tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24558321357377998492024-03-06T03:40:05.518-05:00Stop Thief: Don't Steal My GriefGrief. Honest comments, poetry, and stories. Grief. All aspects all kinds. Before I lost my husband on July 17, 2009 I didn't understand the depth of grief and I also didn't understand the pressure from the world to live a double life - the one where you pretend to be "okay" and the one where you are real.Jan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.comBlogger280125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-46745173116294827962021-06-06T21:08:00.001-04:002021-06-06T21:08:54.617-04:00<p><span style="color: #800180; font-size: large;"> <span style="font-family: trebuchet;">On Finding A Purpose After Someone You Love Dies</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's been a long time since I wrote ba <span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">blog post. A lot of people have been writing on Grief Speaks Out (www.Facebook.com/GriefSpeaksOut) that since someone they love died they feel dead too. Even after many years they still feel as if there is no purpose to their life. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">When my husband first died I, too, felt dead. I used to say without thinking, "We died." instead of "He died." I thought he would come get me. Then I thought I should go to him. I only stayed alive not to hurt those who love me. After about a long short time when the shock was wearing off I wondered what my purpose in life could be. My husband and I called each other our raison d'être. That is French for reason for being. If my reason for being was no longer here on Earth with me what could be my reason for being? It seemed impossible. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">I thought about my husband. I wanted to honor him in some way. I wanted people to remember him. He was a recovering alcoholic who always made himself available to other addicts and alcoholics. He ran an AA meeting and sponsored many people. I thought I could continue his work by making myself available to other grieving people. I thought if I reached one person it was enough.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">I figured out how to write this blog. After a while someone told me to start a Facebook page. I hadn't a clue how to do that, any more than I knew how to write a blog, but I figured it out. Then my Facebook page ;had so many followers a publisher asked me write a book. (Grief Day by Day: Simple Practices and Daily Guidance for Living With Loss by Jan Warner). I didn't think I could write a book, but I did. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">This morning I was interviewed by someone for a Summit on grief. I'm also going to be interviewed by someone from a local newspaper. If you Google Jan Warner and grief you come up with many different things. The person who interviewed me wanted my website. I didn't have one so Icreated a website for my book (griefdaybyday.com). I didn't know how to do that either but I figured it out. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">I am telling you all this not to brag about myself but to tell you I am an ordinary person who even 11 years after my husband's death can be pulled into the black hole of grief. I have a splendid talent for wallowing in self pity. I miss my husband every day and sometimes the loneliness for him is unbearable and yet I bear it. However, now I have many more tools for dealing with the dark side of grief. My grief at the beginning was pitch black all the way through. Now I can grieve with gratitude and joy as well as sorrow.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">A lot of magical things have happened to me in the past 11 years - things I would have hated to miss. My granddaughter was born 2 years after my husband died. I didn't know if I could love another human being. I adore her. Being a grandmother is a very special thing and I am glad she has a living grandmother to share her life with and to have adventures with. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">If you are struggling to find a purpose think of the person you love who died. What did they love? What did they do? I know people whose children took their own lives because of bullying who work to educate schools how to stop bullying. If someone loved a sport maybe a local place would have a game or a tournament in their name. Now that the pandemic is over - maybe if they loved animals you could volunteer at an animal shelter. Maybe the purpose is being a good mom or dad or a good auntie or uncle or sister or brother or grandparent or friend. (I know I've probably left out some relationships.). Maybe it's helping an elderly neighbor get food or mow their lawn. Maybe it's to write a book or paint a picture. Maybe your purpose is to learn something new or to accomplish a task.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">In some ways all my suggestions are meaningless because they come from me and not from your heart. Even in death my husband guides me. He holds my hand and pulls me forward. I have a letter from him where he writes that he is proud of me because he watches me falling down and standing up and trying again. It is my favorite letter because I still try to do that - if I fall - get up and try again. (I might take a nap first. :) )</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">So many people in this world need help. Especially with the pandemic. I have always felt if I am helping someone else I am thinking of their problems rather than mine. I was feeling more down than usual and I found a virtual class with The Wild Woman Project in Asheville, N.C.. One of the classes was on love - how to plant seeds of love but also how to give them away. I have to nurture my own ground which is rather rocky and often has poor soil but I can still plant seeds. I can then take the flowers, vegetables, and ever sturdy trees that grow from those seeds and share them with others. It can be something big but it can be as simple as saying to the person who is working at the register at the grocery store, "I love your hair." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">I know that anything extraordinary I have done is something that all others can do because I am both ordinary and damaged in many ways. My husband was a supportive healer to me when he was alive. I don't have that any more. It's why I call us grief warriors. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">I hope while you were reading this a glimmer of a purpose started shining through like the sun reappearing after a total eclipse or like the slow but beautiful cycle of the moon from dark to light. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(128, 1, 128);">You accomplish something every day just by continuing to breathe. I hope the door you find will open and there will be something interesting behind it. I want my husband's life and our love to matter more than his death. I have my hands at your back and I am walking with you - wherever we may go. With love. </span></span></p>Jan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-51124332994617884752016-10-08T15:54:00.000-04:002016-10-08T15:54:05.207-04:00What Does "How Are You?" Mean?My husband has been dead now for over seven years. That seems ridiculous to me. He is still so present in my life. I just e-mailed someone whose son died and I was talking about a movie and the e-mail came back around to how sorry I was that he will never have grandchildren and how much I miss my husband. I may not always talk about it but in the center of my heart it is as if everything leads back to the fact that my husband is dead.<br />
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When people ask me how I am - I say, "The same." They tell me I am different - that I am more alive, that I do so many things. This is true. My husband used to say, "We only have moments." I have over the years found ways to have more productive moments - more happy moments. Sometimes people say they have no joy any more. I have redefined joy. It is not any where near a permanent thing for me but it would be wrong to say I don't have joyous moments. Some of them in the present, some of them in memory. Sometimes I even feel a little lightness like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. <br />
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Grief for me is living a complex life. I have learned to let - most days - my husband's life mean more to me than his death. I take his hand (such as it is) and let him lead me. I am proud of my Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/GriefSpeaksOut) which has over a million likes and provides support to people all over the world. I'm not someone who follow through all the time but in over three years I have only missed one day and it was because I could not get internet in a hotel in of all places, Los Angeles. A woman in Uganda posted a picture of her young child who has died and told me that her mother doesn't speak English but she shows her the pictures and tells her what I say. I find that unbelievable - and yet I know many people who have found either small or large ways to create something that gives meaning to their lives because they want their loved one/s to be proud of them and to be remembered. I purposely schedule many things to do each month. I may not always want to do them - but usually when I go I have a good time. I am grateful for the friends I have made over the last seven years. Many of them new as old ones walked away - but also some of them old. <br />
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At the same time I am not "better". I have not "healed". I don't want to be fixed. I miss my husband because I love him and I believe he stills love me. I don't believe I have to let go to lead a full life. I think of an aunt of mine who was alone her entire life. She never knew the kind of love I was lucky to find. I get angry - even at him - for being alone. I wanted us to be alive together. This insane presidential election we are having in the United States - how he would have loved to discuss it with me. So many times something happens and I run down the list of people I could call and I don't call anyone because my husband is the only person I want to talk to. <br />
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Some people think there are positive and negative emotions. I don't. I am happy, sad, angry, confused, lost, found, joyous, despairing and many more things all at the same time. It's more important to me to be who I really am than to pretend things I don't feel. If I get stuck in one emotion I try to be present to what else is happening. I give myself time to feel this daily exhausting pain of loss and time to find things that give me contentment. I couldn't do that in the raw chaotic first months of grief. <br />
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How am I? Layered. No one knows how dark the dark is. They hear my laughter and think all is healed. Sometimes I remind them. They ask, "How are you?" and I say, "Great - but of course my husband is still dead." I'd rather folks acknowledge the pain and then that frees me up to have a better time. If you only see my joy and my accomplishments and do not see my pain and struggles then you do not know me. That is what I know about other grieving people - to mention the name of the people they love who have died. To talk about them. To give them the freedom to feel what they are feeling without somehow being judged. <br />
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One woman said that her grandmother had a child who died and she grieved for her daughter for 74 years. There is no time limit on grief but there is no limit on filling the empty dark void of grief with color and happy moments - when you can. When you are ready. <br />
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I'm just a normal person. This blog has been around for a while and I decided to post again partly because Google was impossible and my domain name changed from griefspeakout.com to griefspeaksout.net. But the other more important reason is to say I'm still here. I wish I could be with my husband but to me being here means I have to keep figuring out how to make being here mean something. I hope to be reunited with my husband some day. He called me Panache. I want him to say when he sees me again - "Wow!! You fell down a lot but you kept getting up and doing things. I'm so proud of you." It helps me to remember that what seems like time crawling slowly by in an unendurable way is only a blink of an eye in terms of eternity.<br />
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How am I? Might as well ask me the meaning of life. I'll tell you - but it will just be words and words sometimes don't say very much at all. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-49454605758054665022016-08-26T09:26:00.000-04:002016-08-26T09:27:43.582-04:00I wanted to let everyone know that the web link for this blog changed from griefspeaksout.com to griefspeaksout.net due to the impossibility of working with Google to renew the old domain name. I apologize for any confusion this created. It has made me look at the blog again and I see it has been over a year since I have written any new posts. I may just start writing again. I think I should after all of the trouble I went through to make sure it stayed alive. <br />
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Grief...still alive with it - sometimes with grace and panache - sometimes with falling down and not bothering to get up for a while. <br />
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With love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-5819965297365574922015-05-06T15:30:00.001-04:002015-05-06T15:30:22.901-04:00Grief: Have I Stopped Writing Blog Posts? I Don't KnowI can't tell you how many times I think of all of you who come to this blog that means so much to me. In the last few posts I have been apologizing for not writing more often. Now...even though I often think of writing - I don't seem to make time to do it. I am sorry for that. I post every day on my Facebook page Grief Speaks Out: www.Facebook.com/GriefSpeaksOut. I look for material, write, answer questions, and post seven things. I think that is taking all the energy I have for dealing with grief in a writing way. The page has over 700,000 from all around the world and some weeks reaches over a million people. It is not more important than this blog. It just became so much bigger than I ever thought it would when I was trying to figure out how to set it up and maybe get the first 100 likes. <br />
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Mother's Day is coming up and so many people are sad. Mothers whose children have died, children whose mothers have died - and also people we don't think of sometimes - women who desperately want children and can't have them. I didn't like my mother much so it's not a bad day for me - but I am conscious of how hurtful it is for many others. Then Father's Day. It seems it never stops.<br />
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Someone called me a radical griever. I like that. I haven't stopped telling people that grief is a normal process. It is not a mental illness or disorder. It didn't happen in the past. The date my husband died was July 17, 2009 but even almost 6 years later the trauma happens every day - several times a day. My life is magical in many ways but the ache I have for him, the loneliness, the pain of living without him continues. Each morning when I wake up it is a challenge to make it a day when I accomplish something - when I laugh - when I am inspired by my grief instead of deadened by it. Inspired by my grief? Yes because it measures the height of the love I have and how lucky I am to have that kind of love in my life. My favorite question to ask people is "With all the pain you are experiencing now - was it worth it?" I have never had anyone say no.<br />
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I have tried over the years to make my husband's life - and our lives together - more important to me than his death. I try to live for him and for me. I have other relationships - not romantic - I'm still wearing his wedding ring - but I do think about dating - then I don't. My relationship with my daughter is much better after therapy and my granddaughter Gwendy is already three. She is delightful. I am lucky in my friends. Especially the young ones who live in some ways in such a different world.<br />
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In my years of writing this blog there is a good compilation of things to read. It can stand on its own. A journey I never want to take. A journey I still don't want to be on. Some things have changed a lot. Some things seem to always recur. I still have days of true darkness. The fifth year was very difficult. It is exhausting to miss someone so much every day. I gave myself permission to be a sloth until Valentine's Day was over. (My series of dates, except for July, is Dec - V-day.) That worked. I hid out and isolated and found that my energy came back after taking a break. I always follow my rule of making plans so I don't spend too much time alone. <br />
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I tell people I'm not better and that is because the place that hurts doesn't heal for me. Yet the layers around it make me better in a lot of ways. That first year I was all tears and thoughts of death - feeling lost and without meaning. Then I wrote my first blog post - thinking if I reached even one person it was enough to create meaning. I had no idea I would have the ability to reach people all around the world. So many people talk about being lost. I was lost - and in some ways I still am - but I also was able to be found. I learned to let my husband guide me and to slowly regenerate myself.<br />
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A new question I ask people is if there is another relationship that is not the same - never the same - yet equally important. Being a grandmother is to me as important as being a wife. A lot of the love I shared with my husband gets shared with my granddaughter. It occurred to me that if I had no one - which some people do - have no one - that I probably would have found some volunteer work - something maybe with children. Meaning doesn't always come to us - sometimes we have to go out and search for it.<br />
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I have done what I wanted to do - and what I still work on - shifting the balance so I can have a greater number of productive and happy moments. Still haven't written the book. Still haven't gotten my body fit. I'm traveling again though - reading a little more. Sometimes it's the little things. I'm watching the last season of a British TV series - Foyle's War - that I used to watch with my husband. I remember laying in bed with him - my head on his lap - watching one of the episodes - and being angry because I fell asleep and he didn't wake me up. What comfort. What luxury. Imagine being able to fall asleep on his lap. How can a lap no longer exist? How can they keep making the series when he died so long ago. I want to share it with him - talk to him about it. Blah blah blah.<br />
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So much of grief is wanting what we can't have. My temper tantrums are just like my granddaughter's - I want I need I want I need. So - a bit of that and then - what now? I can't have that so what can I do instead? A blink of an eye this life is in terms of eternity. Hopefully when my life is over I will be dancing with my husband in what I call the great party in the sky - but if I am merely dust - that is okay too because I won't know how much I miss him any more.<br />
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I am going to Ireland at the end of the month to see friends I haven't seen in over 30 years. I'm going to be 65 next year and am thinking of changing my name. Seriously. I have always hated the name Jan - so maybe I'll be someone else. I'll never give up Warner though. I love being Mrs. Warner. I still hate checking the unexpected widow box. <br />
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I'm going to put at the end The Mourner's Bill of Rights which I always find helpful - but first a quote from Julian Barnes which I think is the best description of grief I have ever read. I am damaged, I am tarred and feathered, I am grieving. Always. But I am also laughing and loving and helping people and having adventures. It's the best thing we can do to grief - grab it and ride it - let it take us somewhere. It's like when huge waves pummel the shore - some people drown - other people surf. I think I still paddle about gasping for air - but sometimes I land in wonderful places.<br />
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Each of you is accomplishing a lot - you are breathing - you are searching - you are having one moment at a time. You are doing the hardest thing a human being can do - live without the person/pet you love more than anything. That is why I call us grief warriors. We fight a brave fight. Every minute of every day.<br />
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You don't have to let go to move on. My grief - my husband - they come with me every where I go. People say you have to start over. I'm not starting over - I'm continuing. People say you have to let go of the past. How foolish would it be to forget a rich past that makes me who I am? Living in the present means being your past and hoping for your future. This living only in the present idea is very strange to me.<br />
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It took me about four years to connect grief and gratitude. Gratitude that I am grieving instead of my husband. What a gift that was to him. Makes me angry sometimes too. I wag my finger at his picture - "You're not supposed to be dead. It's not fair!!" More importantly the gratitude is for experiencing such great love: that I love someone so much and he loves me so much that his death causes me pain. I think I'm going to be like Betty White or the Queen Mum - one of those women who live a full life but don't fall in love again -<br />
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but then - I saw Candace Bergen who so completely loved her first husband Louis Malle and then to her surprise - three years after his tragic death - fell in love again and is happily married. I know it's not just her - it's many people. Will it be me? I don't know. I don't think so...but then...but then.<br />
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We can't see around corners. I don't know what will happen tomorrow or the next day. I just have to keep on making choices about what I say and what actions to take. In my world that means time to just retreat sometimes and sleep too much and cry. I am still devastated by my husband's death. But that isn't all I am. I am a hurt grieving person, I am also someone who loves theatre and traveling and being a grandmother and a good joke and a beautiful picture. Who else am I? What else do I love? <br />
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I'm an ordinary person. Sometimes people write me and ask me if something they are feeling is normal. I am eating ice cream in my pajamas watching TV and I laugh. I laugh because it is sadly all normal. The question I ask myself is not, "Is it normal." - but "Does it serve me? Is it how I want my life to be?" Sometimes I can create change - sometimes not so much. But normal was never my strength. Anything I have done - you can do - maybe better. <br />
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My friend whose husband and only child both died was right. Grief - if you let it - doesn't go away - but it does gentle down. Life surprises you if you let it. You have to let it - and you have to notice it. I had lunch with a woman once. She said she was always sad. During lunch she told me a lot of interesting stories and was very funny. She laughed a lot. I pointed that out to her and she said - no - she was always sad. She wasn't able yet to say - part of me is always sad - but part of me is funny and interesting etc...<br />
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So it is never goodbye really - just hello in a new way. I won't say I won't write another post because you know if I do I'll post again. I won't say I will though because my life has gone in many other directions.<br />
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There's one thing you can count on - I am thinking of you with love. xo<br />
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The Julian Barnes quote (you might cry when you read it - I always do):<br />
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“You are not at first surprised. Part of love is preparing for death..Afterward comes the madness. And then the loneliness: not the spectacular solitude you had anticipated, not the interesting martyrdom...but just loneliness. You expect something almost geological-- vertigo in a shelving canyon -- but it's not like that; it's just misery as regular as a job. </div>
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What do we doctors say? I'm deeply sorry, Mrs Blank; there will of course be a period of mourning but rest assured <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">you will come out of it; two of these each evening, I would suggest; perhaps a new interst, Mrs Blank; can maintenance, formation dancing?; don't worry, six months will see you back on the roundabout; come and see me again any time; oh nurse, when she calls, just give her this repeat will you, no I don't need to see her, well it's not her that's dead is it, look on the bright side. What did she say her name was?</span></div>
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And then it happens to you. There's no glory in it. Mourning is full of time; nothing but time.... you should eat stuffed sow's heart. I might yet have to fall back on this remedy. I've tried drink, but what does that do? Drink makes you drunk, that's all it's ever been able to do. Work, they say, cures everything. It doesn't; often, it doesn't even induce tiredness: the nearest you get to it is a neurotic lethargy. And there is always time. Have some more time. Take your time. Extra time. Time on your hands.</div>
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Other people think you want to talk. 'Do you want to talk?' they ask, hinting that they won't be embarrassed if you break down. Sometimes you talk, sometimes you don't; it makes little difference. The words aren't the right ones; or rather, the right words don't exist. 'Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.' You talk, and you find the language of bereavement foolishly inadequate...</div>
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And you do come out of it, that's true. After a year, after five. But your don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.”<br />― Julian Barnes</div>
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The Mourner's Bill of Rights: </div>
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The Mourner's Bill of Rights</h1>
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by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.</div>
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Though you should reach out to others as you do the work of mourning, you should not feel obligated to accept the unhelpful responses you may receive from some people. You are the one who is grieving, and as such, you have certain "rights" no one should try to take away from you.</div>
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The following list is intended both to empower you to heal and to decide how others can and cannot help. This is not to discourage you from reaching out to others for help, but rather to assist you in distinguishing useful responses from hurtful ones.</div>
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1. You have the right to experience your own unique grief.</h4>
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No one else will grieve in exactly the same way you do. So, when you turn to others for help, don't allow them to tell what you should or should not be feeling.</div>
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2. You have the right to talk about your grief.</h4>
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Talking about your grief will help you heal. Seek out others who will allow you to talk as much as you want, as often as you want, about your grief. If at times you don't feel like talking, you also have the right to be silent.</div>
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3. You have the right to feel a multitude of emotions.</h4>
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Confusion, disorientation, fear, guilt and relief are just a few of the emotions you might feel as part of your grief journey. Others may try to tell you that feeling angry, for example, is wrong. Don't take these judgmental responses to heart. Instead, find listeners who will accept your feelings without condition.</div>
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4. You have the right to be tolerant of your physical and emotional limits.</h4>
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Your feelings of loss and sadness will probably leave you feeling fatigued. Respect what your body and mind are telling you. Get daily rest. Eat balanced meals. And don't allow others to push you into doing things you don't feel ready to do.</div>
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5. You have the right to experience "griefbursts."</h4>
<div style="background-color: #e4e8f1; color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
Sometimes, out of nowhere, a powerful surge of grief may overcome you. This can be frightening, but is normal and natural. Find someone who understands and will let you talk it out.</div>
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6. You have the right to make use of ritual.</h4>
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The funeral ritual does more than acknowledge the death of someone loved. It helps provide you with the support of caring people. More importantly, the funeral is a way for you to mourn. If others tell you the funeral or other healing rituals such as these are silly or unnecessary, don't listen.</div>
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7. You have the right to embrace your spirituality.</h4>
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If faith is a part of your life, express it in ways that seem appropriate to you. Allow yourself to be around people who understand and support your religious beliefs. If you feel angry at God, find someone to talk with who won't be critical of your feelings of hurt and abandonment.</div>
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8. You have the right to search for meaning.</h4>
<div style="background-color: #e4e8f1; color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
You may find yourself asking, "Why did he or she die? Why this way? Why now?" Some of your questions may have answers, but some may not. And watch out for the clichéd responses some people may give you. Comments like, "It was God's will" or "Think of what you have to be thankful for" are not helpful and you do not have to accept them.</div>
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9. You have the right to treasure your memories.</h4>
<div style="background-color: #e4e8f1; color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
Memories are one of the best legacies that exist after the death of someone loved. You will always remember. Instead of ignoring your memories, find others with whom you can share them.</div>
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10. You have the right to move toward your grief and heal.</h4>
<div style="background-color: #e4e8f1; color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
Reconciling your grief will not happen quickly. Remember, grief is a process, not an event. Be patient and tolerant with yourself and avoid people who are impatient and intolerant with you. Neither you nor those around you must forget that the death of someone loved changes your life forever.</div>
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Copyright 2007-2013, Center for Loss and Life Transition</div>
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Jan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-35546639809782681402015-02-10T13:35:00.000-05:002015-02-10T13:38:54.364-05:00Grief: Another Mountain Top, Another ValleyOh my blog. I don't write you often enough any more. I think of you, but I don't write enough. I'm sorry to those of you who don't do Facebook where most of my writing is now. www.Facebook.com/GriefSpeaksOut.<br />
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I have almost survived my time where the climb from the valley to the mountain top is difficult - and where I slide down into the valley much too quickly. My husband's birthday is Dec. 11th. That is when it starts. Then all the holidays. Then my birthday/wedding anniversary (for those of you who don't know - my birthday present was getting married) and then Valentine's Day. Can you believe Friday the 13th is the day before Valentine's Day? If I were superstitious....<br />
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I read a quote somewhere that you shouldn't compare yourself to another person because you know your whole life and you only know their highlight reel. That's kind of how I've been. I just seem to be back at why bother? I've been spending a lot of time in bed watching crap TV. This week I have a bad cold or the flu or something which I rather like because it gives me permission to do this without guilt. I had given myself permission anyway. To not really accomplish anything until after Valentine's Day. People who don't experience this don't understand how sometimes emotional paralysis sets in and the smallest thing seems impossible or not worth trying. So that is my valley.<br />
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My mountain tops are there too. So many times we (I) look at what I am not doing instead of what I am doing. I did still follow the rule that I can only stay indoors one day in a row. My parents became reclusive when they got older and it made them nasty and sad. I don't want to be them. I did go out with friends when I was in NYC and I did have a good time. I did plan less than I usually do. I did do things like take showers and keep breathing. Then - the main thing - the important thing - is that i truly did celebrate with my daughter and granddaughter. It didn't matter how much I wanted to snuggle into the valley - I left and chose to spend many days including these dates with my daughter and granddaughter. On those days I managed some times to actually be celebrating. I love playing with my granddaughter.<br />
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Gwendy is 3 so 64 is very old to her. So old she ask me if I was going to die. We talk about death in our family. I said - yes, some day - but hopefully not for a while. I told her that when I was dead I wouldn't be able to come back any more on the train - because I wouldn't have a body - but that I would come back with love - and would always be in her heart like she would be in mine. She is trying to figure out what her Mom calls the Great Unknown. She has had some fish go there and knows that her Mom and I have pets and people there. She asked me if my husband was imaginary! Which was interesting - people we love and talk about and can't see - are they imaginary like the pink dragon? No - because once they were alive and now they are still real - at least to me.<br />
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Gwendy said the most extraordinary thing. She asked me, "Do you miss sleeping with your Mommy?" I said, "No - I haven't slept with my Mommy for a long time - but I miss sleeping with my husband - with Grandpa Artie - a lot. I really liked sleeping with him." She said, lovingly, "You can use your imagination and pretend he is with you." I told her that is exactly what I do.<br />
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So it has been a strange time since I have last written you. Full of dead moments that I wish I no longer have - but I still do. It comforts me to know from so many people that even after 20 or 30 or more years these moments - these deep valleys - these dark places come. I miss my husband so much every day that sometimes all the energy is sapped right out of me. Especially this time of year. But I also made new memories. Went stomping through snow up over my knees with Gwendy at night with our flashlights to put out food for squirrels and birds. I want to have adventures with her. Gwendy managed to stay up until midnight on New Years Eve and the three of us made lots of noise and wore funny hats and had a group hug. We did a new thing this year - we lit candles and put out pictures of the people and pets we have loved on a table in the middle of the room on New Year's Eve so they could be with us.<br />
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I had my unhappy birthday cake. I ate the part that said unhappy. I still don't deal with my anniversary very well - but I posted about it on FB. I appreciated the people who acknowledged it.<br />
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In NYC I saw some great plays; ate some delicious dinners; had wonderful moments with friends.<br />
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People now often ask me if something they are doing or feeling is normal. It is. I remember going to a bereavement group in my first year of grieving. I hadn't changed the sheets on our bed for three months and thought that was very strange. I met someone who hadn't changed them for a year. I met someone else who never changed them - just sleeps in another room. We all do whatever we have to do to survive something that is so difficult, so challenging. Some people seem to move through grief with more ease than others - but when you see someone who does that - you do not know what is in their hearts. A lot of people go silent because it is easier. Someone called me a radical griever. I liked that. I know many people who pretend to be fine and then they tell me about their grief and their sadness.<br />
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Although it is comforting to know I am not the only one doing something - I don't ask myself if what I am doing is normal. I ask myself if it is serving me. I have a life to live. Each day. A life that I want to live fully to honor and respect my husband. Sometimes - like now - I give myself permission to collapse and wallow. I love wallowing. I'm not ashamed of it. But I also don't want the rest of my life to look like this. I haven't missed a day of posting on the Facebook page Grief Speaks Out. That's good. But if I can get my motivation back into place I have a lot I want to do. I found myself saying that I want to live for a while. Usually all I feel deep down is that I want to be with my husband. That's a big change. I don't always feel that way - but that's the challenge every day - to say - oops - I guess I'm still alive - how will I be alive? <br />
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Maybe I should build a lodge halfway down the mountain so I don't go so deep and don't have such a steep climb back up. Maybe my husband will be in the lodge and when I start to fall he will catch me and give me a boost back up. Or maybe even the middle isn't such a bad place to be.<br />
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I always tell you to take tender care of yourself. I need to learn to do the same. <br />
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Sending you much love and wishing you the courage you need every minute of ever day. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-68104014362281879802014-12-28T14:42:00.000-05:002014-12-28T14:42:50.852-05:00Grief: Another New Year Without You?I threw out a couple more of your things today. Not much. But a little. I still have your phone book. What for? <br />
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I have many things I am grateful for. Good holidays with my daughter and my granddaughter Gwendy blue eyes who turned three on December 20th. I'm going back on the 30th because after five and a half years I feel brave enough not to hide myself away. I'm preparing for this fun sharing of the new year coming in by isolating - watching crap TV - and eating too much. All those healthy options. Why don't I do the healthy options? I could be meditating, taking bubble baths, developing a taste for kale. Okay - developing a taste for kale is never going to happen. I am cleaning up and throwing away a lot of my own unnecessary stuff as well.<br />
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For some odd reason my wedding ring and my husband's wedding ring were irritating the skin on my finger so instead I have been wearing a band with three rows of tiny black diamonds and two rows of tiny white diamonds. Like my life...sparkly...but all the lovely moments are still surrounded by darkness. There is so much I have done since you died that I love, that I am proud of. I especially love my relationship with my granddaughter.<br />
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I just can't stand the though of starting another new year without you. We had many fun and loving New Year's Eves together. The last one you asked me to come upstairs with you but I was angry and I said no. I didn't know it was the last chance I had to celebrate New Year's Eve with you. I want another chance. I want another chance for so many things. I can't stand it but I will. That's what we do. Stand what we can't stand; bear what we can't bear.<br />
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I keep my husband alive in so many ways. My granddaughter talks about Grandpa Artie - even though she never met him. People all around the world know about us - about him.<br />
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I have made plans for the new year; in the new year. I am going forward - I don't have a choice. Time goes forward and drags me with it. I was thinking of e-mailing all the people I still have e-mails for who knew Artie and ask them for stories about him. Why? They might make me smile but they won't be him. He's dead. There are no new memories. Is this the year I'll try to date since I miss so much being held? I don't know. I want my husband to hold me - not some random man. Yet maybe some random man will do a good job of holding me. <br />
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I need time to feel sorry for myself. When I'm with my granddaughter I don't get much time for that. I don't even want much time then. I like playing. I like cuddling her. I love it when she says something clever or when she just looks up and smiles at me. <br />
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I'm blessed in my family and friends. I alway plan adventures for myself.<br />
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Who knows - I might even start that book I'm so good at not writing. I don't do New Year's Resolutions. I make a gratitude list - all the things that happened last year that I am grateful for. Then I make a forgiveness list - things I would have liked to have done but didn't. Some things on the forgiveness list (forgiving myself for not accomplishing them) go on the list of things to do this next year. Or not. <br />
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A young friend asked me if I feel guilty about what I haven't done or don't do. I said no. Finally after 63 years I feel that what I do is enough. Who I am is enough. I could do more - but if I don't - nothing wrong with what I am doing. I'm capable of so much more than I was in those desperate devastated first days after my husband's death.<br />
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But I'm not finished grieving. I don't see how I ever could be. I can do more and more and more. I can have many exciting and content moments. I can even triumph. Nothing I do will ever stop me from looking up and wishing I could see a very loved face that no longer exists.<br />
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My new year will, hopefully, be full of many new things. It will also be full of something old. Death took my husband away. The one person in the world who totally understood me and who tried so hard to take care of me is dead. Dead doesn't change. People often don't get that. I don't believe in being happy about something I am sad about. How can I be happy my husband is dead? That would make me a liar. I am happy about so much of the time we spent together. I am happy about our love. I am happy about many things in my present. But I cannot "follow my bliss". My bliss is dead. I must create a new meaning for bliss.<br />
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I take my grief with me into 2015. Hopefully it will come with me in many new and exciting directions. Hopefully my husband will be proud of me. <br />
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i don't know how to end this. A new year is supposed to be a beginning not an ending. Maybe what I wish for us all is that our beloved dead become more alive to us not less. I wish for us all that their lives mean more to us than their death - that their love inspires us. That they make us laugh remembering so many things. I wish that we continue to transform grief from something dark and deadly to something that shimmers and skips about leading us into wondrous places.<br />
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A Happy New Year? A new year with happiness in it. I love you my husband. You love me. That still makes me happy. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-66926589401519067242014-12-09T14:09:00.000-05:002014-12-09T15:05:11.729-05:00Grief: 'Tis the Season to Be Sad, Confused, Exhausted and Angry - Oops - I Mean Jolly<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Welcome once again to the holiday season. I apologize for not writing before Thanksgiving. In the midst of all this cheer, I thought of myself hanging on the meat hook of the holidays. Here's my run - Thanksgiving. My husband's birthday is December 11th, Chanukah, Gwendy's Birthday is Dec. 20th, Christmas, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. My birthday and my wedding anniversary are Feb. 3rd (my husband married me for my birthday present) and finally - Valentine's Day. </span><br />
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Thanksgiving. Am I thankful? Definitely. I am thankful for little things like a cosy blanket and big things like having a smart, healthy and beautiful granddaughter. Gwendy's birthday is a good day When my daughter was pregnant I didn't know if I could love this new person. I can. I do. I love being a grandmother. I love that she looks at my husband's picture and says, "There's grandpa!" She may have never met him when he was alive but she knows all about him - and I have this strange feeling she's seen him more that once.</span><br />
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The holidays. I'm working on it. I have so many presents in my hallway it looks like a toy store. I'm going to have to choose which ones to bring to Marblehead near Boston which is where my daughter and granddaughter live. I couldn't possibly carry everything. </span><br />
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I'm going out on my husband's birthday. Never did that before. I'm spending New Year's Eve and New Year's Day with my daughter and granddaughter. It's the first year I've been willing to do that. I did go out with a friend once - wasn't very happy. My birthday. We worked that one out. We sing "Unhappy Birthday to You" and I laugh but no one is allowed to mention it's my wedding anniversary. I love that I have a wedding anniversary but I can't handle spending that wonderful day without my husband. My daughter tried singing, "Unhappy anniversary to you." but I stopped her. I can laugh about having an unhappy birthday - and actually have a happy one. I can't laugh about having an unhappy wedding anniversary. I miss my husband too much.</span><br />
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This is what is going on now after almost five and half years. Things are different. I am doing more. I am enjoying more. I am also having to accept that around these dates everything falls apart. I'm going out - I'm cleaning up - I'm taking care of projects - but I'm also laying in bed watching lousy TV and eating ice cream to numb out. </span><br />
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In between the good times I'm a mess. I couldn't find my purse this morning - it was on the door knob where I had put it. I thought Dec. 26th was a Monday - I think it's a Saturday. Oh - I just looked at the calendar - I think I'm leaving on Tuesday the 16th - the 16th is Wednesday. As if to prove my point, I just talked to my daughter. This is an edit. The 16th is Tuesday not Wednesday. And then she was quick to say - not TODAY. I actually knew that one. </span><br />
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I've been meaning to write a blog post for days. I got a stupid taxi driver who was taking me to the wrong address - I told him he needed taxi driver lessons - he laughed. I cursed him out. Unnecessary - maybe. There are lots of times now when I feel like a person. Times like that mixed in with times as I am going to meet someone I say, "Please let me look and sound like a person." There are things I would like to do that I'm not - but I finally at the age of 63 feel that what I do is enough - who I am is enough. If I do more - okay. If I don't - okay. If I'm better behaved - okay. If I'm not - okay.</span><br />
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I'm meeting with someone who thinks she is my friend to tell her if she can't be sensitive to who I am - and respectful of who I am - I can't be friends with her anymore. I'll call her D. Why did I feel punched in the throat? R told us botha long time friend had been killed in a car accident. R was willing to be vulnerable and take the risk of saying how sad she was. D responded, "Something good has come out of his death because you are reconnecting with people." I couldn't believe it. In front of me - the radical griever. I rounded on D and probably shouted, "Never tell a grieving person that something good has come out of the death of someone they love." D said she was providing "comfort". First of all - there is not comfort. Second of all, comfort is never given by someone thinking the most painful thing that has ever happened to you is good - especially when in R's case it had only happened a couple of days ago. I asked D how she would feel if her phone rang and she found out her son was dead. What would be the good in that? Her eyes teared up and she said, "That's hurtful." I said, "It's meant to be. I have thousands of people who tell me how hurtful it is when people say things like you just said. They won't tell you that - but I will." I was so angry I couldn't sit next to her. D. waited a while and then said - "I can't help loving you." Blech. R said I shouldn't feel bad about my reaction. I don't. I thought perhaps D said she couldn't help loving me because she thinks I'm always angry. I sent her an e-mail saying that I have been out with a lot of people this week and had good times with all. Not angry once. (Of course all my other friends are my friends because they understand about the not jolly part.) I even sent her the Henri Nouwen quote:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #181818;"><br /></span><span style="color: #181818;">I'm not sure why I'm ranting about this. Maybe because I know similar things have happened to you. Maybe because I am still so hurt by it. The truth is D doesn't get it.</span><span style="color: #181818;"> </span><span style="color: #181818;">She probably won't get it when I explain it again for the last time. I'm too hurt to be hurt by people who are not only careless and insensitive but also not willing to be educated. It's a new thing for me - consciously setting boundaries for myself. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #181818;"><br /></span><span style="color: #181818;">I need people to understand that grief goes on forever. I am sad, confused, exhausted and angry. I'm also happy, content, grateful and silly. If you don't get the sad part - you don't know who I am. If you don't get the happy part you don't know who I am.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #181818;"><br /></span><span style="color: #181818;">I admit to watching true crime stories on television. The ones that respect the victim's families. The grief on their faces. The homicide detectives who carry the picture of a victim with them even after 20 or more years. The grief on the detectives' faces. It doesn't stop. It doesn't go away. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #181818;">I am aware of the ways my grief has shifted over the years. More and more I am daily inspired by </span><span style="color: #181818;">my husband. </span><span style="color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"> More and more my gratitude for our time together fills my heart and soul. I have done things in the past five and half years I am proud of - and I know he is proud of me too. Now his life is more important to me than his death. There are things I would have missed if I had indeed died when he did. I say to him, "It's time. Come and get me." He always says, "But you want to..." and mentions something I want to do. I say, "Okay...but after that." But then there are new things.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">It doesn't stop the shrieking. I want to be in the same form as he is more than anything. I also want to be alive to play with my granddaughter more than anything. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">It all tumbles together.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Maybe this is a holiday season to be simultaneously miserable and jolly. Wouldn't it be something if I could pull that off? Isn't it something that I am even considering the possibility of jolly?</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I wish for you that in the midst of the genuine - real - normal - tumultuous pain that is grief - you also - when you are ready - find time for love - for sharing - for laughter. Why? For me it is now partly for myself - but largely it is because I want my husband to see what I learn from him every day. I want him to know that I open my heart because of his love.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I also take too many naps. I also numb out.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">That's me. Be on your guard. You don't know when I show up who is going to appear. There's one thing you can know for certain - don't ever tell me that there is anything good about my husband's death. Everything I have done, everything I have achieved, every laugh I have laughed is hard fought for and the fight occurs every day when I wake up and have to accept all over again that he cannot come back. The person I most want to share things with, the person who understands me, the person who is my reason for being has died. No matter how much fun I am having when I am with you - if you love me - you must never forget that about me. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Have a moment each day - when you are ready - for the possibility of beauty and joy. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I leave you with a Mary Oliver quote. It is a question worth asking yourself - and when you can - with the guidance of those who have died before you - answering - as only you can answer for your self. If you don't know the answer - it will come to you - slowly over time or maybe in a split second. Maybe you already know the answer and you just haven't become of aware of it yet. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;">“Tell me, what is it you plan to do </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;">with your one wild and precious life?” </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
xo</span><br />
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Jan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-47619153096928081352014-11-13T11:08:00.001-05:002014-11-13T11:08:52.774-05:00Grief: Can't Catch Up With MyselfSome people say they can't let go of grief. Me, mine comes with me everywhere. I don't expect to ever leave it behind. I woke up the other morning and said my husband's name out loud. Over five years and I miss him and long for him and will never get used to living without him. However, it doesn't stop me as much as it once used to from doing things.<br />
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That's what I mean by I can't catch up with myself. My life has gotten very busy lately. I am traveling again. I am spending time with my family. I am putting myself in places where I don't have time to sit around and feel sorry for myself. I don't have much time to crash any more. I need that time. Sometimes when I get home by myself that's what I do. The first day I just stay in bed and don't move.<br />
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I'm not grieving less - just moving more. That first year I did almost nothing. I just wasn't capable. Now I am. But sometimes I still just don't care and it is difficult to motivate myself. That's why I make plans. I have to keep showing up so I don't become a hermit. Nothing wrong with being a hermit - but I think my husband would want me to be part of the world.<br />
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I'm finding grief overwhelming though. I have been meaning to write a blog post for a while and keep putting it off. I still post every day on my Facebook page Grief Speaks Out - but I don't respond very much to individual people. Grief is exhausting. I don't want to write a book about it and do workshops. I have read where people stop writing grief blogs saying they want to return to the land of the living. I'm not going to stop writing - my grief comes with me into the land of the living - but I have realized that I will write less often. I am sorry for that. I know people are helped by what I write. I just can't face it any more. It's like I want my grief to be a solitary thing for a while. <br />
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Maybe it's the holidays and my husband's birthday coming up. Grief, after more than five years, still makes me sad and irritable and confused. I don't want to go through this season again. Yet - I want to go through this season because of my granddaughter - who - can you believe it - will be three in December. I told her I was 63 - much older than her. She asked me, "Do you have to die?" I said yes - but hopefully not today. I told her that I will always come back and I will always love her but when I die I won't be able to come back on the train in my earth body any more. <br />
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So here I am - caught between two worlds. When my husband first died all I wanted was death. In spite of that - and because of him - I have made a life for myself. I want to die to be with him - but not today. Today I am supposed to be packing to go out of the country again. <br />
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I didn't want a life after he died - but I got help and showed up and did things for other people. I wound up with a life. <br />
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I'm still married. Someone wrote me to "help" me about someone she knew who was happily remarried. As if I didn't know. As if I live in a cave. She wanted me to have love in my life. I have a lot of love in my life. My husband isn't replaceable. She missed the most important thing about grief - the person we love is not replaceable. Even if I did change my mind and started dating - I would miss my husband. If your child dies and you have other children it doesn't matter. If your sibling dies and you have other siblings - it doesn't matter.<br />
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Most of the time I make friends with my grief these days. But...as you know from the last post - sometimes it all collapses again into the dark place. The place where everything seems impossible. Yet everything is still possible. Maybe I don't have to catch up with myself. My living self will go on if I let it - my grieving self will feel overwhelmed and sad and everything it feels. It will lag behind, resist going, and yet will come anyway. <br />
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I have to go and pack for a trip I don't want to go on - yet I know I will have a good time when I get there. It's who I am these days. I wish my husband was here to kiss me goodbye. I wish I could call him twice a day. I wish I could rush into his arms when I come home. I can't. He is on a trip where you do not need to pack - and I have to wait to join him. Maybe he is kissing me. Hugging me. <br />
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Sometimes I feel foolish lying in bed hugging the stuffed animal he gave me, wearing his jacket. But it's what I have left. <br />
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That's how it is these days...self pity - loneliness - then - gotta go. There's life to be lived. I want him to watch me and be proud. <br />
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That's what I'm thankful for this holiday season - all the wonderful moments of love and laughter. I don't have it now - but how lucky I was to have it at all. I am still grateful for the depth of grief that measure's the height of love. I asked people with all the pain they were in if they thought it was worth it - if they knew about the grief that was to come -would they do it all again. Everyone said yes.<br />
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So...here is my attempt - to make my husband's life more important than his death - to make loving him something motivates me instead of crushing me. <br />
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I wish for us all those moments of joy and even peace to balance all the pain and anguish. There are pinpricks of light even in the darkest abyss. May they shine brightly - because they are coming from those who have died who are trying to show us the way. <br />
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Take tender care of yourself. You deserve it. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-22045501992552601272014-10-01T15:21:00.000-04:002014-10-01T15:21:11.230-04:00Grief: Rambling Mind Still Broken HeartI looked to see when I had last posted. Too long a time ago. For a many years after my husband died I stopped traveling. (I'm a little strange in that I don't consider going to London where I once lived or to my daughter's house outside of Boston as traveling.) I just came back from North Korea, am going to Scotland and then in November - Israel. Such an exciting life. I don't feel like I'm the one who is living it. Every morning I get up and try to make myself care about things. I feel overwhelmed. I feel sad. I have some good times but I am weighed down still. I am tired of feeling weighed down. I am not usually depressed. I hate the way if you are unhappy about something or you want to withdraw that you are labelled depressed. I just find my life exceedingly difficult without my husband (and sometimes I found it difficult with him!). I know I have a magical life and yes I am grateful for it but I still have a hard time caring about it.<br />
<br />
I am depressed today because my daughter is doing what many daughters with daughters do - she is staking her claim to my granddaughter. By that I mean she thinks I should butt out and never have an opinion. She yells at me and says unkind things that aren't true. It doesn't matter what I do for her, what actions I take - she just doesn't feel like I love her. The thing is I can't handle it. I'm not going to never say anything as some people choose although I do keep my mouth closed often. I have a brilliant relationship with Gwendy blue eyes and I'm not going to let go of that - for her and for me. But I have no bounce back from personal attack. I have no husband to turn to. My friends support me but my heart just hurts.<br />
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I went into a store and I unfolded a sweater and apologized for not being to refold it properly. The woman said - but I bet you are good at other things. I said -Yes, I am. She said - That's why we all need each other. I smiled and thought - that's why I go out - that's why I show up - for moments like this. <br />
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I used to say to my husband, "This is too hard. I can't do it any more." Then he would hold me and I would feel better. He didn't care if I did a lot or a little. He just loved me. When I am wounded it is wrong to say I have no place to go. I have a lot of places to go - but I want him.<br />
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I read so many stories about people who survive so many deaths. I just have one to survive and here I am in my sixth year of grieving whining on a bad day. So many people have family members and friends be unkind to them when they most need support. Why is that? Is it smelling the blood of weakness that lets people go on attack?<br />
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I know this depression of today won't last. I have many good things in my life and I will connect with it again. My daughter and I are going to therapy. I am thinking about writing her a letter - maybe if I list actions I have taken I will be able to reach her and let her know I love her. The thing is - it didn't work when she was a child. She was an angry child. But she's 40 now and she's too old to be having temper tantrums at my expense. I know this is common. I don't care. Since my husband died I don't feel safe. I never feel safe. <br />
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I like to write blog posts with shape and reason and poetry. Maybe sometimes it is good to just ramble - to say I too have that black abyss I fall back into and have to scramble out again. My Facebook page Grief Speaks Out has almost 500,000 likes and I help a lot of people all around the world. They say I bring them comfort. I don't know how to find that comfort myself in healthy ways. I don't know how to care for me. <br />
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I care about my granddaughter - and I must care deeply about my daughter or her words wouldn't hurt me so much. I care about my friends. I care about people who are hurting. Maybe the person I can't seem to care much about is me. I'm feeling disconnected again. I said that I don't heal from grief - I'll heal when I die. That's a downer. <br />
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I'm going to get dressed and go out. I'm taking care of business. I have folks to hang out with before I leave on Monday. Maybe I'll cheer up. There's that part of me though that doesn't cheer up. I was watching a commercial. A grandmother that reminded me of myself was being driven around. They stopped and she and her granddaughter got out of the car near a tree. She said, "I met your grandpa for the first time under this tree." Her granddaughter hugged the tree. I started crying hysterically. It turned out it was a car commercial. I was crying at a stupid car commercial. It made me laugh. I don't feel like it is stepping backwards - it's just a grief day. I don't like feeling this way. <br />
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Someone said you can't dance with grief - you can't make it your friend - you can only drown in it. Even on a day like today I know that isn't true. Part of my climbing the ladder up is getting out of the house. Is taking to people. Is trying to look and sound like a person. The temptation is to say I am never happy. That's not true. Sometimes I am happy. When I am happy is when I best honor my husband. <br />
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Oh gee whiz - I looked up at the TV that was on mute. There is program about an old woman who is being scammed by some guy who is using her for her money. Someone she met on Christian Mingle of all places. Well, we know I won't be that woman. How can people be so cruel as to take advantage of lonely widows?<br />
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My tour guide in North Korea is a handsome young screenwriter named Gabriel. He gave me one of the best compliments I have ever had - he said, "When I grow up I want to be you." There's the split. There's the me that is funny and creative that many people enjoy and many find generous and comforting. Then there's the me that just is getting through each day with gritted teeth.<br />
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So today I give you no answers. Only feelings. What I know is that we share these feelings. For every falling down there is a getting up - for every being lost there is being found. <br />
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I hope today some of you are having a better day than I am. I hope later I am having a better day. Let's hold hands and hang on. There are so many - seen and unseen - who walk with us. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-72770093620128315922014-08-10T12:47:00.000-04:002014-08-10T12:47:05.979-04:00Grief: Am I Having Fun Yet?I knew I was feeling overwhelmed and confused but I didn't realize it had been so long since I had written. I can't get in sync with my life. At the beginning I cried all the time and I spent hours in bed watching DVDs or just staring at the wall. Then I started doing a little more. I made myself go out with no expectation of feeling anything or being present. Then life crept back in and I started accomplishing more, having more happy moments. But I still took a lot of down time. Grief was a full time job for me. I needed to shut off from everything and numb myself out to go back into the world again and do things. My husband is dead. It hurts all the time. It just does.<br />
<br />
Now I have created this very magical life. I have friends who are good and loving people. I have my blog and my Facebook page - Grief Speaks Out. I have several book ideas - one on grief of course - some children's stories - and maybe other writing. No - I haven't written a word. I have movies I am consulting on. I have started traveling again. I have the time I spend with my daughter and granddaughter. I am exhausted. I don't know how to function as a full time person. I never did, really. But my husband was there to hold me up when I fell down. He was there to tell me he loved me just the way I was. I could curl in his arms and feel safe and loved. I always write about him being with me in spirit - in every way he can - and I believe that. It doesn't stop me from feeling that I am doing this all alone.<br />
<br />
It is my daughter's 40th birthday and she is having a grand party in California. My room is on the beach. There are 26 adults and 13 children. Everyone is having a great time. On one side of me is a couple I really like who have been married many years - on the other side is a couple I really like who met late in life and feel so grateful to have each other. Hello self pity!!<br />
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I thought about it last night. I have never been an overly social person. I remember one summer Artie and I rented a place on the beach. He met a couple who invited us over to their place. I asked him why he wanted to go. He was my person. He understood me. I went out in the world, I had friends, I travelled but Artie was my person. He was who I wanted to be with. He is who I want to be with. When I isolated myself I isolated myself with him. He knew me. He understood me. He got my bad jokes. Our love was forever - we used to say all the time - nobody leaves. He called it buying the whole package. Nothing either one of us could do would ever separate us. Then came cancer. He died. He left. He didn't want to but he was too sick to stay.<br />
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I so often stand outside of myself watching myself knowing I am having a really fun moment - a really beautiful moment - but I can't feel it. I'm there but not there. I'm smiling. I'm laughing. Sometimes when I go out, while I'm on my way I say to myself - Please let me look and sound like a person - as if a person is something I have forgotten how to be. There is a gap between how others see me and how I feel myself.<br />
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It's not true that I never have fun. My husband used to say that all we have are moments. I have a lot of fun moments. I have enjoyed some things very much on these special days. I am so proud of my daughter and the woman she has become. To see her surrounded by friends of all ages from all around the country makes my heart glad.<br />
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So why, this morning, am I sitting in my room - not even outside my room - by myself. Why do I want to cry? Why does the loneliness come up and strangle me? Why did I come in last night so early when everyone would have loved me to stay? <br />
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It's funny really. I was all settled in for the day - thinking I would hide out and read and catch up on things on the computer. My daughter just came by and said she wants me on the beach with them - she doesn't want me to wait until the barbecue at six. I said - give me an hour to get more social. <br />
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That's the thing isn't it. Life keeps calling. We are alive. When life calls what are we going to do...go back into our rooms and slam the door shut or go out to meet it?<br />
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My answer is still a bit of both. A lot more going out to meet it than at the beginning - but still too much slamming the door shut.<br />
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But the door won't stay shut.<br />
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The door keeps opening.<br />
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I think my husband is opening it. I think he is saying, "I am holding you. Go get 'em Panache." Or as my granddaughter says, "You can do it, Gammy."<br />
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That is my work, my challenge, every day. To take this enormous dark cloud of grief and put it to the side for enough time to be alive - to have fun - to be present for my life until it is time for me also not to be alive. <br />
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I still have my solitary hour. Then I will go out into the sunshine and try to feel my husband's smile shining all around me warming the coldness of my heart into one that can authentically laugh, love and have fun.<br />
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Wish me luck! xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-1532619404366611192014-07-13T23:54:00.000-04:002014-07-13T23:54:18.312-04:00Grief: Still Trying To Figure It Out After Almost Five YearsFive years? How can my husband be dead for five years on July 17th? How is that possible? How is it possible I survived, some may argue even thrived? Every day I still cry "Come back. Please come back. I know you can't, but please come back." Some days I do say it out loud. Some days I do cry or get angry. Even when I don't think it at all it feels like I still cry it out somewhere in my psyche.<br />
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I remember those first days and nights. I would cry and reach my arm to the ceiling as if by doing so my husband would grab on to it and pull me up. I got my images mixed up and pictured him with angel wings gathering me into a swan boat kind of flying thing. Then I had to laugh because I realized I was on the 2nd floor of an apartment building. I pictured him with his feathers in his feathered air boat saying as he came down through all the ceilings and floors, "Excuse me. Don't pay any attention to me...I'm just going to get my wife."<br />
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I even went and sat on the bench in Central Park with the plaque I bought that says "Artie and Jan Warner, Mr. Dazzle and Mrs. Panache, I love you. You're my heart. Always". I thought. You can get me from here. No ceilings, no floors, just take me straight up. I knew by then he wouldn't.<br />
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I thought of going to him. I was his wife - right? So suicide was my obligation. When he was alive we used to joke about my throwing myself on his funeral pyre. I researched suicide for three months. Really researched it. I could't give my family and friends the grief and pain I was feeling. In my fantasy they would let me go - but I knew in real life they would be beyond hurt and lost. Especially my daughter.<br />
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So - what was I going to to do with this tattered thing I never really wanted? My life. It took me 10 years to become Mrs. Artie Warner, Mrs. Boss. The people he sponsored in AA in Phoenix called him Boss - so I was Mrs. Boss. Alcoholics Anonymous. It was the center of his life. I would make myself available to other grieving people the way he was always available to other alcoholics and addicts. I would make sure to tell his story; our story. Always. I wouldn't be a waste of space (i never was - but that was how I felt) if I was helping others. I sent my first blog post into cyberspace not knowing if anyone would every read it. I had no idea we would become an international love story.<br />
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My Facebook page was a year old on July 10th. My husband's life by touching mine, my life by wanting to do something to honor him means that I, a very ordinary - definitely flawed human being - have been able to reach many people who have in turn reached out to many other people. At the time I write this: the blog Stop Thief Don't Steal My Grief gets over 4,000 hits a month - the Facebook page Grief Speaks Out reaches sometimes two million people from all over the world a week. I am astonished. I exchange messages with a12 year old girl in Pakistan - woman in Bosnia, a man in Namibia. At a Buddhist retreat posting with a Buddhist man in Nepal. All I am doing is saying My husband died and this is what I feel. It turns out that people who have any kind of grief at all need to hear and say that. If it has been a month or 40 years we all need to say - I love my beloved dead. I miss then every day. It never stops hurting. We can support each other simply by listening. I thought when I finally got the courage to share my biggest craziest secret that my husband's ashes are in their original sealed plastic bag in a big decorative pillow on my bed so I still sleep with what I have left of him - that everyone would laugh and run away. Instead I found out that a lot of people sleep with the ashes of the person they love either on their bed or near them<br />
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Nothing you do - nothing I do - is crazy. If we are not hurting ourselves or others - it is all a normal part of grieving. The question is - do the actions we take - does what we feel serve us? Does it serve me? Is what I think and feel and how I act something that makes my husband proud? I'm good at falling down - have I also gotten good at standing up?<br />
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I am at a retreat. The space that not talking made in my brain when the teacher asked us to look backward - not into our past - but into ourselves - to look into the looker - see into the see-er let a totally new thought come in. This is me, "Hello. I'm Jan. My husband's dead." That's how I identify myself. Usually within the first 10 minutes of meeting someone. With friends - by always talking about him and us. That's a good thing.<br />
<br />
Is it a good thing? Why do I not say, "Hi. I'm Jan. I am a writer and and producer and creative consultant on documentaries."? Why do I not say, "Hi. I'm Jan. I'm Erin's mom and this amazing two year old Gwendy blue eyes' grandmother."? That question. Who am I? I am a person who grieves her husband. Yes. I am a person who grieves her husband but who else am I? There are a lot of answers to who else am I? <br />
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My husband and I had/have a deep love. We also fought a lot and I felt lonely when I was married. Towards the end I was sad and frustrated. Then I knew he was very ill and his doctor said I was wrong. In Carl Bergstrom's office I was literally screaming at Carl that Artie needed to be in the hospital. Carl looked at Artie; not at me and said, "Don't l listen to her. She's hysterical." I went to NYC and said I wasn't coming home until he went to the emergency room. I had learned during our 23 years how to out negotiate my negotiator. I believed Carl enough that I thought when Artie got to the hospital they would fix him up and he would be fine. He had stage 4 cancer that was in almost every organ. His blood pressure was low (Carl told him to drink Gatorade) not because he needed more fluids but because he was bleeding internally. He was hallucinating not because he was taking too much valium (he was taking it to try to cope with the pain) but because he had tumors in his brain. He died only six weeks after he was correctly diagnosed. Yet - it was a loving dying time. People visiting. Jazz always playing. He told me he was sorry for all the ways in which he had failed me. I said I was too and in that moment all the anger and sadness fell away so that deep and pure love could re-emerge. We held hands and listened to music and talked of many things. We were like teenagers in the midst of first love. I watchedl husband finally understand that he was loved and that he had done good in this world. Those were lovely moments.<br />
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Then he was dead and I was saying goodbye to his body before they took it away.<br />
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Hello. I'm Jan. My husband's dead. He's dying right now. He died almost five years ago but it feels like it's happening right now and there is nothing I can do to stop it.<br />
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But I didn't die. I used to say - and still do sometimes by mistake - We died instead of He died. But I didn't die. People say all the time - I can't breathe. But I am breathing. Is it time to acknowledge what he has known and I haven't seen - there is a Jan without Artie? He is always with me - but I am alone without him. I have down dark days. I collapse sometimes - but I have created a rather magical life for myself.<br />
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When I described what I do with the blog and the FB page - Grief Speaks Out - the teacher at the retreat said I do heavy lifting. I have never thought of it that way. I am here with two dear women friends. A lot of my friends I have made since he died. I live a life of service in his honor. I have a lot of fun with different people. I have a granddaughter who says we hold each other up. When my daughter yelled at me - my granddaughter ran after her saying - "Don't yell at my Gammy. It's not nice to yell at my Gammy." She says sometimes, "I love you my Gammy Gammy." What could be sweeter than that?<br />
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Having my husband back would be sweeter. Five years and I still can't believe that face I'm looking at on the pictures on my bed in this smallish dormitory room doesn't exist - hasn't existed for five years. That voice on the recordings - it's gone. They are gone forever. When I die my physical self will be gone too. Will we get to be together? I hope so. I believe in it because it keeps me able to function - believing that even though he died almost five years ago - our journey has continued - will continue for eternity.<br />
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The universe has pushed the pause button. I keep hitting play and it won't play. I am in love with a dead guy. i wear his wedding ring with mine because he has no finger to put his on. Do I continue to choose loneliness for myself or do I look for a live guy? I have the love of family and friends. Is that enough? Am I supposed to be faithful until I die or do I get new arms to cuddle up with? Is looking for new arms to hold me a betrayal? I don't know. I know many widows who have found new arms even though they love and miss their husbands who died.<br />
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I just have this seed of a new idea. I can be Jan. Not Jan and Artie. Not Mrs. Artie, Mrs. Boss. I am uncomfortable even writing it. My chest hurts. Yet...it is possible that this is my next step. Letting the interdependence (not co-dependence) not even go - I can't picture that without falling down on the floor and staying there for a long while -but letting the interdependence fall away to another level. Hi. I'm Jan. A whole conversation without mentioning my husband. It seems harder than climbing Mt. Everest.<br />
<br />
I have no desire to climb Mt. Everest but maybe the me that is inside me want to come out as her own person. Hi. I'm Jan. Who are you - each of you - if you identify yourself without talking or thinking about your beloved dead - even for only five minutes? Yes you are grieving. But...who else are you? What happens if you let your name stand alone? <br />
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I wonder. I'm Jan. Who are you? With love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-41645917596476714172014-06-26T09:46:00.000-04:002014-06-26T09:46:25.278-04:00Grief: I Never Get Used To...I never get used to...so much.<br />
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I was warned. The fifth year is tough.<br />
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I am trying to change how I feel by changing my language. I have a good time now - often - when I do something I've planned but I never look forward to anything. I miss out the fun of anticipating things. My brain is not easy to train. Or my heart. I am sitting in a hotel room waiting for my daughter to pick me up to take me to her house. (I didn't sleep there because they are remodeling things and I am allergic to dust etc...) We are taking Gwendy blue eyes (my granddaughter) with us to London. She is so excited. She loves a cartoon character called Peppa Pig and we are going to Peppa Pig World. A friend of mine guides at Hampton Court - the palace that Henry VIII built for Anne Boleyn. She is going to make a treasure hunt for Gwendy there - and has a little costume for her to wear. There's the zoo and much more. For me - when they leave I'm going with another friend to see the Monty Python reunion and Bill Nighy in a play. Then flying back to Boston for the fourth of July with Erin and Gwendy. <br />
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So why am I sitting here with a knotted ball of fear in my chest? I got in yesterday thinking I would like a little time by myself I couldn't stand it. Artie wasn't here - of course not - I mean - he's been dead for almost five years. When I travelled by myself the first thing I did when I got to a hotel room was call him to tell him I was okay - and to make sure he had my phone number and room number. Love before cell phones! Five years of not being able to do a simple thing like call him and hear his voice. I turned on the TV and ate through the mini-bar.<br />
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I could have gone for a walk - I could have written about my feeling - I could have meditated - I could have made so many other choices. My whole being just went - I can't stand this - I have to go numb. <br />
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Those stupid grief triggers - grief bursts - grief attacks - assassin grief. Whatever you want to call it. Ouch. <br />
<br />
When my daughter and granddaughter came over for dinner I had a lovely pillow fight with my granddaughter. She brought me a stuffed animal to sleep with. She told me a story about how we love each other and we miss each other and that if I didn't dream about frogs I would get a time out!! So much fun.<br />
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But now - in the in between time - I am frightened of nothing. They used to call it free floating anxiety. I don't know what they call it now. I'm not in my familiar place. I've left all my "Artie" things at home. I took a picture of his picture. Can't take a picture of him any more - so took the picture of his picture. Self pity...a skill I really don't need.<br />
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If it was someone else I would have all kinds of good things to suggest. Dark and light. Sadness and joy. Take tender care of yourself. Sometimes it all feels like blah blah blah.<br />
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I will have a good time. Somehow that doesn't help in the in between time. There is that time when the layer of sadness and loss and ache and stumbling around rises to the top and covers everything else. I wish I handled it better when that happens. I do. Some times. Some times I don't.<br />
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So...off I go...taking my grief with me on more adventures. <br />
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Nothing fills that missing piece. The place where my husband used to be. He has moved out of town and I have to wait to join him. He didn't move away because he wanted to. He is still with me in a lot of ways.<br />
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It is not enough. Some moments I just can't handle it. Maybe that is okay. Maybe next time I can handle it without the chocolate chip cookies! or not. I can remind myself what I am reminding myself of now...soon I will have another layer of me taking a turn. The waiting lasts forever (or so it seems) but my sadness doesn't have to. By the time you finish reading this I may be somewhere smiling or laughing. <br />
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Show up. Take a chance. Don't let the dark side of my grief win...take it out to explore the world. Off I go...if not right now...soon.. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-69553707257567217662014-06-15T16:53:00.000-04:002014-06-16T07:40:19.100-04:00Grief: Still Crazy After All These Years I am sitting here on Father's Day trying to get many different things done. The news is on in the background. I am not really listening but every once in a while I hear yet another tale of grief or someone saying, "Happy Father's Day" without giving a thought to anyone who that simple phrase might feel more like a sharp blade through the heart than a cheery wish. I don't know why I don't play music. It would be so much better. Or those hypnosis CDs (I am so old I still write tapes and have to correct it) that I have been meaning to listen to for about three months now.<br />
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I'm coming up on the fifth anniversary of my husband's death. I cannot believe I have lived so long after the day of his death. I thought in the beginning surely he would come get me. How much I would have missed if he had. I wouldn't have known Gwendy blue eyes, my granddaughter, I wouldn't have made so many memories with my daughter and new friends that came in to replace those who disappeared. I wouldn't have been here with old friends who stayed. There are so many things I wouldn't have experienced. There are so many people that would not have experienced me. No blog. No Grief Speaks Out. It is confusing. <br />
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What is confusing? How I want more than anything to just lie down and join my husband. How I want more than anything to never have my daughter have to tell my granddaughter that Gammy isn't coming back. I never want to make that little girl cry. <br />
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Five years ago I was desperate and devastated every second of every day. Now that devastation and loneliness and agony is still there - but it is a layer of who I am. I have a rather magical life and sometimes I can even be present to enjoy it. Sometimes both at the same time. I went to see with two woman friends an amazing production of the Shakespearian play Macbeth with Kenneth Branagh. Part of the time I was dazzled - part of the time it was like I wasn't really there. Why? The last time I saw Kenneth Branagh he was playing Hamlet and I was sitting next to my husband holding hands. When the play was over we talked about it all the way back to our hotel. That happens a lot. Me being present having a great time - a genuinely great time - and then the moment of OUCH! or getting sleepy - or wanting to go home and crawl into bed. <br />
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I have been feeling overwhelmed lately - doing more things as I wanted to - planned for - on this unwanted grief journey. I posted about that on Facebook.com/GriefSpeaksOut and within 3 seconds I had someone post that they felt the same way. That's it, isn't it. That's why we need to talk about it. That's why I need to keep writing the blog. I'm not the only one still crazy after all these years - most of us are - in one way or another. I have people tell me after 35 years, after 50 years it all comes back. It hurts every day...just in a different way. <br />
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I took little Gwendy to a cemetery and when she climbed over the graves I had her say hello to the people buried there. There were two flat stones with red flowers blooming in between them. On the husband's stone it said, "Gone Before." I looked - he had died in 1933 - his wife (with the same name) had died in 1961. Seems like a long time to wait.<br />
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It's not really crazy - it's just grieving. Those who call it complicated or morbid are wrong. It's just grief. For some, perhaps, it goes away. For most it gentles down, the contours of it change. But does it end? Not in my life. In my life every morning - and every waking minute - and then every sleeping minute I am conscious of my grief. As much as I feel my husband with me spiritually - even talking with him and hearing what he says (not in his voice - he doesn't have a voice - it isn't an auditory hallucination) he is not HERE - he cannot come back HERE and HERE with me is where I want him. <br />
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So my grief - my craziness - is something I walk around - use - get knocked down by - get disoriented by - get challenged by. Some days I transform it beautifully. Other days not so much. <br />
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I don't know why I still meet new people with the news my husband is dead. I don't know why I tell people his opinion about things. I don't know why I keep telling his stories. That's not true. I still can't imagine Jan without Artie. I don't want to imagine myself that way. Why is he still so much a part of me. I don't know. He is. When someone is alive you expect their loved one to talk about them and share things with them. Who says this has to stop just because they died?<br />
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People ask me more often if I'm dating. I say now if someone I liked asked me out or fixed me up I wouldn't say no. But nothing happens that way. I still wear my husband's wedding ring and mine and I think I must have a neon sign on my head that says "Married to a dead guy." For some reason - no matter how many widows I see who are quite happily remarried - it still feel like cheating to me. I still feel married.<br />
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I guess the best thing - if it isn't hurting you too much - and isn't hurting others too much - is to learn to love your crazy. This year I made arrangements to go on a retreat with two women friends in July. I didn't realize I will be there in silence on the fifth anniversary of my husband's death. I am bringing chocolate. I am asking my friends to leave me alone and not worry about me if I stay in my room all day - or be surprised if I show up somewhere. I don't want to be hugged or patted. Almost five years and as i wrote that last sentence tears came to my eyes along with though, "No. He can't be dead." <br />
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He is. <br />
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I'm alive.<br />
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So are you. Alive. Whatever you do that you think is crazy probably isn't - it's probably being felt or done by millions of other people in the world who just aren't telling anyone either. <br />
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Mary Oliver asks, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"<br />
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The first thing is to find a way to actually think of your life as still precious. The second thing is to show up and keep showing up. No that's wrong. The first thing is just to breathe. To accept each breath as having a reason. <br />
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Gwendy blue eyes says we hold each other up. She means when we hold hands we don't fall down or maybe she understands that "We hold each other up" has a deeper meaning. I have a lot to learn from that little two year old.<br />
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If you are still breathing - what else are you going to do? What else am I going to do so every day my husband will be saying - "You go girl!! I called it right when I nicknamed you Panache!" <br />
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What am I going to do with my wild and precious life? Some moments it is still watching too much TV and eating too much or even staring at the wall - but other days it really is quite splendid. Why? Because my husband loves me and being fully alive with grief is the best way to honor that love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-51294295888800793092014-05-28T14:08:00.000-04:002014-05-28T14:08:46.356-04:00Grief: No no no - No More NormalWhy do we always want know what is normal? Perhaps that is completely the wrong question. The medical profession and the helping professions are taking normal and making it such a narrow category that very few people meet their definition any more. When my daughter was little she often didn't behave the way people wanted her to. Now she would have oppositional-defiant disorder. I have good moments and bad moments. I once had a psychiatrist prescribe lithium for me. I read about it and quickly threw it away. Having normal mood swings is not bipolar - as anyone who genuinely is bipolar would know. Now they have made grief into a mental disorder called "Complicated or Morbid" grief. The measuring stick they use to determine this is ridiculous. How long should grief last - 6 months? When i know and you know that it lasts as long as it lasts - often forever. Grief can lead to depression and PTSD but grief is not depression or PTSD - it is...well, it is grief. When you love someone and they die - it hurts. It hurts every day for the rest of your life. The question is not how long does this hurt last - but whether or not you are capable of turning it - as someone wrote on my Facebook page - from your enemy into your companion. My grief for my husband - my missing him - my longing for his physical presence - will be with me always. Will I use that grief to enrich my life or let it oppress me? <br />
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We don't even acknowledge that what is normal is different for different people. Normal for a small child is different than normal for a teenager which is different from normal for an adult which is different from normal for an elderly person. Normal for a healthy person is different than normal for a person with a chronic illness. Normal for a person who has never experienced deep grief is different for someone who has. What I find now that I have so much contact with grieving people of different ages, religions, nationalities is that everything we think is not normal - is. Do you feel angry - sad - numb - lost - like you can't breathe - like you are going crazy - having trouble sleeping? - feeling good one day then hit with an unexpected wave of grief - and on and on - guess what. That is all normal. People all over the world are feeling the same things. Maybe in different ways and different proportions - but whatever you are experiencing - someone else is too. The people who tell you to move on or that you are stuck - or that what you are experiencing isn't healthy or normal are in the dark themselves. They don't know that grieving people take to lying about how they really feel in order not to hear things that are hurtful - in order not to be rejected - or medicated - or fixed. Ask the person who thinks you are grieving too much if they got a phone call in five minutes that their child was killed in a car accident - or their husband or wife - when they would get over it. I did that once to a man I know - he started to cry. I had to comfort him for something that hadn't even happened. He stopped trying to make me feel better. <br />
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The question isn't whether or not what I am doing is normal. The question is whether or not what I am doing is allowing me to live the life I want. The past almost five years have been a continuous spiral up and down of learning how to be more productive - how to have more and more happy moments - how to be more fully alive with grief. Staying in bed and staring at the wall (this fifth year - as I had been warned - is full of a lot of despair - although since I have tools now to deal with it a little better) actually works for me in small increments. I find it helpful to spend time with my grief. It doesn't work for me if I do it all day every day. I have never lost the feeling of great sadness every time I return home knowing that my husband will not be waiting for me. It occurred to me that maybe this is something I can change. I'm not sure how yet. I have the ability to change things - I have done it with other things. Most of my memories now make me smile instead of cry. Most places I walk past that we were together make me think about our happy moments. When I see an advertisement for boxing or tennis I remember how much joy my husband got from watching then instead of cursing things for going on without him. My eating is still weird. My sleeping gets off track. I get confused between wanting to die to be with him and wanting to live to do everything else. I remind myself that what is a long time to me on Earth is a blink of the eye in terms of eternity. <br />
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I don't want to be fixed. I don't want to be happy all the time. I don't care if I am "normal". When i see what normal is - sometimes I laugh and wonder why anyone would want that! It is like wanting to be ordinary when we are all really extraordinary - in our own ways. <br />
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I was watching a soap opera of all things and someone said something like we disrespect the life of our loved one if we let their death mean more to us than their life. It made me stop and think. It is not so much what my husband would want for me - or even what I want for myself. It was - yeah - that's it. Do I not somehow do a disservice to all the happy times and fighting times and loving times if I remember them with pain instead of joy? Can I not look at our love - constant - enduring - splendid - even if our relationship was sometimes troubled and less than it might have been - with clear eyes not shadowed by grief? That's wrong. In some ways grief sharpens the way I remember Artie. I don't take anything for granted any more. I can treasure our moments together even more than I did when he was alive. The fact that there are no more of them in the same form makes them more precious. I was given - am still being given so much by my husband - am I rejecting those gifts if all I do is feel sorry for myself rather than feeling blessed and grateful? My husband's life mattered - it still matters - more than his death. How can I embody that? How can I live that?<br />
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I am not there. I will never be there. I don't even know where there is. However - I can continue every day to do the best I can to take this monster grief and tame it so that I ride on its back to many magical places I would not have gone without it. Missing Artie, loving Artie, feeling somehow not whole without him - yet at the same time never letting the darkness dim the light - never letting my grief diminish the power of what we had and have. <br />
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If you figure out how to do this easily...let me know. Until then - I described it as driving a car on a multi-lane highway. One lane will always be grief - but may we all have ever more lanes - and when we drift or drive deliberately back into the grief lane - may we learn how to just put on our signal light and turn the wheel so we can move again into which ever lane is best for us. <br />
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Almost five years later I have a rather magical life. I don't talk about it that much because I write about grief. It is a life I have worked hard to create. I am ordinary in many ways...so anything I can create - you can too. Do I always feel the magic - no. Do I feel it more often. Yes. Did grief gentle down - yes. Most days. Throw out normal. Oscar Wilde said - "Be yourself. Everyone else is taken." It's been quite an effort to even imagine a Jan without her Artie (he says I am never without him - but you know what I mean) but there is one. I'm learning more about her every day. She is the woman my husband loves. Here's to you being you again - not a "normal" you - but a newly discovered ever growing you. Not being there yet maybe...but finding moments of life and happiness breaking through - finding the unbearable bearable - breathing when you cannot breathe - doing it all because you would not be grieving if you had lived your life without experiencing love - as far too many people do. With love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-8180748182659368082014-05-12T23:44:00.000-04:002014-05-12T23:44:47.258-04:00Grief: Skating on Thin IceJust to prove I'm perfectly human - if you read the last post - Yes, folks, I did manage to leave my laptop on the train. So...I am winging it in so many ways. Learning that I am more dependent on it than I thought. I am working now on a computer I don't know how to use. Trying to figure it out. Kind of like grief. Nothing familiar any more but still typing away.<br />
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So...late at night when I should be doing other things - like sleeping!! This is what I wanted to write about and haven't for many many days and nights.<br />
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I was in London a while ago and was lucky to see Dancing on Ice with Torvill and Dean. Torvill and Dean won Olympic Gold in 1984 ice dancing to Bolero. It is amazing. You can find it on You Tube. I can't give you the link because...well - unfamiliar computer. They have been sponsoring Dancing on Ice for, I think, 9 years. It is like Dancing with the Stars. Amateur ice skaters learning from professionals and then competing. <br />
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I always feel like I'm skating on thin ice with grief. I think I'm doing fine, even balancing, trying a new move, and then the ice breaks under me and I'm flailing around again - gasping for air. <br />
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When people ice dance or ice skate as a couple they have to be in perfect unison. You can do beautiful and exciting things as a solo ice dancer - but you cannot do alone what you can do with a partner. One of the judges said it is all about placing. The professional skaters go too fast to see it. With the other ones you can see them signaling each other. You can watch how carefully the man places the woman exactly where she should be. If the woman falls, it is not her fault. It is both their faults. He may not have placed her gently exactly where she should land in order to go to the next move. There is also this incredible trust as the man lifts the woman - twirls her - sometimes her head just inches from the ice - sometime her body spinning high about his head as he holds her up with one arm. There is a move called the death spiral because of how close the woman's head is to the ice. We grieving people know all about the death spiral, don't we? I remembered - not physically of course - my husband never would have let me come near him if I had sharp blades on my feet or anywhere!! - how I was lifted. How I was held. How I was placed. How together we could do things we couldn't do separately. I had welcome tears running down my face as I thought about that. <br />
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I also had smiles. And more tears at lyrics to some of the love songs. And more smiles.<br />
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I saw Torvill and Dean many years ago when they were still young. I have never seen anything quite as brilliant. Then they came to where my husband and I lived. I couldn't go - I had to be out of town. So I told my husband how brilliant they were and got him two excellent seats so he could go with a friend.. When I came home he said to me, "The women I gave the tickets to had a very good time." I almost killed him. I couldn't believe I had given him such a special present and he gave it away. I didn't kill him. I forgave him. We did that a lot - hurt each other, disappointed each other, forgave each other. The love lasted through everything.<br />
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Torvill and Dean are now each close to 60. They don't ice dance like they did when they were young. They don't do Bolero like they did when they were young. But they are willing to do it imperfectly - as they can now - for themselves and for us. British people don't give standing ovations as often as Americans do - but when Torvill and Dean did Bolero at Wembley Arena (which is a huge stadium) everyone stood and cheered and cheered and cheered. Christopher Dean said it would be sad when they performed it for the last time - but they would always have it in their hearts. Being willing to do something differently, imperfectly. Knowing that some things do eventually end - but they live in our hearts. We can be sad that they can't be done any more, but we can be oh so happy that they once were.<br />
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When Christopher Dean was making his way around the ice I was one of the people whose hand he shook. For a while I had ice dancer DNA on my hand!!<br />
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One of the amateur skaters fell. She made a funny face as if to say - Oops - but she didn't stay down - she got right back up and finished her routine. Isn't that what it's all about. Getting back up.<br />
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I wanted so much to share all this with my husband. I can't - not the way I want to. But I went by myself. I had such a good time. I showed up and allowed myself to be delighted.<br />
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It was raining. I can't walk and think at the same time. So after it was over I was thinking of each splendid moment as I walked out into the rain. I fell down. My umbrella went flying. It was London so people came up to see if I was okay. I kept saying so they would know I was all right, "It's okay. I don't know how to ice dance but I know how to fall!" I do. I know how to fall physically and not hurt myself. Partly from doing comedy improv and doing pratfalls - partly just from being klutzy and having my body react to protect itself. Since my husband died I've fallen a lot emotionally. Sometimes it takes a long time to get back up - sometimes a short time. I know how to fall. <br />
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When one of the ice dancers was about to go on the ice he said, "Let's go make shapes!!" The blades make patterns in the ice. Isn't that what life is all about? Each day - no - each moment - gives us clean ice. We need to go make shapes. We can't make the shapes we used to make. The shapes will different. But they can still be beautiful. That's it, folks. That was what I took away from the night - Go make shapes!! xo Jan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-412414030817809762014-05-10T21:08:00.002-04:002014-05-10T21:08:42.301-04:00Grief: Mother's Day: Skating On Thin IceHere I am wanting to finally write a blog post and I am away from home. When I opened my bag my computer was not in it. Still proving I'm perfectly human. I am on a borrowed computer and will have to wait until late Monday night to write something to you. I don't even have a way to know if my computer is at home or it fell out of my bag on the train. Life.<br />
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I haven't stopped writing. My Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/GriefSpeaksOut) is a dialogue with many people and I spend time every day posting and answering people. I think the blog will go down to maybe one post a month. I don't want to stop writing it. I know a lot of people - especially with blogs on grief - do stop after a time. It is important to me to continue. Yet, I often find I lack emotional stamina. Especially with the fifth year blues of my own grief. <br />
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The above title is my title. I owe you all so much and a blog post.<br />
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I didn't want to let Mother's Day go by without saying I am thinking of you. All the mothers who are still mothers but their children have died. All the children who feel lost because their mothers have died. People always assume that everyone is having a "Happy" Mother's Day. We know many, too many, people are not.<br />
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I hope tomorrow no matter your sadness, your longing, your pain - you will find something to celebrate in love and memory. xo Jan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-19006267314626803542014-04-07T20:16:00.000-04:002014-04-07T20:16:16.426-04:00Grief: Why Is It So Hard To Take Care of Myself?I'm trying to go to a different level in this grieving process. It's not working very well. It's like the children's game Chutes and Ladders (or Snakes and Ladders). I climb up and then get a wrong turn of the dice and slide back down. I don't slide all the way down to the bottom of the board any more. That's not true. Sometimes I do. But not as often. In many ways I have a magical life. In many ways I still feel this dark bleak loneliness. Back and forth. Up and down. As many times as I slide down it is up to me to climb back up.<br />
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I was wondering if I was obsessed with my dead husband. I think about him all the time. I love him more every day. I miss him. I want to be with him; not with someone new. I asked a friend whose son, her only child, died 12 years ago. "Am I obsessed?" I thought she'd say, "Of course not." Instead she said, "Of course you are. We all are." It made me wonder some more. When my husband was alive, even though we were very independent people, we were the center of each other's world. I always say he held my kite string so I could soar. He was who I came home to. He was home. He is home. I thought about him a lot. I made decisions with him and because of him. In his dying time I gave up everything to be there to take care of him. It was a privilege to do so. That wasn't obsession - it was a marriage. It was love. So my feelings really haven't changed. It is just that the person I have these unchangeable feelings about and for is dead...no longer living. Maybe that's what people who tell you to move on don't understand. Just because someone you love dies doesn't mean your feelings for them change. My husband isn't here physically for me to interact with on a daily basis - but he is spiritually. My feelings of loyalty and faithfulness and love and respect haven't changed. You don't stop loving someone when they die...sometimes you even love them more.<br />
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Understanding. I saw someone yesterday who lives in a different city. I only see him once a year. His only child, a son, died around the same time my husband died. When he saw me his eyes were full of kindness and he gave me a big hug. There was an understanding, a being present with each other because we both know grief. We know it doesn't end. We know the tears are always near the surface if not actually spilling over. We can be heart to heart honest with each other. I write this blog, I do the Facebook page...people I know read them and still I get hurt because I don't have that kind of understanding with them. How can they know me and not know me at the same time? Especially when I bang my drum so loud. <br />
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I want to take better care of myself. I want to eat better. I'm so proud of my daughter who is losing weight and looks wonderful. I will feel better if I eat better and move more. Is that news? It is to me when laying in bed watching TV and eating ice cream does such a good job of numbing me out. It seems like it is time to take better care of myself. How do I do it without my husband? The seductively vicious question that grief always throws at me - Why bother doing it without my husband? <br />
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I also want to accomplish more. I have a lot of things I could be doing. A lot of things I want to be doing. I lack emotional stamina. I was thinking that my heart is closed. It isn't. It is so open and hurt and vulnerable that I feel overexposed and in need of hiding myself away. Sometimes doing one more thing - even a simple one seems like too much. <br />
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Today. I've gotten a lot done. I've set goals and accomplished most of them. But there's movement followed by crashing loneliness and wanting to be still. I want to eat now. I want not to feel. I feel joy and happiness and gratitude. But all that doesn't light the darkness when it comes. Someone said when her husband died it was like being a bird with one wing. Rowing a boat with one oar. It seems easier to go around in circle than it is to actually get somewhere. d<br />
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I've been complaining a lot lately. Everything irritates me. I want to stop complaining again. At my daughter's house there is a jar. Every time I complained I'd put a $20 bill in. I said we should start it again...but with $1. I can't afford a $20 a complaint any more. Too many complaints. None of them serious - except for the big one...I'm alive and my husband isn't. <br />
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I never thought of that. Is he still even my husband? He is to me, for eternity. But my legal word is widow - not wife. I hate the word widow. <br />
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It will be five years in July. i am exhausted with missing him. I want to move forward. I want to be more fully alive. I want to do all the things that would make him proud. I also want to stay perfectly still and let my grief swallow me up.<br />
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Ease. I would like to do things with ease. Anger and hurt are all mixed up together. Yet, I push ease away. I know the things that will help me and so often I choose not to do them. <br />
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My granddaughter, pretending to be a butterfly, says: "When my chrysalis is done, I can fly." Sometimes I feel like I am a butterfly turning into a very hungry caterpillar instead of the other way around. <br />
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All I can do is keep restarting myself. I can keep showing up. Keep trying fill the time I have left with joy and work and help for others - and play. I don't thing any of this matters in terms of all the people in the world. It matters, though, in terms of me. <br />
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Sometimes it's clear what I want to write. Sometimes it's all a muddle. That's how I am these days all a muddle. I don't have the stages of grief over time (not that I believe anyone does) but lately they seem to spring up in different forms every five minutes. <br />
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Peace and contentment. I know so many people who claim to have them. Serenity. My husband used to say serenity was just a rumor. When people said they had it - he'd ask them to define it and tell him how they got it. I have met people who are deeply spiritual and connected with themselves and with others - and yet retain a certain equanimity - a certain slight ripple rather than crashing waves. Too many people say they have it but you can feel the lie. You can feel the pain and fear and insecurity bubbling underneath. I'd rather be honest about all my different feelings. <br />
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So - what is taking care of myself? There are simple answers like washing and cleaning up and eating well and exercising and getting enough sleep. But what it taking care of myself emotionally and spiritually? I'm throwing a child's temper tantrum again. I want my husband to take care of me <br />
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That's where I am today. Disjointed. Uncertain. But still trying. Still doing. Still showing up. Brendan Behan said, "Every cripple has his own way of walking." Even after five years I'm still trying to figure out mine. With love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-59487001992250845432014-03-23T16:36:00.000-04:002014-03-23T16:40:50.752-04:00Grief: Is Life Precious or Just Annoying? <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Shouldn't my husband's death make each day of my life even more precious to me? If so, why did I not even consider this a possibility until four years and eight months after his death? I get caught up in how lonely I am for him and how much I want to be with him I forget to consider the possibility that being here on Earth is not a punishment but a gift. For some strange reason that's not even easy to write.</span><br />
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Let's be honest. I've never been one of those perky waking up joyful kind of people. However when Artie was alive we were a comfort to each other. Our love was something that we found sustaining. I always talk about his love for life - and he had it. He didn't want to die. Yet neither of us walked easy on the earth. It was just when he was alive we walked uneasy on the earth together, holding hands and that made it better. We laughed together and understood each other in a way that was very special to us because for each of us it was the only time in our lives we had someone that we could totally trust and share things with in that deeply intimate way. I miss being cherished by him. Do I want to be cherished by another man? I don't know. </span><br />
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Mary Oliver asks, "Listen. Are you just breathing a little and calling it a life?" Sometimes I am. I am hiding away annihilating myself with sleep and TV and food to escape from coming home to silence. I truly believe Artie is holding me and protecting me the best way he can. But he's not here in the way I was so accustomed to him being here. I don't seem to ever totally make peace with that. </span><br />
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Sometimes I have a life full of adventures. I have greatly increased the amount of adventures I have since that first year of sobbing and desperately seeking. There is so much I would have missed if I had died when my husband died - as I wanted to and thought I should. </span><br />
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I wrote about this on my Facebook page Grief Speaks Out. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;">My granddaughter Gwendy blue eyes who is two years and three month has been saying, "Don't talk in the dark. Don't talk in the woods. The animals will hear us. It is scary." It must have come from a story she heard. When I was babysitting her</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"> we put on our coats and hats and scarves to go out into the dark night and have an adventure. We held each other's hands. Walking down the front steps she slipped and I held her up. In the field in front of the house it was muddier than I thought and I slipped - but I didn't fall. We held hands and walked one careful step at a time. We started to venture into a very dark place and an automatic light came on as if by magic and illuminated our way. We went back into the dark and walked around in the tall trees (the dark wood), seeing our shadows - tall and big and how they walked in front of us.. Then we went back in to the dark space and made the light come on again. When we went back into the house we realized that when we held hands we could talk in the dark and not be scared; we could talk in the woods and not be scared. When my daughter came home Gwendy told her, "I had an adventure with Gammy!" Before she went to sleep I told her a story about a little girl named Gwendy who went into the dark wood. She met all kinds of creatures - owls, and mice and many others. They all said hello and asked if she wanted to see their sleeping babies. She went into the woods scared and came home safe with the memories of an adventure and the thought of peacefully sleeping woodland babies and friendly animals and birds. While I was telling the story Gwendy was listening intently with a little smile. If I had died when my husband died as I so wanted to...I would have missed that moment. I would have missed the lesson of how we can go into our own dark wood and not be scared if we only hold each other's hands. </span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">There are many other things I would have missed. Each day is precious? That is a stretch for me still. I'm not an ungrateful person. I have a very long gratitude list. My heart just hurts. What would I do differently if I could see the preciousness of my life while I still have it? If I have to look back on my life after I die what will I see left undone, unfelt because of the choices I made. </span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">I get tired. I think I will always be someone who needs down time. I am imperfectly me. It is a big shift for me to try to even think of each moment as precious instead of something to be gotten through. I always talk to people about being surprised by happiness. Why not get better at creating it? I have often thought with such short lives it is sad that we are so skilled at hurting. Let us become skilled instead at finding contentment; even in small things. </span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">What if when I feel sorry for myself (one of my excellent skills!) I think about all that I have and have had instead of all I have lost? There is so much suffering in the world. Can I bear witness to it and honor it while at the same time not forgetting that there is so much beauty and love in the world? In my own life? </span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">Grief and pain are seductive. We give them names and some people want to medicalize them. We make little boxes out of them and put ourselves inside and close the lid. Here I am, I am a suffering person. Can't you see, there is no way out. Perhaps I am the one who must change how I define myself. I must change how I define my relationship to the world. it is my job to take off the lid of the box I have put myself in. It is my job to step out to see what there is to see. I can always go back in when I need to. All that hurts, all that is vulnerable is real. It needs time and care. However, in the same breath, isn't all that is precious, all that is loving real as well? Why not climb into those boxes some times and close those lids. Maybe that's it. Each moment is new box. Which box will it be? When I look into the corner of my day if I have had too many dark and desperate boxes perhaps the next day will be one of searching - and finding - the precious ones. My life is becomes a search for many different boxes - to see how many there are I can fit into - not just one.</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">My life is precious AND annoying and many other things. I wish us all the ability to put our grief in a box or a bag and take it with us into the dark wood to show it we don't have to be scared. Our grief can come with us on adventures. Our grief can teach us that our life is precious because if we lived a life without grief it would mean we lived a life without love - and that would be truly grievous.</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">Come...let us hold hands and see the light flickering in the shadow instead of the shadow flickering in the light. With love. xo </span></span></span><br />
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Jan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-53483869264694710652014-03-06T13:27:00.000-05:002014-03-23T16:39:29.097-04:00Grief: Why Do I Keep Falling Into This Hole In My Life?I could make this a six word blog post. Because I am grieving, that's why. <br />
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I don't love a generic person. I love someone who was the center of my world whether we were getting along splendidly or fighting in that way when we were done we said, "Who were those people and how did they get into our house?" The fights were never physical, just verbal. I can see now how we could have been more accepting of each other's quirks and had less fights - but nothing we did made the love less. I think how special it is when someone loves you when you are at your worst. It is easy to be loved when you are at your best. This person I love is still the center of my world. The problem is - he is dead. So I miss him. So I grieve. I don't mind that. I can't imagine not grieving. In fact I am grateful that I was so loved that I so grieve. I would like everyone, including me sometimes, to accept that.<br />
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Sometimes it is difficult to get used to the rhythm of it. Am I better after 4 years and almost eight months? I always say I hate the word better. I figured out that I am resistant to it because it only describes part of me. The part of me that desperately wants to feel my husband's arms around me again and share things with him and see his smile and is desperately not really satisfied with him being with me in spirit is never better. That's the hole. It is an Artie shaped hole. Nothing can fill it. When he was alive and I was having a hard day I would say, "I wish somebody loved me." He would raise an eyebrow and say with a twinkling eye - "Somebody?" Because what I wanted was for him to love me - not just somebody. He did. I knew he did and know he does. It was my way of looking for reassurance. So "somebody" - even if some day I am less stubborn and look for another love relationship and find one - will never fit the shape of the Artie hole. <br />
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The part of me that is better is the part all around that hole. I am trying to get used to the truly lovely friends I have made. (Sometimes I also have that hole of thinking I don't deserve good things. I do.) There was a time when I was young when I didn't know how people made good friends. I have less and less time to spend alone - and I like being alone - as I have more and more people I want to spend time with. People who love me. I can't get away with saying nobody loves me anymore. Some of these people I have met through showing up places after my husband died. That is one of the most important things I do - and have done - since my husband died - show up. I show up whether I want to or not. I make plans and I often wish I hadn't. I make myself go. I show up and - surprise! - I enjoy myself. At the beginning when it was almost impossible to have a good time because my grief was so overwhelming - I showed up anyway - not as often - but I showed up. I waited for some of that life out there to seep back into me. <br />
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I am lucky to have my daughter and my granddaughter. The time I spend with them is very special. To be a grandmother to Gwendy blue eyes as well as being fun is also an honor and an obligation to be present. To see life through her eyes instead of my own is a gift. <br />
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I am lucky to have found meaning in doing this blog and the Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/GriefSpeaksOut. The difference is that the blog posts are more of a monologue. The Facebook page is an international community that is compassionate and understanding. People have made friends outside of Grief Speaks Out. Someone posted that they are international now, they have a friend in Liberia and one in Australia. I am humbled by this (as of today it has 330,000 likes) but also very proud of it.<br />
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My desire to travel is coming back. I am reading a little more. <br />
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When Artie first died I wept constantly. I could not understand why he wouldn't take me with him. I considered suicide. I got help from many places in an attempt to save my own life. I am not that desperate hopeless woman any more. I am better. The hole isn't better - it still HURTS.<br />
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Some days, some nights the hole seems like the only place worth being. The quicksand comes back and nothing seems to matter. Sometimes I make friends with the hole. I give myself time to descend into it - to stare at the wall - to be in the center of it. Sometimes I am impatient with it. Sometimes I am exhausted. I think grief warriors are the bravest people alive. We wake up every morning and live our day without what we want most. Even if all we do is keep breathing - that is an accomplishment. We bear the unbearable. Yet bearing this burden we can still climb to great heights.<br />
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The reason I force myself to do the things I do is partly for me but also to honor my husband. He can't live on earth any more - but I can. I do it for myself and for him. His nickname for me was Panache. I want to still be Panache. Not to deny the sadness - the pain - the longing - but to grieve with a certain sense of style. <br />
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The entire time I have been writing this I have spelled the word hole with a w - whole - and had to go back and change it. Maybe that's me telling me what I often ignore - and what professionals and friends and family who tell us to move on or get over - don't or won't understand. I am whole with the hole. The hole is as much a part of me as the parts that are learning how to be filled up with love, new experiences, emotion, and adventure. My challenge isn't to make the hole go away - or fill it up. My challenge is to make the parts of me that aren't the hole happier, more productive, fully alive. <br />
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That's the hole story. We are whole. We can be fully alive with grief. It's just that some days it's easier to figure out how to do that than others. With much love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-43082620891696989952014-02-14T11:58:00.000-05:002014-02-14T11:58:43.241-05:00Grief: It Can't Be Valentine's Day AgainIt's been almost a month since I've written a blog post. It feels very unfair. I miss writing to you. You are all very important to me and I need to be attentive to you. My Facebook page Grief Speaks Out is taking up a lot of my time. I answer everyone who posts as well as posting myself every day. I never said when I was a little girl that when I grew up I wanted to be someone who made herself available to other grieving people and yet that is what happened. Of course, without my special Valentine, as always, my husband Artie, I wouldn't be grieving and I wouldn't think that the way to give meaning to that and to my life is to write this blog and do the Facebook page. I am so grateful for him in so many ways. I love him more every day and I continue to learn from him. That is why I am so determined to believe that he is proud of me - caring for me - and waiting - as I am for the day when we can both be in the same form.<br />
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This is my day to be depressed and sad. I am. And I'm not. I was supposed to fly to Tucson yesterday with my daughter and granddaughter. We were one of the people whose flight got cancelled. 6500 flights got cancelled. It occurred to me that at least I wasn't on the way to be reunited with someone I love. Not spending Valentine's Day with my husband and yet with my husband is the way it is now. All flights are permanently cancelled to where he is...until the day when they aren't any more. It as though he can come be with me but being earthbound I don't know how to be where he is. Which, I suppose is good. It's not my time yet. I know that.<br />
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Before I came to stay with my daughter and granddaughter I went to the drugstore to pick up some things. I bought little Gwendy a pink elephant with pink hearts on its white elephant ears and pink hearts on its white elephant tail. Artie would have loved it. Perhaps he does. I couldn't have done that even last year. I walk through Feb. with my eyes closed. Feb. 3rd was my birthday/wedding anniversary. Someone dear to my heart reminded me to celebrate on that day how lucky I am to have the love I have with Artie. It's not easy to celebrate a day when you want so badly for someone to be alive and they are not. I did try though - to remember so many good times. I tried to remember that the kind of love we have is what a lot of people hope for and dream of. I am just tired of being in love with someone who is dead. Well - that popped out honest! The only thing is - I feel married to him still. I was reading a book about someone knowing someone was lying about their husband being dead because they weren't wearing his wedding ring along with theirs - as is the tradition. I wear Artie's wedding ring (he had been married before but never wore a wedding ring before) which says Artie loves Jan loves Artie loves Jan in a perfect circle inside the band - and mine. I didn't know it was a tradition.<br />
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I had my eyes closed so well - not to see the hearts and flowers - not to hear all the stories about people who are happily married or in happy relationships - or finding someone new - that I didn't know how long it had been since I had written a blog post. This is my year of being numb; of running away from waking up every morning knowing my husband has gone away - not willingly - but still away. Oh - we hold on to each other still. I believe that. I feel that. <br />
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I have a phone call with a trusted friend who does medium work only for me and few others - as her life is more devoted to spiritual teaching and practice. I do this only once a year. In the phone call Artie told me if I need arms to hold me and a body I should find someone living to be with. That we will always be together and what I need for comfort and happiness in this life cannot break our love or that holding on. Then later when I was walking down the street I heard tell me that he only said that because he knew that was what he was supposed to say. He was ashamed to say in front my friend that he wanted me still all to himself. He wanted me to be faithful to him always. It made me laugh because it came through like a little boy confessing to stealing a piece of pie. He is supposed to be more evolved now...and when it comes to me - isn't. Did I make all that up because it is what I want to hear. I don't know. Many people believe in these things. I just saw that they are even called ADC - after death communications.<br />
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It doesn't really matter if it is real or not - it is how I feel in my heart. I don't mind living in the question. I will find out when I die myself - or not.<br />
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But this year my Valentine is a little girl who I gave a pink elephant to - who says, "I love you, Gammy." Who wants to play with me. Who I never want to hurt by not coming back...even though some day I will be the one who won't be able to come back.<br />
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When our flight was cancelled my daughter said it was the Valentine's Day curse. She isn't kidding. She has been dumped on Valentine's Day. She is a woodworker and severed her thumb on Valentine's Day (it was reattached but she doesn't have a joint in it). She talked today about missing her best friend Jon who died of cancer when he was only 36. He understood the Valentine's Day curse and didn't try to cheer up. He'd say, "Stay in bed!! Don't go out!!" <br />
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That's what we miss. Those people who understood/understand us so well. The shared history. I can have a wonderful new relationship - maybe - with another man - but what I want is my old relationship. I can't have a 23 year old journey of private jokes and little and big understandings and misunderstandings both.<br />
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A lot of people share their story on Grief Speaks Out (the Facebook page). This is true of any death. A grandparent, a parent, a sibling, a spouse, a friend, especially a child, a grandchild. I've left out pets and aunts and uncles so - whoever I've left out - please forgive me. We miss them and the special role they play in our life. We miss THEM. I don't understand what is so confusing about that to people who ask us to move on or get over it. It is normal and right to miss someone and long for them when they have been - are - such an important part of who we are.<br />
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However, life does go on. A little girl who got a pink elephant today just opened my door to say, "I went swimming all by myself!" If I had killed myself when Artie died as I thought I should - to get to him sooner I would have missed so much.<br />
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So...I hope this Valentine's Day you have time to spend with memory and story and thoughts and wishes about your beloved dead. It is okay to be sad and lonely. But I hope also that you have some life waiting for you somewhere. If you don't yet...I didn't for a long a while...that you may find some or some will find you. <br />
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I hope I start to write blog posts more often again. i miss you. I love you. I even trust you enough not to proofread this so I can go play. I never thought I would be willing to play on dreaded Valentine's Day. Maybe it's time to open my eyes more often - to see what there is to see. I can always close them again when I want to. With much love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-55879970619967854392014-01-17T15:41:00.001-05:002014-01-17T15:41:44.566-05:00Grief: LonelinessWhen my husband was alive I had a quote about how one could be married and still feel lonely. Sometimes when we fought about things or I wanted him to behave a certain way and he didn't I felt lonely. I had no idea what loneliness really was. We are both damaged people. Friends of his often told me I was a saint for putting up with him. I wasn't. He put up with me too. It was part of the beauty of our relationship that we loved each other not only at our very best but also at our very worst. He called it buying the whole package. We had a pact - and we said it often, "Nobody Leaves". I would say, "Don't leave me, okay?" He would say, "I could never leave you. Loving you is like breathing." Then he stopped breathing. He left not because he wanted to but because his body was too sick to stay. I gave him permission to go. Then I learned what real loneliness is.<br />
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I don't feel guilty but I can see more clearly now the ways in which I could have done things differently. Our journey of teaching each other about love and life isn't over. It is part of the reason that I so want it to continue. I feel that as much as I learned about him while he was alive - I have learned even more since he died. I believe that in his new form he is also learning. I don't know if there is reincarnation - but I want there to be so that we can love again - marry again - and this time have a new starting place. In his dying time he looked at me and said, "I am sorry for all the ways in which I failed you." I replied, "I am too. I am sorry for all the ways in which I failed you." That exchange stripped away all the things that had come between us over the years. We got back to the very alive essential core of our genuine and strong love. <br />
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The loneliness during our marriage came - I think - from simple things. I would be writing at the computer and he would come downstairs and want a kiss. I would think he wasn't respecting my work. Now I know nothing was more important that that kiss. He would go upstairs to his man cave and watch sports or movies. I wanted him to be downstairs with me. Now I know I could have made more of an effort to join him where he was. We so often have expectations of how people should treat us we miss what is most precious. We also had, of course, many wonderful moments together. Holding hands at the back door looking at the roses bloom. Walking on the beach. Our love of bad puns. Too many things to list. I like to remember it all as best I can. <br />
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What we didn't appreciate (like most people) when he was alive was how precious every moment was. As he got older I did make sure that whenever he left the house we gave each other a big hug and kiss and told each other how much we loved each other. I was on some level conscious of the possibility of death - but not conscious enough. My sense of loneliness while I was married would have been less if I had seen things more from his point of view than mine. It is so normal to be that way. When I see couples now I want to shake them and say - cherish every moment. But when people are alive it isn't always easy. With my daughter now it is the same thing. We are human so as much as we love each other - we also irritate each other. I try to remember what I learned from my husband dying - that our relationship is more important that what I am feeling at the moment - but sometimes I get hurt and angry. Sometimes we both say things we don't mean. Why is difficult to treasure every moment when someone is still alive? I think it is for most people.<br />
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When I found out that Artie didn't have very long to live I thought, "Well, we really messed that up." We did and we didn't. From where we started - we came very far. I wish we had had more time to go even farther - deeper - into knowing how to express that deep love we had for each other.<br />
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The loneliness now is a different kind. In some ways I feel that I have not relaxed since the day he died. Each kiss is precious. How can there be no more kisses? How can there be no more hugs? How is it I will never see his smile again, never have the love going back and forth between us as we gaze into each other's eyes. It creates such unease in the middle of the happiest moment to know he won't be waiting at home for me to share it with him. Simple things make me lonely. Seeing a t-shirt he would like, finding a new TV program or movie to share, hearing a story I can't wait to tell him. The loneliest part is that we truly understood each other. I am lucky to have good and loving friends and family. Loneliness is not being alone. Loneliness is for the relationship between myself and my husband. I miss that relationship. He is not replaceable. No one will every look in my eyes just the way he did. No one will understand me the way he did. No one will every think I am special the way he did. I won't have history with anyone the way I have history with him. He is the only person who ever took care of me - and I am the only person who ever took care of him in that very special kind of way. I live in a city with millions of people. None of them is Artie. I am important to many people - but there is no longer anyone alive to whom I am the most important person in the world.<br />
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We were both independent people. We liked missing each other and having time alone - so I would travel and then come home and tell him all my adventures. I was the only woman who never bored him. Our minds as well as our hearts were joined. How can it be that he is not here when I come home? I can search the whole world over and never find him. I can feel his spirit and his love. I believe in that. I believe our relationship continues but I am still encased in this earthly body and he is not. Little me on earth needs flesh and bones and I can only have spirit. To be blunt - it's not easy being in love with a dead guy. Yet I am. I continue to miss him more; love him more every day. <br />
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What does he look like now? With that last exhale - where did he go? Is he a ball of energy? I still picture him looking like he did when he was alive - but what is left of his body and face are ashes now. I'm not delusional. I know he is dead, I know his body is ashes, yet it is difficult to accept that all that energy between us - all that love - has shifted shape in ways I cannot begin to understand.<br />
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Loneliness is part of the daily trauma of someone we love dying. When people want to know why we aren't over it yet it's not because it hurt the day they died - a year ago - 50 years ago - it's because we live with the loneliness of missing them every day. All day, every day. There is something exhausting about that. It doesn't mean we can be fully alive; that we can't fill the years we have left with wonderful times and meaningful action. I have started to think of my life each day as an empty basket. I can leave the basket empty or I can go into the world and find glittering jewels and pine cones and roses or whatever I want and need to fill it up. I have to fill up my own basket now. There will be no more physical presents from my husband's presence - just spiritual presents from his presence.<br />
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My big question, as some of you know, for 2014 is if I want to try to have a new relationship. I still feel so married. If I fall in love again in one way I will feel less lonely because I will have someone to share things with in a new way...I won't always come home to an empty house. In another way I will still be lonely for my husband. I know people who are quite happily remarried and yet sill miss their spouses who have died. I can imagine being happy - I am often happy - I can't imagine every not being lonely.<br />
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Loneliness is one of the challenges of grief. Not to drown in it. Not to be smothered by it. I wish for all of us that we have the love of family and friends - and if we do not - we seek it - so that love can be a cushion for the loneliness we feel because we are still alive and the person/people/pets we love so much have died. <br />
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I am getting close to my birthday which is also my wedding anniversary on February 3rd. I feel like I am rocketing back into the past. As much fun as I have - and I am doing quite a lot these days - every road seems to lead to an Artie story. It does make me less lonely to know that there are so many people who understand how I feel. So many people whose memories are a strong force in their life and who know that a relationship and love do not end because of death. I wish us all laughter and comfort in the midst of this repetitive throbbing loneliness. With love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-9462413784823107802014-01-01T21:45:00.000-05:002014-01-01T21:45:31.061-05:00Grief: Hey Grief - You Don't Own Me. Bring It On!I have asked some grieving people about making choices. Sometimes the dark side of grief answers this question with a resounding, "NO!" It says to us, "I am the black hole that will always suck you back in. You can't run, you can't hide - I am coming after you so you might as well lie down sweetie. There's nothing you can do." <br />
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I have news for you dear Grief - you are a seductive liar. I'm not going to turn way from you. Sometimes I am going to embrace you. However, guess what? You don't own me. I'm not saying you aren't good at the surprise attack. The one that knocks me back to bed to stare at the wall. I'm not saying you aren't cunning; convincing me that I am more comfortable lying in bed doing nothing than being out in the world living my life. Throw your best punch. I'll crumble, I'll cry but you know what. I'll get back up again. I'll laugh at you because as menacing as you are you are the gift I have been given to remind me that every moment of your pain made feeble by the power of the joy of love. Artie's love is grief's kryptonite. (kryptonite weakened Superman's powers. I am using it here as a metaphor that the love our beloved dead can weaken the power of even the strongest grief.)<br />
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I didn't know this when my husband first died. I felt annihilated. I ate only ice cream and watched endless DVDs - when I wasn't crying hysterically in the privacy of my own room and often publicly. But even then I started to bob and weave. I punched back. I went everywhere I could think of for help. Therapy, bereavement groups, comedy classes, on-line resources, Richard Bandler's ridiculously expensive small group, Steven Gilligan's Trance Camp. When I went to places like Nick Kemp's Provocative Change training or the neo-Ericksonian hypnosis conference, I always volunteered to be a subject. I got bored with talking about me and took training with Doug O'Brien in NLP (neuro linguistic programming) and neo-Ericksonian hypnosis. I showed up. At the beginning it wasn't very often. I went to something in New York City called Culture Circle where artists of all kinds (musicians, poets, writers, cooks, pottery makers) shared their work - no criticism unless asked for - only praise. I went to plays and slept through them until I didn't any more. I got angry at the idea that if I didn't stop grieving in 6-12 months I had a mental disorder called complicated or morbid grief and started writing this blog. I think the medicalization of the natural process of grief is dangerous and ridiculous. How foolish would it be for me - for any of us to stop missing and loving these people who are so important to us. The work is not to get over it, let go, move forward - unless you want to (some people want to - and succeed at it). For me the work is to use all the love and life you have to transform your grief not reject it. <br />
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I don't grieve for everyone the same way. My parents were cruel in ways I won't explain. I did not grieve for them when they died. My friend Judy was very special to me - as was my daughter's best friend Jon - but they were not the reason for my being. I grieve for them - I miss them - but their deaths did not devastate me. My husband's death was like a tornado that left the house that was myself in sticks. I had to rebuild. I am still rebuilding. This is not complicated or morbid. My husband is the only person who ever took care of me. We understood each other completely. We weren't always good at acting loving - but the love itself was always strong and pure - and we kept our promise - nobody leaves - until Artie's body was so riddled with cancer I gave him permission to leave to go somewhere to be fee of the limitations of his body. The depth of my grief is a measure of the height of our love.<br />
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I'm not special. People have called me extraordinary. I'm ordinary in many ways. In the beginning I had a lot of frozen dead time. I still have too much - but I've been able to shift the balance. I show up more, have more happy moments and more productive ones. <br />
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In the past I would have said I had no choices. It wasn't true. The first choice I made was - after considering suicide quite seriously - to keep living. The second choice I made was to figure out how to give my life meaning. It was to make myself available to other grieving people the way my husband had made himself available to other addicts and alcoholics. I made a lot of other choices but those - and the choice to find help (and I am not a person that likes to ask for help) were the most important ones.<br />
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I don't have a choice about when I will see my husband again. I can say, "Come back, I know you can't, but come back." as many times as I want to and he won't come back because he can't come back. That dearly loved face and body is a small pile of ashes in a plastic bag. How is that possible? A lion of a man reduced to a small pile of ashes. Oh yeah. He's not in those ashes - he's in what my daughter calls The Great Beyond. He's also in my heart and all around me. Because I can't have him back physically I don't have a choice about when the next wave of grief will hit. What I do have a choice about is what I do when it does.<br />
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I like to make time for grief. I like to spend time with my dead husband. Sometimes I make the wrong choice. I would have been better off this New Year being with my granddaughter. Being alone left too much room for self pity. But that's okay. If I'm going to make choices sometimes I'm going to make wrong ones. I don't think spending a day in bed every once in a while is a bad choice. I don't think falling down every once in a while because I am still so incredibly sad and pained and exhausted with missing him is a bad choice. The question is - after all these years of unwanted practice - can I sometimes make different choices?<br />
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I have chosen to not let his death taint the wonder and joy of my memories - to roll them back to the time they actually happened. i have chosen to sometimes talk about being with him when he died and what it felt like to put his lifeless arm around me for one last hug - but more importantly I have chosen to think of him as alive most of the time. Live Artie makes me happy. Dead Artie often makes me sad.<br />
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I have chosen - when I remember - to keep asking who I am besides someone who grieves - what else do I see and hear and smell and touch and taste that give me happiness when I am willing to dnotice it. <br />
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If I even say the words - I have a choice - I have empowered myself. I don't have to believe it - I just have to say it. I have a choice. <br />
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Every morning when I wake up in the morning I have a choice. If after I post on the Facebook page Grief Speaks Out I feel overwhelmed and go back to sleep until noon - I have a choice at noon. If I spend a day in bed watching DVDs (sorry folks - I love British and Danish television - I will never give that up) the next day I have a choice. <br />
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If I don't like the choices I make - I can forgive myself and accept myself the way I am. (That's not always easy for me - but I know it's the best thing to do.) My mother was a super critic. She lives on in my bones. She's the voice that says I will never do anything right. I'm a great believer in the saying, "Kill your critic." Like a horse whisperer or dog whisperer - we can be grief whisperers. No choke chains or beating up ourselves - we are hurt enough already, we don't need to hurt ourselves more. Reward ourselves, be tender to ourselves, give ourselves treats when we do something we are proud of. Even in that turbulent beginning I tried to do one thing a day I could be proud of. Sometimes it was as simple as taking a shower or paying a bill on time.<br />
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I hope this year - 2014 - I will choose to do more writing, I will choose to fight in more arenas for the rights of grieving people to be heard and accepted. I hope I will choose to take better physical care of myself, to be kinder to myself and others. (Those of you who think I am always loving - I am a champion user of curse words - and grief sometimes makes me extremely impatient and irritable.) What i hope that I do when I am laying there looking at the wall - feeling only enveloped by the dark devastating cunning black hole of grief is that I remember what I have written on this page - that I have a choice whether to stay there or to reach out to others and ask them them pull me out when I cannot pull myself out. <br />
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It's not easy - but it is easier. It is easier partly due to all the people who have come into my life since Artie died. It is easier partly due to actions I have taken. It is easier partly due to the passage of time. For me - time doesn't heal - but it teaches me new lessons - new ways of looking at things. To look outward instead of inward. To look at someone who triumphs over burdens more severe than mine. To look at something that makes me laugh out loud. <br />
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Those men and women who have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan with their legs blown off who walk and run and hike. They inspire me. <br />
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My husband inspires me. You all inspire me. I wonder what choices I will make tomorrow. Tonight it is time for a healthy dinner and some of these DVDs. When my computer tells me I am running on low battery power it is a sign I should turn it off soon.<br />
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I ask you to say - as an experiment - at least once a day - Yes, I have a choice. I may not feel I have a choice about how deep my pain and grief are - but I have a choice about what actions I can take. Say...Yes I am grieving, yes I am stuck, yes I am sad, yes I am devastated, yes I don't know who I am any more but what else am I? Who else am I? I can choose other things to be. I can choose other emotions to feel. <br />
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Go ahead - dare to laugh at grief. Dare to find meaning in your life. Dare to get up every time you fall down (even if it's six days later). I didn't know I was going to be so fierce today. I thought I was going to be broken and empty like I felt last night when I was crying - sobbing - like I did at the beginning. All the things I have done today (in addition to all the things I have not done) have brought this feisty powerful woman out. Perhaps it is my husband -my lion of a man husband - using my vocal chords to ROAR once again. <br />
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I kind of like this feeling. I hope you catch a bit of it and now feel your life force moving through you in a new way. Say it with me: 2014. Bring it on!! Did you whisper it? Say it only in your mind. Be defiant. Shout it. I am ready. Bring it on!! With love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-75287331308922015262013-12-29T16:11:00.001-05:002013-12-29T16:12:48.690-05:00Grief: How To Start A New YearI don't make New Year's resolutions any more. I see them as a recipe for failure. When my husband first died I bought a plaque that said, "Have An Adequate Day." It made me laugh - but I also felt it was something I could live up to. I don't like setting expectations for myself that I might not meet. A lot of life coaches would disagree with me on this. I find it works better to have a gratitude list and a forgiveness list. <br />
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The gratitude list contains the things I am grateful for that happened in 2013. It forces me to look at the good things that happen to me instead of just employing my excellent skill set for self pity. The forgiveness list contains things that I would like to accomplish but haven't yet. They are kind of upside down resolutions. I forgive myself for not achieving goals I might have with the hope that perhaps I will achieve them the next year. But if I don't - they just go back on the forgiveness list. There is no judgement list. Living without my husband is hurtful in so many ways that I try not to hurt myself any more than I already am. That means accepting myself where I am. When I can't do that - I usually talk to someone who will tell me that they love me. I have a friend I met on a grief site that has the uncanny ability to e-mail me and tell me how special I am and how much she loves me just when the dark place has grabbed hold of me and I am thinking that nobody loves me and I am worthless. Her e-mail shatters the dark place and lets the light back in.<br />
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I am grateful for family and friends. I am grateful for all of you who are with me on this strange and unwanted journey. I am grateful I seem to be gifted in some way to bring comfort to those who are suffering. When I started writing the blog I said if it only helped one person it would be enough. It has become much more than that. I never thought I would have a Facebook page with over 260,000 likes - that what I write would be able to reach millions of people all one the world. It is still a little startling to me. This year I saw a play where an actor told of a man whose wife of many years died. He was sitting in a chair crying and people came to comfort him in his grief. They did not know he was crying because he had no grief. I am grateful that I learned this year from that story that my grief is a gift. An uncomfortable one - but how much sadder it would have been to be married to someone I did not grieve for. I am grateful always for the deep and abiding love that grief is paired with. I also learned this year from a quote by Victor Frankl to be grateful that I outlived my husband. What greater gift could I have given him than to take care of him all the days of his life and be the one who lives on. (I hope he appreciates it!!)<br />
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I am grateful for many more things. Good plays, good TV shows. Newly fallen snow, the color of fall leaves. A good joke, a bad pun. A good political discussion. I try to look every day outward to see what is outside me that I am grateful for instead of inward at my grief and my pain. A new blanket that is soft and warm and makes it even more difficult to get out of bed!! Those questions. What else? Who else? I must keep asking it so my gratitude list grows every longer.<br />
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On my forgiveness list? Still haven't written the book - still haven't given myself a healthy fit body. All those moments staring at nothing. All the frozen moments, the unappreciated wishing I was with my husband moments. I would like to be healthier - I would feel better and have more energy. i would like to write a book - maybe. Would I like to have a new relationship? - that one is still firmly in the I don't know place.<br />
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I don't know what the new year will bring. I know it won't bring my husband back to me. I will have to keep finding ways to live with that. I hope, though, that the balance will continue to shift so I continue to have more productive moments and more happy moments. I hope that the pain will continue to gentle down and I will feel less vulnerable, less irritated by life. I would like to look at the world more with my granddaughter's eyes. She says "OOOO' and "Wow" a lot. She laughs a lot. But she is two. I kiss her neck and she says, "Stop. That's enough Gammy." She is feisty and feeling very powerful. She also knows that she is loved. I can learn a lot from her.<br />
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I don't know what I'll do on New Year's Eve. Maybe I'll read some old love letters. Maybe I'll watch DVDs. Maybe I'll listen to some hypnosis CDs. Maybe I'll cry or laugh or all those things. Then it will be January 1st. Then 2nd. Then 3rd. Each day brings me closer to my husband - but it is up to me not to wish those days away but to live them<br />
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Perhaps that is what I would like for all of us this new year - to not wish our days and nights away - but to live them fully. To hold on if we want - and let go if we want. To let love raise us above the pain so that we see things ever in new ways. Not a new year - but a new day - one at a time. A day in which we delight in things past - but also in things present. With love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-51490860562645989912013-12-29T15:34:00.001-05:002013-12-29T15:36:20.733-05:00Grief: It's Been Lovely But I Have To Scream NowThat is one of my favorite bumper stickers. I have had it on my car, on my bathroom mirror, and other places. When Artie was alive I had a bumper sticker on our bedroom door that said "Do Not Disturb: Occupant Is Disturbed Enough Already." <br />
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It's been lovely but I have to scream now is what the holidays have felt like to me. I had some lovely times (again - apologies to those of you who have had children and/or grandchildren die) with my daughter Erin and granddaughter Gwendy. My granddaughter is two already and our holiday was her birthday. She had a small party with myself and my daughter on Dec. 20th and then her big birthday party on Dec. 21st. My daughter had "Curious Creatures" come. They bring animals to children's parties. There was a chinchilla, a skunk , a hedgehog, a flying squirrel and many others. There is a picture of me holding a python. I love holding pythons - the first time I held one was in the Amazon rainforest. They are very strong and it makes me feel powerful as long as there is a trainer near me! Gwendy got a child's trampoline and loves to bounce on it while I play her toy drum. We had a small holiday tree with her picture on the top. My idea - because she is an angel (when she's not being VERY two). After her birthday she walked around for a day saying - Everyone ate MY cake. We explained that birthday party cakes were for sharing - but she kept saying - It was MY cake. You ate MY cake. :) We bought her a big girl bed and it arrived the day I left so I could see her bounce on it too. She even slept in it that night. My daughter was also lovely. Our relationship improves all the time. <br />
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I was having such a good time. I was also having a stomach ache that wouldn't go away. My daughter and my husband (she is not his child) both liked to have me to themselves so when my daughter began living on her own I spent Thanksgiving with her and Christmas with my husband. I didn't have a stomach ache during Thanksgiving. I asked on my Facebook page Grief Speaks Out if grief causes people to be sick. A lot of people said yes - they talked about colds and headaches and stomach aches. I had never thought of that as a connection.<br />
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When I was in the car on the way to the train station Gwendy kept saying - "I don't wan to leave Gammy." I held her hand. I always feel so sad when I leave her. At the same time I am always glad to be back in my own space. My husband said I was a malcontent and I disagreed with him. He was right. He was such a wonderful buffer between me and things in life I find difficult. <br />
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I have the same feelings when I go out with friends and have a good time. Afterwards sometimes I have great memories to take with me - but sometimes I just feel like screaming: "My husband is still dead. Don't you get it? Why doesn't anyone understand me?" I think Gwendy and I get along so well because I am so good at being two! <br />
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I always talk about transforming grief into joy - about being inspired by Artie's love of life to love it myself. They call them grief bursts or grief attacks and I know they are normal. I am still surprised by them sometimes. What do I do with times that I cherished with my husband now that he is no longer physically here? How do I get the lovely part without the painful screaming part? Haven't figured that out for all the times. Sometimes I am present in the happy moments but I am also always glad to get back to my solitude. Then when I am back in my solitude I feel lonely because it is not easy to adjust to having a dead husband (no matter how alive his spirit is) instead of live one. See... a malcontent!<br />
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I have gone out on New Year's Eve since he died but I have chosen this year to spend it alone - with him - which is alone and not alone. He never really liked New Year's Eve so we always spent it together at home. One year I covered all the clocks and we watched Monty Python movies. When I uncovered the clocks it was after 1 am. We laughed and kissed and wished each other Happy New Year. We often watched the ball come down in Times Square on the television. Our last New Year's Eve together boxing or something he wanted to watch was on. When he came down after it was over and asked me if I wanted to watch the ball come down I said no. I was angry that he didn't want to spend the entire night with me. Of course, I didn't know it was our last New Year's Eve together. I didn't even know the cancer was probably already spreading throughout his body. All the precious moments wasted...and all the precious moments shared. I like to remember it all. I like to remember it as it was. It makes the love mean more to me that it wasn't always perfect - that we were often bad at expressing it. I wish I could have a do over though. I want to go back to all those moments that we threw away and make them something different. A perfect love...an imperfect relationship. Yet we kept our promise - Nobody leaves. A love that was truly for better, for worse, in sickness and in health. And even death won't part us now.<br />
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Maybe that's part of the screaming part. There is so much I want that is impossible. I want him to come back. I want to relive moments and change history. I want to live to an old age so my family and friends never have to grieve for me - and I want to be with my husband as soon as possible. <br />
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At least I have more moments of "It's been lovely" than I used to. The screaming is quieter. The grief has gentled down.<br />
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What is it about holidays and dates that make the celebrations often have an undercurrent of stronger pain? My husband is just as dead today as he was yesterday and will be tomorrow. It's how I feel about his death that changes. I have my birthday/anniversary (Artie married me for my birthday present) and Valentine's Day coming up. I try to ignore that. It's not being in the present to think of February while it is still December. But like some people are waiting for January 2nd - part of me is waiting for March.<br />
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I have a lot of fun things scheduled in January and February. They are things I am looking forward to. I know they will be lovely...but then will I have to scream? I usually don't actually scream - but I do sometimes cry or curse. I am impatient with life and with people. I went out yesterday and was annoyed it was a beautiful day. I wasn't in the mood for a beautiful day. How silly is that?<br />
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Of course - I am trying to eat healthy food again. Not medicating myself with sugar. That makes me a lot more temperamental. How normal and how self destructive improperly medicating ourselves is.<br />
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I am wandering off into a ramble. Maybe finally writing this blog post is lovely but I am getting to the I have to scream now. I do feel badly that I am not posting as often. I am more productive than I used to be...but nowhere near where I could be. <br />
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I wish us all moments of pure loveliness and joy that are not colored with our grief. I have those too. I found myself wandering home after seeing a play with a friend and wound up in front of the giant Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. I didn't feel sorry for myself. I thought about my granddaughter and how much she loved some of the adventures she had in New York City with Gammy and Mommy. I smiled a real smile. <br />
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Here's to those real smiles - the ones that go all the way through. Here's to noticing them when they happen and training ourselves to have more of them. With love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2455832135737799849.post-10504794051187135422013-12-15T15:42:00.003-05:002013-12-15T15:43:48.840-05:00Grief: I Wish I Didn't Know The CodeI couldn't sleep so at 3 o'clock in the morning I turned on one of my favorite British murder mysteries - Inspector George Gently. George is played by the intense and lovely actor Martin Shaw. It started with him (an older gentleman) getting a doctor's exam. The doctor tells him he is very fit. Then the doctor says, "When does it hurt most? In the morning or the last thing at night?" They cut away to a totally different setting: his partner being called to the scene of a murder. I'm thinking...if George is healthy why is the doctor asking him when it hurts? Two seconds, it takes me. Oh. The doctor is asking him about his wife's death. When does that hurt most.<br />
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They cut back to the doctor's office. The doctor says, "How long has it been?" George says, "4 years, 3 months and two weeks. I don't miss her less, I miss her differently. I think what gets at me is the never again."<br />
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I got the code. What else hurts first thing in the morning and last thing at night? Someone you love has died. I open my eyes and I remember. My husband is still dead. I turn over to go to sleep and, by choice I guess, I'm alone. I'm sleeping with ashes and a Yankee jacket. Still. That's when I usually say, "Come back. I know you can't but please come back." It's the silence at the end of the day. It's the time when we would be holding each other and sharing all our stories of what happened to us. <br />
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It's a 4 and half years for me. I know Martin Shaw is and actor and George Gently is a character but there is a writer writing this that knows grief. A writer who knows 4 years isn't such a long time and yet it is forever. A writer who knows that you don't miss someone less but you miss them differently - that never again is impossible to accept and yet we have to accept it every minute of every day. <br />
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December 11th was my husband's birthday. I did the usual post on Facebook asking people to do something kind for themselves or for someone else in his memory - to keep his smile alive. I heard from some of his friends I don't usually hear from. I went out with my daughter and granddaughter and had a good time. Then I had a bang up fight with my daughter about something to stupid to even mention. It continued the next morning and she said i was "too easily wounded."<br />
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Damn straight. I am too easily wounded. I always have been. When my husband was alive I would say "I can't do it, it's too hard." and he would hold me. He was my buffer against the world. He was my anchor. He was my safe place. I want to change all the "was" to "is" but I have been feeling too easily wounded for a long time now. Part of me stopped breathing when he died. I have to keep pounding my heart to keep it going.<br />
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I bore myself sometimes with the repetition. I tell other people to accept themselves where they are. I know that people deeply miss the ones they love 40, 50 years after they die. Yet part of me now asks, "Still?" I don't miss him less, I miss him differently. There is a trajectory from the night he died until today. I haven't stood still. Yet some days it is just too much to bear. Then I bear it. But there's a certain tiredness that goes along with it. <br />
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There are still days of falling backwards with no one to catch me except myself. I have so many friends and so many good things in my life. Yet I am drawn back to the malcontented part. My granddaughter is going to be 2 already. She is so smart. She makes me laugh and love. We took her to a Rod Stewart concert at Madison Square Garden and she danced and jumped and danced. I have work that satisfies me. I have done a lot to make my husband proud.<br />
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But when does it hurt more - first thing in the morning or last thing at night? <br />
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Dates and holidays and memories and hope for reunion some day and being present in my present and creating meaning and round and round. <br />
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Grief and I walk hand in hand. Sometimes I can dance with it, sometimes it still thwacks me upside the head and I lie down rather dazed. <br />
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I have a cold. Colds are miserable. Not serious but miserable. Once I had a cold and I asked Artie to buy me some chicken soup. He went to the store and came back and said he couldn't find any. When I got better I bought about different kinds of chicken soup and didn't say a word - just piled the cans up on the kitchen counter. I miss stuff like that. All the little private jokes that no one else can really understand. We had a code too. I liked that code - the one where we understood each other the way no one else ever could. Where being too easily wounded was okay because he could be my protector.<br />
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I wish you ways of creating new traditions and memories to carry you along through the holidays. I wish us all the ability to remember the smiling part of us - the laughing part of us. Now that we know the code...maybe we can be extra tender to ourselves so that even if the hurt doesn't go away we are able to be fully alive with it as a part of us - not the whole of us. Don't make the hole the whole. I guess I wish us silliness as well and the ability to look at the world through the eyes of a small child - with wonder. <br />
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What I really wish is that I had a magic wand that could bring all our people back even for a day. The planet would be very crowded that day but what a precious day that would be. With love. xoJan Warnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05541206302269996391noreply@blogger.com0