authenticity

Vulnerability Is Bravery

March 5, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Vulnerability and bravery. Two words that I wouldn’t easily put into one sentence. Grieving the death of my daughter and the subsequent years of healing has taught me both.

I’m practising being vulnerable and brave by sharing some personal insights from behind the scenes of the latest project I’ve been working on the past year.

Table of Contents

Vulnerability and bravery go hand in hand

Vulnerability – posting about the idea of a new project, a resource book for bereaved parents, I had just intuitively conceived.

I had no plans, just an idea. The critics came right away asking questions and making judgments about things that I hadn’t thought through yet. Truthfully, I felt shattered and hurt. It’s not that I’m a bad planner. I just hadn’t done it yet. I jumped in excitedly wondering whether anyone would be interested at all.

Bravery. I continued anyway, despite the naysayers.

Starting without a plan takes courage

Vulnerability. I asked people to contribute to something that I was only just forming a plan for in my mind.

What would a charity project entail? I didn’t have the money to sponsor another book through production, editing, design etc. after having already done that for my previous three books.

Bravery. Some might call this faith, trust, or fool-hearted stupidity. I just went along believing it would somehow come together. Now, a year later, the donations (click here if you would like to donate) are trickling in, and we are almost finished with the book. For me, this is bravery.

Finding your resilience and spreading hope

Vulnerability. I challenged the contributors to write about what gave them hope in the first year after the loss.

To go back through the story of loss is just one thing. Carefully searching for what actually helped me through the worst time in my life is a huge challenge.

Vulnerability and bravery were shown by each of the twenty-six contributors who went into their loss story again, into the depth of grief – the absolute opposite of an easy task – in the search for their resilience with the purpose of giving hope to the reader.

I cannot do this on my own

Vulnerability. My physical situation was challenging. My back started to become unbearably painful. I realized that I couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to complete this project on my own. This was my first project with different contributors. I hadn’t fully anticipated the extra work it would take to liaise with each writer through the process of editing.

Sometimes we have got to ask for help. In a BIG moment of a vulnerability, I sent a call out to the community and asked for help. I felt totally weak and unprofessional. The most beautiful and unexpected support came my way. It is now truly is a community project. A book written and produced by the community.

In April I started to go downhill physically and by end of July was walking on crutches and lying in bed 85% of my day. I could hardly sit, let alone work on the computer. I learned to ask for and accept help. Again and again. In more ways, I ever thought possible.

Can you help me?

This is what this whole project is about: A hand reaching out to you when you are vulnerable and in need of support.
It takes bravery to realize and accept we need help.
You are brave when you look for help and accept being helped.

We want you to know that you are not alone in your vulnerability.

To know the company of others who’ve experienced what you’ve experienced is what can sustain you in your empty moments. We want to know you and your story. Are you brave enough to share with us your moments of vulnerability?

Can you help us?

Would you like to support this not-for-profit project? Please donate any amount so we are able to give books to parents who have just lost a child.
If you’re interested in the book, you can order it here.

Surviving My First Year of Child Loss – Personal Stories From Grieving Parents

The community of parents from the Grieving Parents Support Network has created a new support resource for bereaved parents.
Contributors to Surviving My First Year of Child Loss were asked to share personal and relational challenges they experienced in the first year of grief. The result is twenty-six heart-wrenchingly honest essays that communicate the individual way each parent coped during their first twelve months of loss.
More than anything else, the Surviving My First Year of Child Loss project invites grieving parents to find support in a community they never intended to join.

Dear Old Me

February 5, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

It’s been a long time since I last saw you, in fact it seems like an eternity. Still, I remember you. And I miss you, old me.

You had an air of realistic positivity. New things you approached with curiosity and delight. Even though I would say you were cautious, you also loved the thrill of skydiving or meeting new people. Your open and friendly nature was easy to be around and you generally enjoyed life.

You were not ‘old me*’ then, you were young and energetic. It’s just to me, it’s seem that you are no longer…

By no means were you completely naive but you had this childlike openness to new things. You even approached pregnancy with this openness, even though you weren’t considered ‘young’ anymore. The unexpected news of identical twins was met with a burst of laughter and delight.

Even though you had a sensitive nature all along and experienced deep emotions, you enjoyed life and took its experiences with glee. The picture I keep in my mind is you skipping along the path, pointing out the colors of the clouds in the evening sky and hugging trees.

I don’t do that anymore. Serious and many times overly anxious would be the words to describe the new normal me. Highly sensitive to noises and crowds, nowadays I prefer to stay at home over a night out. People around me probably don’t think of me as easy to be around.

The forest and its natural beauty still brings me absolute pleasure and joy, or should I say ‘again’ as it hasn’t for what seems years. Just yesterday I laid under the warm towels from the dryer, enjoying the smell and the comfort of the warmness. You did enjoy this and I just remembered as I was doing it. I had forgotten you, old me …

There seems to be many things that I have forgotten about you. First I was upset, really upset that you were no longer around. Screaming and shouting for you to return, for things to be like when you were me. After some time I realized that loss had stolen you from me. The only way to continue was to get to know the new normal me. Forced acceptance.

After some months or years I slowly forgot you. With that I noticed that (many) friends of the old me had also disappeared. The new me made new friends, mostly other new normal ones. And life moved on as much as I wished to turn back the clock.

The link between you, dear old me, and the new me is however never forgotten. It’s right here in my heart. The child we both dearly miss.

Maybe you would have never left, if the child was still with us.

Missing you,

The New Normal Me

*NOTE REGARDING THE USE OF ‘OLD ME’:

The term ‘old’ is not to mean old by age, but the person before the loss.

This article was first published November 2, 2016 in Still Standing Magazine.

Gusts Of Grief

January 22, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Grief Quote by Nathalie Himmelrich — Handlettered Quote by Nathalie Himmelrich

My 4 ½-year-old just crawled into my bed, yawning and stretching.
“Good morning, sweetheart.”
“Good morning, mum.”
I had just woken up a minute before she turned up at my bedside and was still in the land between asleep and awake. The next thing caught me by surprise.
“Mum, if only my sister wasn’t dead,” followed by a moaning sound.
“Yes, dear, that would be nice,” I reply and gently pulled her closer.
“Mum, did Mimi love me?” (Mimi is the name of my mother – her grandmother – who died from suicide 4 ½ months after her sister’s death.)
“Yes, she loved you very much.”
“Why did she have to die? How did she die?”

Silence. An internal sigh. What do I respond?
Weighing the different options in my head, she’s already repeating her question.
Still, I’m grappling for an answer and I can’t think when she talks.
Telling the truth would be my choice but only if it’s age and situation appropriate.
Finally, I answer by saying “I will explain this to you later” and try to distract her continuous questions along the lines of “but why…?”.

Even though the sea of my grief is calm, I had to learn to live with the gusts of wind that come from the outside. Through her perspective I learn about a delayed form of grief, a yearning for her sister, a consciousness which only started to dawn around her 4^th birthday.

She’s just representing one kind of gust of wind. There are others, which still catch me by surprise.
Today I saw two pregnant women and noticed a tinge of sadness at the fact that I won’t be pregnant again. We won’t have a sibling for little miss bliss.
Our preschool is holding a parent’s evening with the topic of ‘siblings’ this week. I decided not to attend, even though the teacher assured me that the talk would include the topic of one-child families.

And yet, you might say: ‘But you’ve got one.’
Yes, I have one.
Still, sadness over the yearning to mother does not magically get cured because I have one.

~~~~

The day ended with my daughter stroking my stomach.
Pensively she drew her fingers over it and spoke softly:
“Are you sure there isn’t a baby in your tummy?”
I lovingly looked into her eyes as I replied: “Yes, we are sure.”
“Have you looked?” she continued hopefully.
Hugging her tight I felt her head leaning softly against my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, possum, there is no baby in here.”

~~~~

And even if there was a baby, I can only echo the words of a fellow loss-mum on Instagram: “Life isn’t magically better when a new baby comes. In some way grief resets due to all the things we do with S that we never got to do with R.”
There is no ‘Life is magically better when…’ or ‘Grief is magically over when…’.

Shifting to an understanding and acceptance that the emotional relationship will never cease when the physical body is gone makes it easier to accept the ebb and flow of the sea of emotions. I don’t want to call it just grief because truthfully, my life was full of emotions before my losses, grief included.

¸.•*¨`*•✿ ✿ ✿•*´¨*•.¸

And… most important:
Talking about the daughter and sister (or mother) that isn’t physically here does not have to mean ‘not moving on’ or ‘grieving’ – for me, it means
REMEMBERING.

¸.•*¨`*•✿ ✿ ✿•*´¨*•.¸

This article was first published April 6, 2016 in Still Standing Magazine.

You Have Got To Be Strong Now

December 4, 2020 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

“You’ve got to be strong now…” I heard my Dad’s voice as if through fog, my sister and her daughter standing behind him as they all looked at me through the computer screen, connected via FaceTime. Before he would say anymore, I knew exactly what had happened.

Just 4.5 month earlier I had given birth. Elation, amazement and deepest despair and sadness only laid days apart. Giving life to my child and having to accept their death in a matter of days, two events that should never be so close together in time. Unspoken rule of time in regards to live and death would expect the parent to die before their children. And even though it ‘shouldn’t’ happen, that children die before their parents, it does. Most likely as you’re reading this it has happened to you too.

I experienced first hand that life has no rule about spreading out challenges in neat 5 year brackets. Dealing with the death of my daughter left me raw. There was no choice of being strong or not – I was overwhelmed at the sheer intensity of early grief’s ups and downs. Dealing with my mother’s decision to end her life revealed just another layer of rawness that left no space to be anything else than ‘in the moment’, to be with any emotions present.

Any of those well-intended messages like ‘be strong’ or ‘you have to keep it together’ are useless. They might bear some resemblance of intellectual truth but on an emotional level they are hopeless, rigid and unattainable. The truth behind those messages is: ‘I can’t deal with the intensity of emotions, yours or mine, so please hide them.’ Yes, emotionality makes most of us feel uncomfortable.

We all have some of those messages internalized to the point that we believe them without any doubt:

I’ve got to stay strong
I’ve got keep it together
If at all, I should cry when I’m alone
I shouldn’t feel so bad, at least I have…
If I keep myself busy, I won’t feel it

We actually believe they (or at least some of those) are true. When have you last said to yourself something like: ‘I made it through the day without crying’ or ‘I stayed on top of my emotions’ or ‘I couldn’t keep myself together so I had to leave’? If those strong emotions are there, don’t you think they have their purpose? Why would a human eye have been constructed with a tear duct if the eyes can stay moist without actually crying?

Those messages, those beliefs that ‘we got to be strong in the face of loss’ are myths, they have been told so many times that we accidentally started believing them. We are pushing ourselves to live up to those standards. They make us swallow our true emotions. Did you actually know that the composition of tears of grief are different to other tears? Did you know that expressing your emotions is helping you heal? Did you know that unexpressed emotions can manifest in your physical body and lead to illnesses?

Upon my dad’s helpless plight not to cause any more pain to my already broken heart, a guttural sound escaped my chest, then I sobbed and sobbed – there was no choice but to feel and express. And when those emotions were given room to let go I was ready to organise our trip to attend my mother’s funeral 20.000 km away.

To be clear, those waves of grief came again and again. After some time the tides were less high and more time passed between them. Now, 4 years later, the waves come from time to time.

¸.•´*¨`*•✿ ✿ ✿•*´¨*`•.¸

I’ve befriended them, embrace them, express them and let them go.

¸.•´*¨`*•✿ ✿ ✿•*´¨*`•.¸

This article was first published February 3, 2016 in Still Standing Magazine.

My Dear ‘Would –Be’ Child

September 7, 2016 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Handlettered quote by Nathalie Himmelrich

You are my ‘would-be’ child, you who would have turned five (four | three) last week. The children from Kindergarten would have celebrated with you in the morning. The rest of our family would have visited in the afternoon. We would be singing Happy Birthday to you and you would have impatiently ripped open your presents and whooped in joy.

Excitement would be here, given that you just started Kindergarten two weeks ago. You would say ‘I’m a big girl now’. I would walk with you and your sister to Kindergarten every day and I’d pick you up before lunch. Your sister would fight with you over the toys you both want to play with at the very same time. Your Kindergarten teacher would have two sets of identical twins in her class this year! You and your sister would each talk to one of the twin boys that live just a few doors down our street, and soon you would walk to Kindergarten with them, holding hands. There would not be one Kindergarten child missing this year.

Both of you would want my attention, often probably at the same time. It wouldn’t always be easy. Both of you talking at the same time would fry my brain. Your sister would have someone to play with and talk to, someone to stay awake with or wake up in the morning. You would share your toys and books and – of course – also fight over them and throw them around in anger.

You would love sweets, especially lollies and Gummibears. I would hear you scream for ice cream and say ‘mmmmh’ when eating homemade chocolate cake. Your favorite meal would be spaghetti. If you could, you would start the day eating an ice cream and drinking cordial. On special occasions you’d be equally happy if Daddy would make you banana pancakes. At any chance you would want to lick the bowl when I was preparing a cake. But then you would dislike brushing teeth not matter the time of the day.

Mostly I would hug and kiss you, my child, I would hold your hand and feel your soft skin. I would brush your curly locks and bear your screams for me to stop because the brush pulls on the knots. You would want me to braid your hair or make pony or piggy tails.

OH, MY DEAR ‘WOULD-BE’ CHILD…

I would do anything to have sleepless nights, difficult discussions or an angry face telling me to go away if I could…
Anything to have you kick me at night sleeping in the same bed when you’re sick or scared of the monsters under your bed…
Anything to see you learn to ride your bike, even if it meant you’d fall and many times I’d pick you up and I’d sooth your bruises…

Sadly you’re my would-be child, the one that lives in my heart.
The would-be five year old but forever three days old.
Even if you’re not seen by the world out there, you are with me every day, in my heart, in my thoughts, in my dreams, in my sleepless nights, in my quite moments.

You belong to me as I belong to you.
You are part of me and I am part of you.

Your Mama, always.

NOTE:

* I’ve previously heard that some psychologists recommend bereaved parents ‘do not grow up your child in your imagination’. My personal experience and that as a grief counsellor is that it is absolutely normal and common to do so. As painful as those ‘would-be’ thoughts can be, they are also a normal way for parents to live out their dreams and hopes of a life that was cut short, the would-be life of their child.
“It is normal for parents to report that they having an ongoing relationship with their child through their memories and mental life.” (Worden J.W. 2002)

This article was first published September 7, 2016 in Still Standing Magazine.

Stop That Grieving!

January 7, 2015 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

NICU — Image from Nathalie Himmelrich’s personal archives (Photo by Cassandra Deep)

Many times during the dark periods of my grieving I wished for it to stop. “I can’t take any more!”; “I hate my life,” and “I don’t want to be like that.”

In one specifically dark moment I remember telling my husband: “You have the luxury to decide whether you want to stay with me or not, I don’t have that option.”

There were so many times I wanted the whole thing to just be a story or a film that would end, preferably with a happy ending. And neither did I want to become friends with my New Normal self, nor with my New Normal life. Why was it called ‘normal’ at all?

In a conversation I had with my mother after her first suicide attempt I urged her to think about and consider what it would mean to me, being pregnant with HER twin granddaughters and having to deal with the grief of losing MY mother. She said: “I know it would be hard, but with time, you’ll see, it will get easier.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

This conversation occurred eight months before she died and four months before Amya died.

This January, it will be three years since my mother left and I finally know what she meant. I feel that it is due to my extensive personal grief work and my process of writing my book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple that I have come to find myself in a good place with what concerns grief.

“With time, you’ll see, it will get easier…” applies to grief. It does however not apply to loss. Since my latest article ‘Being a Better Parent After Loss?’ and some interesting experiences I have had with certain people’s apparent discomfort with my outspokenness about ‘grief matters’, I realised that there is a huge lack of understanding of the difference between grief and loss.

Loss is a permanent, non-changing reality for a parent who has lost their child.

Grief is a process that is different for any parent and changing and evolving over time.

Loss will never ‘stop’.

Loss can not be ‘let go of’ or ‘moved on’ from.

The fact that I have a daughter who died is part of my history.

And even though it’s in the past, it’s also here with me.
It is not something I will or can forget about.

Grief, on the other hand, is a process.

It changed me and my outlook on life.

Grief will ebb and flow, it comes and goes.
With time, it comes less frequently and is less intense.

I won’t get lost in grief.
I resolve to let go and process grief, every day.
But I will grieve the loss
when needed and as long as needed.
And I resolve to remember Amya.
One thing I cannot lose is her memory.
“With time, you’ll see, it will get easier…”

~~~

THE GRIEF GETS EASIER.

THE LOSS JUST IS.

~~~

This article was first published January 7, 2015 in Still Standing Magazine

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