Blog - Page 6 of 8 - Good Griever

March 29, 2019March 29, 2019

Finding Peace After Loss

As a bereaved parent, I’m still on my quest, but getting considerably closer to finding that place of total inner peace I’ve been wanting for so long. The kind of peace that I want, money can’t buy. No one can give it to me. The peace that I want, I know can only come through my ability to accept all things in my life as they have happened. And in all things, I can do this. All but one: accepting the loss of my daughter.

While it’s been an incredible journey of self-discovery to this point and there is no denying it’s doubtful I would have learned all that I have without the death of my child (I do believe in contracts between souls), this doesn’t mean that I like what has happened in any way. Nor has her death been easy to accept. Not her part in it or all the struggle I’ve been left with. From a purely spiritual perspective, it’s the easiest thing in the world to see how we agreed the contract between us to learn our respective lessons and fulfil our life obligations. From the physical (excuse my language) it’s been more like: “WTF? What just happened? What was I thinking????” (my ongoing inner voice battle.)

March 21, 2019April 1, 2020

Got Crap? Rewind…Be Kind

Are you currently surrounded by anyone taking their out stress out on you? Are you inadvertently taking your stress out on others? Being on the receiving end of anyone’s frustrations and anger is not pleasant; even less so when conflict arises between strangers, work mates or any other situation where you find yourself the brunt of someone’s bruising (conflict in the family is a whole other conversation).

With all the horrible stuff going on in the world combined with the intense pace at which most people live, stress is a given. All you have to do is go out your front door to see the fatigue and unhappiness on so many people’s faces.

March 8, 2019April 1, 2020

Science Proves “Broken Heart” Syndrome

Science has proven that we can (and do) die from a broken heart. The medical term is Takotsubo cardiomyopathy – a condition that affects the heart muscle, giving the left ventricle a distinctive shape. It causes the heart to balloon and weaken and contract abnormally. The symptoms appear rapidly and are similar to those of a heart attack (shortness of breath, chest pain, arrhythmia). They are brought on by shock, stress or an emotional event, such as loss and bereavement. While broken heart syndrome can be temporary, with the heart muscle able to recover over days, weeks or months, for some who have the condition, there can be complications and even death. Broken heart syndrome affects around 2,500 people in the UK each year (I’ll add here of those that seek medical attention and receive the diagnosis – many grievers don’t go for medical help or attribute physical illness to grief). Numbers elsewhere in the world are unclear in accordance with the somewhat limited information available on the internet.

February 28, 2019April 1, 2020

Death and Culture: How it Impacts our Healing

If you’re a Canadian, you likely heard about the recent deaths of seven children from the same family in a house fire in Nova Scotia. For those unaware of the story, the father is in a coma from his injuries. All of the children in the family died. The mom was the only one physically unharmed. While her mental and emotional state is anyone’s guess, as a bereaved mom myself, I can only imagine she must be experiencing pain and trauma to such a degree, it is beyond anyone’s comprehension, except for perhaps those who have experienced something similar.

As a background, the family had recently immigrated from Syria and were settling into their new life in Canada. Then, this tragedy. Which has left everyone speechless and shaking their heads. The provincial and federal governments are to be applauded for taking swift action to bring this grieving mom’s extended family to Canada to support her. Which got me thinking how important their actions were in demonstrating how critical family and cultural influences are to the grieving and healing process.

February 15, 2019April 1, 2020

Assessing Your Personal Needs in Grief

After loss, life changes dramatically for everyone grieving the death. Whether it’s a parent or spouse, sibling or child you have lost, you will be feeling the impact of your loved one’s death in some way, as will every one of your family members. The more complicated or unexpected the death, the greater this impact will be. And it’s tough to support each other in grief, because everybody is going through something different at every stage. It can be a confusing time with everyone’s needs rapidly changing.

For some, grief will last a long time. For others, they will seemingly return to normal a lot sooner, which represents a struggle for anyone trying to understand a griever’s unique experience. It stands to reason that many relationships and sometimes even entire family units break down, especially after certain types of loss.

February 8, 2019April 1, 2020

Loving Ourselves Through Grief

While some may think of it as vain or superficial, in the context of long-suffering agony, it is essential that everyone finds room in their heart to love themselves through their grief. Fully and completely.

The definition of love is to feel a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person, such as a parent, child or friend. Self-love is defined as the instinct we have to preserve our own well-being (at all costs). Why then, would it be considered wrong and worthy of so much self-punishment (as many grievers succumb to) when loving ourselves through horrendous loss is the right thing to do? A loss that in our wildest imagination, we could never have prevented.

As a mom of my daughter who died by suicide in 2005, this latter point has kept me punishing myself to various extremes over the years, mostly experienced as mental and emotional conflict when I imagine all the various things I could and should have done differently to prevent her death. I’ve never quite been able to accept that there wasn’t more I could have done to save my child. Despite my many attempts to banish the tormenting thoughts from my mind, they keep coming back.

February 1, 2019April 1, 2020

Is Social Media Killing our Kids?

Right now, there is concern by parents in the UK that social media is responsible for the recent suicides of dozens of young teens in that country . Discussion is ramping up amongst lawmakers about how best to legislate social media companies to remove and ban all content that may promote self-harm. Legislators are as concerned as parents. There is hope they can work with social media companies to find a solution to this endemic problem that still respects freedom of the internet, but where sufficient controls can be put in place to effectively guard it.

Drawing on my former experience working in privacy, I’m not sure if this is wishful thinking on the part of lawmakers or not, but as a mom whose daughter died by suicide in 2005 after viewing content on a self-harm site that offered methods on how to complete suicide, I can relate to the fears parents face today, where almost anything can be readily accessed online. I can also appreciate the difficulty experts may be facing establishing law to ban this content, yet still protect the rights of individuals to access information.

January 17, 2019April 1, 2020

If these organs could talk…

Recently, I came across this news article where a mother’s efforts to meet the recipient of her late son’s heart (he was 23 when he died) is being prevented through provincial law. As someone who did not have the choice to donate my child’s heart (or any other organs) when she died, and therefore not in the same position, I can only speculate on the reasons for this mom’s, or any other parent’s desire for that matter, to want to physically connect with a recipient, whose only reason for continued life is the generous gift of their child’s organ(s).

January 3, 2019April 1, 2020

5 Tips to “Do What You Love … Love What You Do!”

Many mornings of late, I have arisen in the dark to start my day, thoroughly enjoying the ambience of soft lighting; the breaking of dawn that brings with it the beautiful ocean view that forms part of the natural vista; the peace and quiet that surrounds me. Most importantly, I enjoy the freedom I have to do what I love and love what I do. Every single day! But hovering in the back of my mind are the memories of when I didn’t have this freedom and I wasn’t enjoying all parts of my day. Of all the manifesting tools at my disposal, I often felt that things weren’t moving fast enough or sometimes even in the direction I wanted to go. It was difficult to stay positive.

Do What You Love and Love What You Do has become part of my daily mantra, but rather than gauge my success based only on tangible results I have created (much of manifestation teaching centres on accumulating material wealth), my interest is in what lies at the heart of manifesting. Which is the guts, confidence, determination, resilience, persistence and faith it takes over the long haul to pursue and live a purposeful life that ultimately, does bring with it the freedom, bounty and contentment we all deserve to enjoy. A life of one’s dreams filled with purpose and passion can be attained by anyone. Not just some lucky people, which is what it seems like when manifestation efforts are aimed solely at the accumulation of material goods and you don’t see sufficient results.

December 9, 2018April 1, 2020

Grief or Not … am I a Griever?

So many people are in emotional pain and grieving some type of loss from the past or more recently, and haven’t got a clue they are in grief. It is this cluelessness that may well explain in part, why we don’t talk about grief very much in western culture. Which, as someone who has struggled with complicated grief from the suicide of my daughter in 2005, really frustrates me. It has made the journey these past thirteen years very lonely; just as I suspect it’s been a lonely one for millions of other people coping with complicated grief or grief they don’t understand.