Writing

Can grief break your heart?

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Grief actually does have physical effects on your body which can be severe. Have you had your heart race through the night leaving you exhausted when you wake in the morning? Has your whole body ached? Do you barely have enough energy to get around? Have you had unexplained headaches? Has eating become a challenge, or does just the thought of eating make you nauseas? Is your blood pressure high? All of these symptoms are common especially in early grief.

Studies have shown physical reactions your body can have to grief, each of them causing lots of symptoms. Inflammation is your body’s attempt to dealing with things that harm it. When your body gets inflamed during grief, it can worsen health issues you are already dealing with or it can cause new ones.  This inflammation can affect your immune system which can lead to infections. You may develop high blood pressure or a racing pulse. All of these issues require medical attention. They may lead to PTSD, which my doctor told me I was dealing with. Or they may lead to something called Broken Heart Syndrome where intense stress leads to your heart becoming physically weak.

The message here is to take care of yourself. Here are a few things you can do.

  • Eat wisely. I know eating may be the last thing on your mind, but your body needs the strength and energy food provides. For me, I had a really hard time eating at all and lost much weight after each husband died. This led to low energy. I have also known many widows who gained lots of weight, using food as a comfort. This also doesn’t you’re your energy level and can lead to many other physical problems. The key here is good choices both in what you eat and the amount of what you eat.
  • Move your body. Exercise is likely to be the last thing on your mind, but just sitting can be deadly. Do something you really like. Walking, swimming, dancing, and running are all good. As is yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong. There are lots of good videos online that you can watch and move along with.
  • Sleep can be tricky in grief. Often you either want to not stop sleeping or get out of bed, or you can’t seem to fall asleep no matter what you do. Figure out what works best for you and aim for 8 hours of sleep for every 24. I couldn’t sleep for a long while after Jacques died and finally got a prescription from my doctor. I ended up taking it way too long, not realizing that was a problem. Stopping taking it was hard at that point, but I did. Please be careful if you do try taking something. And be sure to be clear with your doctor how long you should take it.
  • Talk to someone. And talk about whatever you want to whether it be the story of your loved one’s transition or the flowers in your garden. Talking can be hard, but it can help so much to get things out instead of bottling them up inside. If you don’t feel like talking to a person, write. Write and email, text, or letter. Or write in your journal. Expressing what you are feeling helps take the pressure off. And don’t hesitate to go to a counselor if you feel you want to. Or you can join a grief group like the private ones I offer online where you can meet new friends virtually.

Amy Davis offers this great advice: “Lean into it. You only get to grieve your loved one once. Don’t spend the whole time trying to distract yourself or push it down. It does go away eventually, and you will miss feeling that connected to that person again. And if you feel like your whole life has fallen apart, that’s fine! It totally has. Now you get to decide how to put yourself back together. Be creative. There’s new life to be lived all around you.”

As I always say, live in the moment. Focus only on what you are dealing with in any moment. And be sure to love yourself in the process.

What Would You Do?

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Do you have times when you drift into thinking that you want to go back to the way it was when you were with your loved one? You think of conversations, of things you loved to do together? I know I do this sometimes, but I always come back to knowing that I can’t go back, that things will never be the same. And at times that brings tears or longing, yet I know I can’t stay there.  It doesn’t serve me to dwell on what was or what might have been, so I have found a way to help me through.

We did lots together and talked about other things we would do together some day. I decided to honor him by honoring those things.  I started by making a list of things we loved to do together that I want to keep a part of my life. Then I added things I would do on my own that he would have supported me in and loved to see me do. Here’s my list.

Things we did together that I continue to do now:

  • We had a daily spiritual practice. We would meditate, write in our journals, read to each other, say our intentions and affirmations, and share a joy we each had the day before. I don’t let a day go by without continuing to do this, most often joined now by my dear neighbor Robin.
  • We loved taking good care of our hone and garden. I continue this by planting and harvesting vegetables, tending to my flowers and fruit trees, and being sure my home is clean and well maintained.
  • We loved to be surrounded by art, so I am continuing to support artists by purchasing works that inspire me. And I create artwork of my own in the studio that Ron had built for me. I do drawings, painting, and sculptures. I even made new pillows for my couch yesterday.
  • Ron was so thrilled when I first started going to Soul Sisters Retreats. And I am so glad. I have made lifelong friends, met so many people who inspired me, and deepened my spirituality.
  • Ron loved mentoring people through their projects and dreams, so I do this too. I’ve been having deep conversations with people about what to do with their lives no that things are so different. I love to brainstorm, like we used to, to come up with ideas and get to watch them develop.

I have also created new things to do that honor him.  I have written a book to help others through the grieving process called Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief which is in the process of being published, and I have created support groups to write together through our grief and to set intentions.

As I look at all of these things, I see that I am honoring Ron and inspired by him.  Try making a list of the things you would like to do that are inspired by your loved one that will keep their memory with you while allowing you to blossom on your own. I would love to read you list or hear about what you do!

Stay well!

 

The picture is one of my drawings.

Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief

Kale and Caramel and Lily

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My good friend was talking a walk (a few weeks ago when we could) when she ran into a friend on her way. Walking on Maui is such a wonderful experience as everything is verdant, tropical, and fresh, and the trades winds are gently blowing. Gazing across the water to other islands is breathtaking. Encountering a friend is more the norm than the exception. This morning, Robin ran into Lily Diamond, blogger, author, and natural beauty. In catching up, Lily told Robin about the cookbook she wrote in dealing with her grief for her mother. I was fascinated by what Robin told me about Lily, so I went to her website and bought her cookbook: Kale and Caramel.

Lily moved to Maui when she was two and lived here until she went off to Yale for college. Her family lived immersed in the natural lifestyle of the island.  Her mother, an herbalist and aromatherapist, raised Lily by teaching her a love of nature and living, spending time in long walks learning all about the plants they encountered. Lily fully embraces all five senses in how she lives with aroma, sight, touch, sound, all as important as flavor. After Lily graduated from college, her mother was diagnosed with cancer and she returned to Maui to help her father care for her.

In dealing with her grief after her mother died, Lily wrote a beautiful cookbook sharing her mother’s healing teaching of the synthesis of flowers and herbs with food to nourish us inside and out. Kale and Caramel is gorgeous. Both reading the book and experiencing the beauty of the pictures makes your mouth water and your heart soften.  In her book, she says:

“It is said that the mind will only truly change when it grows so weary of itself it cannot stand to repeat its machinations even one more moment. And so it was with me. The heavier the grief weighed on me, the more I wanted to be free. For years, I let grief subsume me in its shadowy net, allowed feeling to run through me like water.”

Finally, “What came when I stopped long was being, pure and wild. Being with food that nourished me. Being with plants and flowers that healed by virtue of their very existence, their wildness. Being, no matter how much my heart hurt.”

Kale and Caramel is a cookbook I actually read. I feel my body relax and my breathing slow as I give in to its beauty and life, inspiring me to only eat what serves me, to smell what enlivens or relaxes me, and to live my very best life. Lily celebrates her mother as well as what she learned from her. I highly recommend that go to her website, read her blog, and enjoy her cookbook.

I celebrated by husbands by writing my book, Loving and Living Your Way Through grief. What can you do to create lasting memories of the best qualities of your loved one? Explore your creativity and see what you are inspired to do, then create that tribute, whatever it may be.  I would love for you to share your journey on your way.

 

Kale and Caramel

National Haiku Day May 17, 2020

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In the Writing Through Grief group I facilitate on Maui, one of our favorite exercises is writing Haiku Poetry.  I first learned to write Haiku in a writing class in college and fell in love with the form years ago. The form is so simple that anyone can write it and easily express thought concisely.

Basically, Haiku poetry is written in 3 lines. The first and third lines have 5 syllables and the middle line has 7 syllables. Here are some examples:

 

no creatures better

not men nor flies – all are one

each one lives and dies

by William Blake

 

I write, erase, rewrite

Erase again, and then

A poppy blooms.

by Katsushika Hokusai

 

Calm as a river

Tranquility in my heart

Blue summer skies reign.
by Paul Holmes

 

Spring is in the air

Flowers are blooming sky high

Children are laughing

by Kaitlyn Guenther

 

In silence, alone,

I feel my heart and wonder

at the miracle.

https://spot.colorado.edu/~downton/lifegardening/life.htm

 

The Sun’s warm caress,

Gently touching our faces,

While we now cannot.

by Madeline Bauserman, Washington

 

Such peace and beauty

Grateful for my distant friends

Our world is changing

By Emily Thiroux Threatt

 

As people are looking for things to do during this time we are spending at home, writing Haiku can be an entertaining project that can even become meaningful to you. My grief writers have discovered they can express things in Haiku that they weren’t able to get out any other way.  We are even collecting Haikus written by group members to publish our own little book.

The University of Buffalo created a project to spark creativity for those at home now. You can read about it here. They encourage Haiku writers to post on Instagram where the hashtag #haiku already has 1.2M posts! They want you to post your Haikus along with art that represents them, preferably art you do to make it an especially creative project. I posted one with one of my photographs.

http://www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/stories/2020/04/haiku-project.html

 

Another interesting project is being done in collaboration between the Orange County Museum of Art and sound artist Alan Nakagawa. “Dubbed “Social Distancing, Haiku and You,” the project asks participants to write and digitally record haikus inspired by their own personal experiences during the pandemic. Upon receiving the digital recordings, Nakagawa will use Pro Tools software to create a sound collage that interweaves the multitude of voices into a single composition.” You can even create and submit your Haikus to by included.  The deadline is April 16th. More information is in the Smithsonian article. His composition will be released April 23.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sound-artist-asking-people-record-covid-19-haikus-180974642/

 

I encourage you to write some Haikus yourself.  In honor of National Haiku Day, I am offering my grief Haiku writing class for free here: https://www.reclaimingyourjoywithemily.com/offers/VCqfDijR

I would love for you to post your Haikus in the comments below so that we can all share. I can’t wait to read what you write!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three Things

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I’ve always been told that things come in threes, and that seems to be so.  When
I woke up this morning at the start of this new decade. I was thinking about what I had done last year that brought me joy, and I thought of three things.  That led me to think about what I am doing right now that brings me joy, and again, three things popped into my mind. So, I thought, what will my three things be for this year? And, you guessed it, three more things!

In 2019, I finished writing the manuscript for my book, Reclaiming Your Joy After Loss.  This project took me about a year to complete and was a major life changing activity for me.  In writing it, I worked through my own grief while discovering how I could help others do the same.  I also took a life changing trip to Bali traveling by myself.  I had several challenges in actually traveling to get there and back, but I handled them all, and I was deeply inspired by Bali: the people, their focus on family, their art, their lack of materialism, the way they worship, and the beauty. And the third thing was teaching 90 online university students using a new course delivery platform. I have taught online since the early 1990’s and love it, but this was my best semester yet.  This showed me how wonderful it is to try new things and find better ways to relate to my students.

My present three things are the joy I have found in opening my home to others by hosting writing workshops, hosting an intention setting circle, hosting a weekly produce share, and hosting parties with my friends to celebrate.  I also have discovered the joy of drawing, something I always thought I couldn’t do.  Now I love to draw. And my third thing is the joy in taking care of myself.  I love to work out with my trainer, take daily walks, do water aerobics at the pool, and eat a healthy vegetarian diet.  Finding new recipes is always fun, and I love to discover yummy vegan recipes.

Recognizing how good my life has been and is, I am now setting my intention for my future. Soon I will find the perfect publisher for my book and be helping thousands of people find ways to bring joy into their lives. I will greatly expand the number of friends I have and serve. And, I am open to new experiences whatever they may be. I don’t necessarily need to know what the experiences will be. I am just ready to go where my heart leads me.

What are your three things?  What was wonderful about 2019? What is wonderful about right now? And what does your future have in store for you?  I encourage you to write all this in your journal.  Writing things down somehow solidifies their truth and reminds you of all the joy you actually have. I’d love to hear what you discover!

 

Click here to sign up for my Writing Through Grief class.

Change Your World!

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I read a short book today named A Pocket Guide to Gratitude by one of our Reclaiming Your Joy After Loss group members, Karen Schaal.  It reminded me of my journey with gratitude that I thought I will share with you. Reflecting now, I can see clearly the division in my life from before I really started practicing gratitude to when I adopted a practice of focusing on gratitude every day.

My life was good. I was married to Jacques, a kind, brilliant, loving man, was involved in my community, and I loved what I was doing with my life. Then I had the opportunity to support him through the last two years of his life. Then I was alone. My attitude was negative. I was lonely. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I mostly felt sorry for me. None of that was helping me at all, but I didn’t see it at the time. I was inspired to write a list of things I was grateful for after watching the move The Secret. I was hesitant at first with my negative attitude trying to convince me I didn’t have anything to be grateful for. Surprisingly, I discovered I had lots to be grateful for. The more items I wrote on my list, the more grateful I became, and the more things I thought of to be grateful for.

Soon I realized that I was thanking people all the time. I was smiling more than I had in years, and my attitude had mostly switched to positive. I did learn to pay attention when I would automatically react with a knee-jerk negative thought, but as I paid attention to this, it happened less and less. I have continued my gratitude practice for 12 years now and it grows stronger all the time. Reading that book today, it really hit me that I am such a different person than I was before. I focus on the good, on reaching out, and on being grateful for every moment making every moment something to be grateful for.

Recognizing what you are grateful for can’t help but make you smile. And all those smiles bring so much positivity into your life. I encourage you to focus on what you are grateful in your life. One way you can do this is by “Flipping the script.” What I mean by this is to notice when you start drifting into negativity. For instance, you might say “I have nothing to be grateful for since my loved one died, and I am alone.” Yes, that is sad, but you can find something positive by saying, “I am grateful for all the years, the moments I had with my loved one.” Or “I am grateful for the wonderful conversations we had.” Thinking those thoughts with a positive attitude can bring you a smile. And you will discover things to actively do to bring more smiles based on those thoughts. You could invite a friend for a cup of tea or glass of wine and have a lovely conversation. Or you could spend some time with a friend or family member doing something that brings you both joy.

You can feel so much better when you focus on all the good in your life instead of on the negative. I encourage you to write down 5 things you are grateful for right now in this moment. Then see how good it feels. Then keep up the practice. You’ll be so glad you do!

 

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