Shifting: How to Handle Change with Grace

In modern life, most of us move at least once, if not several times during the course of our lives.  In previous generations it was more common to stay in the place we grew up and retire at the same company we started with.  Current studies show that the average time at a job in modern society is around 5 years.  Often job changes mean moving.  Learning to handle moving with grace can be a tremendous benefit to your happiness and your family’s well-being.

Time to Shift

During college, I spent some time living in Kenya.  I lived in a small slum outside of Nairobi and traveled each day by matatu (old VW buses repurposed as public transport for 15 people) to a rural school.  We spent our days teaching children hygiene. They used frayed branches as toothbrushes and had to wipe themselves with their hands after using the toilet if they didn’t bring their own toilet paper.  I’ll never forget the day I asked the children, “Where to germs come from?” They said, “Satan!”  My eyes got big, and I realized we had some basics to cover!  One of my favorite days was teaching the children how to dance the Virginia reel and kicking up red dirt as we twirled and laughed through it.  Their natural exuberance was contagious as was their curiosity.

Part way through my time there, there were some government misunderstandings, and skepticism about our work.  We were told we had to “shift.”  I had never heard of this before.  Our neighbors explained it meant, we had to move.  We had to stop working, and change apartments. I was heartbroken—I had come to love the children and I felt I had made some in-roads with teaching. Regardless, it was time to “shift.”

As I have moved many times since then—I have come to love the idea of “shifting.”  When we move, we literally do more than simply transport ourselves and our possessions from one place to another.  We change.  Just as a shift key on the keyboard changes a letter from lower-case to upper case, moving allows us to change who we are—to up level ourselves to something even better.

 

Change Will Be a Constant

We can all expect change.  We will have to move, people pass away, our health deteriorates, we lose jobs.  Even changes we want and choose can be hard; when we graduate from college and enter the work force, when we get married, when we have a baby, when we leave the work force, when our last child enters kindergarten, when we retire and the list goes on.  Change is a constant.

Don’t Resist

I find I often resist change because it is an ending—it means losing something I had, was, or wanted to be.  Even if it’s something I don’t like, knowing something is at the end brings with it some mourning. Part of letting something go, is acknowledging how much something or someone meant to you.  It’s recognizing how it’s been part of your life and imagining what life will be without it.

When we resist the emotions of disappointment, discouragement and sadness, they turn into resentment and anger.  It’s such a tremendous relief to accept a sadness.  Resistance requires a lot of mental and emotional space.  Letting it go, frees our brains and hearts to be open to how to adapt to the change and how to solve the problem.

Make Space for the Old

One way to give voice to our loss and sadness is to create rituals.  Rituals can help us acknowledge endings.  Our family has a little ritual at the end of each of our international postings.  Each child gets to list a few places that are most important to them—a favorite restaurant, school, church, a beach, a park etc.  We take a family drive and video all of our favorite and frequented places that have become part of our daily pattern in a place.  We enjoy talking about them as we drive and it’s a way of saying good-bye.   We try to do the same with people we love—plan a chance to say good-bye and acknowledge their presence in our lives.

Another way acknowledge pieces of our old lives in an on-going way is to hold “country nights.”  We include a holiday for each country we’ve lived in on our family calendar.  We celebrate our time in a particular place on the holiday for that country—we wear traditional clothing, eat local foods from that place and watch pictures from our time there.  Recently we celebrated “May Day” or “Lei Day”  for Hawaii.  We wore leis, ate Dole Whip and watched pictures from our time there.  It helps us continually bridge back to the past and commemorate our significant connections.

Don’t Indulge Sticky Sweetness

Grief is a clean emotion—it’s cathartic and healing.  Self-pity is an indulgent emotion.  There isn’t much positive that comes from it.  There is a fine line between mourning and becoming a victim.  I love the way CS Lewis describes this tricky 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.”  We need the catharsis of processing our emotions and acknowledging them.  However, once that has been accomplished, continuing to “indulge” in the “sticky-sweet pleasure” of our self-pity becomes harmful.  It is when we cross this line that it’s time to channel our inner Elsa and “Let it go.”

I find the time I most want to indulge in the sticky-sweet pleasure of self-pity is a few week to a few months after we move.  It’s takes tremendous energy to start fresh somewhere, particularly when it is in an unfamiliar place, culture and in an unknown language.  Making friends takes time.  At first everything is new and fresh, and then the newness wears off and the difficulty sets in.  It’s when everything seems “hard” in our new home that my brain wants to whine and indulge in what we’ve left behind.   It’s beyond the feeling of loss of our last home—it’s all the drama my brain is offering me about creating the new life and how hard it is.  This is when it’s time to let go.  Staying in the self-pity keeps us spinning our wheels.  We just dig deep ruts instead of moving forward.

Create a Vision

One of the things I find has helped me keep from spinning my wheels, is to create a vision of what I want our life to look like in our new place.  I try to fill the void of the old with something new.  One of our favorite things to do is to make a bucket list for each place we live—places we want to go and things we want to do while we live there.  Often we even map out trips to nearby locations and when we will take them.

I love working out the details of the flow of our new home…who will share a room, which door will we come into, what will each child’s chores and family contributions will be.  I love to research opportunities for our family to contribute in our new community.  I feel like it’s easier to start new family patterns in a new place.  There aren’t the old patterns in place.  Everyone is shifting mindsets and starting new family plans pairs well with a move.

I love to dream big—I love to think about who I want to be in our new place. Some of the thoughts I have had include “I want to be an on-time person in this new place.”  “I want to be more balanced with self-care in my new home.” “I want to be deliberate with spending.” Shifting is a bonus new beginning.

It’s hard to create amazing things without have dreamt them up first.  Knowing what we are going helps us leave things behind more easily.  It also gives us a template and momentum to begin creating a new life.

Creating

Even if we have mourned and visualized a new future, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with moving.  It’s a lot of work logistically and emotionally to start over.  Just the boxes and re-organization alone are overwhelming, not to mention meeting new friends, finding new places of worship, and stores to obtain what we need.  Often when we feel overwhelmed our natural inclination is to consume.  We eat more, we watch more Netflix, we indulge in anger or irritation.  We look at others and expect them to reach out to us—we want to consume their friendship. These things cause us to feel a temporary relief, but don’t address what we really crave which is happiness in our new life.  When we feel the urge to consume, we can create instead.  We can begin creating organization in our home, we can begin reaching out to others to invite them over to create new relationships, we can begin creating the person we want to be in our new home.  It is creating that will fulfill our deepest cravings for peace.

Edit Your Brain

Often our biggest enemies and intruders in creation are our own thoughts.  It’s common to say things to ourselves that we would never tell someone else.  “This will never work.”  “It will never be as good.”  “What was I thinking?” “Why did we do this?”  “I’ll never make friends as good as I had before.” “I hate it here.”  Ironically, these thoughts sabotage our ability to make our move a good experience.

Changing our thoughts can provide the momentum to create the new life we want. We can replace negative thoughts, with thoughts like “I got this.”  “I don’t know how this will all work out, but I know it will.”  “I have faith.”  “I’m excited to see how this all works out.”  “Hard is good.”  These types of thoughts give me so much more confidence and energy to do the work of creating something new. Sometimes that sticky sweetness of self-pity seems so tempting, but being willing to set it aside and to do something new is so much sweeter.

Shifting Into Action

It means introducing myself over and over again our first few months.  I try not to wait for others to reach out to me, I take the responsibility of seeking people out and getting to know them. We have people over to dinner.  We invite friends over for playdates. I plan the first few times I go anywhere that I will probably get lost and it will take a long time to figure out the navigation, parking etc.  It usually DOES take a long time, but I expected it so I’m not frustrated.  On particularly difficult days, I try to find humor in our situation and tell the events in the most dramatic way possible at family dinner or to a friend.  Laughing about it is almost like an escape valve that lets of the pressure.  There are always setbacks.  I try to plan on them—lots of them!   But the more I get out and begin creating the positive momentum the more courage I gain to keep creating.

The process of change is messy and frustrating.  The process of mourning, letting go and creating new is not a neat step ladder process–it’s all mixed up at times.  Sometimes I experience all of them in the same day or the same hour!   No matter where I find myself in the process, when I view it all in the context of shifting to something new, something better it gives me hope and courage to keep trying.

Shift with Grace

What is a change in your life right now?

1.  Think of change as a chance to up-level yourself like the shift key on the keyboard.
2.  Envision the new, but make space for the old (rituals).
3.  Don’t get stuck in the sticky sweetness of self-pity.
4.  Start creating.

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.

Define It: Find More Peace in Your Role as a Mom

Undefined expectations for ourselves and the roles we operate in always lead to disappointment. There is a simple solution for increasing success and satisfaction; defining exactly what it means to be a “good mom,” or a “good person,” or a good wife” etc. allows us to know what we’re shooting for.

When Dorthy set off along the yellow brick road in her sparkling red shoes and eyes wide with hope, she didn’t know much about Oz.  She just knew it was where she wanted to go because she had heard the Wizard of Oz could help.  When she arrived, it was disappointing to find he was just a man behind a curtain.  It’s easy to put up false Oz’s for ourselves without  even realizing it.

My False Oz

About 2 months after we moved into our new neighborhood in Taiwan, rumblings and mumblings started about Halloween.  We live in an old military neighborhood on a mountain overlooking the city of Taipei.  Because Halloween isn’t a “thing” in Asia—those who do know about it are curious.  Over the years our neighborhood has drawn crowds from all over the city.  Many are local Taiwanese who want an American cultural experience.

My neighbors told me, “Halloween is a BIG deal here.”  “No matter how much candy you have, “you’ll run out.”  “Everyone in the neighborhood decorates.  You should have seen what the people who lived in your house before you did!  Everyone really goes over the top.”

I was new and trying to fit in, so I started scheming and ordering on Amazon.  Our family decided to do a Wizard of Oz theme.  We all dressed up as different characters and we built a set with the Emerald City and Dorthy’s house with the legs of the wicked witch underneath.  My husband figured out how to broadcast the Wizard of Oz movies on the outside wall of the house.  It was pretty awesome.  I thought I had rocked the “Go Big!”

The day of Halloween arrived and I thought it was strange that none of the neighbors had many decorations up.  But, I figured they must be last minute people like I was.  Around 5 I started setting things up.  Still no neighbors setting up…eventually I saw a neighbor set out a table with a cloth and a pumpkin and I saw another neighbor hang an orange pennant banner that said happy Halloween.  One neighbor had a few skeletons sitting around, and another had hung out some lights, but nothing too big yet.

By the time the masses started coming around we were the only spectacle around.  The kids loved it and we had a ball, but I had to laugh at myself.  Apparently my idea of “a BIG deal” was slightly different than theirs!

Definitions Prevent Needless Discouragement

Definitions are so crucial.  I could have saved myself a lot of headache (and money) if I would have simply asked a few more questions to define exactly what “BIG deal” meant to most people.  Apparently to them it meant dressing up as an adult and sitting outside with several bags of candy and a cute Halloween tablecloth.

I find that defining things—even if it’s just for myself can reduce tons of headache and extra work.  Steven Covey says, “Disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality.”  If our expectation isn’t even realistic, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.

How to Define Your Roles

One area that seems to have a big expectation-reality gap is our roles as mothers.   I know it is for me at, at times.  I think most of us have amorphous sort of ideas about these pieced together from what we saw our mothers do, what we think others are doing or things we’ve read in parenting books.  My old definition of a good mom was a conglomerate of the compassion of Mother Theresa, the influence of Oprah, a home like Martha Stewart and hair like Jennifer Anniston.  I often measured my success by how my children acted and performed.  It’s no wonder I often felt like I was falling short.  My expectations were completely  unrealistic!

Be Realistic

If we take time to actually DEFINE what a reasonable mother would do—it gives us a more attainable goal and cuts out the disappointment gap between expectation and reality. There are many ways to do this.  One is to look around and find someone who has accomplished what you want to do or be as a mother.  Ask them how they define success and how they got there.  Another way to be more realistic about role definitions is to take your big vision goal and break it into smaller step-ladder goals.  Make sure the first step is something you know you can do!  Define success as the first goal, then move to the second one when you are consistent at being or doing the first.  Success helps build momentum a lot faster than failure.

Make Sure Your Definition of Success Doesn’t Depend on Others’ Behavior

In addition to unrealistic ideals, sometimes we set ourselves up for disappointment by including things in our definitions that we can’t control.  For example, we might include the choices our children make, or we might include the way our children treat us as part of our measurement tool for being a good mother.   What our children do cannot be an accurate measure of success, because it is something we cannot control.   (Clearly we may want to change what we’re doing if our children aren’t responding the way we hoped, but it’s important to consider children may not respond no matter what we do.)  Our definitions of success must include only things that WE can control.

Be Specific

One of the great creators of discouragement is generalities.  Words like “always,” “never,” and “everybody.”  While we know intellectually that no one is perfect, we often expect it of ourselves.  We assume that others are able to someone achieve perfection.  Our subconscious definitions of success often include things like “never yell,” and “always take time to listen,”  “everybody else takes their kids on amazing vacations during the summer,”  “always make a healthy dinner.”  While these are excellent ideas to strive for they make it hard to live up to success.  Getting specific and thinking through what we actually can and should do can help. “I will try to make a healthy home cooked dinner 2 times a week.”  Or “When I want to yell, I’m going to snap the rubber band on my wrist.”

Define success in a very specific way.  Here’s my new definition of a “good mom:

Love my children.  Teach them things I feel are important.  Model being a happy and healthy woman most of the time.

The Emerald City wasn’t all that Dorthy had dreamed it up to be; it was something she had built up in her mind as THE ultimate destination and the solution to all problems.  When she actually saw the man behind the curtain it was a bit disappointing, but it turned out it was even better!    Define what you expect of yourself.  Make sure it’s realistic, specific and only YOU control it.

Define it

What is your current definition of a good mom?

Get a piece of paper and define what it means to be a “good mom”  Is your definition realistic, specific?  Are you completely in control of the outcome or are others involved?

This works well for other roles too–define what it means to be  a “good wife” a “good employee” a “good person” a “good daughter-in-law.” etc.

Happy Hour: How To Feel Happier in the Midst of Overwhelm

One of the emotions I find myself avoiding most is overwhelm.  When the demand for our time or energy or money is greater than our capacity we feel overwhelmed.  I used to think this was how every mom felt most of the day–and especially at dinner time. Then I learned some amazing tools that helped me feel calmer and happier in the midst of overwhelm.

Happy Hour

It was “happy hour” at our house, 5:00 pm.  It was a far cry from the happy hour you might be imagining of colleagues gathering for a relaxing time after work.  My baby had a death grip on my leg and was whining “hold you!” while I tried to sauté garlic.  “Ugh, I should have cooked dinner this morning so it wouldn’t be so crazy tonight” I thought as I tripped over some magnetic letters strewn in front of the fridge.  “The house is trashed, my kids never clean-up” I mumbled as I took a deep breath, picked up my baby.  My older daughter looked over from the table and asked if I could help her with her math homework.  I left my cutting board full of veggies and turned off my half-sautéed garlic in the pan.  I sat down thinking, “I’ve got to try to be patient or she’ll have a melt down.”
We had only made it through a couple of problems when the baby pulled the table cloth and spilled the cup of water.  “I hate this time of day.  I don’t know if I can handle one more thing!” I thought as I stood up to get a paper towel.  Comic relief arrived just in time—a pillow case monster just the size of my middle daughter came barreling down the hallway bumping walls and people to be as scary as possible!  I hardly had time to smile before she knocked right into the chair and cut her toe.  Of course, tears and wails followed—and not from the monster.  I set the baby down to get a band aid.  I felt guilty as I thought.  “I know I should be more compassionate but hello, what did you think would happen when you walk around with a pillow case on your head!”

The baby started whining again, my older daughter reminded me she still needed help with math, and there was still the fountain of band aid tears…my overwhelm exploded.  “Everybody just calm down!  I’m just one person, I can’t help everyone at the same time.”  I yelled.    Everyone stopped.  Their eyes were big and then my shame attack hit.

The Reason We Feel Negative Emotion

For many years, this was a familiar scenario for our family—and not just at dinner time.  Overwhelm and irritation were my constant companions.  And of course, discouragement was a close cousin.  I didn’t know there was any other option; I thought everyone felt overwhelmed in demanding situations.  My feelings just seemed like the natural result of the things going on around me.  I felt exhausted and guilty a lot of the time and so frustrated I couldn’t seem to be the mom and person I wanted to be!

In the last few years, I’ve learned something very powerful.  It has changed everything.

Our thoughts create our emotions.  I can choose my thoughts.

This may seem like a simple concept, but it’s been around a long time.  Two thousand years ago Epictedus the Greek philosopher taught, “Humans are disturbed not by things but by the view they take of them.”  The Buddha taught a similar truth.  “Suffering comes from thoughts not what actually happens.”  The bible teaches us, “As a man thinketh, so is he.”

Three of the greatest teachers on earth taught this same principle.  This truth means that we have the remote control to our own feelings. We can choose what we want to feel and create it by how we choose to think.  We aren’t dependent on anything outside of us.

How to Feel Better

Let’s circle back to vignette of “happy hour” at my house as a case study about how this can help us:

  1. Notice your thoughts
    Figure out what you are thinking in a given situation.  Here’s my thought reel during this episode:
  • “Ugh, I should have cooked dinner this morning so it wouldn’t be so crazy tonight”  (Guilt)
  • “The house is trashed, my kids never clean up” (Irritation)
  • “I’ve got to try to be calm and patient during homework or my daughter will melt down.” (Overwhelm)
  • “I hate this time of day.  I don’t know if I can handle one more thing!” (Overwhelm)
  • “I know I should be more patient, but hello, what did you think would happen when you walk around with a pillow case on!”  (Guilt, Irritation)
  1. Notice your feelings  (See parenthesis above)
    Each thought we think creates a feeling.  It is this feeling that drives our actions.  So, it’s crucial to be aware of our thoughts and the feelings they create.
  2. Decide how you WANT to feel.
    We are in charge of how we feel.  So if we want to feel differently, the first step is to deliberately decide what I did want to feel at dinner time.  Clearly these thoughts weren’t serving me!  I decided what I wanted to feel was peaceful and loving and confident at this time of day.
  1. Determine a healthier thought that will create that feeling
    Knowing that events and demands would stay similar most nights (though specifics would change of course), I brainstormed thoughts that were true, but would help me feel better in the same situation.  Here are some thoughts I’ve tried and afterward you’ll see the result of the emotions they created.
  • “Whew!  There’s a lot going on, I got this.”  (Empowered)
  • I’ll do what I can, and that will be enough.” (Peaceful)
  • One of my favorites is, “This would make a hilarious email!”  (Humor)
  • A good default one for me is, “I’m so lucky to have 4 beautiful daughters”  (Grateful)
  • “I love that they are not vegging out in front of a video game or Netflix right now!  They are confidant enough to express themselves.  (Gratitude and Admiration)
  • Sometimes I compare it to a thought of a much more difficult situation.  What if I had to grow all my own food, and harvest it from scratch and sew all my kids clothes?  I’ve got it good.
  1. Write down the new thought somewhere you will see it and redirect your brain to those thoughts where the situation arises.
    Be Patient.  It can take up to 100 times of consciously re-directing your mind to a thought in order to re-create the default pathway to that thought.

Truly Happy Hour

This is powerful stuff.   If you would have told me a few years ago that 5 pm-6 pm could actually be one of the happiest hours of the day, I would not have believed it.  The practice of changing my thoughts about this time of day has changed “happy hour” into an actual “happy hour!”  It’s not rainbows and unicorns every night of course, but it’s certainly a lot more smooth.   When I supervise my brain and deliberately substitute these types of thoughts for the other ones, I feel peaceful, empowered and loving!  And, I don’t have to yell to get things done…which means I don’t feel guilty either.

We have the ability to choose our own feelings by deliberately choosing our thoughts.   In other words, happiness is a skill!  We don’t have to wait for anything around us to change in order to feel different.

Feel Happier

What’s a time you feel overwhelmed?

Stop and notice what thoughts you are having during this time. What feelings do they create?  Replace those thoughts with thoughts that create a more helpful feeling.

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.