During this month of blog posts, I’ve shared with you some parts of my story and how I dealt with the pain of losing a loved one. To close out the month, I’d like to end with this final excerpt from my new book, Walking in Grace with Grief Meditations for Healing After Loss.

Faith: Inner Knowingness

Talking with Rick, being surrounded by magic and miracles, gave me a profound sense of peace. And with that peace came a deepening of my faith and an unshakeable inner knowingness of life after life. Here was proof that we live on as Spirit after we leave this earth. While spiritually I soared with Rick, however, my body was still grieving a mother’s loss.

I felt the searing pain mostly in my womb and in my heart. Some days I thought that my heart was actually breaking open and spilling its contents onto the floor. I felt a gaping hole in the back, lower-left area of my chest that I came to describe as “Rick’s Space.” There was also deep, burning pain in my lower abdomen, and I often doubled over in a cramping agony reminiscent of the last throes of childbirth. The pain was particularly noticeable when I allowed myself to descend into the “what ifs” and “if he’d only lived” stories. That’s when I experienced a sorrow that was full of self-pity, agony, and despair. After a bout of crying from this state of mind, I didn’t feel any better. There was no sense of relief. If anything, a cloud of depression was ready to march in and take over. I could just allow the cloud to engulf me, or I could fight it off. It was my choice. It’s always my choice in how I choose to react.

So I fought. I held those stories at bay and lived in the present moment. Every time my thoughts wandered to the what-if-Rick-had-lived stories, I pulled myself back. I literally would not allow myself to experience those thoughts. I chose to say to myself, “Forget that—Rick’s not here, and if you think of what could have been, you’ll feel pain. Choose another thought.” And I would. I would force myself to think of something else—to remember a time from the past when he made me laugh, or to remember his voice or his smell. Anything but a what-if-he’d-lived story. This took energy and effort, but I really think it made the difference in how I healed. I shifted the thought and experienced my sorrow in a different vibration, if that makes any sense. It was a higher, cleaner vibration—a healing vibration full of love and mercy. This vibration felt full of acceptance, kindness, and gentleness. I knew that if I could stay in this vibration—if I could surround myself with thoughts and feelings that resonated there—I could heal from this deep wound. I had energy tools to help me stay in this vibration. One of my favorite tools to stay out of the story of “what-if” is Blowing Up a Rose.

Healing Meditation: Blowing Up a Rose

1. Close your eyes and take some deep, cleansing breaths. On the inhale, bring all of your awareness into your body. On the exhale, ground to the earth. Inhale and center, exhale and ground. Breathe deeply as you focus on the present moment, right here, right now. Leave all your to-do list thoughts behind. Allow yourself to feel at peace.
2. Now think of a story that is no longer true for you. Perhaps you’ll think about the story of how your child will marry and have children. Maybe you have told yourself stories of a retirement planned with your life partner. You can acknowledge that the story has always been that, just a story. It was your fantasy about what you wanted to happen.
3. As you continue to think about the story of what might have been, and now will no longer be, imagine the image of a rose appearing in front of your closed eyes. The rose can be any color, any shape, and any size. In this rose is a giant magnet that is pointing back to you.
4. Ask the magnet in the rose to draw your story to it. Watch as each piece of your story leaves your body and moves into the rose. Watch the streams of color as they leave your heart, your throat, and your mind and move into the petals. Watch the rose grow bigger and bigger as the story takes up residence in the flower.
5. Feel the emotions that you’ve attached to this story leave your body and flow into the rose. Allow self-pity to leave. Allow the deep emotional pain of a story that won’t come true to leave your body and flow into the rose. Feel the sadness, the deep sorrow of loss, without the despair and hopelessness.
6. When you’ve collected as much of that old story as you can, then blow up that rose. Watch it disintegrate and feel the story disintegrate too.
7. Before you come out of meditation, fill your mind with thoughts of peace, tranquility, and serenity. Intend for those energies to surround you for the rest of the day.

Defusing the power of the story allows you to return to the present, the now, the current situation without the baggage of what could have been, should have been, or wasn’t meant to be. Releasing my old stories allowed me to look at Rick’s death from a new perspective. It was not about what could have been. It’s about what is—right here, right now. I still felt the pain, but it was a pain of missing Rick right here, right now. It was not about all the future things that would not be.

Blow up the lies, the wishes, the hopes, the pictures of what life was supposed to be. All you have is now, this moment in time.

Thank you for sharing this month with me. 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.

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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.

The Dinner Party Dilemma

A few months after my son’s death, we went out to dinner with a business friend of my husband’s. As you know, when you meet people for the first time, you share information about who you are, what your life is like, your children, your job, and tidbits about life in general. This surface conversation is like going on a first date. Both people agree: let’s not get too deep, let’s not tell the full story of who we are and the pain we’re experiencing. Let’s just be “nice” and social.

Well guess what? I didn’t want to be nice and social! I wanted—no, I needed—this business friend and his wife to understand that I was in pain and walking a fine line right then. I wanted to tell my story. I was not the same person I had been. I was new and I was exploring who I was. So the innocuous bits about my hobbies and what I did with my day belonged to the “before” time and had very little relevance to who I was or what I was doing with my life. In fact, it seemed that the most important thing in my life was how I was working at keeping the grief from encompassing me. I knew that my husband had shared our story with his business friend and his wife, so I didn’t need to tell the story of loss. They knew we had experienced a death, and I expected them to acknowledge that early in our time together. But they didn’t. Never once in our hour-and-a-half dinner did either one of them ever say, “We are sorry for your loss.” Neither ever said, “We have a child of our own. We can’t imagine what you must be going through.” That’s what I needed: acknowledgment, validation, empathy. I was not prepared to share the details of my process, and I did not want to burden these new acquaintances with my pain, but I did expect some kind of acknowledgment that they knew we were going through a particularly difficult phase.

And so I pushed. I guess I got a little bit angry and found myself starting sentences with phrases like, “After Rick died …” or, “During the past few months …” I wanted to give them an opening so that their rejoinder could be as simple as, “We were so sorry to hear about the loss you suffered.” Instead, I received woefully sad faces and averted eyes. This couple was not ready to deal with anyone’s loss of a child because it hit too close to home. I’m sure they pictured themselves in my shoes and couldn’t imagine how they would deal with the death of their child. I got it. I understood. But I could not give them my compassion. Instead I gave them some uncomfortableness—on purpose. I’m not proud of that evening, but I do acknowledge the learning, on both sides.

Looking back on that night, I realize that I was not ready for new friends. I still needed the comfort of my circle of supporters who knew about my situation and who felt comfortable with my teary-ness and my silences. Now, with some distance, I am full of compassion for our dinner companions. I can see how agonizing that night was for them. I have the energy now that I didn’t have then. I extend to them my sincerest apologies for being unable to see how much pain they experienced. We all have growth periods that we endure. This was one of mine.

Do I Have One Child or Two?

As I sat at dinner that night, I kept thinking to myself, “Do I have one child now or two?” It might sound silly to those of you with more than two children, but I really didn’t know how to complete a sentence or tell a story from my past. For years I had used the phrase, “the kids,” when talking about my children. But now I had one alive and one not alive. How did I talk about those well-worn stories of my children’s growing-up years? How could I tell the tale of one child smashing the other child’s finger in the bathroom-door hinge without stumbling into the territory of death and dying? What could I say about how second children learn to take naps in odd places or in shifts? Who was I now? A mom of one or a mom of two? I struggled with this for quite a while, and sometimes I got the verbiage down, and sometimes I felt myself stumbling through a story—and I still do. Mentally I have had to rewrite the stories—all of them—to fit the new reality. Sometimes I say “my daughter,” sometimes I say “my kids,” and sometimes, when I’m feeling really centered and at peace I can even say, “Rick, my son who died.”

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.

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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 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. The following is an excerpt from my new book, Walking in Grace with Grief Meditations for Healing After Loss.

Interwoven among the stories of my experience, in my book I have included some of the healing meditations that made my journey a little less arduous. In fact, these meditations have become a standard part of my everyday life. They continue to help me maintain a profound acceptance of life as it is, not as I wish it might be. I hope they will ease the reader’s path of transition, as much as they did mine.

The following meditation is designed to offer you a chance to renew your own depleted stores of life-force energy. It is important that we keep our gas tank full, so to speak, as we journey through this transition. We are becoming something new. And as with any stress-filled period, it’s important to treat our bodies and our spirits with care and respect. I’ve also included the elements of centering and grounding to offer you a simple, easy meditation you can do every day.

Healing Meditation: The Golden Sun

1. Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor and your eyes closed. Take a couple of deep breaths. Relax and just be.
2. Bring all of your awareness into the center of your head. This is your special meditative space. Between your ears, behind your eyes—this is your space. It is for you alone. If you feel that all the thoughts of things to do and places to be start to encroach on this space, just tell those thoughts that you will be with them in a moment or two. Watch them leave your space.
3. From this space in the center of your head, start to count each breath. On the inhale count one, and on the exhale count two. Inhale again and count three; exhale and count four. That’s all. Inhale and count, exhale and count. Breathe. Count each breath.
4. Now imagine that your body is surrounded by a cocoon of energy. It stretches out about eighteen inches around you in all directions. Put your arms out to your sides and imagine this bubble of protective energy reaching out from your body to your fingertips. See this bubble all around you: above your head and below your feet. Know that this cocoon of protective energy is your space. You are safe here.
5. On each inhale, continue to center, and on each exhale ground to the earth. Imagine your grounding cord attaching to your hips and dropping to the center of the earth. See this hollow tube of energy reach all the way down through the earth’s crust, attaching solidly into the core of the earth. Feel it draw you deeper in your chair as your body begins to relax.
6. Intend for your body to be at peace. Feel your jaw relax and your shoulders fall away from your ears. Ask for any tension you hold in your body to be released down the grounding cord. Feel yourself sink deeper in your chair as you allow yourself to be at peace.
7. Breathe in and center, bringing all your awareness to the center of your head. Breathe out and ground, allowing all tension and tightness to ease.
8. Breathe in and center, breathe out and ground. Be in stillness and peace.
9. Now imagine a giant golden sun above your head. See the sun filled with golden light. Imagine that this sun is about three times the size of your body. Place a giant magnet in this sun and ask this magnet to call back your own scattered energy. Let all your life force energy return from your dream space, from your family and friends. Feel all that energy zoom back into the golden sun.
10. Imagine the golden sun bringing your scattered energies back to a vibration that will be just right for your own body.
11. Fill this golden sun with relaxation, peace, abundance, and gentleness—or whatever quality would be most beneficial to you today. See those qualities permeate the sun, vibrating in a wonderful harmonic, which will be perfectly attuned to what your physical body needs most right now.
12. Pop the golden sun and let all your own energy and all those qualities flow into your body, filling every cell and membrane. Allow the excess to move from your body out into the space around you.
13. Feel yourself refreshed and vibrating at your optimal frequency, enveloped in a cocoon of energies that are just right for you. The world around you can be full of sadness and turmoil, but you, in the center of your aura, filled up with your own energy, can be at peace—free from stress and unease.
14. Sit in this wonderfully peaceful place of fullness for a moment or two. When you are ready, open your eyes. As you come out of meditation, intend for this stillness—this sense of peace and knowingness—to carry forward with you into your day.

Every day for the year or two after Rick’s accident, I reminded myself that I was in charge of my body and my emotions. I could accept or not accept energies into my space. I could be with people and feel their love and support surrounding me, but I didn’t need to let that penetrate into my personal space. This awareness allowed me to be in charge of my healing. I liked that. I liked being in control of at least one small aspect of my day-to-day life. I meditated every day, and I remained consciously aware of my grounding cord connecting me to Mother Earth. I filled in with golden suns health, vitality, peace, serenity, and love. And I talked with my loved one, often.

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.

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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.

 

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