health

The Pandemic of Grief and Loss

February 14, 2022 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

You and I are not as different as it might seem…

I will never forget my father’s first words on January 19th, 2012 as I finally reached him: ‘You have got to be strong now.’

I knew what he was going to say next and I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want it to become the reality we had been dreading: My mother was dead.

It was only 4,5 months after my daughters were born and the younger twin had died 3 days after birth.

By now, you might be wondering why I started this post with the statement above. Hear me out…

Have you been touched by loss?

In the past 2 years as we all dealt with the worldwide effects of a pandemic, a situation no one would have or could have imagined, we have all been touched by loss in one way or another.

From letting go of personal freedom to move to no longer being able to meet and be close with people, from losing loved ones, through separation of space, different views, ideas, or all the way to loved ones who died from Covid.

Loss upon loss

The losses that we all had to deal with or face, in one way or another, have made grief an experience closer than we might even fully realize.

loss of people through death
loss of personal freedom
loss of health
loss of income, job, career
loss of closeness and intimacy
loss of friendships
loss of freedom of choice
loss of ease with which we decided to go about our lives
loss of relationships
loss of humanity
loss of unity
loss of individuality
loss of trust in self, in others, in society, in …
loss of potential
loss of safety
loss of belonging
loss of connection through isolation
loss of clarity
loss of individual rights

… just to name a few.

Changes and letting go

The increase of fear and worry goes side by side with the changes we all had to go through. Changes inevitably bring emotions: some changes bring relief, others fear, uncertainty, and many if not all mean letting go of what we are or have been used to.

Letting go involves grieving what no longer is. Maybe the grief is subtle, and going under the radar of your awareness. Sometimes it shows up through physical, emotional, or cognitive symptoms such as, for example, a lack of motivation.

Are there any other kinds of losses you have experienced? I’d love to add them to the list. Share them in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Photo by Amin Moshrefi on Unsplash

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 through 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 allowing 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 their creative images and words of reflection 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 comfortable 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: May We All Heal

Why You Will Never Fully Understand My Grief Experience As A Bereaved Mother

February 19, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

woman crouched up — Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash

The experience of every bereaved mother (or father) is unique and so is their grieving experience. You can never fully understand another bereaved mother’s experience, even if you sit with her through the dark of the night, talk to her for hours, cry endless tears in compassion. I’ve tried. And I might have one advantage: I myself am a bereaved mother.

Let go

As much I have been hoping that I could, I can’t fully understand what another bereaved parent is going through. I still do my best at understanding the bereaved families I’m working with and according to them, I’m doing a great job but I have let go of the unattainable: to totally and utterly understand their despair.

In that letting go, there is something else that opens up, something with far greater potential. Rather than trying to enter their experience and in that wondering how that would feel within me, I stay with them. It takes courage and compassion to totally be with someone else, without an ounce of the self who is ‘wanting to make it better for them’ or ‘helping’ them. After all that’s my job, supporting them in finding healing. But here is the thing: the pain of missing someone who is no longer physically present is not something that needs healing or fixing.

Grieving parents have something in common. They must continue their life without seeing their babies grow up to be children or their children to grow up to become adults. Grief is like unrequited love but one where the relationship hasn’t ended even though the person has left and is not contactable. That’s the paradox of child loss.

What if I’m not a bereaved mother?

As someone who hasn’t experienced the loss of a child, you can still be there for bereaved parents. You can walk side by side with them and support them with your love. You don’t need to understand their experience to accept how they express or live with it.

So, be there. Don’t try to fix them but stay with them through the darkness. The presence you show by your willingness to fully be there, is enough. You are enough, even if you don’t fully understand the grief experience.

From Depression to Suicide

August 13, 2014 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

depression girl on chair — Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

Today we all heard the news of Robin Williams’ death through suicide. How sad. I do not read the news but I start my day by browsing Facebook, especially now that I’m in the last stretch of publishing my forthcoming book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple. The news feed today was full of Robin Williams’ pictures, quotes, movie references… a display of people’s love and admiration for his craft and talent of having an impact on people’s lives.

Reading about his death I noticed that, unbeknownst to me, he had depression and committed suicide. I had multiple conversations with people who said things like: “He was such an inspiring character, it’s unbelievable that he was depressed” or “He was so successful, I can’t believe he committed suicide.” It’s the question of theodicy, a topic I cover in my book:

The question of theodicy

“Why do bad things happen to good people?” is the most common version of the theological question around why evil is possible in this world. Religious parents are faced with the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, like the death of their child. Any variation of the post-loss “why” questions can become a way of amplifying loss. According to Dr L. Michael Hall, focusing on getting to acceptance as quickly as possible takes the semantic power out of the “why” question. If overused, the “why” question can become a way to amplify loss.

I just want to know why!

It is completely natural to want to make sense. Unfortunately, there is little to no chance of finding an answer that will quench the thirst for finding the answer that would explain the tragedy. In regards to suicide from depression I have personal experience through my mother’s death which apparently happened in a similar way as Robin Williams’ death.

People suffer depression, no matter their IQ, EQ, the success or the amount of fame, friends, status, toys, things they possess.
People commit suicide no matter how much they are loved, cherished, admired, known, in the public eye (or not).
People, suffering from depression who commit suicide have people who love them and who have told them so every day.
Depression is like a bottom-less cup where any love poured in evaporates, not through their ill will but because of their depression.
In the moment of self-chosen death, many suicide victims have tunnel vision and do not think of the people they leave behind.

I had some in-depth conversations with my mum following her first few suicide attempts. At the time I was 19 weeks pregnant and was furious that she would have me go through grief while being pregnant with the twin girls. “I just wanted to end this pain, it had nothing to do with you or anyone else” – my mother’s words when we were talking about her previous attempts. “I know grief would be hard at the beginning but it will get easier with time,” she added… I shook my head in disbelief. She must be out of her mind.

In retrospect she was ‘out-of-her-mind’ and she was able to see the bigger picture. She was right: It will get easier with time.

Knowing When to Get Help

December 8, 2011 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

sleeping woman lying on wooden pole — Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

As a counsellor, coach or another therapist we are not exempt from needing help, just like any of our clients. We all do face life issues that we cannot easily deal with ourselves and need an outside expert to support us. Even though we work in the field of supporting people it does not mean we can easily fix all our own problems.

Like any doctor who at times needs to see a colleague, so do counsellors. But when is it the right time? This is the exact same question that you will be asking yourself, before calling and making an appointment with a counsellor. Let me share you my experience in making the decision to make the call.

With the recent challenges I experienced with the passing of one of my twins two days after she was born I was facing the hardest times I ever had to go through in my life. The grief on one side and the joy of new motherhood on the other side, including the sleep deprivation and learning how to be a parent put me under big strain, emotionally, mentally and physically. Even though I was coping most of the times, there were times when I was not. In the good times I would think ‘it is fine, I’m able to do this on my own’ but in the tough times I really wasn’t all that fine – understandable under the circumstances.

There came the time that the tough times were too frequent and unsustainable over time. My life normally was built on the base of good times with sprinkles of challenges and annoyances. The life that I was living now however was the opposite; it was as if tough times were the undercurrent of my life.

If you were to compare your ‘normal life’ with how you are now, how different is it? Can you really live with how it is now? Is it just an exception or is it a trend? Answering these questions made me seek help.

I do not expect the person I am seeing to solve my problems or fix my issues. Some of the things that I am dealing with cannot be solved ever. That is not the point of seeing someone. She helps me deal with the challenges I am facing, she supports me in gaining a different perspective and think about upcoming potential pitfalls before I fall in again. And the most important benefit I get from the sessions is that she normalizes my situation, my emotions, and my reactions. She makes me feel normal, where I am an expert in being hard on myself. She does not make my life easy but she definitely helps to ease and softens my tough side or challenges my judgmental side.

All in all, I would say that if you are asking yourself the question of whether it is time to ask for help, do it. If you were in victim mentality, you probably would not ask the question anyway…

Depression – Is My Child Depressed?

March 17, 2011 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

This might come as a surprise to some of you but children can experience depression as well as adolescents and adults. For some children it is not ‘just a phase they are going through’ and these parents need to know what to look for.

History

It is interesting to note that there wasn’t even an official diagnosis for childhood depression until 1980, even though there was significant research into depression in children in the 1950s. A young pediatrician called Leon Cytryn was researching the frequency of sadness and withdrawal he observed in boys admitted to hospital for surgery. He discovered that almost half of them had symptoms, which would have been associated with adult depression.

Sadness versus depression

To clarify here it is important to note that sadness can be a healthy and normal response when the child is upset, for example when their grandfather has just died or their pet has run away. If this sadness however is observed as a continuous state in the child’s day-to-day experience then we need to look at the potential for childhood depression.

Seeing the signs

The following symptoms can be linked to depression:

continuous feeling of sadness
not experiencing pleasure in activities they liked previously
complaining often about stomach aches, headaches or fatigue
significant changes in weight or appetite
repeated thoughts or attempts at running away from home
extreme tearfulness, irritability, low tolerance for frustration
sadness and hopelessness (‘I’ll never feel happy’), low self-esteem (‘no one likes me’)
difficulties sleeping, waking in the middle of the night, not being able to fall asleep or sleeping during the day
decreased social contacts with friends
drop in school performance, behavioral problems at school, refusal or reluctance to go to school
excessive worrying that something bad might happen, worries about family members getting hurt
less energy, looking tired, everything become an effort
hostility or aggression which is unprovoked
suicidal thoughts, fantasies of death or dying which may be observed in drawings or other forms of self-expression

Is it or not?

In order to decide whether the symptoms are truly pointing in the direction of depression ask yourself: ‘To what extent is your child’s feelings of sadness and the behavior interfering with their everyday life and normal development?’ If the answer is significant, you might need to get it checked out with your general practitioner.

Remember that you know your own child best and will be aware of changes in their behaviour and emotion. You might also want to include other sources that know your child like their teacher or other members of your extended family. Trust your own instinct and if you feel something is wrong, get it checked out.