Baby Steps

Ugh.  I feel as though I have been stuck in a lot of life's drama lately and it is distracting me.

 

Big drama has been happening to me on all fronts of my life and I just thought I would let you wonderful readers know the reason why I haven't been able to post on my blog as much as I would like.  Not that you are hanging on to every word I ever post but I thought it would be nice of me to give an explanation for cutting back lately.

 

I can't and don't think it would be fair to talk about all the nuances of the Big D that is overtaking my life but I have faith that some parts of it will be short lived.  Sometimes I think that life's problems will resolve themselves if I give it enough time to unscramble but I am finding that a hard part of healing can be the times when you have to roll up your sleeves and confront the situation yourself.

Until then, I remind myself to take baby steps, for baby steps will get me where I need to go.

Peace.

Arlington Cemetary Allows Personal Mementos

Arlington National Cemetery has a heart.

 

Officials at the cemetery recently talked to families about their months long practice of leaving personal items on soldier's headstones and Arlington is now compromising on its policies about leaving the personal mementos at gravesites.

 

Today's post is an update of a story I  wrote about on October 3 discussing how staff at Arlington National Cemetery were collecting and discarding personal mementos left in Section 60 of the cemetery an area where soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.  This area of the cemetery is where each visitor's grief is new and raw. 

 

A Military Headstone in Section 60

 

The families had no idea that their love letters, photos, balloons and other items were gone and thrown away until they visited their loved ones and found their tombstones bare.

 

Arlington National Cemetery staffers sat down and met  with the families on October 6 and discussed the situation and a compromise was reached.  Arlington says it now has a better understanding of the comfort that grieving families and friends receive when they leave personal treasures at the gravesites and softening the rules is a measure of support to the families in their time of grief.

 

Cemetery spokeswoman Jennifer Lynch said the cemetery will allow displays through the fall and winter months when the grass doesn't need cut often and that the cemetery will also review its regulations and policies to see if long-term changes can be made. 

 

Arlington National Cemetery is one of the nation's oldest cemeteries and is run by the U.S. Army.  Section 60 holds special significance for that is home to soldiers most recently killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Arlington National Cemetery said it collected the mementos because it had been receiving complaints that Section 60 was looking less than military with photos, stuffed animals, balloons and love notes taped to headstones.  Officials also said people sometimes left inappropriate items in the cemetery such as ammunition, glass and alcohol.

 

But inappropriate as others might think them to be, those personal items were mementos of love, reflecting shattered lives and a need to try and make some sense out of what had happened to their loved ones.

 

Section 60 is truly hallowed ground.

 

 

 

Pushing Those Emotional Buttons

I have three sisters and two brothers who are younger than me.  Yes, I am the oldest of six children and we are very close in age.  Such a cast of loved ones has made, and continues to make for many great stories and many great memories.

 

I would say I talk to at least one of my sisters every day and sometimes I talk to all three of them during the coarse of one day.  That's a lot of yakking, right?  Not really because we also email and text each other.

 

In our own unique ways, each one of us has learned that life can be fabulous yet fragile.  Our conversations reflect those learning experiences and as such have become a lot more open and honest.  We have learned the hard way that even though you know what button you can push to get a reaction from a fellow sister, that it's not a good thing or even a kind thing to push it.  Pushing the button can sometimes instantly take away all the good feelings that we worked so hard to create and then you find yourself walking back a lot of what you said and doing that wastes a lot of time and a lot of energy.

 

 

Your emotional buttons will always be there but I have found that even if the button is pushed you have a responsibility to yourself and the other person not to react the way you did when you were younger.  In other words, just because something is said, it doesn't mean you have to take it personally or emotionally and go off the deep end.  Most of us find there is already enough drama in our daily contacts with strangers, we certainly don't need an extra dose in our personal lives.  I think you can acknowledge that you know the button's been pushed but then you can say something like, "Okay, I know that what you just said made you feel a hell of a lot better, but let's talk about what's really going on here."

 

Life is just too short to carry around a lot of emotional baggage every day.

 

You have to figure out when to let go of a behavior and change course.  Think of how much mental energy it takes for you to think about what happened to you, what was said to you, who said it, and then stir it all up until it becomes some kind of foaming emotional cocktail that you carry around with you every day with a big cherry on top.

 

I'm tired just thinking about it. 

 

Instead, I try to jump back from what happened, look at it, figure out what my foolish role was in it and learn something from it.  If an apology is needed, I apologize.  If the person is just venting, I ask if that is what is going on.  If I am annoyed, I go back to the person (not always right away) who got under my skin.  Like the other day, I caught myself.  I could feel that I just wanted to argue the old way of saying something sarcastic.  But I stopped myself, and put myself out there a bit and said, "I don't want to argue.  I just want to find a solution."

 

Take time to reflect on the negative things that happen to you because we can learn from them (ouch!) but don't make those things that annoy or hurt you the centerpieces of your life.  You are so much better than that.  At some point, you have to let go of it and toss it away.

 

Otherwise, the negativity will feed on itself, leaving little room for the great and good things that life will definitely bring your way.

 

A Pope of Hope

From Southern Maryland to Northern Virginia, everywhere I went this past weekend people were talking about Pope Francis and his  recent groundbreaking remarks about the state of the Catholic Church.

 

Pope Francis, you are a healing breath of fresh air and you arrived on the global scene just when we needed to listen your joyous and merciful outlook on life!!

It was amazing to me that people spontaneously brought it up in conversation no matter what else was previously being talked about.  I find religion is sometimes discussed at social events but not very often.  And in Washington, DC, rarely do I ever hear Washington Redskins and Pope Francis brought up in almost consecutive sentences but this weekend it happened and I think this it's due to the hopeful and honest nature of what Pope Francis said in an interview with an Italian Jesuit magazine that was published last week in Jesuits magazines around the world. 

At a party I attended yesterday, Catholics and non-Catholics enthusiastically discussed the subject of Pope Francis, saying how much they liked him, how exciting he was and how they wished they had some one like him in their particular faiths.

 

For most people, it was Pope Francis' comment about sinning that kicked the door open and got their attention.  In the interview Pope Francis was asked "Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?"  In a thoughtful manner Pope Francis replies: "I do not know what might be the most fitting description. . . I am a sinner.  This is the most accurate definition.  It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre.  I am a sinner."

 

Really and truly?

 

Okay Pope Francis that immediately bonds me to you because I am a sinner too.  But people are blown away because this is the first time most people have ever heard a Pope publicly tell others that he sins also.  Usually there is the distinct feeling that we are the sinners but the Pope does not commit sin.  This time, it is as though Pope Francis opens his arms and says to us, "I am just like you.  We are all the same in our humanity."

 

 

America Magazine Issue with Pope Francis Interview

You can read the full interview with Pope Francis on the website for America Magazine (www.americamagazine.org), a national Catholic weekly magazine published by Jesuits in the United States.

 

Read for yourself the thoughtful and insightful way that Pope Francis discusses a wide range of subjects that touches all of our lives and issues that we all wrestle with.

 

For me, my Catholic faith is essential and goes to the core of my being but in the past decade or two I have turned a deaf ear to many things being said by the Catholic hierarchy.  That said, here are two other comments Pope Francis made in his interview that were particularly open and refreshing and signal to me a much needed change in the thinking of the Church:

 

--"I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.  I see the church as a field hospital after battle.  It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars!  You have to heal the wounds.  Then we can talk about everything else.  Heal the wounds, heal the wounds. . . And you have to start from the from the ground up."

 

--"The woman is essential for the church.  Mary, a woman, is more important than the bishops. I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity.  We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church.  We must work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman."

 

A New Place To Live

Good Morning Fantastic Readers!

This past weekend was interesting and productive and I hope yours was too!  The weekends just fly by wayyyyy too quickly don't they? 

 

Part of my weekend was spent visiting a family member.  In the course of my visit, I could tell we were going to fall into our usual conversational trap of going over the same ground that we have covered many times before.  You know what I mean, right?  The person brings up a certain subject and you know what they're going to say and you try to change their mind or at least get your point across to them.

It's pretty similar to a tire that is stuck in the mud and just spins round and round.  I didn't plan on it, but over the weekend I decided to try a different way of talking to this person because we weren't getting anywhere with the old way.

 

I know this person has been under a lot of stress and is feeling confused.  I felt like the best thing to do was to sit and listen and focus on what was being said without any reaction from me.  I decided to take myself out of the conversational equation because my point of view didn't really serve any purpose.

Instead, I wanted to try and create a healing zone; a place of safety where this person's thoughts and feelings could be shared without the possibility of an argument.

 

 

 

It wasn't a particularly honest conversation but it did allow this person to talk about their feelings and I think that was a healthy and healing thing.

 

For me, healing is finding a new place to live.

 

Not a physical place such as a new house or an apartment but a new place to mentally live.

Healing is finding the place within myself where I try to find quiet and sometimes vulnerability.  A place where I level with myself and tell myself that I can do better.  To be honest with myself and stop making excuses about my reactions to things that annoy or frustrate me.  I can control the volume of my voice and I can control the words that come out of my mouth when I'm talking to someone.

 

Healing is saying to myself that it's time to change.  When I find that my usual way of doing something or my usual reaction to something isn't working then it's time to go somewhere new and find a better way to act.

 

New ways of talking about our emotions can sometimes be scary, but new can also be refreshing because you don't have to lug your old emotional baggage with you; you can lock it up and leave it behind.

 

I'd love to know how you deal with breaking old habits and how you discover news ways of communicating.  Let me know if you have some tips that can break the behavioral logjam and let the conversations flow towards a healing place.

 

You can comment below or you can also comment on my Facebook page!

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!

 

The Selling of The Washington Post

There are some stories that I never expected to read in my lifetime.

 

The selling of The Washington Post is one of them.  When I saw the first tweet about this surprising event, I thought I had read it too fast and read the words completely wrong.  I had to go back and read it again a few times before I understood that it was a real story.

 

I just never in a million years thought the Graham family would sell the newspaper that they have owned for decades and generations.  To those of us who live here in Washington, DC, the Grahams are The Washington Post.

 

People are saying and writing that change is good and that selling The Washington Post to Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos for $250 million means that the paper will survive and ultimately, thrive and grow.

 

 

I sure hope so.  I was in sixth or seventh grade when I first started reading The Washington Post.  It was the first newspaper I ever read on a daily basis and even today I continue to have it delivered to my house.  For 20 years, my late husband reported and wrote for The Washington Post and we talked a lot about the crazy, fascinating and annoying things that routinely happened in the newsroom.  The newspaper felt as if it was a part of our family.

 

But whether I like it or not, families change just as many other things in life.  Change is part of life and that's all there is to it.  While the news of The Washington Post being sold is sad and it brought back lots of memories about my husband and the time he spent diligently and creatively working there, no one knows what the next chapter is for The Washington Post.

 

Sometimes as we pass through sad times or even painful times we move into unexpected events, events that we never thought would happen; events that turn out to be positive and good.  But those good things would never have visited us unless we had the pain first and so whatever happens after the pain sometimes feels bittersweet.

 

I hope Jeff Bezos knows the tremendous power of what he bought and treats it with respect.  We as a community at large are hungry for daily independently reported and written information about what is going on around the globe.

Who knows if The Washington Post will even exist a year from now but I really hope that it stays around because opening the front door every morning to read what has been thrown onto my front lawn is a critical tool for understanding and dialogue and it will always pique my curiosity.
 

The Big 300

 

 

Today marks my 300th post.

It's a personal milestone and truly a huge deal for me.  Big thanks go out to all of my family (especially my son, Ryan, who is my biggest blog cheerleader), friends and readers out there in the internet world who read Cry, Laugh, Heal.   You give me more than you know and I read and respond to all of the great feedback I receive!  And I hope to receive lots more feedback as I continue to write about the incredibly silly, sometimes sad and mostly spontaneous events that happen to me on my new journey as a widow and single mother.

I thought it would be appropriate to go back to the beginning, to the very first post I wrote launching Cry, Laugh Heal in December 2010.  This post is special to me because I had no idea what I was doing -- not that I really know now what I am doing -- but back then I really had no idea where Cry, Laugh Heal was going and what the reaction to it would be.  I just decided to jump in and try it and see what would happen.

 

When I read that first post today, I see a different person, a person still yearning to go backwards to the time when my husband was alive and well.  I still feel that way sometimes but now the feeling comes less frequently and not as strong as it did then. 

I definitely still feel passionately about changing the way people think about grief and trying to help people as they try to rebuild their lives after the loss of a loved one.  That's the reason I started Cry, Laugh, Heal: to open up the subject of grief and it's resulting resilience.  Grief is a natural reaction to a loved one's death and eventually it will happen to you whether you like it or not.  It doesn't help anyone when we make grief a taboo topic.

Everyone's grief journey is unique and certainly full of ups and downs.  I have found that for most people, the passage of time tends to lessen the waves of pain and eventually, the loss becomes less raw and more manageable.  One day, after many years, I had what is called a light bulb moment and finally realized that my husband would never want me or our son to be miserable.  I can't tell you how or why it happened, but it finally clicked in my brain that he would have wanted us to heal and find happiness.

To my great surprise, I have discovered that an inner strength does slowly build with the taking of each day as it comes to me.

I hope you enjoy reading my first post:

Clothes To You

December 23, 2010 

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 said to the husky man sitting across from me, “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.”

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.

I'm Listening

I have found that when you are talking to children of any age about almost any subject, you should be prepared to hear things that can be so truthful that it can take your breath away.  That's not a bad thing.  I think it's wonderful but not everyone is always ready to hear the unpolished truth. 

That's the beauty and wonder of children: there usually is no filter on their wise thoughts.

In talking to my son about his father's death, I tried to keep our conversations as honest and open as I could.  I felt it was more important for my son to express himself and vent his frustrations than it was to worry about whether his words hurt my feelings.

The conversations were for him, not me.  He needed to have a way to verbalize his thoughts and feelings even if they didn't make sense.  This was about him, a then 13-year-old boy, working through his jumble of emotions instead of ignoring the pain and trying to go on with his life and tamp it down inside himself.

I didn't think it would be constructive to tell my son that we needed to talk about his loss and then make him filter and edit his point of view.  I knew he needed to say what he felt and not what he thought I wanted to hear.  There were times when I was surprised by the rawness of his anger but I couldn't show it.  I figured if I did show my surprise or displeasure while talking to him, then whatever progress we made in communicating would be erased by me revealing what I felt or thought.

 Hello Grief, an insightful support website for children, teens and adults, addresses having serious conversations about a loss with children and offers the following tips which I hope you also find to be helpful:

 

Having Good Conversations With Your Kids

By Hello Grief (www.hellogrief.org)

While children experience the same feelings of despair, sadness, helplessness, anger, anxiety, guilt, confusion and fear that adults do following a loss, they often do not have the maturity and experience to understand, identify and express those feelings.

Communication is key to helping our children understand their grief, and begin addressing it in healthy ways. Without communication, you will not know where your child may have a misunderstanding about how or why the loss occurred. With communication, you will be able to identify areas in which your child is struggling with their grief, and how you can help.

It is important to continue discussing the loss and after affects of the loss (such as moving, remarriage, life milestones), with your children over time.

Below are a few tips to having open, successful communication with your kids about grief and loss at any age:

• As a parent, understand what your goal is before starting the conversation - why are you wanting to talk to your child? Is there a specific issue you want to discuss? A specific question you want to uncover?
• Stay on topic – Once you decide on your goal for the conversation, don’t use this time to bring up other “issues” you’ve wanted to address unrelated to the conversation (i.e., homework, house chores, dating, etc).
• Create a safe environment – Atmosphere can play a huge role in your child’s willingness to open up about how he or she is feeling. Have this discussion in a safe place, away from others who may overhear. Don’t create an intimidating environment, such as starting this conversation in places associated with “getting in trouble.” Having a snack, or doing an activity during which talking is easy could be helpful (such as coloring/drawing, riding in a car, going for a jog, etc).
• Allow your kids to be able to say whatever they need, any way they want, to during your conversation - This does not mean you have to allow your child to use profanity if you do not typically allow it. Rather, enable your child to say what they need to say without “correcting their story,” should you remember it differently, or have a different opinion. It also means not keeping any topics “off limits” – including the details of the loss, even if it’s difficult for you to discuss. Let them say what they need, and ask the questions they need without limitation.
• Know that some things are off limits to parents - It’s not you, it’s them. And it’s normal. But, having more frequent safe, and honest conversations with your children will help them build trust and begin to discuss more. Also know that even if your child isn’t saying anything to you, it doesn’t mean they are not benefiting from the conversation. Know they are processing internally. You should also make sure that your child has additional outlets to have the conversations they can’t have with you – such as a counselor, or support group.