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Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

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Sharing Your Story: You Change The World

August 25, 2020 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Sharing Your Story

Yes, you. You change the world. Being who you are. Sharing what you feel. Being honest about your experience.

Forging the way

Just the other day I shared an image of myself from 15 years ago. This was way before my date with grief and loss at its core. I had my share of relationship break-ups and had gone through the death of my grandparents. But in comparison to the death of my daughter, followed by the death of my mother, they paled.

Here is what I wrote:

“Seeing this photo from about 2003 got me thinking…

If I could, I would love to share a few things with that younger version of myself: I’d applaud her for her perseverance in settling into a new country, even though it was tough every step of the way and she felt alone. I’d tell her that the man she had just fallen in love would not return from his trip to Italy but that she would eventually marry a beautiful man, who she’d have children with.

I’ll let her know that she’ll someday have the honour to parent one daughter by her side and teach the world about how to mother her twin sister who had passed away. I’d tell her that she’d not only experience the loss of her daughter but soon after the loss of her mother. I’d remind her that even though it didn’t seem survivable, she would not only survive but would go on living and thriving with Hope. And she would go on teaching the world about how to move from living IN grief to living WITH grief within oneself.

I’d tell her that even though she didn’t see the whole road ahead, which eventually lead her back home, she was never alone.”

A friend of mine commented: “Though I hate that you’ve had to walk this journey, I thank you for forging the way for those of us who also found ourselves on a similar path.”

You ARE already changing the world

We are all on a similar path. You too have the power to forge the way for a better understanding of grief following the death of a child. Whenever you share something real and honest, without obligating people to listen, you sensitize those around you. Every conversation has the power to change people’s minds!

I remember a conversation with my father. I dare say he has strong opinions. He is probably less teachable than others. His generation strongly believed in the grief myths of hiding how you feel and needing to be strong. He recounted a conversation with a friend where she used the phrase “at least she’s got one daughter and she’s healthy”. She was referring to my surviving twin. (If you don’t know my story, you can find it here.) My father responded: “That is no consolation. Which one of your children could you live without, because at least you still had one and she was healthy?”

I was so proud of my father’s ability to speak up and correct his friend’s myth (loss is replaceable.) I was also reminded that what I had previously shared with him, explaining that platitudes like these don’t do any good for a grieving parent’s heart, found its way and taught someone else something new about grief and loss. It helped sensitize them.

‘Change the world’ can even happen through someone else’s conversation.

You are a warrior of light

So, I want to encourage you to share your story and your reality. In the beginning, it’s easier if you look for a receptive audience. Once you are clear about your grief story and practised in sharing it, you’ll find the power of sensitizing, rather than obligating, people to understand you. And you will have changed the world. One listener at the time.

Change the world and know that you’re doing it.

****

Handlettered Quote by Nathalie Himmelrich

Filed Under: child loss, grief/loss, grieving parents

Healing After Child Loss? Possible Or Impossible?

June 2, 2020 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Healing After Child Loss? Possible Or Impossible?

After the death of my daughter six and a half years ago I wrote: “I will never get over this.” This still holds true to some extent. However, I’m no longer in the despair that led me to make over-generalized statements about healing and sentences that implied I had the power of premonition.

Healing – no way!

The topic of healing after child loss is loaded. Loaded with personal definitions, ideas, and expectations from self and others. It is also emotionally loaded with the intensity of the traumatic life-changing event of the death of your child. A father in my first grief support group said: “I don’t want to heal because the pain is my only connection to my daughter”.

Healing – at least in my view and experience – is possible. Before jumping to conclusions or entering into an argument, you would need to ask me: What do you mean by ‘healing is possible?’

Ask yourself: What do you believe about healing? What is healing? What does it mean when used as a noun (the healing), as a verb (I heal) or in its progressive form (I am healing)? Definitions are personal and are based on what we’ve learnt, been influenced by and the myths we’ve been fed.

The most suitable definition I found is: “healing means to alleviate a person’s distress or anguish”.

Healing is personal

The same way as we individually define healing, we also heal in our very own personal way. What is supportive and helpful to me, might not be for my partner.

I processed the loss of my daughter a lot through my writing. First, it was by writing personal emails and notes on Facebook. I just needed to find words and express myself, initially not with the purpose of letting people know but to clarify things for myself. In the beginning, it was a safe way to talk to people without having to reply to their responses. The distance between the writer and the reader was my safe place.

With my mother’s suicide, I chose a completely different path: I joined a group of family survivors of suicide victims for a year-long group. It was intense, intimate, deep and very much worth every minute we spent together. I had also spent a few hours in grief group sessions after the loss of my daughter, but this was a different experience.

Healing expectations

In many cases, those who have expectations (or wishes) about our healing have not experienced the loss of a child. Even our own expectations, which we can hear in statements like “will this ever get better” or “when will I be better”, are based on an experience (pre-child loss) that is not comparable to the one we are having right now (post child loss).

Far too often the emotional healing after child loss is compared to physical healing from a wound or illness. This is so vastly different, there should be different words!

Healing is an activity

Writing, finding words for my experience, and especially the time it took to go through the memories, talking to other parents, was what helped me most.

The second most helpful was when I translated my first book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple from English into German and the realization that came from the changes that had already happened within that year since writing it.

And of course, being a beacon of light for others through my heart-work with events such as May We All Heal as part of the Grieving Parents Support Network.

What is helping you alleviate your distress and anguish?

Photo by Rossina Abril on Unsplash

Filed Under: child loss, grief/loss, grieving parents Tagged With: child loss, grief, grief myth, grief myths, grieving, grieving parents, healing, loss, miscarriage, parental grief, pregnancy loss, trauma

Time To Grieve – How Long Will My Grief Last?

January 31, 2020 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Time To Grieve – How Long Will My Grief Last?

How long will I be grieving the death of my child? How long will my grief last? When will I feel better? Is there a time to grieve? Is it true that I need to ‘move on’ or ‘get over it’? What does ‘moving on’ look like?

How much time to grieve do I have?

I have been asked these and similar questions for years. Just last week, a member of the Grieving Parents Support Network asked:

“Hi. Do you know of any articles about ‘how long the grieving process is for losing a child’? I was told ‘fresh grief’ takes about 2 years and another said it takes 5 years. My adult daughter passed away 6.5 months ago.

When I post something about her on Facebook one was telling me I need to move on – that’s what my daughter would want me to do. Others haven’t been quite so blunt, but the message is still clear.

These comments hurt and make me angry. What shall I do? Ignore them or try to respond with a message about how hard it is to lose a child and that it takes a long time? I don’t know what to do.”

The question showed me a couple of things:

[Read more…] about Time To Grieve – How Long Will My Grief Last?

Filed Under: child loss, grief/loss, grieving parents Tagged With: child loss, grief, grief myth, grief myths, grieving, grieving parents, healing, loss, miscarriage, parental grief, pregnancy loss, trauma

Comparing Grief – Can It Be Helpful?

December 19, 2019 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Comparing Grief – Can It Be Helpful?

Comparing grief is something we all have done at some point.

“But you’ve only had a miscarriage.”
“I experienced the same when my grandpa died.”
“My stillbirth was … in comparison to my miscarriages.”
“I cannot imagine losing a teenager.”

All these are comparisons: a miscarriage versus a stillbirth or neonatal death, the experience of the death of a child versus the death of grandpa, my stillbirth versus my miscarriages, the loss of a teenager versus another loss (or no loss).

Invalidating

Statements that include a comparison are often uttered without any bad intention. They are often an opinion of someone from what they understand or not understand from their vantage point in life.

In many cases, they are helpless attempts at dealing with the unimaginable grief that follows a loss, your own or someone else’s.

In many cases, however, a comparison is invalidating someone’s experience and feelings. No matter the kind of loss, it involves grief and pain.

We cannot truly know what someone else is going through, even if our losses involve the same person or the person in the same relationship (for example grandpa).

Even after an extensive exchange with our partner in regard to the loss of our child we only know what they have shared. And even then, we only have ‘what we understood’ and not ‘what they truly meant’.

Gaining perspective

If the comparison helps you to see something good and helpful for yourself, then it can be helpful – but only to yourself.

For example, Katja, one of the contributors of the book ‘Surviving My First Year of Child Loss’ said in an interview: “I know the murderer of my child, I know he’s in jail and I’ve got a trial coming up. Some other parents don’t have that option.”

[Read more…] about Comparing Grief – Can It Be Helpful?

Filed Under: child loss, grief/loss, grieving parents Tagged With: child loss, grief, grief myth, grief myths, grieving, grieving parents, healing, loss, miscarriage, parental grief, pregnancy loss, trauma

The Healing Is In The Feeling

September 10, 2019 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

The Healing Is In The Feeling

… and that is why it doesn’t help to be told ‘you should just get over it’.

So many times bereaved parents hear sentences that proclaim myths about their grieving and healing. We all have heard those myths, so much so that we have come to believe many of them. So it’s no surprise we, as the bereaved, struggle with healing after loss because it’s so different than portrayed or spoken about in society.

That’s where…

  • YOU (the bereaved) talking about your loss
  • YOU being open about your feelings and thoughts
  • YOU remembering your child
  • YOU openly sharing your tears when grief is triggered
  • YOU celebrating your child’s memory
  • YOU standing tall accepting where you are on your journey with grief

… are making a difference. 

You are a grief and healing warrior

You are a hope spreader, truth speaker, way bearer, silence breaker, taboo destroyer, meaning creator, new normal ambassador and a human resilient healer.

Some of the myths, that we have heard for aeons are the following, or versions of:

get over the loss, stop talking about it, move on, forget about it, time heals all wounds, have another baby (in the case of a bereaved parent), think about… (your husband, your other surviving children), keep yourself busy.

As you all know, most of those are not helpful and deny us of our experience that we have to the point were we ourselves say “I shouldn’t be crying…” or “I’m sorry I lost it” when we feel what is a natural part of healing.

Healing is in the feeling. Healing happens one conversation at the time, thought by thought, tear after tear that runs down our cheeks. Healing can also happen by doing something, creating new meaning, putting your brainpower into a project or your physical power into building something. Healing is so varied and often happens without us even knowing it is happening. It also happens when we think ‘I’m feeling worse again’ or ‘I’ve gone backwards’.

Stop denying your experience. Stop giving other people the power to deny your experience. What you experience naturally is just that: natural.

Yes, of course, you can increase your not so pleasant feelings by doing the very thing you know increases it: for example looking at photos, listening to specific music. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do that, it means to be mindful when and how you do it.

So, how can you own your experience? By becoming and being aware of your own emotions, thoughts, actions, behaviours and spoken words. By taking responsibility on those powers and not let those be directed by what other people or society think or feel.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Filed Under: child loss, grieving parents Tagged With: child loss, grief, grief myth, grief myths, grieving, grieving parents, healing, loss, miscarriage, parental grief, pregnancy loss, trauma

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