child loss

A Letter To The Friend Of A ‘New Normal’ Grieving Mother

April 23, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich 2 Comments

Dear Friend,

It’s been awhile since I’ve contacted you. I was busy. Busy surviving. Busy grieving.

I have been more focused on my journey and me than anyone else’s. I had to. For my own and my family’s sake. Otherwise I might no longer be around.

My child has died and even if/though this is months or even years ago, my memory is as fresh as if it was yesterday. For the outside world it has become a story, the story people tell each other at the shop about the woman who lost her baby. But even those conversations have started to die as the news is no longer headline worthy. In the best of cases, it has become a memory. A fading memory.

I might seem better from the outside and in comparison to the first weeks and months I am… Or so it seems. And then grief rolls over me like the unexpected wave that catches me from behind. These were the moments I didn’t recognise myself. The moments I was the crazy ‘new normal’ woman loudly cursing every detail about her life, wishing death upon her to end this pain. This however usually happened (not so) quietly behind closed doors. They have become less frequent… By not contacting you, you were spared those moments. You wouldn’t have liked them. I didn’t and still don’t. You might have been so shocked by your ‘new normal’ friend that you never contacted her again.

It has been a hard road to get used to the ‘new normal’ me, which honestly is nothing like the normal me you and I knew. Ask the husband, the rock – who knows how he managed to not walk out the door. I’ve kept the ‘new normal’ inside a lot because you see, she has no (or little) social grace. I prefer to spend time with her by my own, not that she is pleasurable company but she just doesn’t fit in my life pre-loss. It was my way to save whatever face was left.

I haven’t just been a crappy ‘new normal’ friend I’ve also been crappy ‘new normal’ mother, wife, sister, daughter, human being. Once I’ve realised that I actually had to merge with the ‘new normal’ myself, I struggled with this truth. She or rather I had to relearn what it means to live, to treat people, to care for myself, to be in relationship, to be a responsible human being, to treat things and people respectfully… Most of all myself.

The ‘new normal’ doesn’t have energy nor desire to be pleasing as I was before. I’ve given up on returning to or getting back the self that used to be me – I’ve given in on being ‘new normal’. Resistance is exhausting and fruitless. The more honest and straight-forward I’ve noticed the ‘new normal’ was and is, the less socially digestible I’ve found myself to be. A simple ‘starting-a-conversation’ question like “and how many children do you have?” make the ‘new normal’ a party killer. And for those who know the story, I can imagine them rolling their eyes and thinking: “Here we go again…”

The sad truth is I’ve become quite used to the fact that my friends prefer to stay away from ‘new normal’ and I can sort of understand their potential motivation. As much as the ‘new normal’ has needed to talk about it she/I might have also strained your ears and overused your capacity to listen. I myself would prefer the ‘new normal’ would be able to tell a different life story.

Now I want to be a good new normal friend.

The new normal good friend is honest, real and authentic.

When I integrate the new normal…

I will call or contact you when I truly feel like it.

I will tell it like it is.

I will always mention all my children, dead or alive.

I will learn to love myself, life and what I’ve come here for.

I will appreciate your patience, love and care.

I will be human, fallible and imperfect.

And I’ll hope you to meet your humanness too.

Thank you,

Your friend

This article was first published July 1, 2015 in Still Standing Magazine.

Dear Fear

April 17, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Having published my book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple a year ago and being weeks away from having the book published in its German translation, I’ve been reminded of the vulnerability it brings: Having my name out there, my opinions, my story, my suggestions – they all leave room for criticism.

The idea of having your most vulnerable time of your life neatly packaged in 200 odd pages for the whole world to read can bring up fear, as I was reminded in a recent conversation with a fellow grief coach, who is contemplating putting her story into a book. I said: “fear has a role of protection” and “have a conversation with the fear” which I thought was a great suggestion for myself too – maybe even for you?
Here is mine.

My conversation with fear

Dear Fear,

We need to talk. You’ve been with me on and off all my life. I know you protect me from pain, hurt and disappointment. I get it. I appreciate your concern and caring protection.

Whereas in the past you visited from time to time, it seems now you’ve moved in permanently.
In the past few years since the death of my child and my mother you’ve become ever present. I can feel you in my bones. I can feel you in my recurring thoughts, day and night. It’s draining my energy to have you live here with me. Is it that you feel I can’t continue living without you?

You’ve been with me, holding me while I held my daughter as she passed away and you sent your companions ‘numbness’ and ‘shock’ to ease the pain. It worked for a while… Until I noticed that I couldn’t avoid the pain. Even if you would have done anything for me to avoid it, it wasn’t possible on the long run.

You’re with me all of the time

You kept me at home, under the duvet, ignored calls for me and had me stare blankly into the world. You’re with me, every step of the way, alongside my parenting journey. I can even see you in my husband’s eyes, hear you in his ‘be careful, or you’ll hurt yourself’ sentences. You’re right by my side in every step my daughter takes and you make me scream at her for fear she might get hurt – and for fear that I would get hurt in the process of it. That’s when you send your colleague ‘self-judgement’ to come in right after you’ve done your job.

What you couldn’t turn away was the hurt I felt from someone’s thoughtless comments. Friends have disappeared and you make me wonder what I might have done wrong. You’re worried I’ll end up old and lonely. At times you’ve even gently suggested not to mention my daughter, when the question asked was: “Is this your only child?”

You’re present when I talk, walk and even when I sleep. You tell me to become better again, to become a nice sociable person again, or people won’t like me. I worry more, sleep less, question more, think deeper.

‘Anger’ isn’t your friend, nor colleague or companion. You’re afraid of the anger because you can no longer control me, while he’s around. You fear the things I’d do or say when the anger is around. You fear the people that will leave me for my anger. You make me afraid of my anger and its destructive tendency.

I need to be brave

As much as I appreciate your concern and care, you’ve also kept me from stepping out and doing things, trying things in a new way. As true as it is that I’m tired of pain and hurt, I also need to be brave to make a difference, to continue living boldly and allow my daughter to do just the same.

How can we find a way together?

This article was first published August 5, 2015 in Still Standing Magazine.

May We All Heal – Why It Is Good To Reflect On Your Grief

April 15, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

May We All Heal is a creative healing event, where we reflect on our grief. Participants from all over the world take part in this online event, sharing their images and thoughts.

May We All Heal and its history

Originally created by a few women from the Grieving Parents Support Network it is now in its third year. It lasts throughout the whole month of May. It allows bereaved parents to focus on aspects of their grieving and healing. This is done by using any form of creativity, be that drawing, colouring-in, doodling, writing, talking, singing, dancing, modelling with clay or any other form. Another important part is the reflections on the prompt that is offered for each day.

Why would I want to delve into these memories and the emotions they evoke?

Author David Rock’s book Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long explains:
“To reduce arousal, you need to use just a few words to describe an emotion, and ideally use symbolic language, which means using indirect metaphors, metrics, and simplifications of your experience. This requires you to activate your prefrontal cortex, which reduces the arousal in the limbic system. Here’s the bottom line: describe an emotion in just a word or two, and it helps reduce the emotion.” Even though this hasn’t specifically been written in the context of grief, it describes what happens when we reflect on our emotions upon the use of symbolic language which creativity is part of.

This is what we are doing in ‘May We All Heal’, where we are using creative metaphors and words to describe our internal processing. Just by doing that, we are changing the fabric of grieving and allow healing.

You are not alone

As much as the statement ‘you are not alone’ is uttered, it needs to be experienced to be believed. ‘May We All Heal’ harnesses the power of community, the ‘we’ as Sherly Sandberg in her interview with Time describes.

The participants share the creative images and words of reflections on social media like Instagram and Facebook. Using the hashtags #MayWeAllHeal and #MWAH allows participants to find one another and read and comment. On the event page on Facebook, there is also space for the participant to share and communicate with each other.

Participants feel enriched through this experience. They said: “I feel comfort here” or “I’m so glad I found the May We All Heal event because it is so beneficial for my healing”.

Come and join us! You can start any day. All information is here: May We All Heal yearly event.

Buy the May We All Heal companion playbook here.
Facebook peer support group: http://bit.ly/MayWeAllHealFB

Why Grievers Are Often Misunderstood

April 9, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

woman at the window — Photo by Thijs Kennis on Unsplash

Recently, in one week 80% of my arrangements to meet up with friends got cancelled. Not by me. I was utterly disappointed.

Maybe I’m a highly sensitive person, or perhaps I simply get easily disappointed. So when I inquired into one specific cancellation, which happened to be with another bereaved mother, she said:

“Since the death of my son five years ago I experience a daily challenge of organising my calendar, regularly double book myself (which is what happened on our supposed meeting day) or have people show up at my door without remembering why. This is just how it is.”

As much as I understood and could relate to what she described I was also hurt that we wouldn’t meet up, that our daughters wouldn’t be able to play with each other.

I took the sum of cancellations personally and reacted with overwhelm and lack of motivation for anything.

I even posted about my disappointment on my personal page on Facebook which I only very irregularly do nowadays.

Then, I realized something much bigger

This is where grievers are so often misunderstood. Her short-term grief experience is as unique as the longer-term effects she’s experiencing in her life. Full stop.

Even though we are both bereaved mothers I am reminded that I CANNOT compare myself to her. It’s human nature to compare and to want to find someone to relate to and feel understood by. ‘She experienced what I have’ I hear myself thinking.

“You are the first one who truly understands what I’ve been going through” numerous clients had said to me. It’s true: another bereaved person at least has a bit of insight into what is going on… but really – just ‘a bit’.

Grievers misunderstand other grievers when they compare their grief or are in different places relating to their loss. Every comparison of grief is a total misunderstanding of the uniqueness of EACH and EVERY loss, of the uniqueness of each relationship and each griever. The only two losses that can ever be compared are your own and even this comparison is not helpful.

Grievers are misunderstood because a non-griever is looking from that perspective of ‘not currently grieving’ and is simply not capable of relating. That’s when unhelpful myths like ‘just forget about it and you’ll feel better’ or old-fashioned beliefs like ‘you just need time’ get uttered in helpless attempts to sooth the pain.

Grievers are so often misunderstood and – at the same time – misunderstand those who might not be grieving a loss at this specific time or even others who are grieving differently or are in a different place with their grief.

Grievers expect the ‘outside’ world to have an empathy and understanding that far fewer people are capable of than those that – magically – seem to have that skill, gift or empathy, even without having a personal experience of that kind of loss.

This article was first published November 4, 2015 in Still Standing Magazine.

Accept The Unique Fingerprint Of Grief And Loss

April 2, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

women in black and white — Photo by Tuva Mathilde Løland on Unsplash

Grief is unique

Your grief is as unique as your fingerprint.

No two fingerprints are the same.

Yes, they are both from a ‘finger’, made out of the unique pattern of whorls and lines on the fingertips but that’s as far as it goes in regards to similarities.

They are more different than they are same but the eyes are not able to ‘see’ that.

The only reason fingerprints are compared is to identify the individual.

There is no healthy reason to compare your grief and loss with another person’s.

It does not help you heal. Nor does it help the other person heal their grief.

Recently there was an article floating around the Internet with the title ‘Losing a dog is like losing a child’ (before you cringe at the title, go and read – don’t make a judgement before you read the article with 1.4 mio likes! and read until the end of this article). It is just one example of a sentence in which two completely different losses are compared. As much as it seems logical not to compare completely different losses, we fall into the trap of comparing seemingly similar losses. There is just no point, absolutely NO point in comparisons!

Even by saying ‘the loss of a child is the worst loss ever’ we are basically comparing. We are setting the loss of a child above all other losses.

It’s not helpful, in fact it’s detrimental and it segregates people, who are all in grieving pain. It leads to feeling ‘I shouldn’t feel that bad because really, I’ve only lost … and not my child’ or ‘I should feel the worst because I lost my child’.

Those of us who’ve lost a child are left to believe ‘I’ve experienced the worst loss’ and some even get stuck in the mindset of ‘I’ll never get over this’ or ‘I will never ever feel better again’ for the rest of their lives.

Then, there is also comparing yourself to other loss parents… It’s not helpful.

Similarities and differences

Grieving experiencing are unique and can be experienced in all different ways.

The only similarity that connects grieving parents is the fact that we are a parent and we’ve lost a child. That’s the ‘finger’ part.

Your experience however is just that: YOURS. At different times you might or might not relate to someone so don’t let yourself be fooled to believe statements like ‘that’s what grieving parents experience’ or ‘this is what child loss feels’. If you can relate, fine, but if you can’t, it’s fine too – you’re unique and so is your grieving experience.

You can only know how your loss feels and how you experience your grief. Don’t attempt or pretend you know another person’s experience. Do not even use comparisons to find similarities or differences between a mother’s and a father’s grief of a child – two different people, even while losing the same child, their child, still experience the loss differently.

Comparing is about finding similarities or differences. The similarities might help you understand your situation better. That’s where grieving theories come in helpful in normalising the experience by giving a list of potential similarities. Still, allow your own process to unfold.

BE AND ACCEPT YOUR OWN FINGERPRINT OF GRIEF AND LOSS.

This article was first published December 2, 2015 in Still Standing Magazine.

The Misunderstanding About Grief And Death

March 25, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

cloudy sky — Photo by Vijendra Singh on Unsplash

When I held my daughter in my arms as she drew her last breath I knew it.
When I learned that my mother had just died through suicide I knew it.

I didn’t fully understand grief

I speak boldly when I say that society largely misunderstands grief. Even as a trained psychological therapist specialising in grief and relationship, I misunderstood grief. I thought I understood it, knew about it. I was mistaken. What was interesting to me was that according to my clients I was well equipped to support people through their losses even though I didn’t fully understand grief.

From the perspective of personally LIVED loss experiences, deeply inhaling the grieving process, struggling to keep up the resilience to get up every day, dealing with mundane daily tasks… I really had no idea about grieving prior to my own losses and I believe not many people do – until life shows them death.

Grief myths

There are many unconscious biases and grief myths that are commonly used in our everyday language (see my articles on Downton Abbey Grief Theory Part 1 here and Part 2 here) that it comes as no surprise that society BELIEVES that:

Grief Quote by Nathalie Himmelrich — Handlettered Quote by Nathalie Himmelrich

Grief has a set timeline and it will be ‘over’ after that time
‘Keeping it together’ and ‘not losing it’, meaning to not show emotions, are desirable signs of being strong and this is how we should show up
Replacing what was lost will resolve the grief (like ‘have another baby’)
If you just do something useful (=keep yourself busy) it will be better

And, to a certain degree, we as the bereaved ourselves believe these myths which make us stuff down our emotions, pretend we don’t feel them or numb them out with all kinds of (addictive) behaviour.

EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS

Openly feeling and authentically expressing our emotions is not encouraged in our society. ‘Don’t cry’ is probably the most used sentence responsible for children from a young age learning that emotional expression is not welcome. We often get shamed, judged, critiqued or even laughed at when showing our emotions and the pain of that vulnerability makes us shut down.

MISUNDERSTANDING:

Not feeling or not expressing the feelings makes the pain go away.
Keeping yourself busy will resolve any unpleasant feelings.

GRIEF TRUTH:

When loss has touched our lives and after the shock and numbness wear off, we are often overwhelmed by emotions. We need to speak about it, often much longer than the people surrounding us can bear to listen without being emotionally affected themselves.

TIMELINE

In a recent workshop on bereavement support I heard the presenter mention that the average time of dealing with the bereavement is 2 to 3 years when losing a parent, 5 to 7 years when losing a partner and a lifetime when losing a child. Even though these are (again) suggested timelines, he also said that we all process loss differently and therefore the time span will vary from person to person.

MISUNDERSTANDING:

Grieving is done after a certain time. Bereaved people ‘should get over’ their loss and move on with life. Time heals all wounds.

GRIEF TRUTH:

Everyone’s experience of loss is unique. Everyone’s timeframe on when they are willing and able to integrate their loss and turn their attention back to life is different. And no, the loss will never be put ‘behind’ or ‘over’ – the loss stays a part of the bereaved person’s life.
Time on its own does not simply heal all wounds.

REPLACING THE LOSS

If you lose a child, the next child will not simply fill a space. It’s not possible. The hole in a parent’s heart will not be healed by another child. A new baby does not diminish the wishes, dreams and expectations you had for the one before.

MISUNDERSTANDING:

A rainbow child will heal the loss of a lost child.

GRIEF TRUTH:

The emotions following loss are present in some form or another. It’s natural that the parents will be busy with another child and therefore have less time and space to grieve. This does not, however, mean it’s resolved.

When death visited, I knew. I knew it in my cells. Death was filling me equally with awe as it filled me with devastation. I knew that this was the single biggest emotional experience my life had trusted me with so far.

Looking back I know now that…
My soul was ready for the experience; my humanness however was thrown into the painful path of grief.
My soul knew I was resilient; my humanness struggled for months and years.
My soul knew it’s purpose and my humanness was yet to embark on the journey to find out.

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