In Honor Of The Oscars

In honor of the Oscars last night, I'd like to give out a personal award.

Last night's Academy Awards speeches seemed to me to be particularly emotional, expressing the gratitude of recognition, the fulfillment of dreams and deep thanks for the years of incredible support that people received while working on their ground breaking film projects. 

It brought to mind for me the role that others play in our lives during difficult times and reminded me that support groups around the country are on the front lines of our communities, doing the nitty gritty, down and dirty and painful work of helping us put one foot in front of another as we learn to live with the unexpected challenges that life has brings us.

 

In my case, I'd like to give out a personal award, The Best  Support Group award to Widowed Persons Outreach (WPO) located at Sibley Hospital in Washington, DC.  The people at Sibley who run this incredible program are the unsung heros of bereavement work and I'd like to draw the curtains aside a bit to reveal that grief support groups are not strange secretive gatherings of people who wallow in their sorrow and loss.

 

Best Support Group Award

No indeed.  They are groups of compassionate people dealing honestly and directly with the confusion that grief brings.  I spent almost two years as a participating member of the WPO support group and then after leaving the support group I spent many years later as a volunteer trying to give back the unconditional support WPO gave to me.

I learned a tremendous amount from the other widowed members of the group and also the amazing people who ran the group while I was there.  One person I would like to give a shout out to is Julie Potter, a calm and patient woman with so much insight that she reminds me of  a wise Buddha.  WPO taught me how to slowly gather the shattered pieces of myself and figure out how to best to put them back together in a way that gave me worked for me.  The group gave me the strength to help myself and my grieving young son.   

 

Whether it's alcoholism, gambling, overeating, drug addiction or grief, I believe that others who are traveling the same unpredictable path as ourselves can often offer the greatest amount of inspiration.

It may seem slow and incredibly painful but I found that when you sit and share your story with others facing the same issues, there is a sense of relief that you have finally found people who understand the depth of what you are feeling and how hard it is to handle.  In searching for a way to begin healing, support groups offer a safety zone because you find you are not alone in your emotional turmoil. 

 

Many people are uncomfortable with the emotional pain of grief.  As a result, family and friends are sometimes unsure of what to say or how to be helpful.  Support groups are the places where we can let it all hang out, revealing the thoughts and feeling we might not want to tell others because they might not get what we are really telling them.

 

You deserve to talk through your feelings and get them off your chest.  It's all part of starting a healing process.  By letting your emotions come to the surface and then working through them, you acknowledge and face your changed life and find others who are also dealing with the same sorts of issues.

 

Each grief may be individual but you shouldn't feel that you have to handle it all by yourself.  Support groups can be a crucial first step when you find yourself unsure of how to deal with a personal crisis.

With A Little Help From My Friends

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends,

Mmm, gonna try with a little help from my friends. . .

 

                                        ~ The Beatles

Whether it's alcoholism, gambling, overeating, drug addiction or grief, I believe that others who are traveling the same unpredictable path as ourselves can often offer the greatest amount of inspiration.

It may seem slow and incredibly painful but I found that when you sit and share your story with others facing the same issues, there is a sense of relief that you have finally found people who understand the depth of what you are feeling and how hard it is to handle.  In searching for a way to begin healing, support groups offer safety because you find you are not alone in your emotional turmoil.

In my grief support group, I was particularly inspired by a middle-aged woman who had lost her husband and an adult child.  I would listen to her and be amazed that she somehow had found a way to carry on with her life.  Given the same circumstances, I'm not even sure I would be able to get up, get dressed and get out the door of my house.  Seriously.

Laying bare your pain, guilt, shame, anger or even desires sounds like it would be a humiliating experience but I never found it to be.  In support group meetings, I was totally vulnerable but I wasn't afraid to talk and share because I had found an atmosphere of support and understanding.  There was no criticism or censoring of any kind. 

And that kind of support can take you anywhere you want to go.

In Boston, it took Marty Walsh all the way to the mayor's office.  Walsh's background is as a state legislator and a labor leader but the other part of his amazing story is that he also believes in extending a helping hand to those with addiction problems. 

 

 

 

Walsh, a recovering alcoholic who still attends AA meetings after 18 years of sobriety, was elected Nov. 5 to the city's highest office, the office of mayor, with the help of many former drug addicts and drinkers who worked on his campaign staff and also volunteered canvassing door to door to get the word out about Walsh.

 

Walsh said the support from former addicts was invaluable to him not because of the political rewards that came out of their work but because of the personal and emotional rewards of watching people find hope, get involved and work for something they believe in.

 

"They give me the emotional strength to keep moving," Walsh said in an interview with The New York Times.

 

And that, my friends, is the essence of why support groups work.

 

They give you the emotional strength, the strength you so desperately need, when you are adrift in a sea of hurt.

 

Congratulations Marty and good luck to you!!

Amazing You!

A significant and ongoing part of the grieving process is learning what to do with the confusing feelings you experience.

 

What am I supposed to do with the sad, angry, and surreal emotions I have inside me about the person who used to be in my life?  That person who was here yesterday, but is not here today, and won't ever be here for a lot more todays in the future.  How can I turn those sad, angry, surreal feelings into constructive feelings so that I can make a future for myself?

Acceptance of my new life and my new status is something I work on all the time.  Sometimes I push myself even when I'm not really sure where I am going because I know I have to challenge myself.  We all need to have something in our lives, something that we are passionate about, that makes us want to get out of bed in the morning and get dressed and go out in the world and interact with others.

 

In the beginning, getting out of bed was the last thing I wanted to do after my husband died.  Fortunately, my wonderful son needed to go to school and more importantly, needed to see that his only parent was functioning on some level as a regular human being.  I ignored my desire to pull the covers over my head and numb myself.  It was hard, very hard, and I felt as though I was walking through cotton candy, but I put one foot in front of the other every day and somehow managed to push forward to rebuild our lives.

 

I found that these confusing feelings were their most intense after my husband's death but even now, nine years later, I still can have a wave of sadness come out of nowhere and totally wash over me.  Last week it was a beautiful, sunny, picture perfect September day and I left my office for a walk down to the Whole Foods store near George Washington University.

Nothing in particular was on my mind so when a slide show of memories of me, my husband and our son started playing in my head I really felt down.  "I don't want to go backwards," I said to myself.  "If I do, I will only feel sad." I kept walking and breathing deeply and eventually got back to my office.

  

It takes a while to wrap your brain around the fact that someone you love very much has died and they won't be with you anymore to do the things that the two of you did over and over again and probably always thought you would do over and over again.

 

In a sense, it is as if some gigantic arm swept across the table of your life and wiped it clean, pushing everything away and laying it bare.  Your life as you know it has disappeared and all the routines you established with this person have collapsed.



Photo Courtesy of Dr. Rennie

But there is still you.  Amazing you!

 

Don't count yourself out.  Ever.

You may feel broken into pieces right now but you are still beautiful and full of possibilities.  You just need to find some glue in the form of love and comfort from friends, family and even support groups.  You do have reserves of inner strength within you and as strange as it sounds, you'll find these reserves when you allow yourself to feel the pain of your loss.  You also find them when you do something by yourself that you never have done before.  I promise.

Naturally, no one wants to feel the pain or put themselves out there in a vulnerable way, but that's when you truly and authentically live life.  I have memories that are so painful that I have mentally put them in an imaginary box.  They are raw and scary feelings but experiencing them has made me live my life differently.

Don't be afraid to spend some quiet time; time thinking about what you have been through and where you may want to go in the future.  Eventually the pieces of your life will start to come together and slowly mend, forming a stronger person.

Let's go forward, for you and I are on new paths, and together we will accept and persevere.
 

Widowed Fathers Reaching Out

I know a few widowed mothers and have great respect for how they handle the role of single parent.

I don't know any widowed fathers so I have always been curious about how they juggle the demands of raising children and handling their work careers. 

 

I imagine that a family member helps them; maybe a mother, a sister or even a brother.  Or maybe the fathers had already hired someone to help them when their wives sadly became too ill or were weakened by treatments.

 

But after reading the insightful New York Times story below, I found that widowed fathers and widowed mothers essentially struggle and try to deal with the same issues: school, bed time, personal responsibilities and housekeeping.

 

 

At the end of the day, it is not possible for one person to physically and mentally juggle it all.  It takes a lot of support to parent your children and take care of your broken heart all at the same time.  And it's okay to admit that.

 

You are not SuperParent.  You need help.

 

Asking for help doesn't mean you are weak.

 

Asking for help is a sign of good mental health.  It means you recognize that your efforts are not changing your situation the way you thought it would and something different needs to be tried.

 

Asking for help is a sign of strength.

 

It doesn't feel that way when it is happening but it's true.

 

I am always in need of help.  Many times I would call my grief counselor and my voice would be shaking and my hands would be shaking and I would try my best to keep it together but it wasn't happening.  Sometimes I couldn't even put together a simple declarative sentence.  All my words would come out in a jumble.

 

It's hard to put yourself out there when you are most vulnerable and in need of kindness and support.  And as a single parent, you feel you have to be strong for your children and show them the way to go.  I'm always asking other parents what's going on with their children and then telling them something that is going on with my child to see if a particular thing is common to them. 

 

"Well how did you get them to eat that?"

 

"What time does your child go to bed?"

 

"Have they asked about blankety-blank yet?"

 

Please read this great New York Times story below focusing on widowed fathers and the wonderful way these guys handled their unexpected situations:

A Lifeline for Widowed Fathers

By JANE E. BRODY

April 22, 2013/The New York Times

Three springs ago, Joe Ciriano was living in a fog. He had just lost his wife of 21 years to breast cancer. He was now the sole parent of a son and three daughters, one with Down syndrome. The children, ages 6 through 19, all had different needs and levels of understanding.

Mr. Ciriano, 51, an accounts manager in Burlington, N.C., was riddled with doubts about his ability to carry on as a single parent and was struggling to keep his head above water. While deeply mourning his wife, he was unsure of how good a parent he could be.

“What is normal?” he wondered. What should he say to the kids about their mother? How should he treat them? Could he handle his family and do his job?

With no one to share day-to-day family responsibilities and decisions, and to help fill both his and his children’s emotional and physical needs, life felt “overwhelming,” Mr. Ciriano said in an interview.

Then something wonderful happened. He and Karl Owen, a 49-year-old software engineer from Chapel Hill whose wife had died, of lung cancer, three weeks after Mr. Ciriano’s, were asked to form a support group for fathers widowed by cancer who had children at home.

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Donald Lee Rosenstein, a psychiatrist, and Justin Michael Yopp, a psychologist, weren’t sure how openly these men would talk about their feelings and struggles. But the researchers saw a pressing need to help them and their children through this trying life experience.

Too often, they’d found, widowed fathers contend with social and emotional isolation — a profound aloneness — and suffer in silence.

“I’m not a support-group kind of guy who wants to talk about touchy-feely kinds of things,” Mr. Ciriano said. But finding himself “lost at sea,” he was willing to give it a try.

The result has exceeded all expectations. The eight widowed fathers who formed the core group, led by a professional facilitator, quickly learned that their feelings, doubts and concerns were shared by all and offered one another insights and suggestions on how to cope.

“All the men were exhausted and suffering a crisis in confidence, fearful of screwing things up,” Dr. Rosenstein said. “They faced countless daily issues — school problems, struggles with discipline, bed times, expectations and a tendency to let things slide a little, which really doesn’t work well for kids.”

Mr. Owen said in an interview: “A lot of things that seemed abnormal in our lives were common to the other guys in the group. Someone would bring up a situation, and the rest of us would nod, ‘Yeah, me too.’ These issues were very difficult to discuss with friends who hadn’t been through a similar experience,” said the father of two children, who were 9 and 12 when their mother died.

 

“We were all in a place in our lives we hadn’t prepared for,” he said, “and collectively we could share experiences and help each other navigate.”

Participants in the group developed a remarkable bond, a level of friendship and sharing that is rare among men, who even now are expected to be strong and resilient, and many of whom still avoid talking about deep feelings and doubts.

Three years later, four of the men continue to meet monthly and have benefited so much from the experience that they are reaching out to help other fathers newly widowed by cancer.

Meanwhile, Dr. Rosenstein and Dr. Yopp, who said they could find no similar support groups for widowed fathers, are trying to get others started at cancer centers around the country. They would like to conduct a formal study to determine “what is most helpful and what isn’t to these men,” Dr. Yopp said in an interview.

Ideally, he said, every major cancer center would have a support group for widowed fathers, whose experiences and needs are different from those of widowed women and older men. (More information about how the group works can be found at singlefathersduetocancer.org.)

Cancer is responsible for more widowed fathers than any other cause of death, Dr. Rosenstein and Dr. Yopp noted in an article in the journal Psycho-Oncology. An estimated 100,000 children are living with widowed fathers in the United States, and the trauma of losing a mother at a young age can seriously disrupt a family’s structure and the children’s development, sometimes with lifelong consequences, they wrote.

“There is a pressing need to understand the experiences of these widowed fathers and to develop supportive interventions for them and their children,” they said.

I can attest to the value of such support. I was 16 and my brother was 12 when our mother died of cancer in 1958, leaving my father emotionally, physically and financially drained by her yearlong illness.

To stay afloat, he worked two jobs and had little time to enforce routines and discipline at home. I soon departed for college, and my brother was left to cope on his own with the devastating loss of our mother at so vulnerable an age.

“Men traditionally do not play the role of the more nurturing parent; therefore, as widowed parents, fathers may be less likely to employ child-centric or nurturing parenting styles and more likely to feel unprepared than widowed mothers,” Dr. Yopp and Dr. Rosenstein wrote.

They said various studies had found a clear “link between the mental health of the surviving parent and the adjustment of the parentally bereaved child.”

A major issue for widowed fathers, Dr. Rosenstein said, is providing parental consistency with love and understanding. Good parenting requires structure, clear expectations, well-defined limits and reasonable consequences.

“What I’ve seen happen a lot is the former family order melts away and no new order is put in place,” the psychiatrist said. “This can be tough for kids, who feel cared for when there are limits and consistent discipline.”

The trauma of a young mother’s protracted death from cancer can be exacerbated by the patient’s understandable wish to live as long as possible for her family, Dr. Rosenstein added. These women often choose aggressive therapy until the bitter end, missing the comforts of hospice care and the opportunity to express their love, wisdom and wishes for the family.

In an online survey conducted by the two researchers, nearly half of 144 widowed fathers said their wives had had no chance to say goodbye to their children.

Sometimes A Decision Is Made For You

 

 

 

 

Maybe it's a bit of an election "hangover" or perhaps a reflection of my personal life, but lately it seems as though I have been on a decision-making bender of sorts.

Has this ever happened to you?  I'm not sure if it's true for you or not, but when it's happening to me it feels as though I am going from one decision to the next with no breaks.  These decisions vary in importance -- from stuff around the house to personal issues -- but still they seem to keep coming at me with no end in sight.

Just when I think I am done with one decision, I barely get a chance to catch my breath and another one seems to be vying for my attention.  I remember reading somewhere that every time you make a decision, the process of trying to arrive at what you should do takes a little bit of energy out of you each time.  If this process goes on long enough, you can either burn out or start making some bad decisions.

And then sometimes, a decision is made for you.

 

Besides writing and researching this blog and my full-time job, I also have been writing and editing a bimonthly newsletter for Sibley Hospital's bereavement support group for the past seven years.  I once belonged to this group after my husband died and I don't know what I would have done without their help.  The group was the best thing that ever happened to me and it was a great experience!

 

After I left the group (you can only belong for two years), I wanted to give back and help others rebuild their lives after their loss, so I volunteered to oversee the newsletter and I'm so glad I did.  But now I am saying good-bye to the newsletter because several relatives are dealing with serious health conditions and I want to help them in any way I can.

 

I tried to juggle all of it for months but eventually I could see that I need to let someone else take over the newsletter.  There truly is a time for things to begin and end and it's hard to let go but other things become more important and then it is taken out of your hands. 

 

For the past seven years, I have talked to lots of people in different stages of grieving and done hours and hours of research about what to expect in the grief process and how to gain strength and slowly go on with your life.  My goal with the blog and the newsletter is to give women and men, parents and children, friends and relatives who are recently widowed lots of resources so they know they are not alone.

 

The newsletter and my blog are also places where all aspects of grief are a mainstream topic; to help people feel they can talk about it without getting that look from others that basically says "Uh oh, I gotta get out of here because I know this person is going to get upset."

If there is one thing that I have learned about grief, it is this: you have to talk about it.  Who you talk to isn't important, but you have to express to someone how you feel because if you don't you will constantly carry it around and it will increasingly become a bigger emotional burden.

This decision about the newsletter now feels like the right thing thing to do.  Life has a way of moving you along.  There is a time to fight it and then there are times to make peace with it and accept it.

Peace!

It's Not What You Think

  

 

 

 

To show you how little I knew about loss, I thought that the first year after my husband's death was going to be the hardest time that I would ever have to experience.  My thinking was something along the lines of  "If I can get the first year under my belt, then each year after that will become easier to handle."  Right?

Guess what? Not. Always. True.

Grief is always full of surprises and just when you think you have it under control, you don't.

The first year was so raw with emotion for me and such a blur of just getting through the 365 days of it, that the whole idea of my husband's death, the finality of it, didn't really and truly sink in at all. I thought about it, cried about it, read about it and even went to a support group for it but it still was a concept that danced all over the place and didn't settle in.

But the second year was different.  For me, the second year was harder than the first because it painfully confirmed for me over and over again that he wasn't coming back.  Ever.  That this was it and it's not like he's gone on a very long trip.  And then the second year also forced me to stop playing all those mind games with myself and face up to my new life. 

But what happened to me may not happen to you.

I know it sounds like a cliche, but it's still so true: everyone has their own grief journey to travel and no two journeys are the same.  There is no right way or wrong way to grieve.  There is only your way.

I'm not making this up.  It's really true.  Your reactions and experience with grief may be very different from mine and it's totally okay and normal.  It's normal because our relationships are different, our experiences are different, our emotional DNA is different, our religious beliefs are different and our expectations from life and the person we lost are different.

Unfortunately, no one prepares us for those differences. We may watch someone we know experience grief and we think that person's experience will be ours too.  But that isn't always the case.  I lost a husband.  Someone else may have tragically experienced the death of a child or a wife or a friend or a parent.

As much as we may want one and search for one, life does not provide us with a guide book on how we should grieve.  We all process pain and loss differently. 

We grieve because we love.  It is because we love that we grieve.  We care and we emotionally connect to other people and when that person is taken away, it is a shock that can take a long time to process.  On the surface, you are handling things, you take care of daily responsibilities and you go through life automatically.

 

But underneath, you may be a mess.

By the third and fourth year of grief, you think it's going to be so much better and sometimes it is.  I have two friends, they live in completely different cities, they don't know each other, they are different ages and both have lost spouses.  The woman has children and grandchildren and lost her husband suddenly in a tragic car accident.  The man has no children and nursed his wife through a lengthy illness until she died.

 

Both have told me they are surprised by the fact that they continue to grieve during their fourth year of loss.  They are active, positive people trying to change and rebuild their lives because both of them socialize, take classes and work.  They meet a lot of people but nothing has ever clicked.

So they forge forward, as I and others do, together, trusting that time will heal us as we journey to renewal and new opportunities.

It's what we know and we keep doing it until it gets better. 

 

 

Finding Support

 

Re-reading my first Cry, Laugh Heal post from 2010 for Monday's edition brought all the crazy grieving feelings back to me: exhaustion, numbness, raw emotions, the scary future and sometimes even laughter!

But it also reminded how great my support group was during that time and how it gave me hope and helped me feel that life really would get better even though my husband died.  As I met with my small group twice a month, some sessions were upsetting and some were comforting but eventually I felt less alone and stronger about myself and my murky future.

There's a very good reason why they are called support groups: they are set-up to give that extra boost of support needed to help you handle a life crisis and the people in the group have been in your situation.

 

The philosophy of most support groups is this: we have been there, we know how you feel, and you can lean on us until you feel stronger.  Whether it's grief, alcoholism, drug abuse or any other condition where people reach out for help, those who have experienced it are part of the group and lend a helping hand by giving back to those trying to figure out how to deal with their crisis and the more experienced people pass along how life can be lived in a different way.

 

For me, that was the secret weapon of my support group.  The leaders of my group had lost spouses, raised children, and rebuilt their lives.  I had no idea how they had done it but I was there hanging on to every word, reading every bit of material and drawing all of the strength that I could from them because I told myself that if they could do it then so could I.

 

We were bound by our common loss and our discussions, which usually lasted for about two hours, were supportive and healing.  People in my group were newly widowed and had the opportunity to talk about all the issues surrounding their spouse's death, things that they didn't feel comfortable discussing with even their family or friends.  The getting it out, the expression of emotion truly was a huge help.

 

I remember at my first meeting I was nervous because I didn't know what to expect.  We went around the table and introduced ourselves and I thought I would be fine until it came to telling why we were there.  I started to cry and couldn't stop.  But it was okay.  Everyone was quiet and waited for me.  I finally got through my story and when I was finished there was such understanding.  It was so reassuring to me!!!!

 

I could only belong to my support group for two years and while this support group worked me, joining a support group may not be for everyone.  Many people prefer the privacy of one-on-one talks and that is wonderful too.  I tried one-on-one chats for a few months until I was ready to join my support group.  A wonderful and compassionate woman from the support group would regularly call me on the phone and we would talk for about an hour.  I can't tell you how helpful it was to have that support!  Having someone listen and then having her tell me what she did after her husband died was such a gift.  To this day, I treasure those conversations.

 

You are not alone and you don't need to bear your loss all by yourself.  I found my support group at the local hospital but you could also ask your family doctor or a trusted friend.

 

Please don't be afraid to take the first step.  There are lots of helping hands waiting for you!

Working Through Emotional Pain

 

Sunrise off the coast of Ireland

 

 

At one time, I thought that if you ignored something unpleasant it would go away or solve itself on it's own.

 

And sometimes that actually does happen: people move away, they change jobs or people decide to transfer their children to another school.

 

But for the big emotional stuff -- grieving, divorce, abuse, illness -- I find you have to face it and slowly work through the painful issues to get to the other side of it and eventually heal your inner self.  I have found that if you ignore the emotional pain from these traumas, the pain only becomes worse and unfortunately, it takes a lot longer to heal.

 

Sometimes we cannot heal on our own as hard as we may try and when that happens you may find that you need to talk to a professional or find a support group which may help you work through your painful experiences.  I say thank goodness these resources exist so that we can take advantage of them!

 

In the October 2012 issue of Oprah magazine, I found some words of wisdom from Iyanla Vanzant that may help you take the first steps to dealing what has happened to you.  Iyanla Vanzant is the host of OWN's Iyanla's Fix My Life.  Here is her take on how to get past emotional pain:

 

"Everything we experience -- no matter how unpleasant -- comes into our lives to teach us something.  To move on from something difficult, look for the lesson.

 

Start by asking yourself: If this is the way things are supposed to be, what can I learn from it?

 

Think about how you may have contributed to the painful experience, or if there was anything you could have done to prevent it.  Often we don't realize the lesson because we'd rather avoid reliving the pain.  But once you allow yourself to reflect on the sadness, anger, guilt, or shame you've been hiding, those feelings will begin to subside.

 

Yes, someone hurt you.  Once you've forgiven them and let go, you can move forward and begin creating the life you desire."

Dr. Seuss

Today is twenty fours hours that has never happened before and won't happen again.

Think about it.  We all have daily commitments and responsibilities but maybe today is the day to take that first step towards doing something you've had on the back burner.

As Dr. Suess says, "You can steer yourself any direction you choose."

Is there a project you've been meaning to start? A person you need to call?  A diet or exercise change you want to introduce into your life?  A support group you've been meaning to attend?

Today we face and embrace the thing we've been putting off and see what it's all about.

For me, I have a number of boxes containing papers that belonged to my husband.  Last night, I pulled out one of the boxes, took a deep breath and just started from the top of the box, one piece of paper by one piece of paper.  I started reading what he left behind. 

I was surprised that some papers were so easy to toss but others I just stared at and they took me back to the date on the paper.  Those papers that took me back were either sad or annoying and that's why I haven't finished going through all of his boxes.

But, I was able to throw away a lot of those papers and that's something I've been meaning to get to for a very long time.

Thanks again to The Silver Pen (www.thesilverpen.com) for good thoughts and actions!

Julie Potter -- Sibley Hospital Angel

I write today about a special woman named Julie Potter who played a pivotal role in putting me and many others on the path to resilience.

Today is Julie's last day at Sibley Hospital and I know that she will be missed quite a lot!!!!!  True to her nature, Julie always downplays her valuable contributions and the vast resources she has set up at Sibley to help others.  Besides her primary responsibilities at Sibley's Senior Services department, Julie also oversees the Widowed Persons Outreach (WPO) bereavement group.  For 21 years, Julie has reached out to help people who find themselves vulnerable during trying times and she has generously given them emotional support and strength so that they may find their way back to more solid footing.  She is calm, gentle and patient but she is also honest and funloving.  Julie has a sixth sense for what people need and if they can't find the right connections then she helps them until they do.

Sibley had no support groups when Julie began working there.  Julie started the hospital's first support group, a cancer support group, and that led to the start of many other groups: arthritis, alzheimer's, bereavement, diabetes, parkinson's and movement disorders.  And if that wasn't enough, she also started the hospital's Walking Club in 1992.

I remember the first time I spoke to her on the phone because I was pretty much a basketcase.  I had received a pamphet in the mail about a bereavement group at Sibley Hospital that met twice a month and Julie was the contact person.  I wasn't ready yet to talk in a group but still I thought it would be a good idea to talk to her for guidance and also to see if I could talk to someone in the bereavement group on a one-to-one basis.  I called and left a voice message for her.

My husband had died about nine months earlier and I had just come back from vacation with my young son.  We weren't vacationing alone; we were with friends. But it had been jarring to spend vacation time without my husband.  Everything about the beach was almost the same as it had been from the year before except my husband had died.  It became a big deal to me as I realized pretty quickly into the vacation that I needed to talk to someone about all the grief feelings that I was experiencing. Every day during vacation I would tamp down all the feelings of contradiction.  No one I knew could really understand what it was all about.  I would walk up to the beach early every morning and sit in the sand and cry and then walk back to the house as though everything was okay.

When Julie called me back, she said she knew of a woman in the bereavement group who was widowed many years ago and had since remarried.  The woman who Julie sent my way helped me tremendously and I will always be grateful for her sensitivity and empathy.  She was truly an incredible gift sent from heaven.  She listened to me and also shared her own stories about being a wife and mother and suddenly becoming a widow.  She told me how she met her current husband and how life would get better.  She gave me hope.  And so did Julie.

Thank you Julie Potter from the bottom of my heart for taking care of me and all the other people seeking understanding and support after losing a loved one!!!!!  Best wishes in your continued volunteer work with WPO and all other endeavors you decide to follow.

Clothes To You

With the today's launch of Cry, Laugh, Heal, I’ll start by sharing an unexpected moment that helped me cope with my husband’s death.

Grieving can take you down some unpredictable paths -- sometimes revealing humor where you least expect it.

I learned the importance of having a sense of humor early in life while growing up in a large Irish Catholic family.  If you couldn’t laugh at yourself, then someone else would imitate you until you did.  So laughing and making jokes about life’s bumps in the road was part of my DNA, an integral part of my spirit, and it served me well until my husband died.

Suddenly, I found myself in this new role of being a middle-aged widow and single mother and I felt as though I was outside of myself performing some sort of high-wire act.  On the one hand I was trying to move forward and support my young son, while on the other hand I was completely numb.  As much as my family and friends supported me, I felt as if no one really got my “spin cycle” of emotions and what I was trying to handle. 

I decided I needed to find others who had also lost loved ones and talk to them about how they managed to put the pieces back together and go on with their lives.  I started going to group support sessions at Sibley Hospital’s bereavement group called Widowed Persons Outreach (WPO) and it was there that I found the emotional resources and freedom to talk about ALL the issues surrounding my husband’s death -- even the things that sound really irreverent and crazy to other people.

Talking about the emptiness, the surreal feelings, the memories and the loss of future memories was exhausting but therapeutic.  But the best thing that came out of these emotional dialogues was that I unexpectedly rediscovered my sense of humor. 

We were talking about what happens when you have buried your loved one yet their belongings – their clothes, their food, their books, most of what they owned – is still all around you.  I jumped into the discussion and began talking about what happened to me one day when I was in the house all by myself.  That particular day, I really felt like I was falling apart and all I wanted was some kind of contact with my husband.

 I opened my cell phone, walked around the room and stared at it, thinking there actually was the possibility that something might happen -- a ring, a text, a signal of some sort from my husband.  I know it sounds strange but when you are in the throes of deep grief and your loss is so raw, you are just hurting and not being logical. 

I closed my eyes and imagined that he was hugging me.  Then I opened the hall closet and took one of his tweed jackets off the hanger.  I put it on and of course I immediately felt better. I smelled him in that precious jacket and I imagined his arms around me.  I was comforted and torn up at the same time.

As I talked about this experience to my group, I talked directly to the husky man sitting across from me and said, “Trying on his clothes really made me feel a lot better.  Haven’t you ever done the same thing?”

Without missing a beat, he said with a completely straight face, “I gotta tell you.   I have never, ever once thought about wearing my wife’s clothes.  Wearing her pink cardigan would not make me feel better!”

I totally burst out laughing.  Something about the serious expression on his face, his delivery and the mental picture of this big guy in a small pastel sweater made me laugh so hard I couldn’t get my breath.  And everyone else started laughing too so I knew that we had hit on something close to people’s hearts.

It was then that I knew life was going to be a little softer.  Nothing was going to be great or wonderful; just slightly more bearable.  For a long time, I didn’t think it was okay to laugh.  I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying myself and besides, nothing was funny to me anyway.

There is a very thin line between crying and laughing.  Many times you find yourself doing one of them and all of a sudden you are doing the other.  But a good cry or a good laugh can make you feel as if a huge weight has been lifted and that’s what this blog is here to do.