Conscious Grieving

Grief and Thanksgiving

28 November, 2011 — Posted in: Conscious Grieving Leave a Comment

306498869_28ebd349e6_z It’s Monday of Thanksgiving week. We’re in town, so I went about my usual Monday errands.

But the world is in a different space than I. The grocery store was full of people, their shopping baskets brimming with pre-Thanksgiving staples, those non-perishables that you buy a few days before the big Whole Foods shopping trip.

We are not celebrating this year. Rick died eight months ago, and Megan is off in Europe traveling for the year. I’m trying to ignore the festivities. But the world does go on, doesn’t it?

My favorite once-a-year Thanksgiving first course is shrimp cocktail. Those big fat shrimp in a very spicy cocktail sauce always said “Thanksgiving” to me. So when a woman asked the butcher at Safeway, “May I have some shrimp, please?” my stomach clenched and I felt one of those waves of tears and anguish surge from deep within. I couldn’t get out of that store fast enough.

I came home, unpacked my enchilada ingredients and sat down to do a meditation. I wanted to clear out the grief and loss energy that I had accumulated while walking the aisles of Safeway.

I guess I didn’t dig deep enough because, that afternoon in the dentist’s chair, I almost came apart again. Of course, it’s natural to ask people what they are doing for the holiday – I always did it myself.

It never occurred to me that someone wouldn’t be celebrating Thanksgiving. I’m pretty sensitive in the weeks leading up to Christmas because I know lots of people don’t “do” that day. But Thanksgiving? I didn’t prepare myself for the impact of being asked what I had planned for the week. The hygienist, the dentist, the cashier, a second dentist who just stopped in to say hi, and, as I was walking (running?) out the door, the receptionist called out after me, “Have a great holiday.” All well-intentioned, sensitive people. But wow – it devastated me. I went home, grabbed the dog, and went for a walk around the lake to clear my head. I cried as I walked. I went down into the depths of “poor me” and wallowed as I walked.

I’m one that always wanted to host the big family gathering of 20. I dreamed that someday, between children and grandchildren and friends of children and grandchildren, I’d have enough family to do that. Even in the years that there were only four of us around the table, my story was that this was temporary and soon our ranks would swell. But the family has dwindled, and I need to put that dream aside. I cried and grieved not only the loss of Rick, but the loss of the story around the big multi-generational family gathering. Next year, when Megan is home, it will be only three around the table. Not exactly 20.

Grieving takes many shapes. And it has many layers. Today I cried about me and all my stories that are untrue. I have to let them go and accept what is. As Byron Katie says, “Who would you be without the story?”

Who would I be without the story that Thanksgiving is about a large family gathering? Who would I be without the story that it isn’t Thanksgiving if one of us is permanently missing? Who would I be without the story of turkey and stuffing and pies?

I thought about gratitude. Could I find at least some little thing to be grateful for? It took longer than I ever would have imagined getting to the place of saying, “Yes, I have room in my heart today for more than just grief.”

I have a daughter to love. I have a husband who adores me. I have friends to have a cup of tea with and pottery to keep my hands occupied. I have a home. I have a dog. I have freedom. I have food. I have love. I have so very much to be grateful for.

And who would I be without the story?

I’d be peaceful and grateful and in love with those people and things that love me.

Yes, I am truly blessed.

Thank You Rick

31 December, 2011 — Posted in: Conscious Grieving Leave a Comment

New Year’s Eve is always a time to reflect on the past and look forward to the new. As I look back on this year, my heart is filled with many different competing emotions. I will always remember 2011 as the year that my son Rick died. The coroner’s visit, the finality of death, and the knowledge that there is no such thing as a do-over in life are ever-present emotions cascading through my body. Car accidents happen and in just that flash; it’s all gone.

But I feel more. I feel a hologram of sorrow, grief, happiness, tears, laughter, grace, depression, despair, fits of joyousness, days of gratefulness, deep appreciation for the smallest of things, and most of all love. In big capital letters, LOVE.

Cocooned in the gentle caring of my husband and daughter, I have felt the outpouring of support from friends near and far. Most of all, I have felt Rick’s presence and the beams of radiating love that he sends my way.

Yes, I have been blessed. This terrible, terrible year, has also turned into one of my most precious. I will always look back and see the love. The grace. The beauty of people helping people. I will see the faces of my friends, as they ask, “What can I do for you”? I will hear the moms of sons silently saying, “Oh my God, that could have been my child!”, and then turning to give a smile, a kiss, or a hug to their precious baby, adolescent, or young adult.

All who knew Rick have all come away with an appreciation for life, for the smallest of small favors, gestures or smiles. I have become much more centered, soft, and patient. I am a wiser, more caring person. And, I have a deep sense of appreciation for how strong I really am! Yes, I have lost a son, but I am here and I am dealing with this. God doesn’t give you more than you can handle, and I know now, that I can handle quite a heavy load.

As I take my morning walks, down the forest road to the wide green gate, I often think of why I chose this path. I do believe that before we enter this world, we sit down with the “big guy from above” and map out our life. We decide on the lessons we want to tackle, the growth that we want to accomplish, the karma that we want to clean up. We decide all of that. It is not given to us; we take it on. We then gather those people most precious to us, those that will accompany us on the journey to Earth, and jointly we agree to become each other’s teachers and button pushers this time around. On those long morning walks, I reflect on what in the world I was thinking taking on the task of being a mother that loses a child! What lessons are mine to learn? Am I strong enough to follow this path?

After many walks and many meditations and many thoughtful discussions with my Spirit friends, I think that my lessons are two-fold. To be and to teach. I am much more in touch with my being-ness. I am not as inclined to take action, now I’m much more inclined to be something – patient, caring, compassionate, kind, or even angry. I know that life is not about doing, acquiring, having. It’s about being. That’s all we can take with us when we die. Our being, our essence, becomes the composite of all the lessons of this lifetime. That is what is important; To be.

So yes, I am grateful. I am full of appreciation for life, for life-after-life, for this awe-filled place we call home. To my friends, I say thank you, for giving me the opportunity to be more of who I was meant to be this lifetime. And to my son Rick, I bow in gratefulness. You have bestowed upon me a great blessing; you chose me to be your mom.

Thank you son, I love you. Namaste.

Even On The Darkest Days There’s Room for Gratitude

9 December, 2014 — Posted in: Conscious Grieving Leave a Comment

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein

I used to feel disconnected from the magic and miracles of life until I made a commitment to the practice of being in an (almost) constant state of gratitude.

What I’ve learned in my daily practice is this: When you shift your focus to seeing the magic and miracles in the little things, you open the door for your whole life to transform.

Long ago, I kept a gratitude journal. Every morning I would list five things I was grateful for. But after a while I stopped journaling lists. Because everything I listed was a thing, not a feeling. It began to feel like a young girl’s night time prayer: “I am thankful for Mama, and Papa and of course the new baby brother that I don’t even like.”

My gratitude journal became a chore. And of course that’s not what gratefulness is all about. Gratitude is a feeling – a deep gut level acknowledgment of beauty, magic, miracles, grace, and love.

So I stopped keeping a list – and just started living from this feeling state as much as I could each day, every day.

Most days it is pretty easy to come from the state of wonder and magic, seeing the beauty in the most simplest things – ocean waves pounding the rock wall, a friend’s smile when you walk into the room, or a baby’s joyous laugh and gurgle .

And, I find that I can be in gratitude for even the hiccups of life. Even on the most tumultuous days such as today -when a close friend loses a son – and all the old sorrows of my son’s death come tumbling to the surface.

If I stop and allow the deep emotions of my loss and hers to intertwine in a dance of grief, longing, sorrow, and compassion, I find the magic and miracles – there – right below the surface. The magic of having someone else who understands the deep searing pain of losing a child. The miracle of knowing that my son and hers are alive as soul-brothers in another realm. The gratitude that I can walk by her side as she navigates this year of becoming something else – something more – something deeper and wiser and oh so exquisitely beautiful.

Every day there’s a chance to step into, and live from, this state of gratitude. Even on the darkest of days, such as today.

Dealing With Loss Over the Holidays

18 December, 2014 — Posted in: Conscious Grieving Leave a Comment

5212990899_1b87633c0e_z The holiday season is not always a time of candy canes and festive gatherings. For many, it’s a time of remembering and grieving loved ones that are no longer with us.

My 29-year-old son died three years ago, and I’ve yet to decide how I want to celebrate this season of merry making and good cheer. I don’t feel cheerful –yet. Maybe someday, but not today.

That first year, as I approached the beginning of the holiday season, I gave myself permission to set the pace, choosing those events that I could deal with and leaving the rest behind. It was my time to heal, and I found it necessary, for once, to think of myself first. I learned to speak up and set my boundaries.

I spent time alone in meditation, and I hiked our mountain road. I took our dog for long walks, read, and tried to be fully present each day, allowing the flow of thoughts to penetrate but not stick. I cried. I talked to my Spirit Son about how much I missed him. I wallowed a bit in why-did-this-have-to-happen-to-me.

Grieving takes many shapes, and it has many layers. I thought about my life and all my stories that are untrue. I had to let them go and accept what was. As Byron Katie says, “Who would you be without the story?”

So, I asked myself, “Who would I be without the story that the holiday season is about large family gatherings? Who would I be without the story that it isn’t Christmas if one of us is permanently missing? Who would I be without the story of candy canes and good cheer?”

I thought about gratitude. I wondered if I could find at least some little thing to be grateful for. It took longer than I ever would have imagined getting to the place of saying, “Yes, I have a room in my heart today for more than just grief.” I have a daughter to love. I have a husband who adores me. I have friends to share a cup of tea with and I have pottery to keep my hands occupied. I have a home. I have a dog. I have freedom. I have food. I have love. I have so very much to be grateful for. And who would I be without the story? I’d be peaceful and grateful and in love with those people and things that love me.

As I come up to the fourth holiday season without my son, I am still waiting for a new story to unfold; a new way of marking this season of magic and miracles. I am exploring ways of celebrating that are in alignment with who I am now. Every year I inch into this new-story and bit by bit my family is making new memories.

It is taking longer than I would have imagined to become comfortable with this new way of being. But as I walk this path of sorrow, I do so consciously and in choice. Every moment of every day I consciously choose how I want to be.

May you be at peace with where you are in this journey called Life. Namaste.

Walking in Grace with Grief: Part 1

5 July, 2015 — Posted in: Conscious Grieving Leave a Comment

I’m turning my thoughts to grief, loss and how we manage in those terrible times of sadness. Those of you that are used to me blogging about happiness, joy and authenticity might be a little surprised to discover that in our times of sorrow and grief some of our same energy tools are powerful allies. During this month of blog posts, I’d like to share with you some parts of my story and how I dealt with the pain of losing a loved one. These are excerpts from my new book, Walking in Grace with Grief Meditations for Healing After Loss.

My Story: Part 1

The knock on the door came on a Sunday evening. The knock no mother wants to answer. There were two people standing on my steps that evening: a man and a woman. He was tall and strong, she was small and petite. I smiled as I opened the door. The woman said, “Hello, I am from the county coroner’s office. This is Officer …” I really don’t remember the rest of the sentence because that was enough. The coroner was here in my living room.

They told me that my sweet, twenty-nine-year-old son, Rick, had been in a solo car accident on a mountain road that afternoon and had died at the scene. My immediate thought was to rush to Rick’s side, to offer him comfort and to ease his pain, but the coroner was here. There was no hope. No surgeries to fix his broken body. No tubes, no nurses, no hope. The coroner was here in my living room. My son was dead.

Most of us have dealt with the death of a loved one. Some of us have experienced the same knock and had the same conversation with coroners, medical professionals, or chaplains. In that respect my story is similar to many. But in many other ways it is not. And that’s the story I want to share.

Grieving a Different Way

Life is full of synchronicity: little acts of luck, good timing, and coincidence. Whatever label you choose, the right people surrounded me at the right time. After David and I had told our daughter, Megan, about her brother’s death, she called her best friend, who lived across the country. Kitty and Megan talked for an hour or more. Afterward, Kitty called her mother, Ann Carroll (“AC” as she is known to her friends). As a spiritual medium, AC communicates with souls who have passed over.

AC understood that Rick would be frightened and dazed by the trauma of dying. So she contacted him, Spirit to Spirit. She found him, still quite close to the accident site, not fully aware of his new state of being. Rick was confused. AC called out to him, and he answered her. What he said to her was so typical of my son. He said, “Who the f*** are you, and what are you doing here?” When I heard about this from my daughter the following afternoon, I smiled in agreement. It’s not the language a mother would want attributed to her son, but that was his phrasing and his typical way of responding to things. AC explained who she was and told Rick that he had died. She asked how the accident had happened, and Rick explained that as he reached to get something from the floor of his car, he swerved and hit a tree. She told him that for the next few days he might want to stay close to his family, and then she would come back and help him cross over to the Other Side.

As Megan told David and me all of this, I felt an immediate sense of relief. I now knew how the accident happened and, most importantly, that Rick was safe. That might sound funny to some, but my motherly instinct was to reach out and shield my son from discomfort and ease his confusion. AC did that for me. I could breathe easier knowing Rick was indeed “alive”—that he was being cared for and guided toward his new path.

How Do We Speak Spirit to Spirit?

How is it that a spiritual medium can contact the dead? Can we all do this, or is it just for someone with the “sight”? I know most of my relatives were thinking, “Are you just making this up and not acknowledging that your child is dead?”

I believe human beings are so much more than just physical bodies. We are fields of energy. We can “communicate” with others along fine lines of intertwining energy: the “web of life,” as some biologists call it. Like many others, AC has the skill of traversing these planes of energy and communicating Spirit to Spirit.

Most of us have experienced flashes of insight or known who was on the phone before we answered it. Sometimes we dismiss these occurrences as coincidence or lucky guesses. We downplay our intuitive abilities either because we are embarrassed or have been trained to believe it is all nonsense.

I believe that we all have the ability to communicate with our deceased loved ones. Some of us are born with very clear communication channels, while others like me go to school to re-learn, to awaken, and to remember our natural state of hyperconsciousness. At the time of my son’s death, I was immersed in a year-long psychic awareness program. The focus of our class time was building a skill base to allow us to open our psychic pathways. Over the years, as I have continued in my studies, I have become adept at reading auras and seeing and feeling energies. This is a skill, just like playing a piano. It is not “woo-woo”; it is not “far out.” It is a natural, albeit underdeveloped, part of being human. This skill was of immense help to me in the weeks and months following Rick’s death.

Part 2 of My Story to continue in my next post.

If this post resonated with you and you would like to read more, Walking in Grace with Grief Meditations for Healing After Loss is available on Amazon or at your local bookstore. From my heart to yours.