work. I’d been trying to use someone else’s idea of what a spiritual life was. What did I think my spiritual life should look like? It would be unique to me. 

As I engaged in new forms of being in a spiritual way, I began searching for other places of learning. I’d heard about the Enneagram, and hearing my first podcast about it made it seem complex. There was something about this Enneagram thing that drew me to it. I began to look for a book that would explain things in simple terms. I found one called The Road Back to You and digested it. It’s a very basic primer, and what it does very well is enable the reader to get a sense for the number where they might fit. Its downside is that it doesn’t go deep enough. Soon I discovered that there were better ways, and there was more to this thing than nine numbers on a weird-shaped, nine-pointed thing. 

With all the therapy I’d done, and now spiritual direction, I was looking for a spiritual growth tool that I could use for myself, and that I could use to work with clients and directees. If someone is interested in this growth tool, I’ll use it. If not, I don’t pursue it. 

When I first began therapy, I did a great deal of talking. I needed to talk. While the talking helped, and worked for me during that time of my life, deep down I knew I needed more. How does one fully engage with the shadows of a life? How could I deepen and find a path into personal growth that would work for my entire life? I needed to find an Enneagram teacher. There was something in this spiritual growth tool that I wanted. I began to plan and to engage in course work. Good stuff, this Enneagram! I was finding a way to engage the deeper shadows and discovered its power. 

Growth, and the inner work of growth, is never easy. If it is easy, I’ve found that I’m not going deep enough. I’m not being fully honest with myself. Looking into mirrors can be difficult, terrifying, and the greatest gift we can give our souls. It is also tricky. 

I’ve noticed that while people want to change, want answers, and will even tell themselves they can do the changes needed, sometimes the past fouls it up. Sometimes past traumas, letdowns, or the reality of what we must give up to get what we seek traps us. We think it will be easy; we think it won’t hurt; we can’t sit with ourselves for the length of time it will take for the process to affect us and move us into change. We sprint out of the awful, find safety in old ways or a new distraction, and slam the door just when we need to keep it open. Hiding in bubbles doesn’t work. 

It Sounds Scary, but in the End, it Frees You

How do I know if I’m ready? The answer to this question is complex. We don’t find relief in catharsis—that is a temporary fix. Relief is found when you can sit the monster down and engage in a conversation and decide two things: the first thing is that you want to understand the monster, and the second is that you will entertain the monster in conversation so that you can learn from it. 

This is not easy to do, because we delude ourselves by thinking that we can win our monsters over with one simple chat and a table of cookies and tea or coffee. This is not high tea: this is plowing the field and finding the huge clods of earth that need to be broken up and put to use in healthy ways. 

Our monsters want all our tea, coffee, and our cookies. Our monsters lie to us. They tell us that we don’t deserve the good stuff of life. Sometimes our monsters deceive us into believing that there are shortcuts. As much as I love a short route to places, I’ve discovered that I might miss some essential scenery if I don’t stop along the way to engage the process. This brings me back to mirrors and the Enneagram. 

I have found that I can use the Enneagram to understand my monsters. I can meet them in a place where they feel respected by me, and I can converse with them in ways that are generous and insightful. I am taught and moved to new places. I don’t always like my teachers, and that is OK, as long as I hold space for the learning that comes because of the conversations. 

This trip through grief has taught me that there are better paths to follow and better ways of seeing myself and others. This trip through grief has also taught me to question and to find new ideas, and that taking the leap into the unknown can be scary, challenging, and just the thing we need to do to change in unexpected ways. This soul journey is going to last the rest of my life, and that is good.

Mar 26

On My Way to Somewhere Else (Revisit)

This post was originally published on December 9, 2021.

Losses in our lives happen in many ways, and my greatest loss happened while I was trying to get to somewhere else that wasn’t on my agenda, or at least not in print. It happened in a way I won’t forget: a walk downstairs to find an altered life. A note on the dinner table telling me where his body was. That was the part of the promise he did keep.

We write scripts for our lives, and when they are interrupted the jolt can be confusing and difficult to understand. While we’re making our way along the road, the demons interrupt our peaceful walk and give us the boot off our carefully manicured path into something more like sludge, mess, and unexpected confusion.

At first, we panic, and then we try to extricate ourselves from this place, only to find ourselves pulled further into the mess of the sludge. When we realize that we can best exit the sludge by remaining calm, relaxing, and working with it, we’re free to embrace it. We can then deal with the mess in this new place. We figure out that the best method for getting free from where we are now trapped is exploring it for alternative exit options. That is how most grief and loss journeys begin: a surrender to the unknown.

I got out of the immediate sludge state and realized that there was a mountain in front of me, and that I needed to go through it to reach the place I needed to get to. That was both a relief and rather terrorizing.

With the unwanted interruption to our lives, we forget where we were headed, focusing on the path before us that has become cluttered with boulders, fallen trees, and strange critters that inhabit the once pristine path we thought we were on, and realizing that we’ve been transported to a much different place altogether. Where are we? What is this about, and will it be a help or hindrance?

No, we’re not in Oz or anyplace like it, though a part of us may wish for ruby slippers that we can click to take us magically back to before we wound up wherever this is now. We don’t get the slippers. Instead, we receive a walking stick that will come in handy in turning over the rocks, giving us leverage to lift the heavy trees that block our route, and in testing the strange new critters to see if they are friend or foe.

It’s taken several minutes to construct this, and yet the descent into this place happens instantly. We’re just not aware that within seconds of hearing they’re dead, “I’m leaving you,” “I’m moving out to pursue…,” or whatever the loss is, we’re sent by our mind into this place. As we grapple with it in those first few moments, we realize that our control is gone. Will we ever be the same? Will our world ever feel the same?

The Answer Everyone Wants

In this place we ask: When will it end? And when will things return to normal? The honest answer that we eventually discover is that we’ll develop a new normal, discover a new life path, and renegotiate what our personal universe looks like and what it is filled with. We forget about the old somewhere that had held us captive and begin searching for a new somewhere else. The catch to this search is that things no longer work the way they once did. The topsy-turvy has flung us into the unknown. All we can do is thrash around until we find something to grab onto that feels stable. 

We start to learn that the tears, the missing, and the uncertainty will fade over time, and in their place the texture and quality of what is present in our lives changes. Slowly, we stop asking when and start focusing on the how to of this new place. This leads us to finding a support system, a new village of people that is populated with those who will become our new friends. They understand where we are! They’ve been in the sludge, gotten out, and faced their own mountain. They’ve dismissed some old village residents due to the fact that they left the village or are not able to attend to the needs in the village at this time. We find a therapist who speaks our language and we seek out spiritual direction, or stumble into another path altogether. As we gain strength and our concentration returns, we begin reading books and are able to question and act on those questions. 

This new place of discovery is exciting, scary, and wide open. Oh, the options that we can explore! Slowly, the places we were headed fade away, and we’re left only with new things to discover. 

You know how people say that we’ve changed? We have! If we do the work of grief, loss, and pain well enough, we reinvent ourselves. There are old things, new things, and a bunch of creation waiting to spring forth. It can all be good. In the meantime, the question we wanted answered disappears as we become involved in the process of creating new life within ourselves. New life and meaning are unique to each of us.

The tears and the missing are still present. They’ve taken on a new form and texture. For me, it was somewhere in my year three that I noticed the real change. How did this happen? It wasn’t about time; it was processing and a world view change. It is something we experience and understand due to the work we do around our grief, loss, and pain, effecting change deep within. 

Noticing the Gift

For some people, the loss and the grief that are encountered become a gift. What? How can this be? I’ll admit that on August 29, 2016, if you had told me I’d be typing these words in 2021, I’d have had said something to the effect of “You’re nuts!” I’m typing this and I know I’m not nuts. Telling someone at the beginning of the process that change will happen is counterproductive to the process. There are some “please do’s” and “please don’ts” that are essential to observe.

Relationships can trap us, cause us to shortchange ourselves, or make us second-guess what we want in our lives—to name just a few of the things that can happen. The fact that she cheated on you and didn’t want to work it out is sad. After the heartache passes, a new discovery of freedom comes.

He or she is now gone; the love you once had will always remain, and now you are asking new questions. You want something different from before, and finding it is a good thing. You haven’t changed; you’ve grown! You are beginning to trust your own knowing, and this is an essential component of finding the new place of existence.

The gift of the tragedy is not pleasant. We are called to understanding through the unveiling of new options that we truly have choices if look and access them in the present. It is what we find buried in the rubble that was once sitting out in the open, waiting for us to discover it for the first time. 

We couldn’t see it where we were because our understanding of our lives was focused on the life we had then. We weren’t stumbling along the path, attempting to find the new points of entrance into the new place that we need to get to.

I know some who have needed to step into employment for the first time in their lives and now report feeling fulfillment in a way they never have before. I know others who took the chance of a new career. Somehow, the lack of security allowed them to risk big! For others, it is doing the same thing with fresh new insight into the things they value most. For me, it resulted in several things. My favorite is that I returned to school for a certificate in spiritual direction. I love the program! Would I have discovered this had I not been widowed? NO! It took me moving to a new place and finding a new path to walk to do what I’m doing now.

Along the way, we employ new navigation strategies, discover our “rose rooms,” and come to an understanding that the interruption that occurred on the way to somewhere else, while tragic, has become a touchstone in our lives.

Feb 12

Goodbye, Again

I don’t say goodbye well. It isn’t that I can’t; it’s that I will always remember. I’ll remember the place and the clothes I was wearing. I’ll remember the time of day. Now, it seems that 2026 is a year to let go of the old and welcome the new. It is a bittersweet time of my life.

And so it is with grief. We move forward into new discoveries. What I once struggled to part with is now back in a decade of dust just like the dust that a car makes on an unpaved road.

Last night I said a difficult goodbye to a leadership position that I’ve held for eight years. I’m saying goodbye because I’m moving forward. I’m headed into an unknown, and hopefully good, place where I’ll serve others in new ways. Goodbye was hard, and after I said the words and left the meeting, I sat on my wonderful bed, and I let the tears come. It seems as if clearing the battlement, and realizing that I don’t need to engage the iceberg as I once did, enabled the tears I once might have not shed to come freely.  

It seems to me that, like the seasons, I’ve moved in time and understanding. I now have the option of questioning what I’m ready for as I move along my new path of life.

As I think back on the winter of grief, tears form, and I recall the pain of wondering if the tears and the heartache would ever end. I listened to the voices of others who said that, yes, the tears would change, and the quality of the tears would be different. Then I became one of those voices. The day came when I noticed that the tears had faded into the past. “Goodbye, I love you” could be said in a different way. That was the season of autumn, with its rich colors and flavors. It was a time of acceptance and quiet movement. Autumn speaks to my heart in many ways, and this season of grief has spoken well, and I suppose that I’ll visit this season in new ways and different times of my life.

I’m entering into a new spring! I’ve been here before. This time around it isn’t the budding of new hope: it’s the beauty and surprise of the unknown that will welcome in a place of exploration and gently move me into a summer of exploration and new life. I’ll gladly engage with this new journey! Summers are all about the work of the journey. Once again, I’ve crossed Styx. I stand on this expectant shore ready to welcome the spring and summer that will unfold for me.

I realize that the seasons of grief are not organized with one following the other. These seasons take us to where we need them to carry us, and the work that we do on our grief journey determines the season we arrive in. There are multiple seasons! 

I light my scented candle that brings the scent of water into the room. I realize I’m being called to a place along the shoreline where the river pilot waits for me. He ushers me on board the sleekest of sleek boats. Run the water with this! Whoa! I know my friend the pilot and I will navigate new waters with a new confidence. I’m sure I’ll put to shore in different seasons and head inland to explore. The pilot asks me if I remember that first running of the water. I do, and I was so scared. That old boat is somewhere off in a past that has faded into so many new discoveries. I believe the best one is that ten years ago I didn’t know I could do what I’ve done.

As I cast off into the water, I’m finding out how to welcome the new. A few years ago, I said a goodbye at Bracelet Bay in Wales. I spread ashes and cried, and a friend said a prayer. Jon’s ashes spoke to me of the place where I needed to spread them. The fine dust of life went into the water that September day. Wales has been a part of this grief process, and soon I’ll be within view of it in March as I take on a new task in my life.

I haven’t been too anxious to move things along at a rapid pace. I’ve needed to learn what the river holds, and I’ve needed to allow the gentle process of healing to glide me along the path that it holds for me.

Grief is about tears, mourning our losses, and accepting new futures. Grief is about learning to say goodbye in a thankful manner for what the journey has taught us. Grief is leaning to welcome what is new graciously.

Jan 22

The Fifth Season of Grief

Friday the thirteenth, 2017, I get a phone call from my sister, who tells me my mother is gone. Gone. Dead. Died, and went to heaven. Soon to be pushing up daisies. I’m numb. It’s been less than six months since Jon did the deed. I flash back to that Monday, and our phone conversation. It was the only time I had told my two siblings that something was really wrong, and to go and get my mother (who from this point on will be called Momz—Mom-zee) to the doc. True to form they ignored me. They blew it off. She lived in pain all that week.

I just knew. I always know. It is part of my Enneagram Eight makeup.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of the color green. Green was my mother’s favorite color. After doing lots of reading, I’m starting to believe I’m getting a clear message from her: I’m here. Nine years out and I’m finally thinking of her. Mourning the dead happens when we can take in the information and sit with it. She’d be in her nineties now. Had she not had the heart attack on that Monday when I’d called for our normal chat, would she have lived longer?

I didn’t go to the service. Everyone said don’t come. I was still too shocked from Jon’s suicide to think it through. The heavens opened somehow, and my momz was placed into a blue casket. Had I been present, I’d have insisted on that color. Blue, lovely blue with colorful flowers. That thought took me back to my father’s death. My mother says we’ll do yellow and white flowers because those are the colors he could see with his colour blindness. I pipe up: “No! If he can really look down from heaven, he can now see all the colors.” And so, the momz did it right! And I got my two cents in over the color because, somehow, someone spoke for me.

I sit here with the blue sky, and the sun actually shining as I write this, and I think of my clients and the different types of grief they need to work through. I tell them that there isn’t a correct way to grieve. I tell them that the day my younger sister Joyce died, some of us went for pizza. The place where she died, Paradise, California—the actual spot—burned down. (See The Lost Bus on Apple TV.) That grief just hurt because I thought I’d get back there again and see that 76 gas station. I’d go up there and drive by, knowing that here was where she dropped dead in a phone booth. (It was the ’70s)

Grief is like a carefully built chain reaction of falling dominos. It creates designs that we may not expect. When we’re inside the process, we can’t see the creation or realize that, in sadness, something beautiful might spring up. We don’t see it because grief is not for wimps. The work of sifting through relationships might involve a purge involving an iceberg and a trip to your own battlement. This I learned somewhere in year three but couldn’t do it until much later in the process. If we explore our relationships effectively, they must be cleaned with powerful disinfectant. An honest look brings out the dirt of the process, and you shouldn’t go forward with a new relationship until you’ve worked through the past relationship. BUT, you say in protest there is nothing to look at, and I’m lonely and want someone new.

Here is why you clean out the old relationship: unfinished business. We all have it. The thing about looking at relationships after death that stops many from doing it is the old saying of not speaking ill of the dead. The problem with this is that in order to move forward in a healthy manner, the entire relationship needs to be sorted out.

I remember all those years ago, sitting here at my desk, looking out the window, and noticing the house across the way. The thought of holding my marriage up to the magnifying glass was a hard one, and yet, I knew that there were things I needed to address. Was I willing to do it? I had to look. And so it is with my older sister, my older brother, and my parents. We must mourn the good and the bad, because if we fail to look at it all, we cheat ourselves out of part of the process—just like the blue sky going overcast, and the sun disappearing behind the cloud cover. We must look and face our reality.

I now look at it all because, like the seasons of grief, I must encounter a new season that I’ve never thought of as a season: resolution. It is the calm after the storm. It is the time of life where we can open up our souls to the new journey of peaceful minds and hearts. The work of relationship cleansing has taken several years. Now the fallen dominos are displayed in a colorful new manner. My happy iceberg smiles at me, the castle battlement stands emptied, and I turn to face a sky that looked much like the day Jon took his own life. And I think to myself: I can deal with this sky.

May 7

And Then, There’s That Dream

Yesterday I made an attempt at going outside, getting in a car, walking more than I should have, and returning home. It didn’t tire me out: it caused my left leg to tire. I’m not there yet. 

I feel like the kid in the back seat of the car asking “are we there yet?” I have to keep reminding myself that I get there when I get there.

Watching myself walk is forcing me to listen to my body in new ways. As I do the required exercising and walk on the treadmill, I need to listen to the sound of my feet as I step. Am I stepping evenly, or am I dragging my feet? What this is causing me to do is to feel how I walk. I have to notice the tiny things that I’ve never noticed before.

Last night as I slept, I dreamt that I was walking around a track, and I was in a race. My self-talk was that I needed to slow it all down, and that this was not a race. I woke up to my 7:00 AM alarm knowing I’d just processed what I was thinking and doing. I felt called out by my own actions. When I told the physical therapist, she just laughed. Not funny: she’s getting to know me too well.

With all the exercising I must do to heal this, I’m feeling cramped. It’s an hour’s work. I find myself wanting the time to expand when time is closing in on me. There is so much to do, and not enough time in a day. I’m feeling the crash of the fall once again, and this time around I’m thinking that I need to slow it down. I can’t slow it down, and that dream tells me to slow myself down. I want chocolate in some wonderful form. I know I can’t eat my way through this, and the more I walk, the better off I am. This is stress bleeding its way through.

The grass is never as green on the other side of the fence. I understand that once I’m done with the rehab process, it will be something else that pops up in my face.

So, how does one deal with the avalanche of life and keep calm? I’m finding that my quiet time is valuable, and that I have to create quality time. I no longer have the time I once had post Jon’s death. This makes me think about the grief process, and how we go from the funeral bubble to getting back on the conveyor belt of life. 

Wow! When I think about the eight years I’ve been in widow/single status, I am blown away by what I’ve done, and how I’ve changed. 

Getting back up is a process that we do on our own terms. Society demands that we move faster than we should move. It makes me think of the woman who told her friend that she had six months, and then it all had to be back to normal. Six months? That isn’t even enough time to figure out that you are a mess due to the grief you’re feeling.

And then, there’s that dream…

Jan 4

The Tram

I’m standing on the inbound platform at the UMC station as the tram pulls in, and I board. The tram isn’t full, and I find a seat facing forward, not too far from the doors. I notice the quietness of the tram, and we pull away. The next stop changes everything.

I’m in what is the medical area, and the science park. The med students board, taking every vacant seat and filling the vacant standing areas. The next stop allows for more students to board, and the tram is filled with the chatter of the students.

I’ve taken this tram ride multiple times, and this time I stop to notice the voices, the animation with which the students are speaking. Then I look at the physical behavior of the passengers. They are alive with excitement, enthusiasm, and hope, and it is catching. For the first time I’m noticing the vibrant nature of the students.

Something tells me to stop my thinking, and to watch carefully. I listen to that suggestion and I quiet my mind to listen and observe what is happening around me. That 20-minute tram ride altered how I think about others in group settings.

Normally, I avoid groups because it is chaotic, and I can’t hear others well enough to converse with them. I wrote about this in “When Sanctuary Is Offered.” As I’ve sat with this experience the past few months, some things have changed.

Could it be that I opened up to some type of new understanding? Did I rethink the present hearing aids I have? Was it a combination of things? I realized that things needed to change and I took steps, and some risks, to change things. It pays to rethink things: it did!!!

With the new gadgets approved and all mine, I will venture into new situations. With an appointment at the UMC this month, it will be interesting to experience the ride on the tram in a new way.

I’m also having a new doorbell installed in my house. It will use light, and not sound, to let me know that someone is at my door. No more missed doorbells for me! Oh, and it’s covered by the insurance!!! As mentioned in a previous post, I went shopping for a better hearing situation!

I hear the noise of the organics being picked up and pause to think about the winter winds that blew all the leaves in the universe into my front yard space. I think about the storms that put it all there, and the storms that have blown unpleasantness into my life due to disability. I recall the time when I asked Jon to answer the question of the one gift he’d give me if he could. I still feel the same way about my body. Why would I want to change my core self? Yes, it would make some things easier. It would mean that I would not need to deal with people who show frustration at the way I do things: slower than they can do the same thing. I am happy with who I am. I’m proud to advocate for those with disabilities. I’m proud to be me. It isn’t my issue; it’s yours if you can’t deal with me as a disabled person.

Once we’ve taken an inner journey and done our soul work, things change. Going inside is liberating!

This time around, the work I had to do to get to new hearing aids wasn’t as intense as other things I’ve done.

How do you know when you’ve done enough work? My experience is that the things that were hard or difficult become easier to deal with. Doing the work wipes out a level of fear that can be present when confronting the nasty and the unknown. In this phase of things, and when dealing with our lives in new ways, it is important to tack a mental reminder up: one byte at a time. I think this isn’t something we all start out doing at first; it is something we learn our way into.

Taking it slowly and not being overwhelmed by things isn’t something that comes easily for some of us. We labor under the misguided notion that we can take it all on at once. Then getting overwhelmed by the task before us hits us with a grand force of wind. POW! Sometimes anxiety builds, and we stop it all, only to discover that we’re not where we want to be with any of what we’ve dealt with.

Going inside myself enabled me to flesh it all out. This time, I’m navigating a new stretch of the river that I’m surprised I’m on. I suspect it has some new places to tie my boat up to, to leave, and to explore the new interiors I’ll engage with. I suspect that this part of the soul journey will bring new things, people, and joy into my life.

I return to the tram, and as I watch and listen, I realize that I’m learning something about myself that I haven’t been able to admit as I’ve needed to: the isolation of my hearing situation must come to an end. I’m not the widow who is sitting alone on the tram. I am the widow who is claiming the life she knows is out there in new ways. I’ll risk large groups. I now have a tool that will enable me to do just that.

This all happened because I became quiet in what I once viewed as chaos. Had I not done that, I wonder what would have happened. Time to muse on this experience some more.