Tag: friends

Christmas 2021: What The Bereaved Need From Family and Friends

Dominic left us in April, 2014.

At the time all I could manage (barely!) was the twenty-four hours of each long, lonely and pain-wracked day.

After seven-plus years I’ve learned to look ahead, plan ahead and forge ahead to birthdays, holidays, special days and not-so-special days.

But it takes a great deal of effort and often uncomfortable conversations because no matter how long it’s been, I’m still dragging loss and its after affects behind me.

I wrote this in 2016 when I was desperate to communicate how hard it is to try to marry joy and sorrow, celebration and commemoration, light, love, life and darkness, grief and death.

It remains (I think) my most useful post: Grief and Holidays: What the Bereaved Need From Friends and Family

How Friends and Family Can Bless the Brokenhearted During the Holidays

Most parents feel a little stressed during the holidays.

We used to be able to enjoy Thanksgiving before our 24/7 supercharged and super-connected world thrust us into hyper-drive.  Now we zoom past the first day of school on a highway toward Christmas at breakneck speed.

For bereaved parents, the rush toward the “Season of Joy” is doubly frightening.

Constant reminders that this is the “most wonderful time of the year” make our broken hearts just that much more out of place.

Read the rest here: Season of Joy: Blessing the Brokenhearted During the Holidays

The Truest Friends

I totally get why some folks feel the need to pull back when a friend’s life gets hard.

They may be struggling themselves and the idea of even hanging around the edges of another disaster is utterly overwhelming.

But the truest friends bring their broken to our mutual table where we can talk, cry and work on it together.

Read the rest here: Truest Friends

Ten Ways to Bless a Mourning Heart at Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is only a little over a week away and I know many are making final plans and preparations to gather family and friends around the table.

In the rush toward celebration, please don’t forget those in your circle who have suffered loss.

The past months have prevented or limited many of the ways we publicly gather and mourn so it’s easy to overlook that some families are facing their first set of holidays without a loved one.

Even the second or third Thanksgiving with an empty chair is unbelievably hard.

Here are some helpful ideas to get you started.

❤ Melanie

We are all on a journey through life and each carry some sort of load.  Mine is child loss.  Yours may be something else.

We can help one another if we try.  

Love and grace grease the wheels and make the load lighter.  

Here are ten ways to love a mourning heart at Thanksgiving:

Read the rest here: Ten Ways to Love a Mourning Heart at Thanksgiving

Honesty Doesn’t Have to Be Rude

Like I’ve said before, my emotions will leak out somewhere. I can’t keep them bottled inside forever.

When I choose to be honest AT THE TIME it’s so much better.

When I let folks know that what they say, do, expect from and thrust upon me is unhelpful or overwhelming or even painful, they usually respond with gratitude.

They almost always accept my boundaries.

Those of us walking the Valley often say that those who aren’t just can’t understand. They don’t know what they don’t know.

That’s true.

But they can be educated about some of what we know.

Read the rest here: Hey Fellow Griever-Being Honest Is NOT Being Rude

The Moment the Light Makes it Through Again

A couple of years ago, I had a grace-filled, heartwarming visit with another bereaved mama who came all the way from Maine just to hang out with me. And that was so, so good.

As she and I shared over coffee and tea, shopping and meals, lounging and walking we found so many ways in which our journeys have been similar even though the details are really very different.

One is this: There was a distinct moment along the way when each of us began to see light and color again in the midst of our darkness and pain and it was a turning point.

Read the rest here: There’s A Moment When The Light Makes It Through Again

Sometimes Subtitles Would Be Helpful

Today someone in a bereaved parents group to which I belong asked if anyone else found holidays exhausting.

The comments were a resounding “yes”!

The more I thought about it the more I realized that a big part of what makes it so exhausting is a communication gap.

1538R-61348

I am not the same as I was before burying a child.  

My family is not the same.  

Read the rest here: Subtitles

Why Grievers Need Faithful Friends

We all know how it is-you move, you lose an address or phone number, you lose touch. 

But sometimes friendships end more abruptly-not because lives drifted apart but because one person became so uncomfortable she chose to walk the other way.

That’s what happens so often the other side of child loss.  Friends disappear because loss makes them profoundly uncomfortable.  

Read the rest here: HELP WANTED: Why Grievers Need Faithful Friends

Some Helpful Things To Say and Do For Grieving Family and Friends

When my mother suffered a stroke, brief hospital stay and then joined Dominic in Heaven just over two years ago it brought it all back.

The crowded house, telephone calls-repeating, repeating, repeating the necessary details to friends and family-decisions and bone-tired weariness that never leads to sleep. This time, though, I had the sad advantage of experience.

I didn’t think I’d write at all that week but then this list of truly helpful things came to mind so I jotted it down. I believe if we share more openly with the nonbereaved, they will be better equipped to come alongside.

❤ Melanie

I have learned so much since that day when Dominic left us suddenly for Heaven.

Some of the things I know now are things I wish I didn’t know at all.

Many serve me well-not only in how I respond to my own pain and loss-but also how I respond to the pain and loss in the lives of those I love.

Read the rest here: So What SHOULD I Say or Do For My Grieving Friends or Family?

Holidays: I Need Grace From Friends and Family

I think the most helpful post I’ve ever shared is this one.

So as a follow-up to yesterday’s thoughts about the holidays I’m sharing it again.

I hope that you feel confident sharing it with your family and friends as an invitation to conversation and as a bulwark against unrealistic expectations.

Holidays are hard no matter how long it’s been.

❤ Melanie

I know it is hard.  I know you don’t truly understand how I feel.  You can’t.  It wasn’t your child.

I know I may look and act like I’m “better”.  I know that you would love for things to be like they were:  BEFORE.  But they aren’t.

I know my grief interferes with your plans.  I know it is uncomfortable to make changes in traditions we have observed for years.  But I can’t help it.  I didn’t ask for this to be my life.

Read the rest here: Grief and Holidays: What the Bereaved Need From Friends and Family