Work Can Be Rewarding

Work itself is the reward.  If I choose challenging work it will pay me back with interest.  At least I'll be interested even if nobody else is.  And this attempt for excellence is what sustains the most well lived and satisfying, successful lives.

                                                  ~ Meryl Streep

I am a big believer in working hard.  Besides getting a lot accomplished, working hard makes you challenge your brain and your talents to the best of your ability.  Dirty things become clean and disorganized piles of papers and clothes become organized.  Working hard can also give your mind something else to think about when you are processing your grief.

When my husband died a number of years ago, I continued to work outside the home because I needed to support myself and my son and it also kept me moving forward.  It brought structure into my daily routine at a time when most other things were constantly changing.  There were times when it was jarring; especially when it was time to leave work and go home.  For a split second while walking to my car, I would always think about calling my husband to tell him I was leaving and then I would remember that he was no longer here.

But work continued to be cathartic for me during that time and I was very happy to have it.  Given the ups and downs of the economy in the past several years, I'm still thankful to have a job.  I know there are some people who take their work to an extreme and lose themselves in it after they have experienced the loss of a loved one.  This is easy to do because you don't want to think about what is really going on in your life and constantly working helps you block the pain.  For my son's sake, I was careful to make sure I didn't go that way.

That said, it's important to do something you really love or something that makes you feel as though you are always learning something new.  I have a job where I work in an office downtown and I am paid to do that work.  But I am not paid to write this blog.  I write this blog because I enjoy it and because I need to write it.  I started Cry, Laugh, Heal in December 2010 to help people become more comfortable talking about grief and how you can rebuild your life after losing a loved one. 

People can tell if you approach your work with a certain amount of pride or if you could care less about what you do. I hope you can tell how much I love my readers and how much thought I put into trying to help others who are also on a grief journey.  I never want anyone to feel as though they are alone or that there is no hope for the future.  There is always hope!!!!!!!

Whether your work is mental, physical or a combination of both, it can feel so good to put in a hard day's work.  Once in awhile I do wonder what it would be like if I didn't have to work.  Of course, it would be great, but I would still need to find something meaningful to do.  I know I would still write Cry, Laugh Heal.

As the wise and wonderful Meryl Streep says, work can be a reward in itself especially when you achieve that "good tired" feeling.

Meryl Streep

When Hollywood hands out its little gold statuettes tomorrow night, we'll find out how The Academy voted on the nomination of Meryl Streep and her empathetic performance in the role of Margaret Thatcher as a politician and a wife.  The story is primarily about a British woman attaining so much power in the 1980's that she became Britian's first woman prime minister.

But the movie is also a love story and a reminder that no matter how high the government position you are elected to, no matter how much money you make, no matter how much privilege surrounds you, human beings are all the same when it comes to losing a loved one.  The same pain, confusion, and shock from a loss hits a Prime Minister as hard as it hits a painter.  Grief is a great equalizer.

Even Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of England and subject of the Oscar-nominated film, "The Iron Lady," searches for meaning in the midst of her grief.

Surprisingly, "The Iron Lady," shows us an elderly Margaret Thatcher preparing to eat breakfast with her husband, Denis.  She is talking to him about the usual things husbands and wives talk about in the morning.  The camera shows Margaret Thatcher talking about the price of milk as she starts to eat her soft boiled egg and then the camera shows Denis on the other side of the table folding his newspaper, conversing with his wife.  We think it's a routine scene about a husband and wife having breakfast but then Thatcher's assistant enters the kitchen and we see that Margaret Thatcher is sitting at the table alone and she has been talking out loud to herself.

There is a place set on the other side of the table where Denis would be sitting were he alive.  But for Margaret, Denis is still very much alive in her imagination and she "sees" him as she has every day of her married life.  That is when we bond with her as a human being, when the person of Margaret Thatcher is revealed. 

We feel the same jumble of emotions that anyone would feel were we in her position of adjusting to life without her loved one.  Her husband may be gone but she still talks to him because she feels his presence and it doesn't seem strange to her to talk to him even though he is no longer physically present.  Lots of people do this and it's perfectly normal.

"There should be no stigma...It's about life.  It's about the truth," Meryl Streep said in a television interview discussing the personal scenes where she depicts Thatcher as an 86-year-old widow.

Then there is that moment in the movie when Margaret is being urged by others to get rid of Denis' clothes and his other belongings.  We expect that Margaret Thatcher, who appears to be ice cold and steely strong in her public life, will also handle the death of her beloved husband in the same stoic manner.  But we would be so wrong.

Denis's clothes are hanging in the closet, his pillow is right next to hers and his golf clubs are leaning against the bedroom wall as though he just came through the door and placed them there.  As Margaret goes through Denis' things, she relives the memories of the highs and lows of their life together.

"The decision to let go of your husband's things after he's gone is a very hard thing," said Meryl Streep in an interview with the Daily Mail.  "These decisions you make in your personal life are as profound as any decision about the Falklands.  Everything counts.  In a big ambitious life, everything counts."