Archives for posts with tag: grief

No words

August 8, 2013 //

Every August, for the past several years, I get an unexpected wave of sadness. Then I remember that my friend, Gina died in the month of August. I can’t even remember how long ago; it must have been at least 15 years. Gina was just a beautiful person and friend. I met her in graduate school. I was in the clinical psychology program and she was in the counseling psychology program, which was housed in Education rather than in Arts & Sciences. We met through our mutual friends, Annette and Ellen, who are also now counseling psychologists. Gina had just returned from her clinical internship to finish her dissertation, her remaining Ph.D. requirement. She was also recently divorced.

Gina was so fun and such a kind-hearted person. After she graduated, she ended up taking a job at Duke University in onco-psychology. Yes, she worked with cancer patients. Gina used to talk about how happy John and I were together. “Elizabeth laughs when John tells stories you know that she’s heard a hundred times.” She and Annette were quite taken with John and referred to him as being the “most marriageable man” that they knew. Not that they thought he was available; they just thought he was well suited to marriage and were looking for someone like him. (And believe me, this is not the first time my girlfriends have talked about my husband this way to the point when my friend, Cheryl would even say, “I’ve got to get myself a computer nerd.” It was just fine.)

I suspect even more than being re-married, Gina wanted to be a mother. She eventually did marry her husband, Bob. We flew back to North Carolina for the wedding reception and John was the official photographer at the small family-only service at Coker Arboretum on the UNC campus. He took some really beautiful shots.

Gina did have a baby, a beautiful boy. We were so happy for her. A few months later, Annette called and I answered. “Gina died.” She’d had an brain aneurism and died while her husband was driving her to the hospital. There’s a boy in North Carolina who only knows the mother who waited for and wanted him so much through a video that Annette made. When she found out that Bob and Gina didn’t have a camcorder, she borrowed one and took footage.

I was wondering today why I was feeling her death again like the day Annette called. I looked down at my calendar. In fact I feel sadder than I have felt in many years. Today is August 8th. Today is the anniversary of my mastectomy. Today is a reminder of what I have lost and the greatest losses were not of my breast or my femininity, or my sense of self.

The loss I feel today is the loss of the ability to take for granted that I will be able to be alive for as long as my daughter needs me.

I have learned to be happy, to be appreciative, to have abundant and overwhelming joy in my life. But some days are just sad and that’s as it should be. In our sympathy card, I wrote to Bob, “So many words describe what Gina meant to us. No words describe our grief in losing her.”

Tomorrow is a new day. But today is the one I have right now.

There are no words.

Tags Breast Cancer, grief, Parenting

Categories Feelings, Parenting

How Can I Keep from Singing?

July 26, 2013 //

I’ve been thinking about a mother and her teen daughter with whom I’ve worked in my psychology practice. They had lost their husband and father ten years previously to cancer. What I remember most was the mother’s comments about their grief as a mother and daughter, that they loved their new family (she had remarried and had another child) and that they were capable of happiness. But each day they grieve for the loss of a father and husband and the grief co-exists alongside the happiness.

I feel in my own grief process regarding my breast cancer that my efforts to integrate it into the rest of my life experience is resulting in this kind of accepting co-existence. I am still working on it, but I feel close to the next place I need to be in this. And I know that I will additional opportunities to grieve my experience. (Our brain is kind and often gives us breaks in between periods of grief.) And I know that I will have other losses and challenges in my life that will test my fortitude and serenity.

But today, I am reminded of my favorite hymn. I don’t really write about my religious beliefs. And part of that is because people fight about it. I don’t need to have people fighting on my blog. Another part of it is that I really haven’t managed to hammer out all of the details of my beliefs. And suspect that I never will. That God is love and that we are here to care for one another, are my central beliefs, which I suspect will never change. And I will always love this hymn. I hope that whatever you believe that you will appreciate the message of hope, love, and resilience.

My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation,
I hear the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn
That hails a new creation;
Thro’ all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?

What tho’ my joys and comforts die?
The Lord my Saviour liveth;
What tho’ the darkness gather round?
Songs in the night he giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that refuge clinging;
Since Christ is Lord of Heaven and Earth,
How can I keep from singing?

I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin;
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smooths,
Since first I learned to love it;
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
A fountain ever springing;
All things are mine since I am his—
How can I keep from singing?

(The history and text for this hymn can be found here.)

(Enya recorded a lovely version of this hymn in the 90’s though I prefer to hear my mother’s and perhaps I will be able to twist her arm into singing it for my blog.)

Tags Christian Hymns, coping with breast cancer, grief, Resilience

Categories Feelings, Mindfulness

What things cost: Letting go

June 30, 2013 //

As a child/adolescent psychologist, I work with a lot of moms. They often express feelings of guilt for their children’s challenges. I often respond by saying, “You have the rest of your life to feel guilty as a mother. Save some for later.” This statement usually gets a laugh and often the guilt although not gone, is small enough for us to move forward in our conversation. It is often, however, not so easy. People get stuck. Even psychologically solid, reasonable parents can get stuck on guilt. Several years ago, I worked with a wonderful mom of a very young child who was showing signs of significant developmental challenges in multiple areas. She had professional experience working with children and was acutely aware that her son may have handicaps that would greatly change the future possibilities in his life.

Although there was no evidence that she had done anything to contribute to her son’s difficulties and further, it was yet unclear as to whether his difficulties would be short-lived or chronic, she felt guilty. She felt guilty and stuck. During one session I asked, “What do you think you are getting out of this guilt?” She looked at me understandably with a confused expression. I went on, “It may sound backward but sometimes people hang onto guilt because it gives them a sense of control in situations in which they feel totally out of control. We cannot have guilt without a sense of power, even if the power we feel is to harm.”

She was dubious but I had planted a seed. She came back a week or two later and basically told me that she had thought what I had said made no sense but upon careful reflection, it actually made sense. It was a turning point in her grief process.

Guilt is blame turned inward. It can also be turned outward. In Atom Egoyan’s 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter, a town grieves for the loss of a busload of school children in an accident. Ian Holm plays an attorney who travels to the small town to file a class action law suit against the bus company. He has his own grief back story, which is his adult daughter’s drug addiction. Holm’s character tirelessly pursues blame. Someone must be responsible for the tragedy. That someone must pay. Things don’t just happen. They happen for a reason. He was going to find the reason at all costs. I won’t spoil the ending for you but let’s just say that letting go of blame and accepting the loss of control is a major theme of this film.

As for myself, I have had issues with letting go of anger. There is a release that comes with losing my temper and in the moment, it feels good. But because I am at heart a peacemaker and an empathetic person, I feel regret at having hurt other people, especially my husband. My anger is usually rooted in anxiety, anxiety that a problem can’t be controlled or solved. Anxiety that my house will never be an environment that I can control and make a sanctuary. Fears that my cancer will return. Fears for my family, especially my teenaged daughter. I have fears of not being a good enough psychologist when my patients are having particularly treatment-resistant struggles.

Most people would consider me to be a very disciplined person. One exception to this has been my life long struggle to eat healthfully and to exercise regularly. I love food. I am an excellent home cook and I love good restaurants. I love to eat a large amount of food. The act of eating is an amazing, highly enjoyable, sensory experience. It is also a wonderful social experience. And I know when I am overdoing it and often in my life, I just keep eating. And at these times, it seems too hard to put the time into preparing healthy meals. Quick and easy is convenient but not nutritious. The rest of my health suffers and I just don’t feel as good during the non meal parts of the day. It also feels good sometimes, not to exercise. “Ah, I can just sit here and rest.” This is particularly true when I let my work and family life burden me. I work too many hours at work and at home, doing things and worrying about people. I am tired and I feel that I deserve to rest even though I know that I deserve the kind of treatment that promotes good health. But like many caretakers, I put my self-care low on the priority list even though I have counseled countless moms to avoid this. But putting my health at lower priority made my daily to-do list shorter. It made it seem like I was juggling fewer balls in the air. It was a false illusion.

In my 20’s, I gained and lost the same 20 pounds over and over. By my 30’s and 40’s, I have gained and lost the same 40 pounds twice. Right now, I have given up the convenience and the joy of eating to the point of indulgence for healthier foods. Yes, it is work to plan my meals, to make entrees ahead and freeze them in reasonably-sized portions. I take the time to make sure that I always have healthy vegetables on hand. I love vegetables and you know what, eating a large volume of vegetables is actually good for me. And I’ve gotten so that I look forward to my daily 3 mile walks. The key for me was realizing that I was self-employed and could therefore set my own hours! I am better at exercising in the morning and had been trying to add it to the end of long clinic days, which didn’t work at all. So, I just started seeing my first patients at 9:30 am instead of 8:30 am. What a rut I was in to not think of that solution years ago!

Letting go of these things has required patience, which does not come naturally. But I have grown and changed over the years. I have learned to manage my anxiety pretty well and with my mindfulness practice, I am learning to practice acceptance and further, that acceptance is not the same as doing nothing. It is not accepting that can spin me in circles, feeling like I am doing something but getting no where. Endless anxiety and anger can be a trap where you expend so much energy that it feels like you are doing something productive and your are not. And as a person who has been clinically depressed twice in my life, I can tell you that the helplessness and hopelessness of that passive state is one of the loneliest places in the world. I can’t tell you how thankful I am that I have not been near that place for over 10 years.

It can be hard to let go of anger, of grief, of impatience, or anxiety, of sadness, of guilt, at the point when I need to move on. Emotions are vital to our lives, even the “bad” ones. They motivate, protect, and educate us. But they do not always work in a healthy way with our thoughts and behaviors. I know that I will be working and reworking this balance for the rest of my life. I try not to think about how things “should” be in respect to things over which I have little control. I got breast cancer when other people with similar lifestyle and risk factors did not. I got it when people with more risk factors did not. Disease is part of the natural world and it doesn’t make sense to me to be mad at the universe. That just doesn’t work for me and the cost is too high.

We all have to make our own paths in life. In my life, I feel pretty unstuck right now but know that the cost of each day is a different set of gains and losses. Yes, I have lost the illusion of control but I have gained so much. I write this to reflect. I write this to remember the peace I have in my life at this moment.

I let go to gain freedom. I let go to go on.

Tags Breast Cancer, Coping with cancer, grief, Marriage, mindfulness, Parenting, self care, wormen

Categories Feelings, Integrative Health, Mindfulness, Parenting

Wonderland by Kirsty Mitchell: heart-breakingly beautiful photographic series in memory of an extraordinary life | Mail Online

May 27, 2013 //

I saw this article today and the beauty of the photos as well as the inspiration for the work is very moving.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2145760/Wonderland-Kirsty-Mitchell-heart-breakingly-beautiful-photographic-series-memory-extraordinary-life.html

Tags art, brain cancer, grief, Kirsty Mitchell, photography

Categories Uncategorized

Inspiring Moms

April 27, 2013 //

A very heartfelt thank you to Diane of Dglassme’s Blog for nominating me for a Very Inspiring Blog Award. It must have been that belly button scar photo I posted the other day that put me over the top! Seriously, I have followed Diane’s blog for quite some months now. She is brave, no nonsense woman with an interesting and honest perspective on her breast cancer treatment. Diane also writes joyously about what her relationships with her gorgeous Golden Retrievers add to her life.

I am writing about someone who inspires me and that is my friend, Shirley Enebrad and her son, Cory. I met Shirley through her husband Steve Geller, a fellow psychologist and friend, with whom I share an office. He is the one who is moving to Hawaii in about a month and has inspired a frenzy of furniture shopping to replace the stuff he is taking.

I’ve never met her son, Cory. He died about 20 years ago at age 9 of pediatric leukemia. Steve knew him (Cory was a child from Shirley’s first marriage) because he was working as a grief counselor conducting kids’ groups. Cory was in his group. This is also how Shirley and Steve met each other. Cory was an extraordinary boy with an extraordinary mom. Shirley wrote a quite moving book about her life with her son called, Over the Rainbow Bridge. It is an amazing and inspiring story. Cory’s life transformed the lives of those around him. I know that sounds dramatic, but it is true.

Here’s a quote from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D., the pioneering psychiatrist who wrote, On Death and Dying:

Cory was my favorite patient ever, and he taught me more than I could ever teach him. His lessons about the afterlife were profound, and his drawings of what he saw “over the Rainbow Bridge” helped thousands of people get in touch with their long-buried emotions.

I can only imagine the shattering trauma of losing a child. I know that Shirley’s heart still aches for her son, who if he had lived, would be near 30 now and perhaps have children of his own. Shirley became a tireless worker on behalf of children with cancer. Prior to her moving to Hawaii, she was the person who put together every one of the educational baskets that families of newly diagnosed cancer patients receive at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. That hospital serves a six state area. Shirley has organized fundraisers, written grief materials for children, and provided grief counseling to others. That’s just the tip of the ice berg of her service to families and children. On top of it all, Shirley and Steve have served as foster parents to a number of children over the years in addition to raising two children of their own, who are now both adults. In addition to being incredibly generous and skilled with very challenging children (with trauma histories of their own) for Shirley to take on foster children, who typically end up leaving your family, is incredibly courageous for one who has lost a child in the past.

Shirley has just published a new book, Six Word Lessons on Coping with Grief: 100 Lessons to Help You and Your Loved Ones Deal with Loss. It is downloaded onto my Kindle and I’m looking forward to reading it. She did not ask me to publicize her books on my blog. I love celebrating my friends’ accomplishments and sharing resources with people who might appreciate them.

Tags Breast Cancer, Childhood Leukemia, grief, losing a child, Over the Rainbow Bridge, Parenting, Shirley Enebrad, Six Word Lessons on Coping with Grief, Very Inspiring Blog Award

Categories Facts, Feelings, Parenting

Meditation on Loss and Resilience

March 29, 2013 //

Today is Good Friday, a particularly good day to meditate on loss and resilience.

I had a wonderful visit with my friend, Mike, a couple of days ago. He and I became friends in our teens. We were in the same woodwind quintet through a high school program at Cornish Institute in Seattle. He played French horn and I played flute. I continued to play through college at the University of Washington but not as a music major. Mike went off to Oberlin Conservatory and then the Julliard School. Our lives after high school diverged though I did see him a couple of times during college, when he came back to visit his parents.

While I was becoming a psychologist, Mike was a professional musician. In particular, he played in the orchestra for a lot of Broadway shows. After about 20 years, he decided to study Chinese medicine and he currently has a practice in New York. Now I see us as doing similar things again; we are both healthcare providers. I think that’s pretty cool.

Mike has been in Seattle for the last few weeks to be with his father during his last days. His father’s funeral was last Saturday. Mike’s mother died several years ago of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). I was relieved to hear that his dad did not suffer horribly like his mom did. Mike has had some really big loses over the past year. Remember that I mentioned that he lives in New York City? Well, like many people in that area, he experienced the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Mike also traveled around neighborhoods to help people. He inspired me with his FaceBook posts, describing the positive ways in which people were helping each other wade through chaos and fear. He reminded me of the Fred Rogers’ quote that went viral on Facebook after the Sandy Hook tragedy.

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers–so many caring people in this world.

Mike’s family is incredible. His parents, who were both born in the U.S., were forced to leave their homes during WWII because they were of Japanese ancestry. He and his family have continued to face discrimination as people of color. Mike is one of the most loving and kind people I know. Nonetheless, he and his partner, Dennis have faced discrimination as a gay men.

I know that Mike has experienced many hurts in his life. But I am struck by his grace, resilience, generosity, and optimism. Mike and I have never discussed mindfulness though I know he practices meditation. I believe him to be a very mindful person, someone who does not ignore painful truths but who observes and accepts them. He also accepts the beautiful truths. I think this is what allows people to grow from hurt, instead of remaining stuck.

Why have I been meditating on loss and resilience? Well, in addition to being inspired by and having a great deal of affection for my friend, Mike, I have been trying to sort through this cancer thing. Many positives have resulted from my experience thus far and it’s hard for me to write about it without fearing that I sending a message like, “Cancer is an awesome gift! I’m so lucky! Yippee!”

Cancer is not something I would invite into my life, but I got it whether I wanted it or not. I do have control to a large extent, over how I live each day and how I incorporate these experiences into a meaningful life. There is growth that can come from adversity and as long as I am experience it, I might as well grow.

This C.S. Lewis quote comes close to what I am trying to express:

Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.

I’m not a big believer in destiny as I am not much into the idea of pre-destination. How about the idea that hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary future? (Note that it says “often” and not “always”; let’s not bring that big old buzz kill, Nietzche into this.) Yeah, I know that it’s pretty nervy of me to mess with a quote from a most highly regarded Christian scholar. And I’m brazen enough to do it on Good Friday, too!

A purple form of trillium intertwined with bleeding heart buds.

Trillium intertwined with budding bleeding heart. My garden is really cooperating with the theme of my post today.

Trillium ovatum. This trillium is native to our area. It’s three petals and the change in petal color from white to purple is often viewed as symbolic to the Lenten season. Lent and Easter are early this year so mine is still white.

Helleborus orientalis. “Lenten Rose” If you are able to grow this plant in your area, do so as it is not only beautiful, but starts blooming in winter.