Everyone experiences loss of those they love, but the intensity of your grief can be doubled by your relationship to the person who died such as a parent, spouse or child and this is the first holiday without that person who was so important in your life.

Like me and most other people who face this holiday season with a huge void, a hole in our hearts we have many questions and thoughts that are conjured up in your mind like, How can I survive this?, I want to hide until the holiday season is over, I don’t feel like celebrating, I can’t act normal because my life isn’t normal, I can’t face happy people, No one understands the grief I am going through and how will our holiday traditions now be different?

You should know that there really are no right or wrong answers to all the questions and all the questions you ponder may not have answers, maybe not now anyway.

Before you are totally overcome with anxiety, overwhelm and sadness there are things you can do to ease your pain and sorrow.

Here are just a few ideas that will help you cope immediately this year. You will feel so much better honoring yourself and the memories of your loved one. You will also release expectations and surprises you don’t want to face.

Lower Your Expectations

Don’t feel obligated to send the holidays cards and bake all the cookies like you used to.

Honor What You Feel

These are your feelings and whatever you do this holiday, claim those feelings.

Planning Ahead

You now realize that this year’s holidays and perhaps holidays yet to come will not be the same or unfold how you’d wish. It is best to plan your days ahead as this will help you cope.

Empower yourself where you can

Obviously there are many changes you can’t escape from and you may feel your power has been taken away. Perhaps this is a good time to evaluate your holiday traditions, which ones hold meaning and which ones you want to keep.

Major changes

For the first year or two without your loved one, it usually isn’t a good idea to make any major changes to your traditions like leaving town only to escape or ignoring all sense of traditions you used to share.

Get and maintain a support system

The holiday season is a time when emotions naturally are running high

as are the memories making this a difficult time to be alone. I encourage you to find support of family and friends who can pitch in and offer help.

Remembering

If your loss was recent you will want everyone to remember your loved one, I know I did. You may choose to plan a ceremony or special tribute to honor your loved one, or a casual round the table recalling stories kind of sharing.

Gratitude

During your time of sorrow you may find it impossible to find anything to be grateful for. But I assure you even during our darkest time there are things we can be grateful for.

You too can cope with grief during the holidays if you are gentle with yourself and try some of these ideas and more than anything, finding some joy during this festive time of year is also a wonderful way of honoring the memories of those who have brought us so much joy and those still with us.

I was  interviewed on by Mary T Okeefe, founder of Well Within on her radio program.  Here is a link to that short interview.  CLICK this link to listen: 

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Death is a word many people understand the meaning of all to well.  According to the dictionary, the definition of death is the end of life, or in other words the person involved has come to the end of his life.  What the dictionary meaning does not refer to is that the family who loved this person has also come to the end of life as they know it.  The obituary will most likely read “survived by “and list the person’s family.  Death has taken during my life time my mother, my father, two husbands and a granddaughter; I know that the term “survived by” is not an accurate description.  The word survives means to continue to prosper, to exist or function. The person in grief is not able to do any of this.  Even though our loved one who is “dead” has come to the end of their life, in so many ways this definition is also true to those who have “survived”.

     Another meaning in the dictionary for the word “survive” is to remain alive.  This definition is where we must begin our grief and find a way to heal.  Just to remain alive sounds very simple, but in reality it is so hard to do.  Many may ask, “How do I even start to feel alive again”? For myself, I started with time.  Hours, minutes and seconds really had no meaning, they were all the same.  So I began to set a goal of time for myself to get through, some days it was an hour, others days were only minutes or seconds.  I would spend time writing, crying, remembering or doing nothing at all but hope to get past an increment of time.  No matter how hard it was, I always made it.  I may have not always felt better but I made it, I remained alive.

     As I stumbled through the hours, day, weeks and months to follow, I found I was remaining alive.  I thought many days that this would be how I would continue to feel forever.  I would remain alive I just would never be alive. I often wrote in a journal, I called it good days and bad days.  It was several months before I put a notation on the good day side.  My writings were all the works of someone just trying to remain alive.  Well wishers would see me and tell me how very sorry they were I had lost my loved one.  I thought and wrote about this comment often.  I had not lost my loved one, lost infers to something you can find and I would never find them again.  More accurately it was I that was lost.  How do I find myself again and do more than just remain alive?

     I began by continuing my journal writing, and attending grief counseling.  I started a project to make bears out of the clothes of my loved one to give to family and friends.  All of these things helped me begin my journey through grief.   I cried when I felt sad and I laughed when I felt happy.  I realized at some point that remaining alive was not enough.  If I were to only remain alive for the rest of my life then in reality when my loved ones died, I did also.  This would leave the rest of my family mourning another death.

   Somewhere in the blur of months and years to follow, I wrote in my journal of a celebration I attended.  Celebration is another word that was not usually in my vocabulary.  The dictionaries definition of celebration is to observe a notable occasion or to honor.  As I thought about this word, I believe I turned a corner in my healing process.  The death of my loved one was certainly notable and I could honor those I had lost, I could “celebrate” their life.

     I began by writing on the good side of my journal, the good memories I had.  I talked often to my family sharing stories and remembering the great times we shared.  I organized a golf outing to raise money for charity in my loved ones name.  It was this outing that changed my journey from remaining alive to being alive. I began to feel again and through those feelings I found a purpose, a mission.  With the help of my children, we began a children’s grief program.  Realizing as an adult how hard I had struggled with my grief, I know it must be even harder for a child.  Together my family and I created a safe place for children to come and talk about their feelings.  A place they would not feel alone, a place where they could take this journey through grief and learn to celebrate again.

    Each of us has our own journey through grief and each of us feels our loss differently.  It is not necessary to begin a children’s grief program, hold a golf outing, write in a journal or make bears out of clothes.  It is only necessary to remain alive until you discover what makes you want to celebrate your loved ones life. By celebrating my loved ones life rather than mourning their death, I found the true meaning of the word “survive”.  I have learned to prosper, to function to live, and I have done more than just remain alive.  In that process of living I have also found a way for my loved ones memory to remain alive.

For those of you feeling lost in your journey through grief, it is my hope that you can one day find a way to celebrate the life of your loved one.  Find a passion, a meaning, a purpose and celebrate in their honor your achievement.  Death is not then the end of life, but rather a notable occasion where we can continue to honor our loved ones life.  They become the survivors by remaining alive in our hearts and we can say we have survived and learned to live again.

Please share your comments below or with Jacqueline Nannini directly at:   jackiedbmf@aol.com

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 The day our son Paul died, the director of development at Crossroads School, where Paul and his brother Ben had attended high school, called. She was sympathetic, soothing, and selling as is the way with development directors for non-profits. I know. I used to be one. What she suggested was an endowment fund in his memory that would benefit the high school’s jazz music program. How smart she was. As a jazz pianist and composer Paul had greatly benefited from that program, so I was sold on giving back to it immediately. By the time of his funeral we had it set up.

In that first year we made several other donations.  The charity nearest and dearest to our hearts is the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services. Besides money donations each year we walk in its suicide prevention run/walk and attend its Erasing the Stigma luncheon. I truly believe this stigma and shame kept Paul from seeking help and talking about his illness. The work Didi Hirsch does to erase that stigma and to prevent suicide would have been so useful to us while Paul was alive, if only we had known that a place like Didi Hirsch existed.

We donated a plaque in his memory at the Jazz Bakery to memorialize the last time Paul played piano in public. He played in the Crossroads School Jazz Ensemble reunion concert the December before he died. He only played one tune, and it was hard for him to even focus on that.

And we gave the Micronesian handicrafts we had collected while we lived in the South Pacific to the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California in Paul’s memory because the time we lived in the South Pacific – on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands and visiting Ponape, Yap, Palau, and Guam – were some of his happiest times growing up.

On the first anniversary of Paul’s death we planted a tree on our property. It stands at the edge of our driveway like a welcoming sentry in the place where an old Monterey pine once grew and died. We knew we wanted a flowering and climbing tree. We had hoped that whether we’re still at this house or not, some little boy or girl would find joy in climbing that tree and sitting in the leaves as Paul did in the old pine as a boy.

Also on the first anniversary we had a ceremony to dedicate his gravestone. Officially this ceremony marks the end of the Jewish year of mourning. And even though I made much progress in that first year toward surviving his loss, official or not, I was not through mourning for Paul. I couldn’t stop thinking he shouldn’t be here, that he doesn’t belong here in a plot surrounded by old, old dead people, that he has too many things to do and places to go yet, and that he can’t do any of them because he is here.

Bob was at my side and held my hand during the dedication ceremony as we gathered in a circle on the grass next to Paul’s grave. The Rabbi spoke, said some prayers in both Hebrew and English, and recited a beautiful poem. Then we all recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Mourner’s Kaddish  – a prayer that affirms life rather than rants about death. The Rabbi then took off the red cloth that covered Paul’s black granite stone and the dedication was over. Just like that. One year of mourning officially over with the swift removal of a red cloth – like the curtain rising at the start of a play. Well, I wasn’t ready for the play to start. I had more mourning, grieving, wallowing to do. The first year was over. I had made a lot of progress in that first year, but I still had a long way to go.

Since Paul’s death it has been our tradition to visit this site on his birthday and death day every year. We don’t stay long. All I need is a few minutes to reconnect, to stop what I’m doing in my busy life to just be with Paul. But, really he is with me everywhere – all around our home, in my office, in the car, wherever we are when we travel, in my words, in my mind, in my heart. I don’t need to look for him in the cemetery. Being there affirms his death. The other places keep him alive for me.

Paul Sharples

During that first year, I made a memory list of things unique to Paul. At first it was in prose form and then I turned it into a poem that I like to post on my blog on his birthday. I also have it in my memoir Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide (Lucky Press LLC, May, 2011). I felt like I was racing with time because I didn’t want the passage of time to fade his memory from my mind. However, even though he died twelve years ago, I haven’t forgotten my memories of Paul. Here are a few items on the list.

• I’ll always remember he slept without closing his eyes all the way
• I’ll always remember he played the piano, legs crossed at the knees, leaning
• way down over the keyboard
• I won’t ever forget the feel of his cool pale skin the last night I saw him or the sound of his voice
• I’ll always remember he loved to fish

Madeline still honors her sons memory through suicide prevention work and donations to mental health and suicide prevention organizations, such as Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the Facebook page Putting a Face On Suicide. She also continues to write to keep his memory alive and aid in her healing. Last December, Paul’s birthday month, she profiled a mental health or suicide prevention organization every day on her blog Choices. She also blogs for Red Room, PsychAlive, and Naturally Savvy, and she is currently working on a novel.

 IF YOU’VE EXPERIENCED SUICIDE IN YOUR FAMILY OR WOULD LIKE TO SHARE COMMENTS ON HOW YOU HONOR THE MEMORY OF A LOVED ONE, PLEASE SAHRE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW:

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I am going to suggest you remain open minded to gratitude, while you may be feeling sad and alone with your grief, there are other ways to look at this moment in time.

I have heard terrible stories of those who have lost their loved ones to tragic deaths and for those it is more difficult to find any gratitude. However…

 Gratitude can be a healer and a teacher.  Be open to gratitude and you will find comfort and peace.  Here are just a few examples of grateful thinking;

• Be grateful for the comfort & support you receive from others
• Find gratitude in the faces of children who see wonder and possibility in holiday traditions or whimsy
• Be grateful for your faith and the strength you gain for that faith
• Be grateful that you are able to write you thoughts in your journal everyday
• Find blessings in the kindness of strangers who have reached out
• Be thankful if you have a loving family
• Be grateful that you feel joy, peace and love during the holiday season despite your loss
• Be grateful for the tears, for they wash away the sadness of your loss and remind you that you are and have been loved
• Be grateful if you have a pet that offers you comfort in your time of grief

What do you find gratitude in?  Please share your comments below

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According to Wikipedia, they describe the holiday this way, it focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. It is particularly celebrated in Mexico, where it attains the quality of a National Holiday. The celebration takes place on November 1st and 2nd, in connection with the Catholic holidays of All Saints’ Day (November 1) and All Souls’ Day (November 2). Traditions connected with the holiday include building private altars honoring the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed and visiting graves with these as gifts.

Catrinas, one of the most popular figures of the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.

Scholars trace the origins of the modern Mexican holiday to indigenous observances dating back hundreds of years and to an Aztec festival dedicated to a goddess called Mictecacihuatl. In Brazil, Dia de Finados is a public holiday that many Brazilians celebrate by visiting cemeteries and churches. In Spain, there are festivals and parades, and, at the end of the day, people gather at cemeteries and pray for their dead loved ones. Similar observances occur elsewhere in Europe, and similarly themed celebrations appear in many Asian and African cultures.

I for one think many of our cultures should find more ways in which we publicly honor our loved ones that have died.  Often in American culture (which is all I am qualified top speak on) we tend to only remember our loved ones on significant dates to our dearly departed and at that many people tell me they do this privately.  I have taken some time to learn more about how the Mexican culture celebrates and honors their loved ones with great joy and celebration and I for one rather like this tradition.  To honor another in joyful celebration to me really gives meaning to me that this person I cared so deeply for mattered and I am here to publicly acknowledge their life.

What do you think?  I’d love your comments below about this celebration or any other that your culture may have to honor and celebrate a life.

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Sandy & Ken Gambone

1.  Be compassionate with yourself.

All feelings are OK and valid. You feel what you feel. You may feel anger, guilt, regret and many others, even relief about something. It’s all OK. It does not mean you did not love them, it means you are human.

2.  Feel what you feel.

I don’t always do this, but the times that I have, I’ve realized the truth in the advice of really feeling your feelings. This helps them to move (feelings are energy) and it helps you realize that you are not your feelings.

One night I was in a place of deep despair over Ken’s death – I actually felt physical pain in my heart – and I sat and felt the pain. I did not judge it or try to describe it or explain it to myself, just felt it inside my body, and after not too long it dissipated. I felt lighter and freer. Sometimes I think we are afraid to feel the grief, or fear or anger or whatever. But if we do sit with it and truly feel it, then it can be released.

3.  You will have ups and downs.

I was feeling better, and then the 6-month anniversary was approaching. I had what is called anticipatory grief. I dreaded that upcoming day and felt very sad. Yet when the day arrived, it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. I actually felt some peace and calm.

As of this writing, I am at the 7-month  anniversary of Ken’s death and have felt sad and not so sad and OK. back and forth, as the day goes on.

There are many triggers for sadness. I passed a man in a car who looked like Ken and tears came to my eyes, even though I’d felt fine for days. I don’t listen to love songs, as they make me sad. I went to a wedding this past weekend, and thought about the ‘what might have been’ during the ceremony.

4.  Realize that others may not understand how you feel and may not understand why you are not ‘over it yet.

Grief takes time. There is no timetable. Everyone goes at their own pace. Give yourself the time that you need. Spend time alone when you need to. It’s OK to decline invitations you may have otherwise accepted. It’s OK not to feel up to driving somewhere (I’ve run into this a few times).

One of the women in my support group has a friend who is a widow who told her that unless someone has been through it, they cannot understand. I have found that of my friends, a woman who has been a widow for 20 years is the one I feel most at ease talking to. Another friend told me that she does not know what I am going through and is not sure how to best support me. I found that honesty so refreshing and I love her dearly for saying it.

A couple of people have commented on my ‘coming out of it’ or ‘How is your grieving process going?’ I mostly let the comments slide off of me and don’t say much to them. I know it will ebb and flow and there is no ‘getting over it’. It will always be with me, become a part of who I am. I am surviving and in some ways thriving. In other parts of my life, not so much yet. I do not judge myself, I will get there.

5.  Talking with others who do understand and writing about it helps.

I attend a support group for those who have lost a loved one to suicide held by the suicide prevention organization Samaritans. It is called Safe Place. And it is. It is comforting to be with those that have been through the same thing, who understand the extra layer that suicide adds to a death. There are women who have lost husbands of 40 years, parents who have lost only sons, those who have lost siblings, a man who lost his mother, and those like me, who lost a boyfriend.

It is not therapy, exactly, but it is being with others who are going through the ‘If only’, the ‘what if’, the regrets that this kind of death brings up so strongly. And I find that helps me immensely. It doesn’t matter how long it has been since the death, it is a group that you can discuss the issues with, people with whom you don’t feel like you have to act fine around because you wonder if they are tiring of hearing about it.

Writing has helped me, also, as I don’t have a lot of people I am close to that I feel I can talk about my grieving process. I found writing in my journal helped me to sort through my feelings and to get them out.

6.  Honoring their memory

I need to talk to Ken and have his picture around where I can see him often. Most of the people in my support group said they could not bear to have pictures around, or had them in only one room that they didn’t go in all the time. I even have a picture of Ken and I as my computer wallpaper and I say Hi to him every time my computer boots up. A couple of those in my support group had a voicemail that they liked to listen to and keep saving it so it won’t get deleted. This is all a personal thing and there is no right or wrong choice. Do what feels right in your heart for you. I have some recordings from when Ken had his own radio talk show and I have listened to a few of those and I enjoy hearing his voice. One from several years ago mentioned a former girlfriend, so I won’t be listening to that one again.

I am doing a 5K walk put on by the suicide prevention organization, the Samaritans, in a couple of weeks. I feel that Ken would be proud to have some of us walking in his name for a great cause, even if he never and never would have contacted them for help.

I had a reading with a medium and was told that Ken wanted me to remember him how he is now more than how he was. Now he is radiating light like a sun. So I looked for and bought a necklace of a sun, with the center a dome of amber, and I bought a wind chime with a sun on the top. I wear the necklace often and tell some people what it represents to me.

As I said, I talk to Ken often. Sometimes I sense he answers me, mostly I just want to say Hi and to tell him I love him and to send him love. During the reading with the medium Ken talked about him not seeing his own light when he was alive, but that I did. He wanted me to share that when people die from suicide their loved ones often focus on the pain their loved one must have felt in order to take their own life. He said this doesn’t help their soul and that we need to send them love. I had been doing that since he died (I had read years ago something about it) and he said it really helped him. So, I want to let others know that no matter how your loved one died, send them love, as it helps their soul on the other side.

**Thanks  Sandy  for submitting such helpful tips. Please share your comments about these tips  in the box below.

Would you give the same tips as Sandy or can you share your experience in the comments section below.

If you want to submit a story for the Heartache To Healing site, you can learn more by clicking here.

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The journey through grief, for me, began long before my mother died. Choosing to be a caregiver meant that life as I knew it would be completely changed. I stepped full-time into my Care Bear role at age 59 when my mother’s dementia took a stronger hold on her brain, causing her to mix up her meds. Making the choice to leave a full-time job as group counselor at an alternative school for expelled high school students was not an easy choice for me to make, especially for financial and health benefit reasons. I enjoyed my work. Yet, it seems as if there had always been invisible threads of connection between my mother and me, beyond our roles as mother and daughter. My heart especially yet, also, the inability for her to afford nursing home care made the decision for me. During the first year of mother-sitting, I came to visualize us as having always been joined by one of those leash-like contraptions that some mothers use to keep their toddlers from wandering away. Ours was just heart-felt and invisible!

 There were moments when anger, frustration, and depression came on me because I had let go my job and thus, my financial security, benefits and even a piece of my identity. My freedom to come and go went out the window along with the habit of getting a good night’s sleep. The weight of grief, however, came from the settling in of dementia into my mother’s brain. Although it was difficult at first for my independent mother to hand over the reins of her life to me, the dance of dementia in her brain was such that she eventually lost the memory of being a nurse, a mother, a sister, and an adult. Within a year of her death, my mother had no inkling of death or grief or loss because, within the mind of a child, each day was always fresh and new.

For my sisters and me, however, our dances with the journey of grief had become a daily affair. The experience through grief was made tolerable for me because the grief process had long been an interest of mine. I had read a lot of books. Previously, I had been involved in support group environments where people could talk openly about their situations, losses and emotions. Throughout my Care Bear experience, friends and family checked in with me daily so I always felt supported.  When my mother was napping, Wii Fitness bowling and tennis helped me burn off the fires of anger and frustration. The despair, helplessness and hopelessness of depression took a back seat during those moments in which I tuned out from grief and into healthy distractions like jigsaw puzzles, funny movies, reading or journaling. When my mother was awake and we were dealing with the obstinate responses of her brain and the tired, frustrated responses of my brain, I began to practice a simple, inexpensive exercise. This exercise required of me only one thing, that I be willing to practice.

There is no easy way to make it through the dance known as grief. Distractions might work for a while yet, because we are human, we will face grief head-on at some time and for various reasons. In those moments when anger, frustration, sadness and despair hit me the hardest, I began to practice the art of breathing through the tidal wave of emotions that threatened to pull me under. There were moments in which it felt as if I were having a heart attack. I even took my blood pressure a few times to see if a stroke was imminent. At first, I wanted some quick fix to escape the pressure yet the strongest emotions came when I was trying to cope with some dementia-related, out-of-the-blue behavior of my mother’s. I could not turn away, take five or do anything that would leave my mother in an unsafe situation. Breathing through the heaviness of emotion was a hands-free, non-interruptive practice. Yes, I also muttered a lot at first. Here is what I now know.   For me, continuing to breathe through the tightness, the heaviness, eventually brought me to the sense of calm that I needed in order to get things done. This practice was akin to a prayer. A focus on breathing through anger, sadness and despair invited prayerful thoughts into my mind. With practice, I came to experience a sense of a peace that passed all of my understanding. Every night when I had gotten my mother to sleep, I called someone, usually a sister, and talked out my day.

Because of our wonderful Hospice care staff, our mother was able to pass from this world while at home. During that last week of her life, there were moments when, looking at my sleeping mother, my breath would become still and a powerful wave of loving emotion would well up within me. At such moments, it seemed as if I might die or, at least, disappear if I stayed caught up in this emotion’s strength for too long. Religions have their ways of explaining love, using words that evoke or awaken one to an experience of God’s love. For me, it seemed as if there were instances near the end of my Care Bear journey in which Love simply gathered me in its strong, gentle arms and, for a moment, took me some place beyond the strongest emotions of grief. Always, afterwards, there was a sense of graciousness and freshness in place of the heaviness in my heart. Grace sat within my spirit after the heavy emotions of grief had had their release. Breathing through instead of resisting those emotions brought peace to me.

 When my mother died, a sense of this peace stayed with me even as I mourned the loss of her physical presence in my life. We had been mother and daughter, friends and, at the end, I played the role of mother while her brain saw herself as my daughter. I had lived out of state for a number of years and was the daughter who had written our mother many letters.  One day while going through my mother’s files not long after she had died, I found her cache of saved letters and cards.  Sitting and reading them while tears of anguish flowed, the sadness at no longer having her physical presence in my life became overwhelming. Continuing to breathe through the sadness, I finally had to get up and move around, doing various chores in order to burn up that overwhelming energy. When I sat back down, I was able to read the rest of the letters, still crying yet without the heaviness of despair. Sweet memories sat with me instead. As was my healthy habit, I called a sister.

There is no set formula that I have stumbled upon that might have helped me be able to immediately step out of those Care Bear and mother-sitting roles, pick up the missing pieces of my life and get the pieces all glued back together again in some kind of satisfied way. The words in my journal turned into a book, Adventures in Mother-Sitting. Writing and editing was cathartic for me and created a concentrated focus for the next year of my life. There are still those moments in which grief grabs my attention and breathing through again takes me to a peaceful shore named grace. My sisters and other family and friends and I continue to offer emotional support to each other.  I still have a connection with our Hospice chaplain and other staff who offered support to my family.

    It has been two years now since my mother, my cheerleader in life, has died. Something in my 63 year old spirit seems to be waking up. Though there is no clear direction yet for my life, I find that I am tuning more into social networking venues that relate to caregivers and grief issues. It feels timely now for me to make contact with local agencies and volunteer in some way. I do see a part-time job in my future, one that keeps me in contact with others versus one that is behind a desk. More will be revealed on that front. Other people that I cared about have since died. As my own deep level of grief has waned, it has become easier for me to offer more direct emotional support to others who are experiencing loss in their lives. Grief, as we know, is a journey to be shared. I no longer wait for grief to visit me out of the blue. Each day, I take some moments to sit and breathe through the sweet sadness of grief then sit quietly and reverently for a while with grace.

**Thanks Doreen for submitting such a beautiful story. Please share your comments in the box below.

If you want to submit a story for the Heartache To Healing site, you can learn more by clicking here.

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This experience made me realize the power and need to maintain perspective.  I could have let this take over my being, like it did when my mom was sick and after she passed, but I didn’t get depressed or out of control.  I went through the grieving process slowly as things were happening.  I cried a lot, but did not lose myself throughout it all.  And then I came to terms with the fate of the situation, and am truly at peace with it now.  This is such a change from where I was 15 years ago.  I know you cannot compare the loss of a mother to the loss of an early pregnancy, but I feel like I’ve made huge strides in dealing with grief as well as dealing with life and keeping things in perspective.  I hope that I can remember this feeling for the next time I experience a big loss in my life so that I can take that with grace and perspective as well.

As was the situation with my mom passing, family and friends have been a huge support and comfort through this difficult time.  They are truly my inspiration to get through the situation and be okay, knowing that I have their support and love.  If there’s one lesson to share with the world about both experiences, it is to lean on your family and friends during such trying times in your life – they will be there to let you cry, hear your story, and make you laugh when you need it.  They are also there to be your rock and keep you going forward.  For the past 15 years, I have made it a point to never take my family and friends for granted, because they are such an important part of my life.

 **This story was submitted by a Heartache To Healing  reader who prefers to remain anonymous…Please share your comments about this story below, we love to hear from the readers.

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JoAnne & Suzann

This weekend I was invited to attend a retreat called “Sacred Journey – A Retreat for the Widowed” sponsored by The Grief Project and founder Suzann Eisenberg Murray.

The retreat began with grief counselors talking about grief as an experience of change and loss and how grief affects us spiritually mentally, physically emotionally and socially.   The attendees were encouraged to remember that death ends a life not a relationship!   We continue the relationship with those who have died by talking & praying to them, honoring their memory through new and old traditions, keeping photos in sight to remind us of our relationships.

They talked further about the idea that there is no going back to the person we were, rather we’re in between where we were and who we are going to be.  This applies to all loss, now just widowed people.

There was a session on Journaling  Your Way Through Grief.  Here we were encouraged to let go of our inner critic, connect with our creative side and simply write.  A simple tip to get connected with your inner self is to write down a question with your dominant hand and then write your answer in the non-dominant hand.  Generally then our answer will come from our intuition, that inner self that knows the all our answers.  Journaling through grief is a process and having trust that it will take you where you want to go in discovery and healing.

Indoor Labyrinth

We were introduced to Labyrinths, which are ancient patterns, thousands of years old and found all over the world. Labyrinth walking can provide a sense of calm that is conducive to meditation, self-exploration and prayer. For me walking the Labyrinth symbolized taking steps to move forward in my life.  For everyone else, their walking meant something equally as personal.

You can find Labyrinths all over the world,  check with your local church’s for more information or to learn more from our mentor Lisa Moriarty and Paths of Peace.

Grief retreats can offer the mourner a safe space to share their story, get support and find a place of hope among other who are on a similar journey.

I was humbled to be a companion to others on their grief journey, to witness their courage and strength in sharing their stories and the hope everyone shared when the weekend was over.  Yes, there was no going back, everyone was on a new path and through the tears, pain and heartbreak of loss it seemed just a little brighter when we left.

Retreat group

Remember you need other people to help you through your grief.  Grief retreats & other peer support groups are valuable despite the fact everyone grieves in different times and in different ways.  The support of others experiencing loss is powerful.  You are not alone.

Check out the resources page for a partial list of organizations that offer grief support.

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