Posts tagged with “grief”
When You Reframe Your Breakup as an Opportunity, Everything Changes
“Sometimes the most uncomfortable learning is the most powerful.” ~Brené Brown
Seems impossible, doesn’t it?
How can you look at your breakup as an opportunity when it feels like someone cut your right arm off and ripped out your heart?
Breakups can be rough. When you open yourself up to another person, love them unconditionally, and compromise your own needs for the “betterment of the relationship,” you put yourself all-in. It’s no surprise that you feel lost, confused, and unwilling to move on when that connection is torn away from you. You gave everything to your relationship and now it’s …
How Journaling Helped Me Heal from Grief and How It Can Help You Too
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” ~C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The day I was told that the man I loved was going to die from cancer, I did two things: I made a pact with myself never to have more than one bottle of wine in the house. I knew the risks of numbing pain and I knew that it didn’t work. Then I went to a stationery shop and bought a supply of fine moleskin journals.
My journey through grief started the day the pea-sized lump behind my husband’s ear was given a …
3 Things That Are Helping Me Deal with Stress, Pain, and Loss
“Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness; but it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.” ~Unknown
Life has not been kind lately.
My aunt passed away in October. She had been suffering from cancer, but her family kept the extent of her illness to themselves, and hence I did not have a chance to see her before she passed away. I felt bad about that.
My father followed her a month later, just after Thanksgiving. He had been ailing from Parkinson’s Disease, but his death as well …
The Most Compassionate Words and How They Heal
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” ~Dalai Lama.
It wasn’t until my mother died that I was able to feel her love and have that mother-daughter relationship that I’d been craving all my life. It was not until she died that I was able to learn, and truly feel, compassion—for her and for me.
I’ve always known that compassion for others is a nice thing. We all know that. But it wasn’t until I truly felt it that I was able to create a deep sense of healing.
My mum and I always had …
The Most Powerful Way to Help Someone Through Emotional Pain
“When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.” ~Unknown
I walked in for my monthly massage and immediately sensed something was off.
A layer of desolation hung in the air like an invisible mist, ominous and untouchable, yet so thick I felt as though I could reach out and grab a handful in my fist, like wet cement, oozing out between my fingers.
I’d been seeing the same masseuse once a month for three years, repeating the same routine each time. I wait in the hallway just outside her rented studio, a …
What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone Who’s Grieving
“Remember that there is no magic wand that can take away the pain and grief. The best any of us can do is to be there and be supportive.” ~Marilyn Mendoza
My mother, an articulate and highly accomplished writer, began to lose much of what she valued a few years ago. Her eyesight was compromised by macular degeneration, her hallmark youthful vigor was replaced with exhaustion, and many of her friends began to die. Finally, and cruelest of all, her memory began to go, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed.
Her struggle and her suffering in the last …
How to Enjoy the Holidays When Grieving the Loss of a Loved One
This post contains an excerpt from GETTING GRIEF RIGHT: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss, by Patrick O’Malley, PhD with Tim Madigan.
It was spring 1980 when my wife, Nancy, and I received some of the best news of our lives—she was pregnant with our first child.
On a Tuesday morning that September, we found ourselves sitting in her obstetrician’s office. Nancy, not due to deliver for three months, had been awakened the night before by a strange physical sensation.
She had wanted to get checked out, just to be safe. But after the examination …
How a 10-Day Silent Retreat Helped Heal My Grieving Heart
“In a retreat situation, you are forced to come face to face with yourself, to see yourself in depth, to meet yourself.” ~Lama Zopa Rinpoche
When I was at university, doing a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat was considered a hardcore rite of passage only the toughest among us attempted. Those who lasted the distance referred to it as a “mind-blowing” and “life-changing” experience.
“Think of how you feel after an orgasm,” a friend said when I considered finally doing a Vipassana meditation retreat to reconnect with myself after a decade in full time employment. “Imagine feeling for two months …
To Be AND Not to Be: Honoring a Life Lost to Suicide
“To be, or not to be—that is the question.” ~William Shakespeare
This Sunday marks one year since my friend took his own life. It both is and isn’t a big deal. It is in the sense that we like to commemorate things: one-year-old, one year at a new job, one year since 9-11, one year sober.
It isn’t in the sense that my to-do list that day includes “thaw and marinate chicken.”
When a person takes his own life, it creates a cosmic shift in the universe.
It also doesn’t.
The first few days after a person takes his own …
Love Hurts: Buddhist Advice for the Heartbroken – Interview and Book Giveaway
Note – The winners for this giveaway have been chosen. They are:
- Jennifer Moore Hardesty
- Margie Lynn
- Dr. Mac
- Ryan
- RB
- Justme
- Rogério Cardoso
- Fernanda Garza
- Benjamin E. Nichols
- Terri Cross
When you’re dealing with heartbreak, it can feel like the pain will never go away.
You may know, intellectually, that everything heals with time, but in that moment, when you’re suffering, it’s hard to hold onto hope.
Like all humans, I’ve experienced my fair share of loss, and I’ve felt scared, depressed, alone, betrayed, rejected, regretful, and angry—with other people, with myself, and with the world.
Losing someone or …
How Losing My Father Helped Me Become A Happier (and Better) Person
“In every loss there is a gain, as in every gain there is a loss, and with each ending comes a new beginning.” ~Buddhist Proverb
Four years ago, on a typically cold and overcast day in upstate NY, I found myself scurrying around preparing for a two-week trip to Kenya and Tanzania, which left the next day.
My father, a strong and soft-spoken sixty-two year old, had aspired to experience the great plains and animals of east Africa since childhood, and was deeply proud that he was able to pay for me to accompany him on his bucket-list adventure.
Though …
Surviving Loss: You Always Have Choice
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” ~Stephen Covey
One ordinary night after an ordinary day of work and family, I went to bed a mother, wife, teacher, writer-person.
I remember falling asleep between sentences exchanged with my husband after an evening spent with just the two of us on our patio, something we rarely seemed to find the time to do in our busy lives. We promised each other that we’d make a concerted effort to have more of these “dates.”
The next morning, on what was supposed to be another …
Meeting Grief with Mindfulness: How Embracing Pain Opens the Door to Joy
“We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.” ~Mary Oliver
Mindfulness is a way of relating to our experience that opens us to the totality of it—that is, we learn to embrace it all, the joy and the heartache. But some experiences are harder to be with.
It’s difficult to be with physical or emotional pain, and we often retreat to the mind in search of distractions. But when we are able to fully be with our experience, something that feels like magic happens.
It …
Coping with Suicide Loss: 9 Lessons for Hope and Healing
“It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” ~Marianne Williamson
“That boy is one in a million, Jill. He’s one in a million.”
These were my grandfather’s words to my mum about my brother, Mitch, when he was just a kid. He really was one in a million—a light that shone so bright as a child and early teen, only to then fade into shadows of desperation and defeat as he grew into adulthood.
No one really knows what’s going …
Why We Shouldn’t Rush or Feel Guilty About Emotional Pain
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche
In July 2012, a conversation changed my life.
Prior to this, I had been struggling to right myself after a difficult loss. Several months had passed, yet I continued to revisit the same sad, angry place again and again. I believed the presence of these difficult emotions meant I was “doing it all wrong.”
I thought, if I could figure out why these feelings were so persistent, I could make them vanish altogether. To assist in the quest, I enlisted the help of …
How to Speak to Someone About an Unspeakable Loss
“It’s not about saying the right things. It’s about doing the right things.” ~Unknown
Years ago, my family and I moved to a bucolic little town in New Zealand, where we were immediately swept up into a group of ex-pats and locals. We felt deeply connected to this community by the time I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy in the local hospital.
When our son was three months old, a doctor heard a heart murmur. Twenty-four hours later, he died.
In the days and weeks that followed, I wandered in my own fog of grief as I went …
10 Lessons My Mother’s Death Taught Me About Healing and Happiness
“Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be.” ~Joan Didion
This spring marked ten years since I lost my mother. One ordinary Thursday, she didn’t show up to work, and my family spent a blur of days frantically hanging missing person fliers, driving all over New England, and hoping against reason for a happy outcome.
My mother was prone to frequent mood swings, but she also talked to my two older brothers and me multiple times a day, and going off the grid was completely out of character. How does someone just vanish? And why?…
The Good News About Feeling Bad (And How to Get Through It)
“To honor and accept one’s shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It’s whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.” ~Robert Johnson
There’s nothing worse than having a bad day (or week or years…)
Or when emotions take over and carry us away.
Or when our relationships bring challenges.
Or when we endure great loss.
Or when we wish that just once when things started getting good, they stayed that way.
But difficult times are really offerings that show us what no longer serves us. And once they’re cleared, they no longer have power over …
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