Stress Management

The connection between mind and body has been only partially established. That is, we are aware of the effects that the body has on the mnd. We are clear that we can influence the functioning of our thoughts and emotions through physical interventions such as surgery, and pharmaceuticals. However, we are often unaware that the mind can influence what goes on in the body. Grief may be caused by stressors, feeling states, emotional strain or intensity, and the way we perceive things or the way we think. It is essential to establish the mind-body connection by actually experiencing it.

Grief Poem

Grief

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what's left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside,
and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again.
I am not afraid. She has been here before
and now I can recognize her gait
as she approaches the house.
Some nights, when I know she's coming,
I unlock the door, lie down on my back,
and count her steps
from the street to the porch.
Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,
tells me to write down
everyone I have ever known,
and we separate them between the living and the dead
so she can pick each name at random.
I play her favorite Willie Nelson album
because she misses Texas
but I don't ask why.
She hums a little,
the way my brother does when he gardens.
We sit for an hour
while she tells me how unreasonable I've been,
crying in the checkout line,
refusing to eat, refusing to shower,
all the smoking and all the drinking.
Eventually she puts one of her heavy
purple arms around me, leans
her head against mine,
and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.
So I tell her,
things are feeling romantic.
She pulls another name, this time
from the dead,
and turns to me in that way that parents do
so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.
Romantic, she says,
reading the name out loud, slowly,
so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel
wrapping around the bones like new muscle,
the sound of that person's body
and how reckless it is,
how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.

Matthew Dickman

Conquering Doubt and Fear

Doubt and fear are two of the most negative elements in the human psyche. The end result of these two elements is immobility, paralysis. We cannot take a step either physically or mentally. Both the mind and body can be frozen with fear and doubt. Whatever we do to help ourselves surmount our grief (psychic pain), we must deal with these negativities. We cannot expect ourselves to be hopeful, or to have faith in moving forward, when doubt and fear are not handled. We are all aware of the placebo effect or of the increased speed of healing when optimism and hope are present. Thus when we believe that we can get better, there is a much better probability that we will, in fact, be successful.

You Were Encamped...

You were encamped in the living room yesterday
And had mined the hall.
Every step exploded a memory.
Whether sour or sweet
They took my knees out each time.

There were simply no choices
I had to engage with you all day
Talking, pleading, recriminating
Laughing like a lunatic.
And afterward just alone.

Today, I stand in the hall watching
The ghost of an old cat arch against the corner
I know you are there
Rhyming my name with an exhalation of air
I feel on my neck.

For the first time, I turn back to the kitchen
Away from you,
Away from somewhere you are
Somewhere...
I will apologize again and again.

KC Conway

Keeping a Grief Journal

Keeping a personal grief journal can help you process and sort out your thoughts, feelings, memories, images, sensations, and experiences. As you continue to write, you may begin to gain clarity of where you have been, where you are now, and where you want to be in the future. This writing activity helps you track your own journey through grief. Your journal is private. You are the only one who needs to read it, unless you want to share it with others.

Directions

Get a nice notebook. Give yourself as many pages as you think you’ll need for the following sections (these are suggestions and you might come up with some of your own):

1. The meaning of loss
2. A significant childhood loss
3. A significant loss in adolescence
4. A significant loss in adulthood
5. Hurting
6. Helping
7. Healing
8. Needs
9. Puzzles
10. Now
11. Beyond now

The remainder of the journal will be for periodic entries.

Under the 11 headings do the following:

1. The meaning of loss: write down your thoughts about loss as a universal and personal experience (i.e., all of us go through loss at some point in life, but we each do so in unique ways). Also, if the experience of loss means something to you, what is that?

2. Signifcant loss(es) in childhood: write down how you felt when you had a loss as a child and how you feel now about that loss. What made it hard? What made it bearable? What made it easy? What are the most striking parts of your loss? In what ways do you feel the loss affected or changed you? Looking back, can you see any value in going through your loss? If so, what is it? If not, then say so.

3. Significant loss(es) in adolescence: same as above except for age.

4. Significant loss(es) in adulthood: same as above except for age.

5. Hurting: write down your present loss-wounds and compare them to earlier times.

6. Helping: write down what has helped you cope with or heal your wounds.

7. Healing: write down your resources and healings after past loss(es). How are you healing your current grief?

8. Needs: What are your current needs? What would help you be self-respecting and caring of yourself now?

9. Puzzles: What curiosities and unanswered questions do you have about your loss(es)?

10. Now: How do you currently relate to your loss(es)? What do you notice about your present moment experience of being here and living with a history of loss(es)?

11. Beyond now: write down your fantasies and dreams about the future. What plans do you have for recovering newness and meaning in your life again?

Periodic entries: set up a private time and place for you to record your entries during the next few months. Your journal writing schedule can be daily or weekly with a minimum writing time of 20 minutes. Often people find it helpful to write down their feelings about the day. It is good at the end of the day to let yourself "simmer" a bit. Then take some time to re-member what happened and how you felt. Some days you may have several feelings to write about. Other days, one feeling may predominate. Ask yourself what it is like to experience that feeling. Was it unsettling, frightening, comforting, pleasant, painful? Did the feeling last a long time or was it short-lived? Was it familiar or unfamiliar? How did the feeling get expressed? Did you cry, laugh, shout, distract yourself, bottle it up? Was the feeling so upsetting that you refused to experience it? If nothing comes to mind, then you may need to begin by writing how it feels to sit at this moment trying to write. Be patient and the feelings will come.

Many people who begin a journal in a time of grief find that they develop an inner capacity to listen more and more closely and compassionately to themselves and others.

Grief Poem

Sometimes poetry is the only rope bridge we can find to keep moving into and through our grief. This blessing-poem by John O'Donahue captures many of the elements of what it feels like in the mind, body, and soul to lose a loved one. Because it is also a blessing, it reminds us of renewal and healing as we move into the future a changing person.

Beannacht
("Blessing")

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(Echoes of Memory)

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Finality

Our experience of grief is a natural healing process. In order for it to begin its healing we must be willing to learn to tolerate a wide range of intense emotions. This Wordsworth poem captures the breadth and depth of emotions emanating from grief. We hear how the poet moves, sometimes plummets from joy to deep sorrow in recognition of his loss. Recognition of the finality of death is perhaps the hardest part of the grieving process. Our denial system begins to dissipate and the reality of impermanence moves into high relief. We are pinned down by the sheer concrete reality that our loved one is gone. Perhaps the most salient and lasting dimension of the grief process is our yearning to be reconnected with our loved one. Yet, as we do learn to tolerate these powerful emotions, we find that they come and go as waves on the ocean. And we can bring ourselves to experience—with growing compassion for ourselves—the most painful emotions. Thus, as the initial necessary numbness of grief wears off and the finality of loss emerges, we may notice that our memories flow more freely. We find the memories to be alive and dynamic. Perhaps this points a way for us to begin to transform our relationship to the deceased. We can begin to contact the part of our loved one we still have inside of us. This need not be a religious or spiritual connection, but simply a powerful emotional one.

Wordsworth

SURPRISED by joy — impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport — Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind —
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.