"Many of us come to mindfulness seeking relief from the confusing jumble of thoughts that dominate our lives much of the time. So the first gift that mindfulness gives us—after we get accustomed to the shocking simplicity of sitting and doing nothing—is a little bit of peace. We’re no longer as tormented by our thoughts, since as we observe them come and go, no single thought seems to be a big deal anymore. It’s like being at a laundromat watching the clothes tumble in a big dryer. We don’t have to tumble along with the clothes; we can just watch them fall through space."
Things No One Told Me About #Grief
“No one purposefully neglected to tell me these things about grief. Loss, pain, sorrow, heartbreak, they are all simply topics that aren’t discussed in depth and that are experienced in both unique and universal ways. To say: this is how you will experience grief robs it of the unique, yet to say: this is how we mortals experience grief is to give the gift of not being alone. How do we talk about things for which there are no words, in any language that can capture the whole of it? The pain of tragedy burns so deeply and transformatively that we pander around in art, movies, poetry, flowers, songs, essays, trying to grasp the unfathomable. That’s what tears are for, they are the words of the utterly crushed…
No one ever told me that explicitly, either, but I think I’ve known it all along. That love both breaks and heals. Walking through loss with my daughter and sharing our grief is strengthening our relationship. Even though it won’t miraculously heal scars or close up black holes of loss, shared grief is what love looks like.”
The Unexpected #Grief Of The Unknowing
"Through all my self-doubt, and the grief I still experience, I am comforted knowing my mom knew my heart. She understood (more than I could have at the time) how typical, though ill-timed, my behavior was. Nothing changes a mother’s love."
On #Widower Watch. #hpm @otherspoon
"Marking family and personal occasions in this way has become increasingly important to all of us; these events intersect long, quiet weeks with laughter and company. And here’s the often unacknowledged benefit to keeping watch on a widower: With my grandparents dead and my friends all around my age, he diversifies my social life as much as I do his. He gives me a perspective on the city we live in that my peers simply don’t have. We spend our time together talking about our dissimilar lives and the things that matter to us, reminiscing about his many rich years, and looking up old poems in the vast library that lines the walls of his house. He is my friend and I miss him when I am away. As it turns out, nonagenarians are good company".
Surrounded by #pain, #doctors turn to poetry, writing to #cope with #loss
"The genre has blossomed as doctors have become more comfortable acknowledging their humanity and vulnerability through prose, said Dr. Paul Gross, the founder and editor in chief of the online journal Pulse, which carries the tagline 'voices from the heart of medicine.'
Doctors deal with so many difficult situations each day, Gross said. “How do you process it? And how do you remain whole as a person?” Writing helps them work through those issues by forcing reflection..."
The "On Coming Alive" Project. #Grief. @lexibehrndt #oncomingalive
"We believe that we are meant to come alive. This doesn’t mean we’ll be without pain. This means that we’ll face the pain, looking it in the eye, feeling it, acknowledging it, never faking it, but embracing life for what it is, a coexistence of the deepest sorrows and the deepest joys. We want to be alive to feel both, because we know that if we hide from the pain, we often also hide from true, deep joy, from freedom, from love and life.
We believe that we come alive as we mend, but we also come alive when we reach up and reach out.
We want to dig down deep and muster the grit within us, reach out our hands, and pull one another to the light, because we don’t believe that we’re meant to always live in the darkness."
It’s worth it: #Love in the face of #Death. @lexibehrndt
"It’s a painful thing losing someone you love. It wrecks you at your very core. It shatters you, as they take a piece of your heart with them as they go. It is earth-shaking and dream-crushing and horrible in every way imaginable.
And it is worth every single second— every beat of their heart, every whispered prayer, every ounce of love given, every time you held their hand, every tear shed, every smile, every kiss, every lullaby and every single time they looked at you with soulful eyes, and told you in their own way, 'I love you, too.' They are worth it all.
Take it from me.
Choose the harder path. Love until you feel like your heart has given all it has, and then give a little more."
How to Tell Someone You’re #Terminally #Ill. #hpm
"Though everyone eventually dies, few know how to talk about the end of life. ‘‘People don’t know what to say,’’ Wanda says. ‘‘They’re afraid.’’ Be prepared for strange and stilted reactions. Some want to believe in a fix and will give you unsolicited health tips. (‘‘Don’t eat sugar.’’ ‘‘Avoid gluten.’’) You can ignore their suggestions but acknowledge the heart underlying them. People may offer to pray for you. ‘‘Prayers are good, but maybe what I need is someone to listen,’’ Wanda says. For that type of engaged listening, you may need to seek out a professional, like a trained social worker or a psychiatrist. Sometimes people who know about your condition — those you tell will tell others — will pretend your situation does not exist. Or weirder still, they will temporarily forget".
WHAT’S MY #STAGE AGAIN: SHARING IS #CARING. @robinmbrowne
"It can be hard to feel like anyone understands what you’re going through, and can be discouraging when message boards and support groups don’t give you the emotional reinforcement you need. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and alone with your thoughts if you don’t feel comfortable sharing your situation with those around you. Not everyone wants to post about their experiences on Facebook, or live-tweet each scan. If you tend towards the private side, there are still some resources I’ve found that can help with feeling less alone with your struggle...
One of the great loves of my life, Fred Rogers (also known as Mister Rogers), once said, “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.” There’s no easy way to start the process of emotional healing, but sharing your experience with others can be a strong foothold for that journey."
5 Things #Grief Taught Me
"Six years inside complicated grief taught me many things. Five of them I can put into words and onto paper. I have a feeling I will be learning from her the rest of my life..."
7 Fun Ways To Teach Your #Kids #Mindfulness
"If you ever want to be inspired and also have a giggle, ask a group of kids what they think “mindfulness” is. “Relaxing out of our daily troubles and stress,” “A way to stay yourself when you’re going through something troubling” and “It’s like getting off of one railroad track and getting onto another one” were some of my favorite answers from the recent class meeting. Kids can really be fountains of spiritual wisdom!
When I told them the dictionary’s definition (“a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique"), the kids weren’t entirely sure what I was talking about. And so we did some exercises to test it out. Feel free to try these at home!"
#Childhood #Bereavement #Care Pyramid
"In the absence of a national approach to childhood bereavement care in Ireland, the pyramid is a guide for professionals and concerned adults in identifying and responding to the needs of children and young people who have experienced a loss.
An expert group working in the area of childhood bereavement was convened to review the adult and child bereavement literature and pertinent policies (international and local), in order to establish existing models of bereavement care and core dimensions of best practice. From this review and building on practice experience, a framework was created and piloted with medical, social work and educational professionals and parents".
On #Parenting: There is no 'normal' when it comes to #kids and #grief. And that’s okay
"We stopped talking. I rocked back and forth on her bed, holding her close, reverting to the keening motion every human leans into when things get that bad. It was the same way I held my husband in August and again in September, and the same way he reached for me in November, the wordless soothing rhythm of a parent and child.
Our guests would be okay downstairs. We sat together in the dark. And I let her cry, and cry, and cry. Broken open, edges jagged, ready to grieve".
#Death and the #Workplace. @GroundSwellAus
"We know that most of us don’t grieve in stages. In fact, we experience resilience. To use George Bonnano’s research, for most of us grief is an up and down experience with capacity for both intense positive and negative emotion. This is normal and expected. And perhaps most importantly, we know that being part of a network of colleagues (as well as friends and family) who take part in the caring process, has a transformative effect. Not just for those of us who are experiencing great loss, but also for the people who work with and care for us."
Embracing Life While In Palliative Care
"When you come to the end of your life, how do you mark it's last moments?
This short documentary,Embracing Life, aims to take away the stigma attached to death and dying.
Talking to patients in palliative care, the creators of the film enable conversations about how people feel about approaching the end of their life.
'The aim of the project has been to help build the capacity of communities to talk about death and dying, loss and grief, so that those living with a terminal disease can be better supported,' Sam Kelly from Calvary Health Care Bethlehem told The Huffington Post Australia.
The patients interviewed in this film give an incredibly positive perspective on what it's like to face death.
'Once I accepted that death was to come, I've just held everyday and I try to live it to the fullest,' said Tony Steele.
What Luck Means Now
"The day we learned the news, just 15 months had passed since our wedding on a New Hampshire hillside with friends and children gathered, fireworks exploding and a band backing us up as we performed a duet on a John Prine song and talked about the trips we would take, the olive trees we would plant. Each of us had been divorced almost 25 years. How lucky, everyone said, that we had found each other when we did.
Now, luck means having this operation. In four hours, luck will mean getting a call from a nurse who says: 'They’ve reached the tumor. They’re going in for it'."
Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me
"It is the reason a neighbor knocked on our door to tell my husband that everything happens for a reason.
'I’d love to hear it,' my husband said.
'Pardon?' she said, startled.
'I’d love to hear the reason my wife is dying,' he said, in that sweet and sour way he has.
My neighbor wasn’t trying to sell him a spiritual guarantee. But there was a reason she wanted to fill that silence around why some people die young and others grow old and fussy about their lawns. She wanted some kind of order behind this chaos. Because the opposite of #blessed is leaving a husband and a toddler behind, and people can’t quite let themselves say it: 'Wow. That’s awful.' There has to be a reason, because without one we are left as helpless and possibly as unlucky as everyone else".
They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain
"So I'll tell you the positive effect and you know it already: empathy is pain's best antidote. It is, says Robert Burton in his astonishing Anatomy of Melancholy, 'as fire in Winter, shade in Summer, as sleep on the grass to them that are weary, meat and drink to him that is hungry or athirst.'
The pain doesn't go away; but somehow or other, empathy gives the pain meaning, and pain-with-meaning is bearable. I don't actually know how to say what the effect of empathy is, I can only say what it's like. Like magic".
When Your Loved One Is Ready for #Hospice Care - and You Aren't. #HPM
“And I had a lot of questions about hospice care, including whether I could stop it if I changed my mind later. (He told me I could stop it at any time, for any reason, and that if I changed my mind again I could resume the services.) The conversation was incredibly stressful. At one point I realized I was holding my breath.
After answering all my questions, Doug looked at me kindly and said, ‘You know, Marie, the real question for the caregiver is how to help the patient have the highest possible quality of life in the time that is remaining.’
That completely changed my thinking about the situation. It gave me a new and positive goal - to bring Ed as much happiness as possible. It led me to think about all the special things I could do for Ed -- visiting him more often, taking my little Shih Tzu to see him, having that violinist come back and play another concert, reading to him from the newspaper, and buying him even more of the stuffed animals he loved so much.”
Looking Forward. ~ PhotoGrief. #Grief #Bereavement
Photos by Jimmy Edmonds
“These are montages that I make using my son Josh’s image against a background – these are from Mexico while we were filming of the Day of the Dead last year. The original image is of Josh (he died in 2011 aged 22) pretending to be asleep, but it has become one of the main pictures that I remembering him by. What is important for me is that it represents a continuing relationship that I have with him as I re-craft his picture as part of my on going work as a photographer and filmmaker. Photographs we have of our dead love ones are always in the past from when they were still alive – and in that sense they are stuck in history. What we teach on our photography course is that by reworking them and creating new photos we can re-invent the deceased as part of our present lives – its a very cathartic process and does a lot for my own healing – instead of always looking ‘back’ at photos as a way remembering him I am now looking ‘forward’ to the next image I will make with him in it.”