Bobbi Kristina

ABC News

If there is one thing I have learned during my personal experience with grieving, it is that we all grieve differently.  Each of us has our own path that we follow in the healing process and it takes different amounts of time for each of us to work through and find out what we are comfortable doing and saying when we are trying to adjust to the loss of a loved one.

I remember asking myself how I was going to live through this pain, how was I going to get over my loss and what the hell was happening to me.  Your loved one is physically gone but that person is still living in your heart and soul.  It might be very different for you, but I have found that grief tends to lasts as long as it takes you to accept and learn to live with your loss.  For some people, grief can last a few months.  For others, grieving may take years.

I started thinking about this while watching the recent televised interview earlier this month that Whitney Houston's daughter, Bobbi Kristina, gave to Oprah Winfrey.  Many news stories speculated that it was too early for her to be talking in public about her mother's sad and untimely death because they thought she might not be able to handle it.

For someone whose mother died just about a month ago, I thought she was a very poised 19-year-old.  I also thought her interview was a gift to viewers.  When your mother is as big a celebrity as Whitney Houston was, reporters and photographers are around you all the time.  Still, it is not easy to go on television and discuss what you're personally going through and how you feel.  While she didn't have to do the interview, I felt that she might have agreed to do it because in talking to Oprah, who knew her mother so well, Bobbi Kristina might have also felt closer to her mother.

And that closeness, that connection, is something we all fight to keep.

"I'm doing okay," Bobbi Kristina said in the interview with Oprah.  "I'm doing as good as I possibly can."

Bobbi Kristina revealed very personal and intimate thoughts and feelings about her mother and discussed some of the things that can happen when you are still in shock from the sudden loss of a loved one.  "She's always with me," Bobbi Kristina told Oprah.  "Her spirit is strong, it's a strong spirit.  I feel her pass through me all the time."

Bobbi Kristina said that sometimes when she is in the house, the lights will flicker a little and she will look at them and say, "Mom, what're you doing?"  Oprah gently laid the foundation for discussing what a grieving person can sometimes experience when she told Bobbbi Kristina that some people believe "we're crazy" for believing in "visitations" from those who have died.  "I can hear her voice, you know, and spirit talking to me, telling me, 'Keep moving baby. I'm right here. I got you.' She's always with me," Bobbi Kristina said.

To take your pain and turn it into a positive experience is a gift to others in the same situation.  It doesn't matter whether you are a celebrity or not.  Feeling the loss of someone you love is a universal and human emotion.

Watching someone else trying to navigate grief can be helpful.  You feel you are not alone because the other person may be expressing the same confusion, pain and stress that you are feeling.  People respectfully watch a public person in the midst of grief to see what they are doing, how they talk about their feelings and how they handle themselves, many times giving hope to others so that they too can find positives in their lives.

Michelle Williams Now

Actress Michelle Williams is healing.

By setting her own pace and allowing herself to feel the pain and imbalance of grieving, Williams has found new strength, new energy and hope as she takes on the complex role of Marilyn Monroe. 

In a new interview with Vogue magazine, Williams talks about the 2008 death of actor and ex-boyfriend Heath Ledger as a deep loss that continues to affect her outlook on life, changing her as a parent, a friend and as an actress. 

But with the passage of time, she is rebuilding her life, adapting to her new reality and gaining more control over her emotions.  To her surprise, three years later, "My life has kind of repaired itself," she told Vogue.

Previously,  the few times that she spoke in public about Ledger's death, she talked about the need for privacy in raising their daughter, Matilda, and how difficult it was to fit the pieces of her life back together.

Interviewed by ABC's Nightline last year, she said this about the first year of grieving: "In a strange way I miss that year, because all those possibilities that existed then are gone.  It didn't seem unlikely to me that he could walk through a door or could appear from behind a bush.  It was a year of very magical thinking and in some ways I'm sad to be moving further and further from that."

Here is the New York Daily News story about Williams containing a link to a Vogue picture gallery:

 Michelle Williams talks to Vogue on life after Heath Ledger: 'My life has kind of repaired itself'

BY Adam Rathe
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS WRITER

Tuesday, September 13th 2011, 11:01 AM

Annie Leibovitz/Vogue

Michelle Williams spoke to Vogue about playing Marilyn Monroe and life after Heath Ledger.

Michelle Williams is moving on the best way she knows how.

The actress, 31, graces the cover of the October issue of Vogue and opened up to the magazine about playing Marilyn Monroe, raising her daughter Matilda, 6, and life after Heath Ledger.

"Three years ago, it felt like we didn't have anything, and now my life -- our life -- has kind of repaired itself," said Williams, whose "My Week With Marilyn" opened at the New York Film Festival Tuesday morning.
Ledger died from an accidental drug overdose at age 29 in Jan. 2008, leaving his ex and their daughter behind. The loss, Williams said, has influenced part of her life ever since.



"It's changed how I see the world and how I interact on a daily basis. It's changed the parent I am. It's changed the friend I am. It's changed the kind of work that I really want to do."

With "Marilyn," Williams seems to have found a role that fits her new criteria. She's long admired Monroe and the part gave her an opportunity to sink her teeth into a character she cared for and play a glamorous bombshell at the very same time.

"I've started to believe that you get the piece of material that you were ready for," she said.

"As soon as I finished the script, I knew that I wanted to do it, and then I spent six months trying to talk myself out of it," she said. "But I always knew that I never really had a choice."

Ted Olson On Loss & Love

There is no single path on the road to healing and resilience.  Different people take different steps, drawing on their own strengths and what works best for them.  Here is one person's chosen path.... 

Ted Olson on loss and love

 in the decade since 9/11

By Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger

The Washington Post

9/12/11

 

Ted Olson in his office at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher last year. (Jahi Chikwendiu/ The Washington Post)

Ted Olson spent his 71st birthday Sunday at his family’s lakeside property in Northern Wisconsin. He was invited to ceremonies marking the anniversary of 9/11 but, after careful consideration, decided not to attend.

“I had to balance between my feeling that I should be at the Pentagon and participate in these public events of memory and remembrance,” he told us Friday. “On the other hand, I also felt it’s so powerfully overwhelming that the best thing I could do is to celebrate my birthday, remember Barbara’s death and celebrate the remainder of our lives with family members away from Washington, D.C.”

Ten years ago, Olson became the most famous person in D.C. to lose a loved one in the terrorist attacks: His wife, conservative commentator Barbara Olson, was on American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. She had delayed a trip to California so she could be in town for his birthday dinner the night before.

Barbara Olson during an appearance on “Larry King Live.” (Ho/Reuters)

Olson had recently been confirmed as the Bush administration’s top lawyer — solicitor general of the United States — and was nationally known as the man who successfully argued the controversial Bush v. Gore election case in front of the Supreme Court.

Before she died, Barbara placed two calls to her husband from the hijacked plane. The terrible news spread within minutes, and Olson immediately became Washington’s face of loss.

“When I appeared in public, I had to stress that I’m not unique . . . unfortunate, tragic things happen to all of us,” he said. “It’s very important to put that in perspective: You’re not the only one that has experienced a terrible tragedy, as thousands of other people did that day.”

Olson said he was determined not to be consumed by his sorrow. His mother, then 81 years old, told him: “Ted, you’ve got to get back on your feet and get out there. You’re a young man.” He went back to work the following Monday and argued his first case as solicitor general three weeks later.

Six months later, he was introduced to Lady Booth, a tax attorney from Chicago. The two began dating and quickly became serious. “I felt that some people would feel that I was moving too fast. Everyone has their own idea about how someone should cope and how much you engage in mourning. I believe Barbara — because she was so passionate about life — would have wanted me to live my life.”

Ted and Lady Olson in 2006. (Philip Bermingham)

The past decade has been filled with personal and professional highs: Since 2006, Olson has been happily married to Booth, his fourth wife. “It’s not easy all the time when people want to talk about Barbara, but [Booth has] been absolutely spectacular and inspirational.” He remained with the administration until 2004, then went into private practice and is considered one of America’s most influential lawyers. He teamed up with former rival David Boies to challenge a California ban on same-sex marriage and, earlier this year, was recognized with the American Bar Association’s highest honor.

On Friday, Olson delivered a speech about 9/11 at the Justice Department, then flew to Wisconsin to spend his birthday with his wife, mother, brother, sister and daughter. “It’s nice to be able to get away from this extraordinary, heavy, nonstop emotional binge taking place this weekend,” he said.

Wisconsin is also where Barbara is buried. It took three months to identify her remains, and he decided the family retreat would be her final resting place. Olson said he would spend Sunday surrounded by the people he loves best.

“Horrible things can happen to you, and horrible things happened to us on September 11,” he concluded. “But if we look for love and happiness and fulfillment, we will find it.”