Hope is the Thing: Getting Through Grief

Grief is a heavy emotion.  It shrouds everything with a bit of a darker hue.  Even happy things don’t feel the same intensity of joy. One of the most difficult parts of grief is the illusion that it may last forever.   There are tender and sweet parts of grief that I would never give up.  And there is a secret I learned to getting through it.

Losing My Mother

This is a significant week for me.  It is the anniversary of my mother’s passing; 7 years ago we lost her to Ovarian cancer.  She was the emotional center of our home; mother of 6 children and married to my dad for over 30 years.  Her mother thought she looked like a vulnerable little robin bird with it’s legs all curled up when she was a newborn and named her Robyn. Throughout her life she loved birds and even chose the name “flight” as her camp name as a young adult.  This analogy of flight became significant for me in my process of grief.

She suffered with cancer for 4 years.  Even when it  was her time to go, it’s hard to ever be ready to say good-bye.  I was living in China, and sobbed all 18 hours of the flight home to Colorado.  I remember trying to write her a final letter, or say a final good-bye.  As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t quite get my mind around it.  How could I sum up on a piece of paper what my mother meant to me?  I gave up.

We were all surrounding her bedside as she took her last breath.  She had been in pain, and now she was free of her earthly bonds and strains.  We imagined her reunion with her parents, and her mother in particular who she had lost when she was only 14.

Those tender realities softened, but didn’t eliminate the difficulty of watching her lie lifeless on the bed, and be wheeled out of our home.  The finality of the gurney wheels and the car door closing made my heart ache.

The day of the funeral, I felt numb.    I greeted people and felt so genuinely loved and supported.  It all felt surreal; I didn’t really know how to process not having a mother.

Losing Myself

In the days that followed I felt adrift.  I’d think, “I need to call mom and ask her….oh.” I’d stop myself and remember there was no mom to call.

When my mother was alive, I would save up little things I wanted to tell her and write them on post-it notes around the house. I found myself still writing them. But, instead of calling they just accumulated.  Little situations, daily tasks and exchanges with others–totally un-related to my mom felt heavier and harder.  I was irritated more easily with others.

My mother was the one I depended on to remind me who I really was and give me a hit of courage when I needed it.  I watched her as my model of how to mother, how to do hard things, how to think about the world, how to be a woman.  All of that was gone.  I felt anchorless.  Where would I find my confidence and mentoring?

I had my mother’s picture in my hallway. Sometimes I felt like she was watching me.  I became hyper aware of all my imperfections and became self-conscious.  It was a dark time.  I cried myself to sleep many nights.  The emotions would well up at strange times—like a song on the radio, or when I saw her picture in the hallway.  There were bittersweet moments too–like standing on the Great Wall of China where she’d wanted to stand with her grandchildren, without her.

I felt that who I was had changed.  I felt like without knowing about this sentinel event in my life it would be hard for someone to fully understand me.  My identity was different.

Grief

Sometimes our grief is obvious if we have lost someone we love.  Other times our grief is less obvious if it is grief over a job loss, a spouse who changes, a divorce, a child who is struggling, poor health or the life we thought we would live.

The fog of grief has many sweet parts too–it is an indication of how significantly the person or thing you are grieving has influenced your life.  I believe that is part of grief’s role–to help us focus in on the imprint left behind.  Fully letting ourselves mourn the loss of something allows us to eventually let it go.

Letting it go often means letting a piece of ourselves go too, and replacing it with something deeper and more profound that we gain through the experience.  Each person’s grief journey is different and the circumstances surrounding loss often inform our grief process differently.

Hope is the Thing

I remember for a long time the feelings of grief were so raw it was difficult to own them sometimes.  I felt an affinity to anyone who had lost a parent—knowing they “knew.”  My cousins had lost their mother to Ovarian Cancer about 5 years before. One day, in a tender exchange my cousin Marie Jackson shared this with me:

“You’ll never stop missing your mother, but the pain becomes less acute over time.  One day you will be able to sit on your moms grave and eat popsicles and tell stories.”

I remember thinking about that over and over.  It planted in me a small hope that I could endure this pain—knowing it wouldn’t last at this intensity forever.  My mind began to think on a poem my Aunt Natalie had read at my mother’s grave-side service.

My Aunt Natalie lost both her parents, three siblings and a sister-in-law and many other loved ones. She knew loss. The poem she sharedwas elegant in it’s appropriateness.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
By Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

What is Hope?

It is a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen. I love that analogy of hope as a bird. It’s perched in it’s nest, but has wings—which promise flight.  Those wings promise greater vistas and new experiences, even if they aren’t available now.

Finding Hope and Taking Flight

Over time I began to feel hope.  Not all the time.  But little moments of it—like little pockets of light in the darkness. I would notice how beautiful life was in glimpses.  I had a moment of joy watching my baby smile, my husband would make me laugh, or I would be enraptured by the all-consuming glory of a new blossom. These moments helped me realize the contrast between happiness and how I was seeing life most of the time.

It was almost as through I saw life through a filtered lens of grief most of the time. These moments of hope, reminded me that life would not always look this way.  Hope “sang the tune without the words and never stopped at all.”  It just kept gently reminding me of happiness and peace.

Little by little I began to feel hope more often. At times I’d sink back to a deep and painful place.  That was important.  I needed to be there.  Feeling pain acknowledged and gave voice to my loss.

However, I still needed the hope that I wouldn’t always be there.  Grief and healing are messy.  There isn’t a neat step-wise process you complete and “heal” from.  You don’t “get over” a loss.  But, in my experience over time the pain becomes less acute and the shroud of darkness over everything begins to lift with time.  The emotional and mental brain space the loss occupies becomes smaller and smaller over time and other things are allowed to take it’s place.

People who have never experienced the same type of loss can sometimes have a difficult time relating to the person who is grieving.  What To Say To Someone Who Is Grieving.  My aunt gave me some beautiful advice after my mom passed away.  She said, “Carve out space and help people help you grieve.”  I found that sometimes I had to ask a friend to listen when I needed it, or I needed to cry to my husband or my sister sometimes.  Raw emotion would catch me at moments I wasn’t expecting like a song on the radio, or seeing her handwriting on a recipe.

Often I would long for her when I was lonely or struggling.  I needed her encouragement.  No one quite replaces your mother.  She is the one person that doesn’t expect reciprocity. There is something so comforting about that.  My mother had lost her mother when she was only 14.

She always told us growing up that there were “compensatory blessings” that the Lord provides to help us compensate for the lack of other things.  I believed her, but wondered how that would play out.  There were certainly plenty of lonely moments that didn’t feel very compensated!

Over time I did see lovely divine interventions and compensatory blessings.  It never fully alleviated the ache of missing her or the absence of her in my children’s or my lives, but they did help. And, I found that I became a different person through the  experience–someone stronger, but also more reliant on God and connected to others in a way I hadn’t been before.

As I began to see my life could be beautiful–even though it was different than I’d planned or would choose, it gave me more hope.  Grief and hope wove a beautiful tapestry together and still has it’s ends unfinished.

Getting Stuck

Grief is a clean emotion—it’s cathartic and healing.  We absolutely need to let ourselves feel it fully in order to let it go.  However if we stay in it beyond what we really need, it can turn from grief to self-pity.

No one on the outside could ever determine when someone is in grief and someone is in self-pity.  It is something only the person can know on the inside. It is a tricky tightrope to walk between the two.  I know for me I knew I had crossed over into self-pity when I sometimes felt like a victim. Instead of feeling just sad about the loss, I began to resent others who didn’t understand or assumed they wouldn’t. Sometimes I expected others to feel sorry for me.  It wasn’t a place I hung out in often, but I certainly learned the difference between grief and self-pity.

Self-pity is not a clean emotion, it is an indulgent emotion.   I often felt worse after indulging in self-pity.    I love the way CS Lewis describes this  space.  In “A Grief Observed,” a book he wrote after his wife died he says, “I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it–that disgusts me.”

Allowing our selves to feel the full weight of grief is cathartic, it helps us process it and eventually let it go.  Conversely continuing to indulge in the “sticky-sweet pleasure” of our self-pity keeps us stuck.   It is when we cross this line between the two that we keep our feathers held down.  Hope can begin to wither and resentment and anger can take root.

Flying Free

After my aunt read Emily Dickenson’s poem at the graveside on the day of my mother’s funeral, my Dad had each of his children stand in a semi-circle.  He told us as a symbol of letting our mother go, he had bird for each of us to release.  One by one we each held a trembling white bird and let it fly into the air.  Meanwhile  the song “Amazing Grace” was playing.

As I let my bird fly free, it’s wings took it higher and higher until I could hardly make it out in the great expanse of the sky.  I feel grief is a little like that.  When it is close, it looms large and causes us to tremble.  As hope lifts us little by little, our grief becomes smaller until it is only a piece of us–not all consuming.

Hope Continues

It has been 7 years since my mother’s passing.  Last summer, we flew our children to Colorado and my husband and I took our four daughters to my mother’s grave. We sat around and told stories about my mom and ate treats as we talked.  A lot of healing has occurred in the intervening years.  I still miss my mother terribly, but my grief has lessened. As my cousin had promised, the rawness of the pain and longing is not as acute.  The more life moves forward and I feel more hope that there is so much beauty to be had in my future.

It’s joyful to talk about my mother.  I want my children to know her. With time, some of the holes she left have been filled by compensatory blessings—stronger dependence on God, a deeper connection with my husband, a new and richer interdependence with my sisters, finding wonderful mentors in friends and women in my community, and more courage to listen to my own heart.  The little bird of hope continues to sing the song and never stops at all.

Find Hope

What are you grieving?

1.  Grief is clean pain—it’s important to allow yourself to fully feel the loss.
2.  The human spirit is resilliant—it wants to feel hope.  As we notice and embrace our small hopeful moments they will grow and lift us to higher planes of happiness.
3.  Remember you can feel grief and hope at the same time.

What Would the World Be Like Without Negative Emotion?

Most of us think of negative emotions as bad.  If given the chance we’d love to avoid or eliminate negative emotions entirely!  However, negative emotions can have some powerful benefits.  Being aware of how negative emotions help us can create a totally different experience for us when we feel negative emotion.  

A Silver Platter of Emotions

If you were offered a silver platter of emotions which ones would you choose to feel on a regular basis? My guess is you’d choose emotions like happiness, peace, love, and contentment.  These feel wonderful.

Would you choose any negative emotions?  Most of us wouldn’t.  After all, why would we want to CHOOSE negative emotion?  Negative emotion feels terrible and sometimes drives us to act in ways we aren’t proud of.

A World Without Negative Emotion

What would a world without negative emotion be like?  At first it may sound appealing, but without negative emotion, there would be no positive emotion. It is the contrast of negative and positive that allows us to know the difference.

The book, “The Giver,” is a dystopian novel where the society has removed all memories of the past, and people are medicated so they feel limited negative or positive emotions.  The result is that no one is heartbroken.  No one is disappointed or lonely.  But no one feels love, or exhilaration, or excitement either.  In the cinematography of the movie, based on the book, the filming for this portion is done in black and white.

In the book, a designated individual (the Giver), is given the responsibility of being the holder of all memories and all negative and positive emotion.  The young boy who is given this charge begins to feel for the first time in his life. He feels the exhilaration of a sled ride, but the devastation of war.  He feels the excitement of attraction to a girl, but the horror of seeing infanticide.  As he experiences the spectrum of human emotion the film slowly begins to gain color. Although the experience of feelings is overwhelming, he recognizes the value of feeling all emotions and tries to convince the community to stop numbing themselves.

Emotions—both positive AND negative are what make us human.  All emotion is what allows us to truly live and grow.  Trying to filter which emotions we feel is limiting our humanity—it’s like living in a black and white world when we could be living in color.

Benefits of Negative Emotions

When we embrace the rich experience of the spectrum of emotions, a whole new world opens up to us. Instead of living in fear of negative emotions, we are able to do and be so much more.  Here are a few things I have found negative emotions do for me.

Negative Emotions Make The Positive Ones Meaningful
Early in my career I applied for a job with the American Heart Association.  I really wanted the job and felt some anxiety and uncertainty while waiting to hear back.  When I received the job offer, I felt tremendous relief and excitement.  Without have first felt the anxiety–I wouldn’t have appreciated the relief and excitement.

Negative Emotions Send Us Important Messages
Our family moved from Taiwan to China this last summer.  I felt tremendous sadness after moving.  I started feeling bad for being so sad–and my friend, Jennie Marchant, pointed out that the sadness was an indication of the wonderful friends and meaningful experiences I had experienced there.

Negative Emotions Can Help Us Slow Down
It is often difficult to move as quickly with negative emotion.  Discouragement, disappointment, fear and others slow us down.   One time I received some disappointing news.  I tried to continue living my life at the same pace I was accustomed, but I found my mind kept going back to my disappointment and it slowed me down in what I was doing.  Because I was consumed by the negative emotion it forced me to stop and really process the news I received.

Negative Emotions Are the Currency for Accomplishing New Things
In order to accomplish anything new, we must by it’s very definition do things that are unfamiliar to us.  Starting this blog has introduced some new emotions for me.  One of them is confusion as I try to figure out the technical side of blog design and SEO etc.  There are times I don’t want to feel confused, however as I tolerate that negative emotion it allows me to create something new and the exhilaration from that is fantastic.   There is no other way to accomplish something new–except to tolerate some negative emotion.

Negative Emotions Allow Us To Do Hard Things
Being willing to do hard things means we have to tolerate some discomfort.  I have noticed that my body doesn’t react well to milk.  Unfortunately, I love ice cream, and cheese and sour cream.  When I cut out milk products, I feel disappointment that I can’t eat them.  Being willing to tolerate disappointment allows me to enjoy better health and greater energy.

Negative Emotions Allow Us to Connect To Others
It is often when we feel negative emotions that we reach out to others.  Living abroad means that we are immersed in a new culture every few years.  That means learning to live among new customs and languages and trying to figure out life.  This has some wonderful parts, but can also be overwhelming and discouraging at times.  Interestingly I have found some wonderful friends during our time living abroad.  Part of what connects us–at least initially–is the shared experience of living in a foreign culture together and trying to figure it out!

Negative Emotions Are Essential for Success
Negative emotions are the currency for accomplishing our dreams and goals.  In order to do something difficult, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable, or to fail or to feel stress.

Being willing to experience negative emotion allows us to do more, accomplish more, heal more and connect more.  Our whole lives become bigger, and more colorful. Ironically when we choose negative emotion, our lives become more happy.

Thinking About Negative Emotion Differently

When we think about negative emotion as something that is benefiting us—suddenly the emotion doesn’t feel quite so negative. We might become willing to tolerate and even choose negative emotions on purpose because we know they bring meaning and humanness to our lives.

Choose Negative Emotions

Think about which emotions you most want to feel in your life.  Would any of them be negative?  If you had to choose negative emotions to feel, which ones would they be?

Sadness, Discomfort, Disappointment, Failure, Fear…

Experiment by being willing to do hard, challenging or new things that might mean you’ll feel something negative.  If a negative emotion results—own it.  Be willing to feel it.

The Eclipse of Happiness: My Depression Story

As the stresses and struggles of life accumulated I found that they began to eclipse the joy and happiness I had always enjoyed.  I lived for a long time in a fog of disillusionment, discouragement and disconnection with people I loved.  This is my story about depression and the process of finally finding light again.   My journey is personal and in some ways vulnerable, but I lived in darkness for so long I want to share hope that there is a way to feel happiness again; hang on.  This is my story.  At the end I give some helpful steps that set me on a course for healing.

Sunny Delight

As a young child, my mom used to call me her “sunny-delight.”  I grew up as an all-American girl in the suburbs of Chicago; my mom took me puddle jumping after it rained, and my Dad taught me to ride a two-wheeler without training

wheels. My family had a gaggle of girls and a boy at the end that my mom used to call the cherry on top.  We used to sit on the stairs and brush and style each other’s hair and exchange notes in little “mail boxes” on each other’s bedroom doors.  This was also a time when I began to recognize what God’s love felt like, and developed a deep conviction of his care and involvement in our lives.

My teen and college years in Colorado and Utah were also filled with sunshine and hope.  My mother used to tell me I was like her little hummel on the fireplace: pockets spread wide and filling them with new experiences.   I ran cross country, traveled to Africa to teach hygiene to children, sang in a Pentacostal gospel choir, and graduated with a degree in Fitness and Wellness Management from BYU.

As a young professional, my eyes were wide with idealism.  I helped create a wellness clinic for a sports medicine doctor, worked in the NICU of Primary

Children’s Hospital and ran the statewide wellness program for the American Heart Association.  Best of all, I fell in love and married a bow tie wearing diplomat.  Life was perfect.

 

Sunshine Begins to Dim

Sometimes even the sun goes dark.  The recent eclipse in the United States was a fascinating example of this.  A warm sunny day changed to a dark cold one in just a matter of minutes as the moon eclipsed the sun.  It’s light never never actually changed, but it was  covered up and no one could feel the light and warmth it characteristically gave off.
Over time, despite the abun

dant blessings in our life—the sunshine in my life began to be eclipsed.  We moved frequently for work and graduate school. The frequent moving and isolation from family took a toll.  I began to feel less bright and happy, and more tired and irritable.    Problems seemed bigger and answers seemed more significant and weighty.  I cried a lot.

Sometimes I would create “harry problems”, as my husband called them, that had no good solution and then I’d analyze and over analyze and swirl myself downward into misery. No matter what solution I found—nothing felt right.   I had a difficult time making simple decisions like what to do with my free time.  I ruminated on conversations with friends and worried about things I’d said or didn’t say.  All of this mental drama weighed me down.

It was confusing.  I had wonderful days too, and every time I thought about my life it seemed so amazing; nothing seemed wrong per-se.  Of course I had stresses, but it didn’t seem like more than anyone else had.  I tried harder to count my blessings, and focus on the positive. I kept telling myself I SHOULD be happy. I need to try harder.

Borrowing Light

I remember calling my mother one day and pouring out my heartache; I was sitting on a park bench in Boston sobbing.  She gently mentioned she thought I might have some depression. She had suffered from depression, and she must have recognized it in me.  She was a hero to me.  In a time when depression was hardly well known and certainly not widely understood or normalized, she discovered and identified that she was not coping well.  She sought treatment with medication and counseling, and was able to largely heal through these and through the atonement.

As the realization began to settle in that I might have “depression,” I resisted it. My brain found plenty of evidence to show how I had lots of happy days, I was fine, and how I had lots of normal excuses to account for how I was doing.  However as I began to look at who I had become and how I felt and interacted compared to who I had been and how I had felt and interacted most of my life, it became clear that something was not healthy.

Recognizing that I was at a vulnerable place, my mother took a plane to Boston and spent a week with me.  I will forever be thankful to her for that tremendous gift of her love and nurturing through a critical juncture in my life.  The first thing she did was have me take a depression and anxiety evaluation.  She explained that this would help me determine if I was indeed depressed or anxious or both—and how severe.  While it might not be a perfect measurement, it would give me a decent idea if I should pursue treatment and help in that direction.   My scores were severe in both depression and anxiety.

I was shocked.  I didn’t feel like the embodiment of what I had pictured someone with severe depression like.  Accepting this label took a lot of humility, but it was also freeing to know that there was a reason for my feelings and behavior beyond my own character flaws!  Knowing there was a diagnosis also gave me hope that there could be treatment.  My mother’s example was a huge inspiration to me.

My mother suggested I begin some medication–even temporarily that might help me get to a place I could think more clearly and change some of my patterns.  I wasn’t anxious to put things in my body that I didn’t absolutely need.  I thought counseling would be a better first step.  I had 5-6 visits with one therapist and found that I was more of a mess after going, and there didn’t seem to be much help or hope on the horizon working with him. I tried two other therapists thinking maybe it was just not the right personality match, but ended up feeling a bit disenchanted with counseling in general.

I began reading a book called, The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns. David Burns was a pioneer in the field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a highly successful therapist and a professor at Stanford.  He wrote the first lay handbook for patients about how to begin to recognize some of our unhealthy thinking patterns—and learn how to untwist them.  I was fascinated as I read with some of the distorted filters and inaccurate thinking patterns I recognized in myself.  Becoming aware of my own distorted thinking was helpful.  I seemed to get to a better coping spot but I certainly wasn’t thriving.  I wasn’t really sure what else to do.  So, I just kept limping along emotionally the best I knew how. All this time, I don’t think most people around me knew anything was wrong.  To people not close to me, I looked like the essence of happiness.

Darkness Growing

Soon we found that we were expecting our first daughter.  We were thrilled!  We prepared a place for her and welcomed her with great excitement.  I had always looked forward to motherhood, but I often found myself stressed about doing things “right.”  I worried about nipple confusion, sleep training, and tummy time.  I tried to read all the books and exhausted myself trying to be the “perfect mom.”

My baby did not sleep well and I was exhausted.  After 9 months of sleep deprivation and with hormones ebbing and flowing, I slipped into a deeper depression.  I remember stomping to the baby’s room, angry she was up again. I would feed her, only to be awakened again a few hours later.  I was a zombie during the day.   My brain kept telling me I should be happy.  But I felt numb, and miserable.  I remember watching friends with their babies.  They seemed to find joy in their little movements and progress.  I felt like day and night were one long exercise in endurance.  I continued to slog through every day and night—what else could I do?   Slowly the sunshine and happiness I had experienced much of my life was largely darkened.

I was a ball of negativity.  I frequently complained about all the “hard” things in my life whenever I was with my husband or friends or family.  I’m sure I was miserable to be with.  Frankly I didn’t even enjoy being with myself.  I remember my husband coming home from work and saying he wished we could enjoy having fun together in the evenings instead of debriefing on all the hard things and slogging through the tasks of life.   I knew he was right.  I wanted to have fun as a family too–honestly I didn’t know how.   l remember one night we made a desperate attempt to “enjoy” family time.  We sat in the family room and rolled a ball around with the baby.  It felt so awkward.

My threshold for frustration or aberration was very low.  I was frustrated with anything that made my life even a little harder—having to change an extra diaper, hitting traffic, picking my husband up from work.    I didn’t feel like myself, and I knew it.  I knew I probably still had some depression, but a also assumed most new mothers felt this way.

Life kept happening.  Over the next 10 years, we moved many times—sometimes internationally.  While this was exciting, it was challenging to be away from family and adjust to new cultures.  See Mental Gardening.  We had 4 daughters; each of which was such a blessing.  However, with hormone fluctuations, lack of sleep and some colicky babies I ended up with some post-partum depression after each of them. Some of my children struggled with anxiety and other health issues. See  All Things Brave and Beautiful: Finding Peace in Difficulty.  My mother struggled with Ovarian Cancer and passed away.  See Hope Is The Thing: Getting Through  Grief.  My Dad remarried and we got a new step-family.   we were glad my Dad could have a new companion, but it took time to adjust to a new “normal.”  Meanwhile there was dinner, diapers, kid’s homework, church responsibilities, exercising

and additionally, the stresses of living internationally—bleaching all our produce, foreign languages and culture, living far from family, and constant change.  Many of these things were wonderful but most were challenging too.  During this time I ebbed and flowed in my emotional health, was never really healthy.

Eclipse of Light

As the stress piled up, I got lower and lower emotionally.  My burdens felt too heavy– I began to feel like a victim of life.   There were good moments, there were good days.   However, those became much fewer and farther between.  In the midst of my pain, I blamed my circumstances, I blamed the people around me, I blamed myself.  The blame began to sabotage my relationships, my self-respect, and snuffed out any last sparks of joy I felt.  Slowly I felt the last rays of sun in my life go dark.  For me it was just about a total eclipse.

One of the worst parts was that in the midst of my emotional heaviness, it was much more difficult to feel God’s love.  I couldn’t feel the spirit directing me very well, and without the nourishing help of God, I often felt particularly alone and in darkness.

As my life went dark,  I felt trapped.  I felt like I would always feel this way.  It felt hopeless.  I felt like nothing I did really helped much.  Everything felt heavy and hardI felt numb.  I felt resentful and angry a lot of the time. I endured because I had to, but didn’t feel much joy.  And, to add insult to injury I was discouraged because I wasn’t showing up as the mother, wife, friend, daughter and sister I wanted to be.  That added more layers of sadness and depression.

Even simple tasks felt overwhelming.  Opening the curtains in the morning felt too hard.  I remember taking my kids to ride bicycles in the back yard felt so monumental.  We lived in an apartment building, and getting in and out of the elevator and going through 2 sets of glass doors felt too hard.  I would dread and avoid anything that might be hard or add more load to my already heavy one.  Decisions were difficult.  I couldn’t think clearly.  My head was clouded with worry about what others thought.  I replayed conversations over and over in my mind worrying about what I should have said or not said.

Night after night my husband listened to the awfulness of the day and all the hard things.  He was a saint.  Looking back, I realize I wanted someone to understand how much pain I felt and how heavy it was to carry.  He listened and validated and tried to help.  But even he had his limits.  I remember him gently saying one night—I’d love to talk about something besides just how hard everything is sometimes.  I constantly felt resentful that no one seemed to understand.  It was beginning to affect every aspect of my life—my health, my sleep, my marriage, my mothering, my friendships, my extended family relationships and my day to day functioning.  Even with all this, I think most people just thought I was sort of a negative person.  I don’t think most people outside my close circle of friends and family would have known the suffering I was experiencing every day.  I knew I needed to do something.

Dumping the Darkness

Finally, out of desperation I tried the only thing I knew to do—I called a therapist again.  This time I found an amazing therapist.  For almost a year I talked to her every week and word vomited everything that was “hard” and that made me feel anxious and discouraged.  She listened, and helped me identify the things causing the most pain.  She empathized and helped me extract so many emotions that had been shoved inside for such a long time.  Verbalizing and recognizing my pain allowed me to externalize them…to get them to a place that I could look at them, evaluate them, and even let go, change or mourn them instead of being controlled by them.  This was essential.  I couldn’t deal with them when they were inside floating around under my consciousness.

As I began to unload all of this darkness I been shrouded with—I began to feel lighter.  I began to have more space in my life for light.  The more darkness I extracted, the more space there was available for light.  It was almost as if I needed a space to place all my pain.  This therapist was that place for me.

Burgeoning of Light

After several months, my therapist recommended that I begin taking medication for depression.  She said she felt it would help me get to a healthier place where I could begin to feel and think differently.  I resisted at first.  I was feeling a bit better after getting out so much pain.   I thought I could heal without meds.

One day, I was talking to my friend.  She had experienced depression and anxiety and was telling me about someone she knew who was depressed but refused to take meds.  She said something that resonated so deeply with me at the time that I will never forget.  She said, “It is really irresponsible to herself and everyone around her NOT to take meds.” I had never thought of it that way before.  I decided I wanted to try medication.  My therapist reminded me it could be a temporary thing—and that often people who get on meds make progress more quickly.

A few weeks on meds and I was amazed.  I started feeling brighter and happier.  I noticed I didn’t snap at my children quite as quickly.  I wasn’t quite as irritated by things.  I remember being able to sit on the couch and not feel stressed that I should get up and do something “productive.”  I also started feeling the spirit again.  I remember thinking, “This is the old me!”   I had thought the old me–the one who had filled her pockets with every experience and loved the wind blowing on my face riding my banana seat bike was gone.  I wasn’t really gone.  I had just been so weighed down and sad that that I could not feel or be who I had always been.

(Medication is not the only means of healing and is not the correct route for everyone with depression.  For me it was a critical element of my healing for a time.  Looking back I regret waiting 10 years to finally try it.)

I felt like the sun peeked out again from behind the moon and shed a little light in my soul.  Hope felt so glorious—maybe I wouldn’t have to feel depressed forever!

Becoming Brighter

As the sunshine began to filter in slowly, I was able to see a little more clearly.  I didn’t feel quite so wound up inside and decisions didn’t seem to be so painful.  I wasn’t as irritated and I didn’t see things in such a negative light.  As I saw things differently, I felt happier and more calm and I showed up more positive and more loving to the people around me. Small successes built on each other and while I often fell back in the ditch, I was able to pick myself up and keep going.
I had been doing therapy for about a year and felt a lot better.  I had gotten out lots of the darkness, and there was room for more light.  However, I felt I still had a long way to go in changing the way I thought and felt and acted to stay in a better place.  I remember one day asking my counselor, “I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of the junk out, now what? What do a I do with it?  How do I change the way I think so that I don’t keep putting more junk in?  How I can stay emotionally healthy?”  I was ready and excited to move forward.  I was stunned when she said, “Well, I don’t know.  I’ve used all the tools I have to offer—I don’t really have anything else to offer you.”  I was so disappointed.

Therapy had certainly served an important purpose for me.  It helped me identify and verbalize all the junk that caused me pain, but hadn’t really helped me know what to do with it all.  Many studies actually show that patients who do extended therapy can get worse simply by ruminating over and over on their difficulties when therapists don’t have the skills or the courage to help clients move beyond them after they have sufficiently processed them.

Coasting

I wasn’t sure where to turn next.  I was feeling good-enough to function and frankly I was exhausted from a year of emotional heavy lifting.  For the next few years, I coasted emotionally.  I didn’t do much digging or healing—I just ambled along and tried to enjoy the better state of being.  On my meds, and with some of the junk out, I established some better patterns with my children and my husband—even with friends and extended family.  I enjoyed things more and could laugh and joke and find joy in life.  I began to put my own self-respect back together. Since I felt less overwhelmed, I was able to exercise, eat healthier, enjoy better friendships and contribute in my church responsibilities.  Perhaps best of all was my ability to feel God’s spirit and power in my life returned. The divine flow helped guide and craft my healing.

 

I tried a few times to get off meds, thinking I was doing better.  But every time my dose was decreased, the depression returned full force.  This told me that I hadn’t really addressed the cause of my depression yet.  In fact, I could feel my meds becoming slowly less effective.  My doctor gradually increased the meds, but I noticed side effects at the higher dosages. I gained weight.  I felt numb and not compassionate sometimes. Some of my old patterns of unhealthy thinking even started to emerge.

Choosing Light

I remember one significant moment during this time.  I was out shopping and was chatting on my cell with someone.  I was sharing all the hard things about a particular situation. As I was going on and on, the spirit brought a very specific phrase to my mind.  “Choose happiness.”  I was confused.  Who wouldn’t choose happiness?  If I could feel happy, I would—of course.  So, why would we need to choose it.  After all, it wasn’t like there was a pallet of emotions around me and I purposely selected “frustrated,” or “overwhelmed.”  Or did I?

At the same time, the spirit brought my evening conversations with my husband to mind.  Whenever I told him about the day, I focused on all the negative things that had happened. I told him how hard the kids were or how frustrating the traffic was or how awkward a conversation was with someone that day.  There were plenty of wonderful things that happened too, but because the negative things bothered me, those were what I tended to share.  The spirit gently suggested that I try focusing on the positive things that had happened during the day—and only sharing those.  Choosing happy.  It took a lot of courage and self-restraint at first to share the happy and omit the negative.  However, I began to notice that I saw my life differently when I described and focused on the positive.

I began to feel stirrings that there was more healing to be done; more changes I needed to make.

Seeking Divine Light

Along my journey I came across a talk entitled, “Christ Centered Healing From Depression,” given by Carrie Wrigley.     She is a therapist who spoke at an Education Week at BYU regarding healing from Depression and Low Self Worth.

I confess at first, I was a bit skeptical. While I have deep faith, I had suffered with depression for over 10 years, and I knew first hand that praying more and serving more and painting on a smile didn’t do much to lift the shroud of darkness that covered me.

However, I also knew that God was ultimately the source of light and healing.  I recognized that God had sent many tender mercies to me in form of friends, books, ideas and help.  I suppose I thought that WAS the way he healed us.  However, there was part of me that believed his healing could do more.  I just wasn’t sure how to access his healing power.

Carrie Wrigley discusses research surrounding the effectiveness of many therapeutic methods, use of medication and her experience as a practitioner seeing patients and not seeing many change long-term and how to compelled her to search for how to really help her patients heal and change.

As she searched and studied, she discovered how to help patients access the atonement in their healing.  The atonement makes us into a new creature.  She explained that one way God helps us become a new creature is by changing the way we think.  Our thoughts create how we feel, how we feel drives how we act and how we act creates the result in our lives.  So one of the ways God helps form us into who he wants us to be is by helping us change the way we think, and the way we see things.  I was fascinated by this idea.  I began praying that God would help me learn how to change my thinking.

One day as I was on Face Book I came across an ad that said, “What if you could feel happy most of the time and overwhelmed sometimes instead of the other way around?”  I was intrigued.  I clicked on the link and discovered a life coach named, Jody Moore.  I began listening to her podcasts and finding my mind was challenged and opened in new ways

Over the course of the next year, I began to learn how to re-set my mind to think differently—and much more healthfully.  I enrolled in a life coaching program.  I learned several tools and did a lot of personal emotional work that did a complete emotional makeover on my brain.  I learned how to identify the thoughts that were driving my depression and change them.  I learned how to recognize and process difficult emotions instead of acting out on them, or suppressing them.  I learned that I spent a lot of effort avoiding emotions by eating, shopping, listening to audiobooks or watching Netflix.  I began to feel a positive momentum building.  I was feeling better, my relationships were totally different and more positive.  I was able to hand overwhelm and difficulty better.  I could be more of who I wanted to be.

God guided me through an amazing process has helped and continues to help me become a “new creature.”   I have changed so much inside I am unrecognizable to myself.  The spirit began to help put new thoughts in my mind.  I think and interact in a whole new way.  I am an up-leveled version of myself—even better than the original “old me.”  I feel joy! My life feels full of light.

Living in Sunlight

As my brain has changed, I have been able to work off my meds slowly.  This has been an important indication that finally the source of my depression is being addressed.  I don’t dwell on conversations, I don’t take forever to make decisions, I don’t feel constantly overwhelmed and wallow in self-pity.  I don’t constantly worry about being “productive.”  My relationships are deepening, my brain fog has cleared, and I feel like I show up more often like the kind of person I want to be. Instead of having a head full of overwhelm and stress, it is full of more compassion, desire to help others and mostly full of joy!

One of the things I discovered was how essential darkness is.  God made the light and the dark.  There is darkness almost 50 percent of the time on earth.  Without darkness, it would be difficult to sleep, it would get hot, there would be no natural separation of days, and  it would be tempting to keep working, or playing instead of taking a break.  We wouldn’t appreciate the light.  We must have both to understand the other.

I realized the same was true for my emotions.  God created opposition in all things;  we are meant to experience difficult emotions a large portion of the  time. The tension of opposites is what gives joy and happiness it’s meaning and it’s value.

Knowing darkness or difficult emotions are important made me less afraid of them.  Knowing how to process them and how to move past them has given me confidence that I don’t have to be controlled by difficult emotion.  Now I can accept them and let them go more often. This allows me to let go of them instead of storing the emotion and being controlled by them.  I know there is more light ahead.

Sharing My Light

Having lived in darkness for so many years and not knowing how to climb out, I feel deep compassion for people who live in the dark night of the soul—even partial darkness.  I know it is painful and heavy.  I heard someone say once that each of us bears the mark of the pain we’ve felt.  It becomes like a secret code that binds us to others who bear the same mark.  I am so deeply grateful for all of the people who have helped to uncover my light and I want to share the joy of light with anyone who may be suffering.  That is part of the reason I am writing this blog.

Over the years, many people have asked me where to even start when they feel depressed.  Each person’s journey is unique.  I would never begin to think that I could tell someone else how to heal or recover from their own individual difficulties.  I have listed the steps that have helped me in my journey; I hope they will be helpful to others in some way.  There is so much happiness where light is–and it’s possible.  If you are in a dark place, hang on.  There is light ahead.

Uncover the Light Again

1.  Trust yourself
If you notice that you don’t feel yourself, believe yourself.  Don’t just keep pushing through.  Slow down and observe yourself.  Just because you have good days doesn’t mean you aren’t depressed or anxious.

2. Take a Depression/Anxiety Test
If you have become someone you don’t recognize, and don’t like, consider taking a depression scale test.  This can give you an idea if it’s something you need to address, and how severe you may be.  Here is a Depression Test that could serve as a good starting point.

3. Dump the dark  (Counseling and medication may be helpful tools to consider)
An important part of healing is getting the dark out in a place you can see it, address it and change it if needed. Shedding light on things often takes away the power of difficult things.  Counseling is an excellent way to do this as therapists can help to draw out pain points.

Sometimes meds can be helpful in getting you to a place that you can see more clearly and function better.  It’s sometimes difficult to change patterns of thinking and acting when they are deeply ingrained and the feelings causing the behavior are so raw and difficult.  They are not the right course of action for everyone however.  Remember meds can be temporary.

Both counseling and medication can be particularly helpful in high moderate to severe depression.  More mild depression may be able to be addressed differently.  Methods such as journaling or talking with a confidant can be helpful in unloading pain as well.

4. Choose to Let in the Light
Once the brain knows the pathways that lead to depression, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns.  It requires a deliberate decision to “choose happy.” The minute we  allow ourselves to take even a step into the quicksand of self pity and wo, we get sucked down. Sometimes we  unknowingly feel that there are benefits to feeling depressed or anxious and it’s hard to fully heal when we still “want” in some ways to feel this way. It may sound  strange, as no one would “choose” to feel this way, but sometimes making a list of advantages and disadvantages of depression or anxiety can help us discover our own resistance. This was helpful for me.

5.  Get Help Changing Your Brain
Once you are in a stable emotional place, it is time to begin a brain remodel.  If we continue thinking and acting the way we always have, it is likely we will relapse into depression or anxiety again.  There are many ways to learn to think differently.

Life Coaching is one fantastic source of this type of brain work.  A therapist who does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy can also be helpful.  Sometimes hospitals or colleges offer groups that discuss important principles.  Bibliotherapy can be highly effective as well.  No matter how you choose, the change will come from actually observing yourself, writing down what you observe and making changes to your thoughts.

A great book to get started with is, The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns

One of my favorite podcasts that has helped me make these types of changes is:

The Life Coach School, Brooke Castillo

6.  Share Your Light
Sharing your new found tools and hope is often the ray of hope someone else needs to know they won’t be in a dark place forever. As we reach out to share and help our own light grows.

God Loves Broken Things: Accepting Our Brokenness

Most of us feel broken in some way–we feel unworthy or unappealing or less lovable because we less than our own ideal in some way.  For some it is being overweight, or not having the financial means to have the home or clothes they’d love.  For some it might be feeling like they just can’t stay on top of their home, they yell at their children, they can’t perform to the extent they’d like at work, or are doubting their faith.  More substantial struggles like losing someone we love, divorce, infertility, abuse, trauma, or having a significant health challenge can all be things that can cause us to question our own wholeness.  Ironically it is our brokenness that allows us to come to true wholeness.  God loves broken things–it is what allows him to heal us.

Broken

I saw my husband’s elbow brush the edge of my favorite Talavera plate hanging on our bedroom wall, but it crashed to the floor before a warning escaped my throat.  The bright ceramic colors were strewn across the floor—some large, others tiny fragments. There were too many pieces—it seemed impossible to put back together. The plate was gone.  My husband felt terrible. We scooped it up and the pile of shards sat on my desk for several days. I kept looking at it. I considered tossing it. I noticed the empty plate holder; the room seemed a little duller without it.  And the days went on. One day, I pulled out the ceramic glue and tried to piece back together some of the larger pieces but there were cracks and chipped fragments. I left it for a while to think about if I even wanted it anymore, it just wasn’t the same.

There is something about us that doesn’t like broken things, we resist them.  Things that are broken seem less useful, unworthy and less appealing. Why is that?  Breaking is a powerful metaphor. People break, relationships break. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.  When we feel broken, the natural response is to ignore it, to fix it, or to hide it.

Resisting Brokenness

When my mother called me to tell me she had been diagnosed with stage four Ovarian Cancer, her first words to me were, “We’re not cancer people.”  She refused to be broken. She underwent surgery, chemo, remission, lots of natural healing methods and chemo again. In the in-between she undulated between gut wrenching sickness, longing to live to finish raising her family.

Of course, she did what any of us would do—fight to stay alive.  With her characteristic optimism and quest for knowledge, she was constantly on the lookout for new healing protocols.  We loved her for it, and cheered her on.  Her work and discipline was inspiring, I believe trying new things gave her hope too. She would often tell us her tremendous hope that a particular method would be successful.

We rode the waves of hope and disappointment as she tried various methods.  While I unfairly depended on her for her reassurance, there was always an underlying anxiety.  I was never quite sure how she really felt or what would happen “if” the new idea or protocol didn’t pan out.

As her health declined, her search for healing became all consuming.  This was understandable and certainly what any of us might be inclined to do.  It took most of the day each day to scan the internet for new alternative healing methods, to make all fresh foods and do a variety of protocols with exercise, heat etc. It was a time of grasping at anything to try to get more time.  

We wanted her around for more time–but I confess that selfishly at times I longed for her to stop trying to get more time, and admit she might not have much time left.  I wished she would use the little time she had left to focus more on spending time with me and with her family and friends. That was the time we knew we DID have.  I remember changing our flight plans to be with her at Thanksgiving right after her diagnosis and she insisted we not come—saying “This is a marathon, not a sprint.”  When I tried to record some of her stories about her life, she resisted. It felt to her like admitting defeat.  This was absolutely understandable, and I would probably do the same thing in her shoes.  However it was interesting to be on the opposite side.  As much as we wanted her to keep trying things to keep living, sometimes resisting the cancer meant separating herself from spending time with her loved ones and writing down her experiences.

There were times she did accept her cancer and let us be part of her world.  A few of my favorite were when she took us wig shopping with her and we all tried on ridiculous wigs and giggled at how silly we looked.  One time she got wigs for every member of our family and we all did a photo shoot together.  She let me come with her to get a hair cut when she knew her hair was about to fall out, and let me cry with her as she had to cut off the hair cut she had recently grown out.  She let me make her mashed up sweet potatoes to help her nausea during chemo–there was something sweet about getting to serve my mother who had always served me.  Another thing I loved was to hear her insights from the amazing things she was learning.  She read a stack of cancer books taller than she was.  She was overflowing with interesting perspectives on faith, healing, nutrition, health and so many other things.

Certainly learning how to deal with a terminal illness was a learning experience for all of us.   Perhaps the most difficult was when she wouldn’t tell us what was happening with her health.  I believe she did this to protect us–so that we would not feel the depth of worry and heartbreak she had to feel.  I love her for this.  However, ironically the more it was unspoken, the more anxiety I felt.  When I would call on a bad day, she usually wouldn’t answer the phone. It was often several days of silence until she’d come to a better place and then she’d tell me how low she was and how much better she was now.  In the interum I worried, and wondered what was happening. I hated not being able to love her and listen to her when she felt most broken. She seemed to only be able to be broken in hindsight—it was too vulnerable to be broken in the moment.  Having never been through this but having watched her, I can imagine there were days she simply couldn’t talk.  She felt too sick or was too emotionally low to share.  This was a new and terrifying journey.  She was doing the best she could and the best she knew how.   Still, I wonder how it could have been sometimes if I could have accompanied her more on the difficult paths of her journey–particularly in the earlier phases of her cancer.

Breaking

She did break.  Not all at once, but slowly.   

The summer before she passed away, she had a paradigm shift.  She had asked a fellow cancer survivor for her book list on cancer cures at a yoga class one day.  Her friend refused; she lovingly put her arm around my mother and spoke words that echoed through her heart. “You are in a frantic frenzy. You need to stand still and let God.”

Accepting Brokenness

My mother did.  She had a profound realization of her anxiety or resistance against being broken.  With tremendous courage, she made a deliberate decision to stop “fixing” and stop “hiding.”  She stopped scanning the internet for solutions. She stopped following every undulation of her blood tests. She accepted that she was sick but decided to stop panicking about healing and instead feel peace in the time she had left. She did do a few things to keep up her health, but it did not consume her.  As she relaxed and accepted her “brokenness,” she began to feel tremendous personal peace. She knew Christ was the ultimate healer.

Peace began to permeate our family as well.  Her own peace was contagious.  Knowing she was at peace, allowed me and my siblings to relax and connect with her in a new and deeper way. When we visited she cleared the calendar and chatted, laughed, shared, and sat.   She had tea parties with my daughters in the backyard, she ate more chocolate, and we laughed while we watched “I Love Lucy” re-runs together.  She called all of her children more often and took all of us and her grandchildren on a family history tour of St. George, UT that summer. She wove into our stories our grandparents’ stories. She even compiled all our family recipes for each of us–a way of acknowledging she may not be here to give them to us in the future.  These actions were so different than a year or two before. These are some of my most cherished memories of her.  After this paradigm shift, she seemed willing to share more of her difficult times as well. This allowed us to be part of her journey.  Though it was difficult sometimes to hear of her struggles, there was much less anxiety and so much love as we got to accompany her.

Just a few months later, the cancer returned and spread throughout her body.  This time she surrendered; she knew she was broken. This time it was not “fixable.”  But interestingly she continued to feel hope. It was not hope in a new protocol, a new diet, or vitamin.  It was a deeper hope—a hope in Christ. As she deliberately chose to set aside the anxiety and stop resisting, God was able to heal her spirit.   I distinctly remember a phone conversation we had in which I asked her if she thought it was her time to die.  She said she thought it may be.  She told me that while she wanted to stay and be part of my life and each of my sibling’s lives, she felt at peace that it was her time and that she was at peace with God.

Peace

I was living in China at the time, and I received an emergency call one Saturday morning that she may only have a few days to live.  I frantically boarded a plane and sobbed all the way to Colorado hoping to be able to hug her one last time and tell her I loved her.  I was privileged to get to hold her hand and be with her the last few days before she passed away.  She was in tremendous pain.    She didn’t try to resist it–she accepted it.  It was almost as if she had to labor to get out of this world, just as mother’s labor to bring children into the world.

One day my Aunt Nanny and I laid by her and asked her how she was feeling.  Her response was, “I am feeling great peace.” In her willingness to let her body break, God could finally heal her heart and give her true hope.   Her acceptance gave us all the peace and courage we would need to deal with her passing.

When she did finally pass away, we all knelt around her bed and watched her as her breathing slowed and finally stopped.  It was a sacred and beautiful experience largely because she had accepted her own brokenness.  Having her gone, meant that I felt “broken”.  For a long time I felt that it defined me in some ways, to have lost my mother.  I have had to learn how to be “broken” and beautiful in my own way.  See Hope is The Thing: Getting Through Grief.  After all, God loves broken things.  It is what allows him to heal us.

Broken and Beautiful

Brokenness isn’t something to fear, we are all broken in some way.  We have broken hearts, broken dreams, broken bodies, these are the raw material of hope. When we resist our brokenness…try to hide it, fight against it, and try to prove we are not broken–it gives our brokenness power over us.  God loves broken things. As we surrender our brokenness to him and accept our brokenness ourselves, He gives us hope and peace through his grace. He mends us. Sometimes the mending looks different than we expected. But it is always more beautiful than we anticipated.  Our brokenness is a gift.

I think I will keep my cracked Talavera plate.  It reminds me that brokenness is beautiful—it’s what spurs us to change and grow.  It is what allows God to heal us. The new wholeness is stronger and more powerful than it was in the first place, because now there is a story of pain and picking up the pieces and creating something new…something even stronger and even more beautiful.

Finding beauty in brokenness

When have you felt broken?

What if you owned your brokenness instead of resisting it?  Have you allowed others to see it?  Have you asked others for help? If you could rebuild, what would you do?

I love this new song by Calee Reed called “Broken and Beautiful.”   It expresses a similar idea.

Are you my mother? Re-Calibrating After Loss

The people we love become part of us, and losing them means losing part of your identity.  Trying to adjust to life after loss means we often feel unsteady almost like a chair without a leg…we know we’re missing something and it’s hard to function correctly.  It’s normal to feel this way, and important to recognize what role the person played in our lives. Often loss makes that poignantly clear.  Grieving is essential.   However, learning how to function and re-calibrate after grieving is crucial to finding hope and healing after loss.  This is part of my story of re-calibrating after losing my mother.

Losing My Mother

I was living in Beijing, China when I received a phone call on a Saturday morning from my sister.  “Mom isn’t doing well—the hospice nurse thinks she only has a few days left.”  I hung up the phone.  My mother had been battling cancer for 4 years.  I knew she wasn’t doing well, but I hadn’t realized the end would come so quickly.  I was panicked I wouldn’t make it back before she slipped away.  I boarded a plane that morning and sobbed all 24 hours to Denver.  Bless my sweet seat companions.  Every time I had a layover, I called.  She’s still here.  I didn’t relax until I had her cheek to mine and I was squeezing her hand.

It was a bit of a shock to see her so gaunt and wasted and in a hospice bed in the middle of the living room.  The last time I had seen her, she and I had gone for a walk around the trails in our neighborhood.  Now just breathing was laborious for her.  Each night for the next 6 days I wondered if it would be her last.  I was lucky enough to get to minister to her—to rub her feet, to read her biblical text, to lay next to her, to laugh with her.  I tried to soak in every minute and detail of her presence up until the moment she took her last breath.   For more on losing my mom see  God Loves Broken Things:  Accepting our Brokenness.

I did not anticipate the emptiness and longing I would feel as I watched my mother lie lifeless on the bed or be wheeled out of our home.  The day of the funeral, I was numb.  People were so wonderful and so supportive, but it all seemed like a bit of a blur.  It seemed surreal that I was at my own mother’s funeral, shaking hands of people we loved, laying a flower on her casket. And then it was time to leave.  Her earthly remains disappeared.

Looking for My Mother

I knew she was gone, but I still needed her.  By default, I still kept going to the space she occupied for me emotionally and would find her gone.  I felt adrift and off-balance.  Some days I’d pick up the phone to call my mom…..and remember she wasn’t there.    I had always written little ideas or funny things I wanted to share with mom on post-it notes around the house to tell her next time I talked to her.  I found myself still writing them for a while.  But then I stopped.

My mother was my emotional calibrator.  When I needed encouragement or to laugh about something humiliating, I could almost hear her voice as she’d quote Anne of Green Gable, “Girl you do beat all.”   When I went home, I would re-charge my emotional and personal history battery. It helped me remember who I was and how I wanted to be.  But now I just slowly lost battery and wasn’t sure where to recharge.

Where should I look to find a model of the woman I wanted to be?  The mother I hoped to become?  She was gone.  I watched other women her age, but not having access to their thoughts and personal doings, I felt at a loss.

Are You My Mother?

I knew I still needed anchoring and mothering.  But I didn’t know where to find it.  I felt like the little bird in the PD Eastman children’s book, “Are you my mother?” At times I looked for her in others.   I sometimes tried to find her in my husband, my sisters, my dad, my friends.  They were all amazing, and sometimes they did fill her space in my soul for a moment. I read her journals, I read books I knew she had read and loved.  I made her recipes.  Other times I looked for her in my memories or in her legacy.  What would she do if she were here. Sometimes looking for her helped, but other times it made the empty space she had occupied feel larger and hollower.

Losing Me

I felt my new identity was wrapped up in her passing.  I felt disconnected from people who didn’t know about it.  Little things un-related to my mom felt heavier and harder.  I was irritated more easily with my family and others.  They were not my mother.  And I felt resentful they weren’t.  Of course it wasn’t their fault, or even mine—it was part of the grieving process.
It was a dark time.  I cried myself to sleep many nights.  The emotions would well up at strange times—like a song on the radio, or her handwriting sprawled on top of a recipe I was making that said “delicious.”

I remember sometimes the feelings were so raw it was difficult to own them.  I was a busy mom with a new baby, two older children with their own needs, I was preparing for an international move and trying to carry on with normal life responsibilities.  Life kept going, but the construct of life I had always depended on wasn’t there.  I had to keep going but with more heaviness.  Sometimes I would shove the difficult feelings down when I couldn’t process them. I wanted to process my grief.  I wanted to own it.  But part of me didn’t know how.

Significant days like Mother’s Day, the day of her passing, and her birthday were the hardest.  I remember sometimes being sick of the pain and wanting it to stop.  And, then other times not ever wanting to feel “over it,” as it seemed like that would diminish the significance of the loss.  I wanted to find my mother, but I didn’t know how.  For more on grief see  Hope Is the Thing: Getting Through Grief.

Finding New Mothers

I Found My Mother in Me
In this longing and looking for my mother, and often not finding her, I discovered something.  She was not the only source of love and strength and peace.  I realized I am stronger and braver than I thought.  But I had to walk farther than I’d ever walked before to know it.  In the midst of an international move to Mexico I found my mother—in me.  I remembered the grit she showed as she re-landscaped our front yard one summer, or walked herself into another chemo treatment.  But I had to summon the courage to try.  I found the courage and strength to walk by children to school past drug deals and guards with machine guns.  I found the courage to take my children to doctors in a foreign language and how to do white-knuckled Mexico City driving.

I Found My Mother in God.
I found that He is closer and more merciful than I knew.  But I had to reach out and remove the obstructions of pride and laziness preventing me from feeling his love.  I had my 3rd daughter just a few months after my mother’s passing.  I needed my mother.  I wanted her there.   The spirit helped replace the longing and acute pain with peace.   When I needed a confidant I began falling to my knees to pray to my father who loves me perfectly.  Isn’t that really our journey here anyway—to learn to fall to our knees?

I Found My Mother in Others.
I found that they are more loving and vulnerable than I expected.  But I have to let them come close to my heart and I have to change my expectations.  No one will ever fill that entire role.  But people can fill tiny bits of her.  When we arrived to Mexico City, we had no furniture.  My husband and I were ordering furniture for our home for the first time since we were married.  I scoured design websites and looked for deals.  I was so excited when it finally came—I wanted someone to be excited with me.  I called my neighbor downstairs and she came up to celebrate with me.  It was just a little space she held, but it was enough.

The absence of my mother, left a hollow part of me.  I still miss her fiercely.  I will never fully replace her, but in trying to fill that space, I have found so many mothers… a closer relationship to God, deeper friendships, courage, and so much personal growth.

Re-Calibrating After Loss

Mourning is something each of us do many times in our lives—not just when we lose someone we love, but when we lose a job, lose part of our health, move or a friendship changes etc.   It’s important to grieve and recognize the absence.  Often it is that noticing that gives us a deeper appreciation for what we’ve lost.  After those feelings have become less acute, it can be so healing to begin noticing the amazing compensatory blessings God places in our paths to help fill those spaces.  He does fill them.

Fill the Gaps

What loss have you experienced?

1.  Consider writing down how life has changed because of that loss, what is missing with that person or that thing gone?  It can be so healing to recognize what a significant contribution that person had.  Often it’s hard to fully realize without losing something.

2.  Can you see any way it has been filled in different ways?  If you aren’t sure, become curious and begin looking.  You may find some compensatory blessings.

What to Say (Or Not to Say) to Someone Who Is Grieving

There isn’t any one “right” thing to say to someone who has lost someone, and everyone experiences grief differently however there are a few principles that might help guide interactions with people who are experiencing grief.

Most of  us experience difficulty in our lives, and feeling the love and support of others can make this experience so much better.  After my mom passed away, many people reached out in love and generosity.  I appreciated ALL these kind overatures. They  encircled my family in arms of love during a very difficult time.

I also learned a lot during this time about what types of interactions are most helpful.

Mistake #1 Try to Make Someone Feel Better

This seems like such a noble motive.  It’s natural to feel bad for someone when they suffer.  Our inclination is to make them feel better so they won’t suffer any more.  We might be inclined to say things like, “You’ll see them again.” “They are in a better place now.”  “You have so many things to be grateful for.”  While well intended, the problem with this type of comment is that it fails to validate how the person is feeling.

It never feels good to be told how to act or what to feel–especially if the person hasn’t been through the same experience.  In fact, comments like these may even give the indication that you don’t think the loss really is a big problem.  Feeling misunderstood can cause people to hold onto emotions longer and be less able to move through them to other emotions when they have processed them.

A Better Approach:  Ask How Someone is Feeling or Do Something Kind

Ask questions to allow someone to share how they are feeling.  Sometimes it is awkward when a person is struggling.  We like to hear that people are doing well.  However, what they often need is just to be able to express how they are doing and feel that it is understood and accepted.  This helps them process feelings, which is actually what allows us to let them go.  I remember when a friend said simply, “How are you?”  That was the kindest thing they could have said.

I remember when my mom was going through chemo, and my Dad was trying to balance a career and fill the roles of both parents, many people did kind things that were so thoughtful.  One neighbor came over on garbage day and took the garbage cans out to the curb.  It meant so much to my Dad who had so many things going.  Some friends came and planted flowers in our flower pots on the front porch–something my mother would have loved to do herself but wasn’t up to.  Other friends brought a thoughtful gift and left in on the porch every week while my mom was sick to give her something to look forward to.  The Christmas after my mom passed away our Aunt Katie had ornaments made for each of us that represented something each of us individually loved about our mom.  There were so many sweet things people did, it is impossible to name them all–but each of them made us feel loved.

Mistake #2 Empathize by Projecting From Our Own Experiences

As humans we want others to know we care and understand.  In an attempt to help others know that we recognize how hard this situation is, we might be inclined to assume how someone is feeling.  We might share our own experience, and our own feelings with it.

Sometimes this CAN be very helpful.  But other times it’s not.  For example, when someone loses a child, we might be inclined to say, “I know how you feel–my grandparent just passed away.”  It was well intentioned, however it could actually be hurtful to someone to think you are comparing the magnitude of loss of the passing of a grandparent to the magnitude of loss of a child.  This can cause someone to feel that you don’t understand.

Sometimes people who are struggling with loss DO want to talk to people who have been through what they have experienced.  Each type of loss is different; loss of a parent, a child, a sibling, a spouse, a grandparent, a friend, suicide, homicide, traumatic death etc.  When we have experienced the same type of loss as someone else, they are often more open to our experiences.  However, even two people who have been through a similar experience–or event the same experience–may grieve and process the experience in a very different way.  There are no “shoulds” when it comes to what to feel during loss.

A Better Approach:  Share How Much the Person They Lost Meant to YOU

One of the things my family did during the time my mom was in her final days was to solicit any memories of my mother.  People sent them by email, posted them on her blog, mailed them, called them in and told us themselves. It was so uplifting to see the incredible impact she had had on so many people as we read  her the notes and sentiments people shared.  After her passing, those tributes stand as a monument to her legacy and remind us of who she was.

I really appreciated all the wonderful people who had lost their mothers who listened and shared with me after I lost my mom.  I remember my Curtis cousins who had lost their mother to Ovarian Cancer a few years before, all sent us flowers that would grow through the winter as a symbol of hope and growth.  They all came to the funeral which meant a great deal.  The Westover Family in our ward who had lost their mother 5 or 6 years earlier (also to cancer) brought over a box of presents for each of us for our first Christmas without our mom.  My Aunt Nanny who had lost her mother, invited us to her home for a few days to talk about grieving and to process together.  These and so many more beautiful gestures were so meaningful to us.

Mistake #3 Awfulize

When we know someone is struggling, another inclination we have sometimes is to awfulize how the person must be feeling and try to communicate that to them.  We might say, “That is SO hard.” Or  “You must be struggling so much.” or “I don’t know how you do that.”  Sometimes this can be helpful to the person.  However, if the person isn’t feeling those things it can make the person feel awkward–that maybe they SHOULD be feeling a particular way and they aren’t.

We might say, “I could never handle it, if my mom dies.”  We mean to express that we recognize the magnitude of the experience.  However, on the receiving end it can feel awkward–the person did not choose this difficulty because they thought they could handle it.  It simply happened, and they are getting through it the best they can.

A Better Approach: Express Love and Concern

Rather than assuming how someone is feeling, it is better to ask them.  “How are you doing?” “How are your spirits?”  Follow their lead–if they want to talk, then listen.  If not, they know you care.  I remember when I flew back to China after the funeral and my friends Rosemay and Ryan showed up at my doorstep with dinner and hugs.  I remember my friend Anny took me out to lunch after my mom died and just listened and asked questions.  It allowed me to process and be exactly where I was in my grieving process.

Mistake #4 Assume the Person Will Get Over it

After several months had passed, it can be common for people to say things like “Are you healed?”  Or, “Are you over it?”  The interesting thing with grief is that is does become less acute over time, but it never fully goes away.  It is episodic and comes and goes at unexpected times.  As an outsider, it can feel like after a reasonable amount of time has passed, that people should “move on.”  While it is true that staying in sorrow too long can turn into self-pity, it is never helpful to judge when it’s time for someone else to be less consumed with grief.  Sometimes pointing this out to someone in grief or self-pity can have the opposite effect of what’s intended–causing the person to dig in their heels deeper into grief and self-pity in order to show how deeply they are hurting.

A Better Approach:  Assume the Person Will Always Feel Some Pain 

Assume the person will always have some level of grief over their loss.  A kind statement is, “How has it been for you?” Or, “What has that been like?”  This allows the person to share without the overarching message that healing is a phase that should be completed.

Mistake #5 Avoid The Person

Sometimes because we are worried we will say the wrong thing, we don’t say anything at all!  Or, because we don’t know what to bring, we don’t go visit.  This is understandable, but actually this can be more hurtful than saying or bringing the wrong thing.  Often when someone is grieving, they feel particularly vulnerable.  When they feel avoided it can feel even more lonely, and awkward and can even be more hurtful than saying or doing the wrong thing.

A Better Approach:  Do Something

Even if it isn’t the perfect approach, ere on the side of action. Saying or doing something is always better than nothing.  When my mom found out she had cancer, some of her friends showed up at her home with just a hug.  My mom said it was one of the kindest things anyone did for her.  After my mom died, someone sent my Dad a letter saying, “I’m not even sure what to say, but I just wanted to tell you I care.”  It was one of his favorite notes.  I remember I appreciated when people simply acknowledged my mom’s passing. “I’m  so sorry to hear about your mom.”

A Note to Those in Grief

It can be painful to hear comments of those who are trying to help–but may not understand.  Their comments may at times sound insensitive or naive.  Be careful not to shut people down or they will stop reaching out.  You are in a vulnerable place, and the love others offer can be a healing balm even if it is a little awkward or imperfect.

One thing I found helpful was to consider all the overtures people made as little love notes; like I was collecting this elementary school box of valentines from all these people who cared. Some were more helpful or meaningful, but all were intended to show love.  Thinking about the comments and efforts of those who reached out allowed me to feel an incredible outpouring of love without being offended if people didn’t offer it in exactly the way I would have hoped.

My Aunt gave me some invaluable advice after my mom passed away.  She suggested when you are the one grieving, create space for people to help you grieve.  If people don’t ask the question you want to share about, share what’s in your heart.  Try to picture their motive, not their words.  Open your heart to others even if they don’t hold the space perfectly.  Sharing some will be so much more fulling than ruminating about how they didn’t respond correctly.  We’re all in this together; figuring out how to help each other.

Compassion in Action

On the first mother’s day after her passing, my aunt Natalie sent this picture and poem.  It helped to capture how I was feeling and provided healing balm to my hurting heart.

 .                                                             Is there something on my back?  By Caitlyn Connolly

Heavy
By Mary Oliver

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?

This lovely creative offering was a way of offering feeling empathy without assuming, judging, or giving advice. It simply acknowledged the event and offered validation.