Q&A with Dr. Leary

Dear Pent Up:

            “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”  Your feelings of grief and love are like individual, sacred stories, each one asking to be heard.  Every loss deserves a hundred tellings, and we need to give words to our sorrow and our love.

              When you are grieving, missing your loved one and have nowhere to put the love, you can tell the story of your loved one in a journal. You can connect with your loved one, sharing your life and your thoughts as you did before their death. You can keep the relationship close, unique, and personal. This is not to suggest that you need to change your grief or deny it. By exploring and expressing your grief, you are exploring it from an open and accepting perspective rather than denying or repressing it. Shared grief feels supported and validated, whether with someone you confide in or expressed to yourself in writing or artistic forms.

The benefits of a journal are many-fold:

·         you can tell the story as many times as you have the urge to tell it

·         no one will interrupt you and tell you that “you’ve already told me that”

·         paper is often more patient than people

·         you can keep it private or choose to share it with trusted friends

·         you can revisit memories and find new insights and meaning

·         you can spend as much or as little time on a feeling as you want without prodding

·         you can make sense of events and get rid of feelings that you no longer want to carry

·         you can pose questions and find your own answers without others giving advice

·         you can investigate scenarios and rehearse future situations

·         you can express appreciation and pay attention to our blessings

·         you can continue the connection and conversations with him

·         it’s free and always available.

            You can also move the energy of grief and love out into the world. You can transmute the heaviness of grief and the fullness of love into action for a cause that represents your loved one’s values. What did he stand for? Where did he give his attention and energies? How can you carry on his legacy, as though you are working in the world on his behalf? How can you share who he was with others in a tangible, practical form? Can you share his love for nature by picking up his shovel and volunteering to maintain trails? Can you donate his science fiction in his name to your local library? What would make you think of him and smile if you saw it in your community; how can you make that happen?

There are many ways to make love visible and share it with others. For example, you may have repeated loving habits for your loved one; you may have phoned or texted him every day. You might have baked him cookies every week. And now, in your loved one’s absence, you feel empty without the comfort of that ritual. Can you share the gift of that habit with another person in need? Can you share the details of that interaction with someone else, and share the love instead of keeping the memory bottled up inside? Who can you share with on a regular basis to share your great capacity for love?

It is important to remember that your grief, like your love, is unique and no one can tell you when or how to address it. When and how and with whom you work with your pent-up grief and love needs to be respected and honored. I hope you find the expression and outlet for your love for your son.

Blessings,

Lani

Dear Untethered:

Grief comes in unpredictable, powerful waves. Grief can express itself as numbness or unrelenting sobbing. The goal of grief work is to learn how to live with the reality of your loss; it means adapting to a new world without your loved one and finding ways to make peace with “what is”. This requires support, validation, and coping skills to weather this storm.  The coping skills you may be looking for are ways to think and actions to take that will reduce or stabilize your overwhelming emotions.

Some coping skills and strategies include:

•           Positive reframing means accepting what has been lost, what has changed while also maintaining an emotional or spiritual connection with your daughter.

•           Developing and maintaining a personal spirituality means finding a higher purpose or guiding perspective that helps you make meaning out of what has happened. It may mean that you take up a cause that honors your daughter or find solace in rituals or prayers.

•           Journaling to “contain” and organize the intensity and breadth of your feelings. Expressing your feelings and thoughts can also reflect for you that you are moving through your grief and show you the ways that you are managing what you didn’t believe you could in the past. In your journal, you are giving words to your sorrow and releasing emotions that, if held onto, may cause physical distress.

•           Meditation and relaxation exercises provide a “time out” from a racing mind and provide a respite from the exhausting demands of grief.

•           Seeking out a grief therapist who can companion you when you might feel as though you “can’t do this alone”, and who validates what others may not have the patience or skills to be with you and your grief.

•           Learning about your grief triggers such as anniversaries, birthdays, and important milestones. Knowing what might trigger grief to emerge again, even after years of adjustment, means that you can prepare ahead so that you have the support of a trusted loved one, or you can mark the day in a meaningful way.

•           Find ways to acknowledge the absence of your loved one. Tell stories; wear something that reminds you of them; cook their favorite meal are all ways to continue your bond and evoke meaning and connection.

•           Practicing self-care means paying attention to healthy nutrition, sleeping, exercise, rest, and finding the emotional support person or systems that allow you to move through your grief at your own pace and in your own way.

When you feel as though you are not coping, ask for and allow others to support you. Reframe this period of being overwhelmed and find ways that you have and are handling these difficult times. Be aware of your inner self-talk; be as gentle and kind to yourself as you have been with your loved one.

Bon Voyage and Best Wishes,

Lani

Your heart and intentions are in the right place. You want to help your husband through this long and painful adjustment to the death of your child. You may even be fearful that if he does not grieve “properly” it may affect his health or relationships with yourself and your other children.
Just as your grief and grief work is unique to you, your husband’s feelings of loss, his journey through this “dark night of the soul”, and the meaning that he attaches to your child’s death is uniquely his own. You can best help him by acknowledging that he is different than you; by affirming that he has feelings and his own experience of this loss; and by allowing and encouraging him to find his own expressions of grief. Your husband is indeed expressing his feelings, but in his actions and work in his workshop and garden. The display of your grief may be more obvious and understood in our culture, more easily recognized through words and tears. Your husband may sweat his tears in physically exhausting work or sports. Both expressions are valid, appropriate, direct, and helpful means of moving the energy of sadness, despair, confusion, anger, guilt, anxiety, and loneliness.
You can help your husband by giving him time and space to explore his new environment without your child. Support him by brainstorming opportunities for him to create or build something that honors your child. Many men find it helpful to put their grief into action, while women find it easier to put their feelings into words. Perhaps you could partner in a project that would require him to build (a playground or bench) and you to write the words for the words for the dedication ceremony.
The greatest help with our grief comes through validation. You strengthen his connection with your child and substantiate his experiences of loss when you honor his way, his timing, his intensity, his pacing, and his unique ways of expression. You will be sharing a compassion for his journey that gives him permission to express his feelings and remain in character, cope on his own terms, without judgment.
Grief is work, but the expression and completion of this grief work may be internal and invisible to others. It is so important to be respectful of people’s different ways of grieving, and not to push mourners to express grief in limited ways. The way a person expresses their grief has little to do with the magnitude of their loss.
Blessings,
Lani

Dear Mother,
There is comfort in the compassion and good intentions of others but when we are exhausted by grief, we have little capacity to think for others or advocate for ourselves. We can find what we need when we identify our feelings. You may have never had such a loss before. You may be feeling numb, exhausted, and unable to think. You may be at a loss for words and unsure if anything would help. These are normal and acceptable responses to the unexpected and sudden death of your daughter.
Friends want to help but may not know what is helpful. Many are uncomfortable and unprepared for grief, and either stay away, say and do things that don’t help, or act in ways that are not helpful to the people they care about. The following support in the form of requests has helped others:

Any one of these acts of kindness can make a difference. Please use these as conversation starters, or as a response, when friends ask you what they can do for you. Very few of us know what the death of a loved one means to us, and what we need, until it happens to us. You can help them to understand and to give you what you need.
Blessings, Lani

• “Please remember my loved one by name and with specific stories.”
• “Please allow me all my feelings, whether they are comfortable or understandable to you.”
• “Please ask me what I need instead of assuming.”
• “Please do what you say you will do for me.”
• “Please give me time to grieve in my own way, and at my own pace.”
• “Please stay with me and my grief on holidays, anniversaries, and when my grief surprises me years later.”

You will love and miss your daughter for the rest of your life. In her own way, despite death, she will have a place in your life. In that way, it makes perfect sense that you would remember her and experience her in many ways throughout your life, whether through seeing someone that reminds you of her, recalling the special way she laughed, or wanting to share a special event with her.

To remember her is to bring her back into the present and to give your sorrow expression. Each time you grieve you are also acknowledging the reality of her death and learning how to live without her. This process is the work of a lifetime and it is unrealistic, not helpful, and unhealthy to live as though we can “get over” such a profound loss quickly. Please give yourself the permission and the compassion to move through this painful journey at your own pace, in your own way, and with people who support you.

Grief therapists refer to what you are experiencing as a “STUG”, or a Subsequent Temporary Upsurge of Grief. These are common and expected reactions to the death of a loved, even years after the death. In order to be helpful we must expect, allow for, appreciate, and encourage the expression of them. These healthy and understandable STUG reactions should not be misdiagnosed as “over reactions” or a pathological response to death. You may continue to experience these reactions on anniversary dates such as your daughter’s birthday; during a particular season that she loved most; as memory-based reactions when a place reminds you of her; or from a music-elicited reaction when the words or melody elicit feelings about your daughter.

Your mourning will become less intense and frequent over time. But mourning is never truly over because of new life situations. For example, a different experience of your grief may arise as your friend plan for a daughter’s wedding and you grieve for an event that you will not be able to share with your daughter. Grief and mourning fluctuate over time as your issues, concerns, and reactions change throughout your lifetime.

Rather than think of your grief as unusual, perhaps you can acknowledge your feelings as an opportunity to visit with the memory of your daughter. You continue to love her, think of her, and carry her with you in your heart. Use these “waves of desperation” as an invitation to yourself to create a ritual that will allow you to spend time thinking of her: writing in a special journal, creating art or music that reminds you of her, or passing to others the lessons you have learned may turn these difficult times into meaningful passage.

Dear Leesa:

You dream this because you are his mother. As a mother, you have assumed responsibility for his care and safe keeping, no matter how old he is. Your dream is expressing the questions and emotions you need to work through, and may be your desire to have more control over an uncontrollable event. It is a common and a normal response to seek more control when we feel out of control; to accept responsibility and want more power when we feel powerless; and to want to re-write an ending that feels unacceptable.

Your conscious, waking mind knows and accepts the reality that he died, at home, from an accident. Perhaps your unconscious, seeking mind is still looking for answers to “why?”, “how?” and “what does it mean?” It is common that this search for meaning and the pursuit for peace that comes from accepting life’s unpredictability will take a very long time. Acceptance, understanding, and reconciliation often comes in spurts and after long spells of disquiet.

Another way to work with dreams is to see the primary subject as an extension of one self. In this way, we would see the dreamer as looking for herself rather than her son; trying to discover herself and help for herself; afraid that she has been hurt. When we look at the dream from this perspective, we can see this as helpful: in grief, we often report that we don’t know who we are or how we are going to get through life without our loved one. We feel that we need help or guidance but we don’t know what to ask for or how to find the help we need. We are hurt, torn apart by our grief. Your dream is reflecting this.

Your dreams are an engine that power you deeper through your grief work, even when you do not believe you have any energy left. Your dreams may offer you a glimpse into corners left unexplored in daily life, or another perspective that comes when our normal way of looking at challenges is “asleep”. Dreams provide us to continue the work without the chatter, distractions, defenses, and prejudices of our every-day mind.

My recommendation is that you observe and record your dreams without judging, analyzing, or dismissing them. I trust that dreams come to serve and strengthen us, offering gifts and insights that only the dreamer can affirm. Even though it feels upsetting, these dreams are companioning you in your grief. But you do not have to be along with the dreams or the confusion. Working with a therapist who has special training and a background in dream work may be helpful to offer support as you explore your dreams, your feeling and needs, and this long journey through grief.

Your dreams can be the gift that move you toward an understanding and acceptance of strong emotions, and a deeper clarity of your strength. It may be speaking of a deeper truth through symbolic language. My hope is that you will gain peace and understanding through these messages.

Blessing,

Lani

You are grieving many, many losses and that compounds your mourning. You are grieving the loss of your childhood dreams and the time that was lost when you and Jack did not marry in your youth; those lost years must feel like a lifetime and you can never get them back. But you and Jack found each other again and lived four short years of your dream, only to find yourself without him once again. You grieve the death of your beloved husband, the loss of your youth, and the end of your future dreams. Of course you are in shock, and each day is raw and flooded with tears. Grief is a long journey and you feel each step, each day, each tear. I hope that you can find or build a support network who will listen to your story of love and grief as often as you need to tell it; reminisce with you with laughter and tears; help you celebrate anniversaries and rituals; and companion you throughout this heartbreaking challenge of learning to live without Jack.

Your question about his children speaks to the difference in the relationships with Jack. Each of his children had a different relationship with their father as you had a different relationship with your husband, with different meanings to the roles and different intensities to those connections. Is it possible to have respectful conversations between the four of you to fully discuss and understand what Jack’s possessions MEANS to each of you? It will be easier for each of you to understand why you desire to have certain objects if you can connect the value to the meaning of and the stories behind each object. Is it possible that many of their father’s items have stories behind them that link their father to a certain child or a certain time?

I want to assume the best of Jack’s children, and hope that when they are telling you what family events you “should” attend that they mean to include you as an important part of their family. Unfortunately, they may be confusing an invitation with an obligation and that never feels good. Can you explain to them that you need time and space to follow the surges of your grief?…that some events are helpful and other gatherings are just too difficult at this time? Your self-care and honest assessment of your grief is your most important work right now, and they need to understand that your respect for your needs does not minimize their grief. I encourage you to find the support that will help you move through one day at a time and honor your love.

I am so very sorry for your loss,
Lani

Until we go through our own personal loss it is difficult to be prepared or truly appreciate the intensity of grief and how long it affects us. Grief is a process that extends over time. In most cases, grief has a lifelong impact on who we are and how we see ourselves in the world. It is your grief and only you know its personal meaning in your life. That means you are living it day-in and day-out in a way that others cannot know.

The first anniversary of the death of a loved one is especially difficult. Others can hurt, help, or heal during this time and you can help yourself by educating others about what you need.

Those of us going through a first anniversary have reported some suggestions for support. Most important is acknowledging the loss and referencing the loved one. Grieving is about remembering, so friends and family should help remember the deceased with stories, photos, or personal connections. It helps to have “permission” not to be okay, to show the pain and hurt or to be withdrawn if that is how you are feeling. We need people who will listen without personalizing or trying to take the pain away. We need to be able to share exactly what we are feeling without feeling judged or evaluated. In a word, we need someone who will be present with us.

Remembrances can be in the form of a ritual or ceremony, which is setting aside a time and place with the purpose of acknowledging our relationship with the deceased and the change in our life because of the loss.

There is a “bereavement overload” when our grief, our loved one, or the death is not acknowledged or when there is not a private or public dialogue of the loss.

I encourage you to spend time thinking about what you will need on or around this anniversary day. Reach out and carefully choose those friends and family that can give you what you need, and ask directly for specific acts of patience and kindness. Design a ceremony or ritual that will have meaning for you and set aside the time to make it happen. The ceremony may include a meaningful place, music, food, or activity that held a special memory for you and your husband.

Blessing,

Lani

Dear LifeNet Health family: It takes great courage to grieve, because it asks you to be open and vulnerable to your deepest wound. Your grief exposes you and can make you feel out of control. It takes courage to feel your pain and share it with others. It takes courage to learn how to live in a new world, in a new way, without your loved one.
But in our culture, the bereaved most often report that they feel alone with their grief. You may have felt abandoned just weeks after the funeral. You may have felt as though you were on your own, trying to navigate this unknown territory by yourself. Or people often say that they feel ashamed that their grief has not abated to other’s timetables. That is, until we find a community of others who know our experience of death and grief; who share our common language; who also know what we need and what helps.
You return to rituals and ceremonies that honor your loved one because you find meaning and solace in a shared experience with love and loss. You are in community with each other, and the connection is what makes your loss more bearable. In this community of the bereaved you have created a safe space. You are a family and you are as different as you are similar. While each of your losses is unique, each one of you is the expert for your grief alone, but you all grieve and are in community. You share the human condition of being vulnerable and that is what connects all of us.
Each of your heartaches is unique and none of it is common…but you have much in common. You grieve because you have loved. You come together again to remember and honor that love, and you come to these remembrance celebrations because it is here that you are given permission, time, safety, and validation to grieve.
Together, during these remembrance celebrations, you do not need to be afraid that you will forget or that your loved ones will be forgotten. You can speak their name; you can tell their stories; you carry on their legacy; you share your loved one with others. Just having a caring environment in which you can express your feelings and be heard is profoundly healing.
All grief needs to be blessed, and in order to be blessed, it must be heard. Someone must be present to your expression of grief, someone who is willing to hold it by listening without judgment or comparison. When you wail or tell your story of loss, it is based in your need that your loss not go unnoticed-the death of your loved one will not be overlooked, and your loved one’s place in the world will be marked. Grief is an expression that validates your loved one’s existence in the world and acknowledges that love for a person does not die just because she or he did.
Blessings,
Lani