grief

baby faces

I loved this list from the late, great Nora Ephron. I think I have seen ‘When Harry Met Sally’ 72000 times.

It got me thinking what Id put on my list. It got me thinking about the anti-bucket list I developed last year. It also got me thinking about the impact parenting has on me.

Its Red Nose Day today here in Australia. Chrissie Swan wrote a lovely, eloquent piece on what she remembers from being a kid when she first released that people sometimes lose their kids. I was watching a TV show last night and my girl was perched on the side of the lounge. How is it that there can be 3 other seats available but kids have to sit right ON you? The story was about a mum who lost her little boy to SIDS last year. My daughter sobbed for about half an hour after the story – she asked to go in and check on her own brother to make sure he was OK. I kept asking her to talk to me while also thinking why the hell did I let her watch with me – but like Chrissie said I dont know how you hide the world from your kids – do you shield them from it hoping to keep all the yucky stuff out or do you open it all up for them to peer in to. Being asked questions that start with ‘why’ mean that I always stumble for an answer, because after 10 years working in the grief world there will never be an answer for those questions. I talked to her about life and love and we made a list of things that we should be grateful for, the things that will stick out when we’re old and wrinkly, the things that wont even rate…it went something like this.

Wont miss

Waking up early for swimming

Broccoli

Homework (that was me)

Bad Coffee

Bossy people

Miss

Hugs

Merit awards

Friends, best friends

Grandmas

Laughing  until your tummy hurts

Uno (or Unit as my girl calls it)

Snacks

I calmed her down and she opted to sleep in my bed until I popped her into hers later on. I carried those big, lanky limbs out of my room, around the corner to her bed filled with 100 toys and tucked her in. The face still looks like the baby I used to stare out, like most mums I held my breath after both my babies had started sleeping through the night worried as I stepped in the room that something dreadful had happened during the night. I still check on all the kids at random times through the night. Watching. Waiting. Admiring (and secretly relishing the quiet)

You can donate to SIDS and KIDS or to River’s Gift or just raise awareness where you can. Cliched as it as, hold your bubs tight, talk to them openly and wipe away the tears when they learn that it isnt all rainbows. Im not sure if I tell my kids too much, I also know that I cant take away their empathy for other people. I figure its better to have it, than not.

Share this post if you think that coping with loss is about sharing the message.

Whats on your hit and miss list?

 

I type it loud.

When I worked in London just after the millennium bug didn’t hit, I worked in a time-warp. There was only one computer to share between 4 people. We would fight each other for who got a chance to tap out a court report or a care plan for a small person or a letter to a school imploring them not to expel someone.

On the off chance that I did get to use the machine Id sit down and punch out as many words as my small fat fingers could manage. Neatly presented chronological explorations of children ready for adoption and words of respect for those little ones ready to go home. The guy next to me used to laugh like a big old bear, a Scottish bear, he told me I was like a meerkat…Id put my head down and get busy with my hands and then pop my head up occasionally. Staring out into the middle distance for inspiration and then burrow back into my world again. I still type loud, its my fingers trying to catch up with my thoughts. They come thick and fast.

I was working from home on Tuesday watching the live streaming of the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance. Its part of most Australian families history to have had a chat, or 11, over the dinner table about a little girl who was no longer here. I cried watching the Coroner deliver her respectful findings to the family, taking care to look right at them, giving a space to acknowledge Azaria as someone other than a missing child. She spoke of the child as their daughter, not a newspaper heading.

Sometimes in the world of caring people think that you had to have gone through the same experience as another to be able to reach out the right hand to them (right as in helpful not right as in left and right). I disagree. I have been through little blips in my life where the world hasn’t been fair, where Ive sat alone in the living room trying to cry silently without waking anyone but I dont have to be traumatised to understand trauma. I don’t have to lose to understand loss.

Lindy Chamberlains interview explored not only why the findings were not cause for celebration (Im always perplexed as to how this can ever be viewed as good news, the truth about the death of a child) but her thoughts that the Coroner may have had her own experience of loss, to have reacted with such personal thoughts, didnt make me nod.

Ive never walked the path of any of the families I’ve worked with. I don’t have my own experiences of trauma at that scale. The thing is, I don’t think that everyone wants to yell ‘same same’ when they need help. If you’re someone that cares about the people you love then its easy to care about what other people have lost.

You think?

  • Published June 15, 2012
  • Author
  • Category Loss

Giving power to the loveliness

I had a story published at Daily Life this week. It had been a story that had been rattling around in my head for a long time. Its something that Ive been pondering when I study – its about the fact that if we are all going to experience some type of loss, at some time in our lives, why dont we talk openly about living in that space after the loss has happened?

I think there is a common thread through our desire to hear people’s real stories – to hear the nitty gritty details, why the news is so invasive, why we watch people having microphones pushed into their faces to give us the scoop on just how it is they will go on. We then mutter to ourselves that we dont know how they’ll survive – that if we were in their shoes then we wouldn’t be able to cope. I cant even type the things that Im frightened about losing in my life, its too awful a place to go to.

The thing is people are still walking, talking, ordering coffee and going about their lives in spite of what has happened to them. Chances are that if we ask a person about their life they will have a story (or 7) about something catastrophic that happened to them at some point or continues to happen to them. But we dont ask ‘whats your tips for surviving, well?’. We either say nothing or shake our heads and give our condolences.

The story I wrote included some thoughts from Ingrid. Ingrid came to talk at my work a few weeks ago, she finished up her hour long chat by reminding us that in the midst of all the awfulness the world was still out there, that it was still a beautiful place and that despite what had happened to her she would continue to believe that. Turning off the news, closing the paper and not honing in on the trauma wont stop us from remembering that it happens – it will go on regardless – but it might make us take notice of the lovely things that are still here, not gone.

What do you think?

Is resilience an innate skill that we all have lurking somewhere in side of us – waiting to jump out??

No other explanations…part two

 

Thanks for popping back this evening to read the second half of this lovely interview. If you didnt read the previous posts click here to have a read.

Like I said in my opening last night one of the main reasons for asking to Emmanuel to chat was for me to learn more about how we, as helpers, look after ourselves. Also a couple of years back I hosted a roundtable for siblings who had someone missing – it was the first time many of them had been given the chance to share their story. Their story away from the glare of their parents, away from other people’s interpretation and without having to worry what their words might mean to others.

These ideas shaped the remainder of my questions.

Here it is….love and light to you all x

 

Working in the trauma field how do you manage looking after you?

To be honest I probably look after myself rather badly. Part of my job is listening to other people’s problems and trying to help them in some way. I always thought if I listened to other people’s problems then I could forget about my own to some extent and not have to worry about what wasn’t working in my own life. The problem with that is that your own problems never really go away and at some point you will need to face your own issues.

Self-care and being kind to yourself is definitely something that you are aware of when you work as a counsellor and it is something that gets discussed in supervision especially. I think it is important to have rostered days off and not to feel guilty about them. When you do it is important to do something nice for yourself and to enjoy it.

The hardest lesson to learn is not to take work home. In the early days of my career I was very bad at that and would think about clients on the bus or at dinner and even before going bed. The more experience you get the easier it becomes to switch off and to detach from work at home.

One important element in all of this is never to talk about work at home or socially. Friends and family have a curious fascination about your job when they know you are a counsellor. Other than the obvious privacy and confidentiality issues, I find it is easier not to talk about work generally when out socially. Having a clear distinction between your life at work and your life outside of work is very important.

Some things I do specifically to take care of myself include going for long walks and learning to meditate. After spending an 8-hour day listening to people talk and then responding in turn, it is very nice to not have to do that when you get home. It is important to me to have that down time when I first get home of not having to engage in any conversation and to spend some time unwinding. I need at least an hour when I get through the front door to unwind and switch off.

The flip side of that is that when you have a particularly bad day or are working on a case that challenges you and pushes your buttons it is important to talk about it in supervision and with your manager so as not to take it home. Having a high level of self-awareness is also very important because you need to know what pushes your buttons and why. If you know the answers to those questions then you usually know what you have to do to address the issue.

Does the wider community understand the losses you have endured – do you feel confident to speak about your experiences?

I often talk about my brother’s death with those closest to me both personally and professionally. When my brother died I got an enormous amount of love and support from work colleagues. All my team came to his funeral and most of them had never met him. The support I got from work colleagues made it easier to talk about.

On the downside I can’t hide from it either. Now that it has been nearly 5 years since he died it isn’t as easy to say to them I am having a bad day because I miss my brother. People look at you funny as if to say, “how much longer is this going to go on,” or “aren’t you over it yet.” I am more selective with what I tell them now. I am open about his birthday and anniversary of his death and Christmas being a hard time, but find that I talk about him less and less at work because I no longer get the support and understanding I did initially.

My brother died on a Thursday and for the longest time Thursday was the worst possible day of the week for me. I could barely function and I could hardly breathe or cope with work but somehow you find a way through it. I would get home as quickly as I could and then I would lock myself in my house and close all the lights and just sit and stare in the darkness and allow myself to feel the grief. I don’t do that anymore but I think for the first 2 years every Thursday was like that. Now I can get through most Thursday’s without feeling this way but if I have a bad Thursday I won’t talk about it because it takes more effort to explain why rather than living through it.

With regards to family and friends it is often hit and miss these days. Many members of my family that were close to him miss him just as much as I do. My brother’s death has had a devastating impact on lots of people. Yet any discussion about him is left to me to generate. They often say to me we don’t want to upset you by mentioning his name and talking about him, but sometimes I wish they would! Not talking about him and my paranoia that they may have forgotten him is infuriating at times and I wish they would communicate more about what they are thinking and feeling.

Most of my friends have been very supportive and have been an excellent outlet for me, but they have also been the ones who have said some of the most hurtful things. I saw a bereavement counsellor for over 2 years after Theo died and I remember talking to a very close friend of mine about the fact that it was coming to an end and how anxious I felt about that. Her response was – “it is about time you stopped seeing the counsellor – now he can finally support someone that needs it!”

What do you think people need to know to understand more about sibling loss?

Bereaved siblings are often called the ‘forgotten mourners.’ All the attention whether rightly or wrongly seems to go to the parents and any other surviving family members that your sibling has (i.e. spouse/ children). As a sibling you are made to feel that your grief is not as important and for some reason you are never able to fully acknowledge the devastation that you feel at your sibling’s death.

Anniversaries and holidays are especially difficult because for some reason most people ask you “how are mum and dad coping?” It amazes me that these people never stop to think that I may not be coping or that I may need someone to talk to at these times. Christmas especially is like that. My brother loved Christmas and would get excited about decorating the house and buying presents for those he loved. We haven’t decorated the house since he died and I find it hard to celebrate at all, but we force ourselves to do so knowing how much he loved it.

Prior to my brother’s death I never would have thought that there was such a thing as competition or a hierarchy of grief, but as a bereaved sibling you are constantly made to feel as if your grief is not as important as what others may be and you are definitely made to feel as if you are at the bottom of the pecking order.

When my brother first died I thought that it would be fairly easy to find some literature and books on sibling grief. Reading has always been an outlet for me and I respond well to structure and guidelines. To my astonishment that was not the case. If I was lucky enough to find a section in a bookshop that had more than one book in that area, inevitably there were no books on sibling grief. There are books on just about every other type of grief but yet again siblings are largely non-existent in the literary world.

Similarly I thought it would be helpful to join a group where I could listen to other bereaved siblings and hear what they had to say and how they deal with their grief. Yet again this proved to be virtually impossible. To the best of my knowledge there is no adult bereaved sibling group in the whole of NSW. Young children who are bereaved siblings get lots of support and interventions and yet are left to fend for themselves when they become adults.

So I took matters into my own hands and created a support group for adult bereaved siblings. I joined The Compassionate Friends NSW which is a worldwide volunteer organisation supporting bereaved family members. Through lots of advocacy and hard work I established its first adult bereaved sibling support group in April 2008. I subsequently also became the siblings representative on their council for a 2 year period.

Society in general just doesn’t recognise adult sibling grief. I think part of the reason is that people are surprised to know that my brother and I were very close and I miss him dreadfully. As adults we sometimes have antagonistic relationships with our siblings and there is this perception that adult siblings aren’t as close as they were when they were younger. This is not always the case. Through my group I have met many adult siblings who had positive and loving relationships with their siblings and who feel the same way I do.

I don’t know why sibling grief is not more widely recognised or considered in any way. Especially as an adult I feel that there are certain expectations that I am able to ‘cope’ better than I have and I feel a lot of judgement when I tell people that I still have bad days and find it hard to get out of bed and do what I have to do. People’s initial response is something like “aren’t you over it yet,” or “it has been nearly 5 years and you really need to move on.”

Of course on a superficial level I have moved on. I continue to work and eat and sleep and go through the motions of living my life. I have travelled and am currently studying and generally do everything I can to keep myself busy. Yet there is a part of me that died the day my brother died and that part of me will never be brought back to life. As much as I want to I cannot pretend that my brother hasn’t died and that his death hasn’t affected me in profound ways. I just do the best I can to get through each day the only way I know how. By the same token I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture and I am not severely depressed or suicidal. I just think it is important to acknowledge the sadness I feel and the reasons why.

The best advice I have received since my brother died is 2 very simple things. A good friend of mine in America wrote to me in the days after my brother’s death and she said to me that all I needed to do was to put one foot in front of the other and to try to keep walking – left foot/ right foot/ left foot/ right foot etc. I didn’t need to do anything more than that in the early days. That took an amazing amount of effort in itself but was something I could relate to.

The other piece of advice I received was to remember to breathe. As simple as it sounds it was something I would often forget to do. When things are so overwhelming and I feel as if I can’t possibly go on and the pain and grief is unbearable all I have to do is simply remember to breathe. Just breathe.

So as simple as it sounds and for whatever it is worth, that has become my mantra now and I remind myself of it on a daily basis – remember to put one foot in front of the other and to breathe whilst I am doing it!

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I dont have any questions to pose at the end of this. I just think that its important to sit with the words. Thanks M x

No other explanations…a TSIB interview

 

I asked a good friend who I met through my own space between, that being my passion about my work and me as a person, if they would be interested in chatting on here. We clicked the first time we met over the phone, he was calm and measured and unflappable. The opposite of me. Part of the reason for asking him to talk was I was to see how he dealt with the intersection of life and loss when you deal with it everyday at work. At some times in my life I haven’t been very good at juggling the two things. I can remember my life falling apart as a single mum and then having to back it up and tell a woman her son had died. Ill always remember another social worky buddy of mine who looked out for me that weekend when I thought the weight of the world would literally crush me.

Ive split this interview over two posts…I wanted people to sit with the honesty thats spoken here. I wanted people to give it the respect and time it needs, to honour someone who has put their heart on the page and shared the darkness and light.

Grab a seat, eat some of that leftover Easter fare and learn something about those people whose job it is to step in at bad times in life. His backstory is amazing…

 

So M…tell me about you?

My name is Emmanuel and I’m in my mid-30’s. I have a degree in social work and I’m currently employed as a counsellor. I am the oldest of 3 boys from an Australian-Greek family. From the age of 14 I knew I wanted to be a counsellor of some sort and am grateful to have found work I am passionate about. My family is typical in many ways and yet sometimes it feel as if there has been a dark cloud hanging over my family for many years.

My father died when I was 3 in quite traumatic circumstances. He was killed in a workplace accident. He was a painter by trade and fell off a ladder from the roof of a 3-storey building. As he fell he landed with the paintbrush handle going through his eye. He was taken to hospital and they operated to remove the paintbrush but he was declared brain dead. He was on life support for 3 days and then died when he stopped breathing of his own accord. He was 27 when he died. To this day I have not heard of anyone else dying in this way and I guess it is one of those things where you all you can say is that it was a freak accident and there really is no other explanation.

My mother remarried when I was 7 and my brother Theo was 5. They subsequently had a child together (my brother Peter). Growing up I felt as if I had to keep my thoughts and feelings about my father a secret, as he was never openly discussed in my home or by my extended family. Even now that I am an adult no one really talks about him and no one mentions his name. I acknowledge his birthday each year alone and the anniversary of his death too. No one rings me or texts me to see if I am okay. Other than my mother I really have no one to share these feelings with. I guess people think that given I have had a substitute dad all these years there is no point talking about or remembering the real one.

My brother Theo had contracted meningitis as a baby and was left hemiplegic (which basically means one side of his body was paralysed). He was subsequently diagnosed with epilepsy when he was 19. The doctors told us there was a direct link to his childhood meningitis and the brain trauma he had suffered. Over the next 8 years we supported him the only way we knew how – by loving him and giving him the space he needed to live his life with this affliction. I’d like to think that I understood as best as I could what it must have been like for him but I suspect I really had no idea. Theo’s seizures were what they call tonic-clonic and he would have an epileptic fit every 6-8 week’s.

Initially it was well controlled with medication, but over time the medication only contained the illness. His doctors had warned us that if he had a seizure that was severe enough it might kill him, but we didn’t really believe it and we never thought that it might happen. Sadly we were wrong. On 28 June 2007 Theo had a seizure and never woke up. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest, which had been induced by hypoxia to the brain following the seizure. Theo was 27 when he died, the same age my father had been and the irony of this is never far from my thoughts.

In thinking about your life what is your space in between?

I guess for me everything boils down to a life before my brother died and my life since he died. My space in between would be the delicate balance I have of continuing my relationship with my brother even though he is no longer with us in the physical sense, and trying not to allow his death to overwhelm and consume me.

I think also my space in between is the space where I can be completely honest with my feelings and emotions surrounding my brother’s death and the fact that I think about him every day and miss him dreadfully, versus the space where I am expected to put one foot in front of the other and get on with my life and continue to try and find joy and happiness when a lot of the time all I feel is sadness and despair.

Grief is such an individual thing and the intensity and rawness of it is something that you can never fully be prepared for. Even though I had lived the majority of my life with my father’s death, I was completely blindsided and torn to pieces when my brother died. The unresolved grief I felt for my father also manifested itself following my brother’s death and this has been difficult to cope with at times.

Space and time are such strange creatures. When Theo first died I remembered time dragging by so slowly. Everything related to time seemed to be out of balance. I wasn’t sleeping properly. I didn’t eat for about 2 week’s. I was living off coffee and cigarettes literally feeling as if I was slowly losing my mind and was convinced that I was going crazy. My senses were affected in the strangest ways. Everything seemed louder and noisier. Things smelt more powerfully and I felt completely disconnected from the world. It was as if time stood still, and yet all around me life continued to go on. I just didn’t feel as if I was part of it.

Now I can hardly believe it has been nearly 5 years since my brother died. That is my current reality and yet how can that possibly be? It honestly feels as if it happened yesterday. When you have moments when you look around you and realise it is 2012 and not 2007 anymore, you start to panic for a minute. You start to wonder about all sorts of things. What have I done with my life since my brother died? How have I managed to get by? More importantly how could I have lived this time without him? Am I honouring his life and memory with the choices I am making today?

The answer is I don’t really know sometimes. All I know is that now my space in between is a constant merry-go-round. It is a rollercoaster ride that never ends and I am on a journey that I will need to navigate as best as I can with the resources that I have at my disposal.

 

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The second half of the interview will be up tomorrow….I think that multiple losses, regardless of how far apart they are, are ones that we dont understand. As a society we are not accustomed to the ambiguity of loss, we don’t necessarily understand the impact of each loss – I think when concurrent losses happen they can be viewed in unison and as direct impacts on each other.

I also wanted to say that Im always so amazed that people are so open and willing to share their piece of the world with me. If any of the content in any of my interviews are confronting please visit the Your Space In Between page for details of support services.

Has anyone dealt with multiple losses…how did you survive. Did time speed up or did it feel like the second hand on the clock was ticking so loudly that it was deafening?

The backstory

image from here

I was reading an article while my boy slept on the backstory authors have in the process of writing a book. The little pieces that get you to the point where you are ready to begin the story-telling.

I can remember a few months back when I talked about people’s little bio’s. The little snippets of themselves they give in three sentences or less when they meet someone new. Im thinking of starting a new one as I discovered this week that someone typed into google ‘can a baby be born in space’ and found my blog. Astronaut is the new addition to my bio.

Both blogging and life often start with a backstory. A reason to explain where you are, how you arrived here and what you’ve got to say about it. I notice that most of the time when people start a blog its born out of something that happened to them that shapes them into the writer they are today. Some of the backstories come from places of trauma and sadness, of the need to overcome adversity or just an attempt to make meaning from their loss. Sometimes in the sharing of the backstory the unravelling of what brought them to that moment becomes clearer.

I was having a text chat with an old friend (because who has time to actually speak on the phone??) and we were talking about the over-sharing phenomenon that happens to certain people. Having a social work degree doesnt always extend to after business hours but the listening skills you develop mean that if someone is going to make a graphic disclosure about their backstory at the park, at the dinner party or waiting in line at the supermarket its going to be us. I dont have the heart to stop people even when Im late or tired or all full of other peoples stories. The backstory share is the challange of a kind face Im told.

I think when stuff happens that make life more difficult we tend to get frozen to that time. Its as if our lives become the before and then the after and the space in between becomes the material for the backstory that impacts on the stories we are telling now.

Does your backstory impact on the one you’re telling now? Do you share it with other people?

 

eulogies in the shower

 

My sanctuary is the shower…I can burn myself with the hottest water, lean against the tiles and do all of the thinking I need to do (usually with the light off which drives my husband bonkers). When I worked as a counsellor I used to say to the mums that were worried about puffy, sobbing eyes that they should focus on doing all their crying in the shower because a) no one could hear you b) if you splashed your face with cold water the bags under your eyes would vanish and c) it  might be the only time you legitimately get to yourself everyday. People loved this idea, I seriously thought I should do a community service announcement it was like I was a beauty consultant and grief counsellor all rolled into one big dash of red hair.

Edenland posted a piece the other week about your funeral song. The song you envisaged that would be played when people came to celebrate your life….now before I explain my idea Id just like to state that I have no wish to harm anyone. Just saying it. You never know whose reading your blog. Do you?

I confess that when Im in the shower some of the thinking I do is about funerals. Not about my funeral but about people that have left a scar on my soul. I think about what would happen if they werent around, how I’d react, if Id sob, or look blank or just silently give a little thanks to the man upstairs. I think about the chic black dress Id wear, with big sunglasses that covered most of my face, hell in some daydreams Im wearing gloves and carrying a little clutch (maybe I get this daydream confused with the one where I am Audrey Hepburn??). The key to my daydream is the eulogy…Im a big one for speeches. I loved talking at my wedding, I made sure I weaved my story around the central figures in my life slowly ending up at my daughter and then my lovely husband sitting in front of me. Anyways…back to the eulogy (which should never be confused with a wedding speech)

I usually craft the speech with some background music, a bit of coldplay ‘fix you’ or Adele ‘someone like you’ and then I begin. I pay particular attention on the purpose of the talk – a way to capture the true essence of the person, the highlights, the lowlights and all the spaces in between. I stay strong, I don’t cry, I keep eye contact with the (imaginery) people in the congregation and I tell the truth because when in your life can you truly tell the truth about someone? When they’re gone you can speak with integrity and honesty and without fear of retribution or anger…

The end of the song, the end of the speech or the end of the hot water usually finishes my daydream…I remembered thinking that this was an odd way to view trauma and upset in your life but in talking to close friends the gentle art of a good meander through your mind (in the safety of your own bathroom) is good for the soul and good for a bit of truth telling – well it is for me…

The Kings (and cherubs)

Some times I just dont get it. And by it I mean life. I dont understand why some people have to face so many heartaches and so many challenges. I was reading Naomi’s blog the other day and noticed a few people talking about Lisa King, so I jumped over to her blog and was struck by the beautiful picture of her with her husband and her four kids on the beach. I used to work with families who had littlies with disabilities – Id help out during arsenic hour with cleaning and dinner and baths and books. It was probably the most useful two hours of my day. Having kids of my own makes me remember those little families even more because my kids are healthy and well and yet I still struggle some days.

Lisa lost her husband Aaron last week, four months after she lost her 10 year old son Noah. In the blink of an eye he was gone and she has been writing and I guess wrestling with the reality of that moment in time ever since. She takes beautiful photos and has been recording the time since Aaron died for both herself and her three boys. One of the images was of her holding her husbands hand during her last visit to the funeral home the day before the service. I wept as I read her thoughts and I wondered how after years of parenting kids together how she would curl up in bed at night without the warmth of her husband beside her.

Naomi put out a call to other people who read her blog as so many wanted to help but didnt know how…in the week of collecting, the figure has skyrocketed showing that the urge we all have to help is so strong.

I often wonder when stuff happens how is the best way to help, the money, the thoughts, the food…they all help in some ways but I guess that stirring inside us to cry tears for people we will never meet is the most amazing part because it shows that you dont have to live next door to create a sense of community – caring can be done from afar.

Jump over here if you want to donate but also send your thoughts – it could happen to anyone, but how sad that it had to happen to her, again.

cracks through to light…

I’d been following Kristian’s blog since I saw that snippet of his life on a big American TV show. I was impressed with his honesty , his integrity and his capacity to put into words what love meant for him.

It was with great sadness that I saw a little post on twitter the other night saying that he had slowly slipped away. I went back to his blog that I had been reading and was really struck by what a fast decline there had been in his condition – only a few short months ago he was talking about his hopes for the future but probably the most difficult post to read was how he was slowly answering his children’s questions. I kept wondering after I saw that little blip on twitter what his boys must be thinking and how they could slowly be sitting with that first layer of sadness hearing that their dad was now gone.

I did some creative writing prompts early on in my blog career (well September). This one played heavily on my mind when I read about answering stuff. It also played on my senses when I thought back to last week and the struggle I had in explaining how unfair life can be to my beautiful girl. I watched her struggle with the rawness of truth, the shitiness of how other people’s behaviours can impact the very core of you and how loss can be exaggerated at different times. Some of the year we happily skip about not noticing what is absent and then at certain times loss knocks at your day and you just cant turn it away. Difficult concepts to explain to little people.

I got an email from a research fellow this morning asking for some thoughts about how young people live with the loss of a missing person and I pointed out that there was so little (well nothing) written about it but that many moons ago when I had sat with some kids I did notice that no one should fear saying “I just don’t know’. It doesn’t provide the answers to any of life’s questions but it does give a response that is honest, respectful of the child’s need to know and the starter of a conversation that might lead to more uncovering of layers as time goes by. It provided an opening line to a very long dialogue.

Parenting in happy and sad times probably teaches me more about life, resilience and moving on than any book I could ever open.

Vale Kristian Anderson

 

Controlling the uncontrollable

Yes I know thats an oxymoron…

I read a lot of blogs and articles about weight loss and being the best you can be (in a non Oprah sense)…its just a topic thats interests me – places like Sarah Wilson, Diminishing Lucy and even the WW FB page let me dip my toe into the world of food where the world of food makes you feel and look better.

When working with people experiencing sudden and traumatic life changes, or even trauma’s thats creep up over a period of time, its fair to say that whatever brochures or pamphlets may to be thrust into hands in those moments will have a looking after yourself  list attached. A few centuries ago when I was working as a social worker I scoffed at the inclusion of eating healthily on these lists. I kept thinking that people had enough on their plate without some bleeding heart telling them what to eat and what to do with their ‘me’ time. I just thought it was about surviving anyway you knew how (and if that meant scoffing chocolate secretly in the pantry then so be it).

But then a few years back I joined WW – it was scary and confronting and exhilarating all at the same time. I found that in the midst of my uncontrollable life controlling what I put in my mouth made me feel strong and powerful and in return I had the added bonus of feeling better – I slept better, I felt more comfortable in my own skin and I actually stopped and looked at myself rather than slinking away from the puffy reflection that had greeted me for a fair few years before that.

Part of getting older, being exposed to people’s intimate life experiences and actually feeling good about me made me rethink those scoffing moments when I read or write self help literature for people suffering a loss. Thinking about what you eat is just an extension of looking after yourself and in the midst of chaos and trauma maybe thats the one thing that can be controlled.

Can food one of the controllable parts of our life…what are some of the others?