It may seem like the easiest way to get an inside scoop on how I’m REALLY doing-but don’t do it.
Please don’t ask my kids how I’m doing.
Respect the fact that they have their own grief burden. Respect family privacy and understand you are putting them in an impossible position.
If you want to know-to REALLY know-how I’m doing, ask me.
Read the rest here: Please Don’t Ask My Kids How I Am Doing
I first shared these thoughts a year ago as the world began to shut down in an attempt to quell the pandemic.
Here we are, more than twelve months later still facing not only an uncertain future but dealing with concrete and life-altering changes that have many of us despairing of brighter days ahead.
It’s tough waking up to a world you don’t recognize and don’t like.
If you wonder how to make it through, ask a bereaved parent or sibling. They’ve learned to courageously step forward into scary and uncomfortable tomorrows.
❤
Many of you are waking up each day and facing a world you don’t recognize.
I’ve been doing this for over half a decade.
Almost seven years ago my family’s world was shaken in much the same way everyone’s world is being shaken today.
Read the rest here: Welcome To My World
One of the things I realized early on this journey was that I did not possess the vocabulary for the deep pain, unbearable sorrow and relentless longing I was experiencing.
So I sought out quotes, fellow travelers and groups of others who shared this awful path.
It helped.
It didn’t take away the pain but it gave me words to express it. It gave me courage to believe I could survive it.
I will never forget those who chose to come back with a torch in the dark and light the way.
❤
There are so many ways to describe grief.
So many ways individual hearts walk this path.
For many of us there’s a sense of being locked in time, stuck in space, unable to leave the moment one received the news or the few days before and after.
It’s maddening that the earth still turns, the sun still rises and people go on with life when in so many ways our world is frozen in place.
Read the rest here: Forest of Sorrow
I should have known. I should have been there. I should have called, texted, spoken one more warning or given one more hug.
Should. Should? Should!
I have yet to speak to a bereaved parent who does not harbor guilt of some kind over the death of his or her child.
Not one.
Read the rest here: Nagging Guilt in Child Loss
Most people are familiar with SAD-Seasonal Affective Disorder-a cluster of symptoms mimicking depression that develop in otherwise healthy folks when the shorter days and longer nights of winter limit sunshine exposure.
Fewer folks know that nearly every bereaved parent has his or her own version of SAD which has nothing to do with daylight/darkness cycles and everything to do with the calendar.
For me, it starts in February and runs through May.
Read the rest here: Child Loss and SAD: Seasonal Affective Disorder
Sometimes I write a post for other folks. A topic pops up in a group and my mind starts whirling.
Sometimes I write a post for me. My heart is so full there’s nothing left to do but release its contents.
And sometimes, like this one, it’s a combination of the two.
This post is one of my favorites even it if never touches another soul. It’s both proof of healing and proof of the limits of healing in this life.
❤ Melanie
Another bereaved mom wrote that she was better able to cope now than she had been a year ago.
And thanks to Facebook memories she had proof.
Several comments down a second mom wrote something that got me thinking-when, exactly, did Dominic’s loss move from the forefront to the background?
I’m not sure I can pinpoint a day or moment when I realized that sorrow was no longer ALL I feel and Dominic’s absence no longer ALL I see.
Read the rest here: Background Music
It hurts my heart every time I hear it or see it written at the end of a long, heartfelt post in a bereaved parents’ group: “Am I normal?”
Because in addition to bearing the weight of child loss so many mothers and fathers wonder if what they are feeling, what they are thinking and what they are doing is within the range of “normal” for those who have buried a son or daughter.
If we didn’t closet the deepest and most difficult aspects of grief and loss hearts wouldn’t have to fret about whether or not their experience was common, expected, typical, ordinary and very, very NORMAL.
❤
I just came home a couple days ago from a weekend retreat for bereaved moms and was reminded again that the range of “normal” in grief-especially child loss-is so very wide.
Still crying after a decade? Absolutely normal.
Trouble getting dinner on the table or remembering your child’s school schedule? Yep. That’s normal.
Read the rest here: Grief-So What’s Normal???
In all fairness, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had no idea her research would be taken out of context and plastered across professional literature and media outlets as a definitive explanation for the grief experience.
But she didn’t mind the notoriety.
And ever since, counselors, pastors, laypersons and the general public have come to expect folks to politely follow the five (sometimes described as six) stages of grief up and out of brokenness like a ladder to success.
It doesn’t work that way.
❤
Sometimes those that walk alongside the bereaved are biding time, waiting for that “final” stage of grief: Acceptance.
And some therapists, counselors and armchair psychiatrists are certain that if the grieving mother can simply accept the death of her child, she can move on–that she can get back to a more “normal” life.
But this notion is as ridiculous as imagining that welcoming a new baby into a household doesn’t change everything.
And new parents have months to prepare.
Read the rest here: Loving well: Understanding “Acceptance”
In the last post I shared the difference between mourning and grief. While the outward ceremonies have long passed, the inward struggle to embrace and understand the pain and sorrow of losing my son continues.
If you love someone who has lost a child, perhaps these thoughts might help you understand a bit of their pain and how completely it changes the way bereaved parents encounter the world.
Please be patient. Please don’t try to “fix” us. Please be present and compassionate. And if you don’t know what to say, feel free to say nothing-a hug, a smile, an understanding look-they mean so very much.
❤ Melanie
A bereaved parent’s grief doesn’t fit an easy-to-understand narrative. And it flies in the face of the American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality.
You can’t beat it–it’s not a football game-there is no winning team.
You can’t lose it–it’s not the extra 10 pounds you’ve been carrying since last Christmas.
You can’t get over it–it’s not a teenage love affair that will pale in comparison when the real thing comes along.
You can only survive it. You can heal from it, but it will take a lifetime and require very special care.
Read the rest here: Loving Well: Understanding the Grieving Heart
It will be seven (!) years on April 12th.
And yet those first hours and days are some of the most vivid in my memory. Who showed up, what they did, what they said (or graciously and wisely DIDN’T say), how fragile and lost I felt as precious friends guided me through so. many. decisions.
I will never, ever forget the kindnesses shown to our family during that time. I will never, ever stop thanking God for the brave souls that entered into our world of pain and simply refused to be shooed or frightened away.
❤ Melanie
The death of any loved one opens a door and forces you to pass through.
You cannot procrastinate, cannot refuse, cannot ignore or pretend it away.
Suddenly, you find yourself where you absolutely do not want to be.
And there is no going back.
Many bereaved parents describe the first hours, the first days after losing a child as a fog–we feel both horrified (I can’t believe this is happening!) and numb (Is this real? Am I dreaming?).
Read the rest here: Loving Well in the First Days After Loss
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