Elisabeth Kubler-Ross developed stages of grief when listening to and observing death and terminally ill patients. She came up with 5 stages of grief. I thought that was interesting because I think I have gone through 105 stages of grief… so far! I am years out now from my husband passing away and I think […]
Let’s chunk the journey of loss into 3 parts- survive, heal and grow. It’s easier for my head to wrap around it that way. Grief is really complex, so we are going to simplify it, if possible! There are so many things that make a difference in this journey- your history, personality, how your loved […]
For crying out loud! Please don’t stop yourself from crying. Cry it out! Your tears heal. They are taking the pain that you feel inside and releasing them outside. We don’t want them bottled up inside or our body and soul will feel it. Later it turns into stress, pain, and/or sickness. Some of us […]
We do have choices! Choice is defined as an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. It is a gift we have so many choices in this day and age, but sometimes it is overwhelming! Once again, we all are different so we go about deciding things […]
Just like the 4-minute mile- nobody thought it was possible for a person to run one mile faster than 4 minutes, but as soon as Roger Bannister did it in 1954, 2 runners- just 2 months later- ran it faster. You, too, can do this hard thing. Loss may feel like a marathon, but you’ll […]
After the loss of a loved one or any big change, fitness may change as well. Why in the world would I talk about fitness when it’s hard to just get out of bed? There are huge benefits of exercise for the mind and body. When people get hurt they do physical therapy as soon […]
Who is to blame for this loss? Is it your fault? Is it someone or something’s fault? This is the blame stage and it’s hard, but you really have to go through it to get it out of your mind and find peace within. Exploring it won’t change what happened but it helped me to […]
We grow up with beliefs of what our lives should look like. That’s the problem right there with expectations. I pictured my life to be normal like my parents – grow up in a nice family, go to college, get married to the love of my life, have a bunch of kids, raise them, retire, […]
Let the year-long roller coaster ride begin! Oh wait- it may last longer than that. Emotions after a loss are crazy! I was listening to a lecture on stress and it said that we all can take and even kinda like some stress. Many people like to go on roller coasters at amusement parks. Why? […]
Dreaming after a loss. Some days I hated to go to sleep because I knew in the morning I would wake up to a huge thud in my heart when I realized this truly was happening- my husband had passed away. After the loss, I had weird dreams. Often I dreamed he was still alive […]
This major change of loss rocked my world. And my beliefs. It made me step back and look at my beliefs from a completely new perspective. I never even considered that my core beliefs could change. Or some could even be false. Wow- this is eye-opening! The dictionary describes belief as an opinion or conviction. […]
Change is uncomfortable. But this earthly life we are living is changing all the time. Change is especially prominent after the loss of a spouse or loved one. Pretty much everything changes- who we wake up to, who we communicate with daily, and who we put all of our love into. One of my favorite […]
This could be an entire book, but for now, let’s look at the basics of children’s grief. Children and loss– Kids don’t have experiences or resources in knowing how to deal with death. That’s our duty is to teach them, probably right along with ourselves, how to do this in the most healthy way. Unfortunately […]
Acceptance is a word that doesn’t mix very well with the word death. It seems by saying that I accept this death that I’m ok with what has happened. That is not true. Acceptance is confused with ok with what happened and I don’t think anyone feels loss was justified or that they like this […]
Boundaries. Yeah- Another thing I get to learn in this journey. Isn’t this fun that every day I find something else I need to get better at? I must have skipped class when we learned about creating healthy boundaries. I thought being nice was the most important thing in the whole world and let people […]
