Today we are all still socially threatened to seek help for our mental stresses.  The healing power comes when we can reflect with another and have objective feedback during situations where we feel stuck or paralyzed by outside circumstances. 

There have been some major points in my life over the past three years that has given this a real focus for me.  There have been five deaths in my close circle of family and friends, two suicides, one with a fatal illness, two natural old age.  My own encounter and healing with cancer and others I meet in this battle against cancer and other fatal diseases.  This runs its course through the stillness of your mind and you need to reach out to someone for reflection and different perspectives. 

I was in a deep place of thought with this recently and happened to be out to dinner with a few friends and overheard while in the ladies room, two women speaking about the same thing.  One of them was saying how in the past eleven months, nine people she knew had passed over, three suicides, two automobile accidents, four with diseases.  The other woman said she had lost six family members in the past six months!  They were saying how hard it is to be around immediate family members of those who pass on. 

As I was pondering on what the two women had said, I realized I have witnessed the impact of death on those left here in this world very often in my service over this life of fifty-six years.  Observing close family and friends of those passed on not dealing with it or running away in denial and looking to pass blame to ease their own pain and guilt.  It is too common to not take time to handle the pain felt when someone we love, or a person who plays a major part of our day like a co-worker or employee dies.  We all have a process that become the reaction to this, and in mass society it is not talked about, for fear of being considered morbid or thought to be depressing. 

It is the same when someone we know and loved family members are told they have fatal diseases or tumors. 

Usually the person goes down faster after diagnosis.  So the belief of impending death is fuel for the disease.  Once we put our mind to the word or description of our illness, it is given more power and we fade fast.  We give up and don’t use all that is available to us. 

If death is what we need to prepare for, it too has a course of action and preparation to process, and needs loved ones to participate.  Yet it is something we are not taught in our mainstream society.  Living is time moving toward dying.  Sometimes people’s reactions to it is evidence that we feel that it only happens to others, and never to ourselves.  Denial and avoidance. 

We do not know how to handle endings.  Being complete is not what most people are taught as children.  We avoid directness and truth is padded with fakery to make it more palpable to the weak and vulnerable person who lives in blaming and projecting the misery in their life onto others.  When we decide to go on to something different, we tend to make bad of what we are leaving.  Or we need to make it all wrong, and have anger to feel justified to end it.  Does it mean something has to be wrong for us to be right, to change? 

Change is an essential part of being alive.  But some changes are harder than others.  Life’s losses, death divorce, cutting back/relocation or bankruptcy produce a grief, a complex emotional process that can affect all aspects of our life, including our ability to think clearly, exercise good judgment, and resist diseases. 

Loss of life long dreams and people’s hopes can be just as heavy a grieving as when a loved one dies.  The resulting depression and anger can take a toll on our immune system, send our stress hormones soaring and result in missed meals, lost sleep, and spells of tears and fury.  Our feelings and the intensity of them are different from person to person, but all the same grief means adjusting to new circumstances and even a change of reality. 

Over the past twenty years, I have had a wonderful mentor in this field Dr. Elisabeth Kubler Ross, Swiss physician, researcher and author.  After spending her whole life helping the dying, she has identified five steps that happen during our process of grieving.  They can happen in various orders and most often get all entangled, instead of unfolding one to the other.  They are *Bargaining *Denial *Acceptance *Anger *Despair. 

Sometimes we are experiencing one or all of them at once.  And then they can come on one stage at a time.  During this time we need someone.  We need a caring real person.  Someone who can tell us the facts and be strong for us until we can get on our own feet again.  A person who can give us truth and assist us to handle it, to be strong and have faith until ours returns.  This person(s) realizes time will make a difference but knows when it is enough and when it is time to move forward.  A person that can listen and let you know it is healthy to cry and experience all these emotions and stages so that true healing can happen. 

A.  Be Caring and Loving to yourself. 
It is okay to cry when you experience sadness.  Ask questions and allow yourself the natural reaction and need for accurate understanding of what has happened and what you need to do during this time. Self abuse and being critical of your role will not help you through this time.  Being strong and tough is not real or healing in these periods in our life. 

B.  Reach out to people close to you, let them know what they can do. 
ASK FOR HELP. 
Blaming yourself and thinking you could have changed things is normal too.  Talk over these things and sort them out so you can heal.  People are always unsure about what they can do to make a difference for you during this grieving time.  Tell them you want to talk about what is going on in your head!  Friends and family can help keep you in perspective on matters now.  Look up or have someone close to you find a counselor or call your clergy person and have them take you for two or five visits over the next month or two.  This can also be a social time for the two of you and helps you begin to adjust to your present changes. 
You can never lose what has been a part of your life.  As people, we live on inside each other.  We hold to the good and the healthy memories.  We are permanently changed by those who have loved us and have been with us daily, so we cannot lose that.  The pain of a void and emptiness does ease and we do go on. 

C.  Trusting your spiritual sources. 
I have taught the value of journaling for years.  It is a way to sort things out and to see the manner in which we feel and see in certain circumstances.  Also, how we tend to alter matters with different emotional influences.  When we reread them four or five days later, we can find patterns in our personal overviews.  These can be good patterns or be a guide to assist us to overcome things we choose to change.  So now is a powerful time to sit daily in a favorite place and journal. 
Make a list of the many things you can make of this time and change in your life.  How is this painful time making a difference in how you live?  Can you find something good that will come of it? 
For example, you’ve learned you can survive life’s hardest knocks. 
Find a place that lifts your spirit and helps you feel the comfort of just sitting in silence, or observance of all activities around you. 
Reach out to your religious practices and reading materials.  Do whatever will help you get a bigger picture of what has happened. 

D.  Caring for your body 
Normal sleeping periods, daily walks and sports.  Eating healthy foods and drinking nurturing fluids instead of coffee or caffeine products.  Taking vitamins and herbs that will assist your body during these changes is very important. 
It is also healthy to go out socially and to do a service for charity or offer your talents to the community facilities. 

E.  Get a healthy mindset: a healthy attitude 
I remember a presentation by a Captain Coffee that was a prisoner in Vietnam for nine years, without evidence of rescue.  What he shared with us was a way to make it out of any helpless or bleak time in our lives.  He said it is when we take the attitude to survive or to make it through whatever we are in in the moment.  He said we always have choices, no matter how closed in we feel or are.  In a cell just large enough to sit up in, we still have a choice to go on and the attitude has to be one that says we are not alone, and in time you will feel ready to move forward. 

1.  Talk about the past openly and often.  Fond memories and profound times in the lives of the two of you and the loved one who has passed over.  Or the person who has left, or the change that has been forced upon your loved ones. 

2.  Be a great and eager listener.  Allow them to weep, rant and rave if that is what they do.  They must express themselves and you can help by not making that wrong. 

3.  Assist them by doing something to help clear things away, or changing a room arrangement.  Offer your service to clean, care for a pet or plants.  For the first couple of weeks, provide a meal once or twice a week.  Get the person or people out for dinner or go shopping with them for the week’s groceries.  A small thoughtful thing means you are there and you care, it heals big time! 

4.  Flowers are wonderful messengers when you cannot be there, but nothing replaces your personal appearances.  Be generous, give time.  This is what is needed for all who are grieving no matter what the cause. 

Grief goes on for a time, even when the person is not in denial.  It is a nightmare that does not go away when you awake each morning if you were able to sleep.  It is the shock of profound finality and there is no way you can change matters.  And it is stark terror when we think no one knows and forgets the next week that your life is gone and that you will never be the same. That everyone goes on the next day like usual but for you it is a real empty time.  Stop in often, and never go longer than two weeks to call or visit afterwards.  Weekly for two months, or the first six months is really needed. 

Do not let up until you see your loved ones going on and making healthy changes and adjustments. 

© Copyright 1998 Pa’Ris’Ha