How Grief Has Taught Me

I experienced someone I loved dearly pass away and had no idea how difficult the grief would be to navigate afterwards. I thought that I was preparing myself for the loss during the long journey of cancer treatments. What I found was that I didn’t know how to deal with my pain and anguish. I found that I lost my appetite, could not sleep through the night, was always distracted and had a difficult time focusing on life around me. I also found that life was a chore and that some days were better than others but each day was a challenge to maneuver through while not realizing it was caused by my grief.

On March 8, 2018, I lost my mother who suffered from Multiple Sclerosis for 40 years. My heart was broken but she also left behind my father who lost his soulmate and half of his heart. He prays daily that he can go and be with my mother. His grief and pain continues because he admits that he would feel guilty if he let the grief go and not focus on my mother on a daily basis. So I continue to support him where he is at and not force him through his grief journey.

I have walked the journey of losing two children to miscarriages and had no idea how to handle myself afterwards because society made me feel like those pregnancies were not important so I needed to pull myself together and return to work the next day as if those pregnancies never existed and those children never existed.

Three years ago, as I was forced to move my parents into a facility, I was left to prepare and sell my family home. The home where my parents raised five children in good and bad times. Now, I had no choice but to sell the home and hand it over to a stranger. I had so many levels of grief from my parents health deteriorating to their home being sold to strangers that I thought I would never get through such a sad time. But I managed to take care of business and work through my grief thanks to the Grief Recovery Method.

I have had three children go away to college and then off into the workforce which took them away from me. One moved to another country. The empty nest syndrome is very real and difficult. I have had to find my new identity as a mother of adult children who are now independent and living far away from me.

I had the unfortunate experience of taking our golden lab and my mother’s therapy dog, Ellie Mae in for her annual checkup and leaving without her. Sometime between my short trip to the veterinarian’s office, Ellie began to have difficulty breathing and as it turned out it was a terminal condition and that it had been exacerbated by Ellie getting in and out of my car, I was overwhelmed with guilt. After the diagnosis and decision was made, I called my family to come and say goodbye. How quickly grief came and engulfed my family.

These are just a few of the various losses that I have experienced throughout my lifetime. Many more deaths, divorces and losses have occurred but this is a variety of the losses that can occur in your life. Just because I have not listed your specific loss does not mean that I cannot help you through your specific loss.

As I worked with others who had lost their loved ones while on hospice, I found that they too did not know how to handle the pain and loss known as grief. So many times the hospice experience ends and so does the team that you have worked with leaving you to start with strangers as you try to find yourself through this ocean of grief. Watching a long standing marriage dissolve due to infidelity or finances and not being able to help stop the bleeding before it is too late I found difficult as well. As a social worker for 30 years and after watching so many people around me suffer from some form of loss, I decided to focus my energies on developing my knowledge of grief and loss. I had already experienced a number of losses and understood that grief can be all encompassing. I wanted to learn how to help move myself and others through the grief journey with support and guidance. There is no magic to making the pain go away and avoiding it can only cause the grief to fester and grow to the point of destroying lives, relationships and faith.

I immersed myself in the study of grief and found the Grief Recovery Method and worked through my own grief and was so overwhelmed by the program I became a Certified Grief Therapist. During this journey, I have had the privilege of working with people who thought they had lost their world due to a loss and over time came out of the fire of grief to emerge into a new beginning that they made their own. Working with people walking the journey of grief are the true teachers that I have learned from over the years. Walking the journey with those who have lost someone or something very important to them are the ones that have taught me that you can survive grief.

Now, I only focus on adults who are grieving a loss. Parents, guardians, and teachers who touch the lives of children who are grieving their own loss. Pet owners who have lost their best friend and companion in life and so many more who have lost that special someone or something in their lives.

Helping people find their new self on their journey is a challenge that has great rewards on the other side. Then if they choose we go further with life coaching in defining new goals and paths for their journey.