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Birth and Death Anniversaries Are Hard

September 1, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Death anniversaries are the hardest.
Annonymous client

Death anniversaries are hard

She uttered the sentence in response to my public sharing on Instagram regarding the fact that it is 10 years since my girls were born and A’Mya died:

It also means that my grief journey with A’Mya is turning 10 years old. 10 years without her. ⠀
⠀
10. ⠀
⠀
I find it hard to believe that is already 10 years.⠀

10 years ago I was pregnant.
I knew it was my last day of pregnancy.
I knew it was the last day of Hope & Passion inside me.
Alive.
Together.
Side by side.
To be born tomorrow.

31 August 2011

It’s the time of year… birth, death, all intertwined… and I’m so wrapped up in my own physical reactions and responses to the memories that I didn’t have any capacity to remember much of anything else.

Grey’s Anatomy can trigger grief

The past few days, when I was resting (I broke my right little toe) I watched Grey’s Anatomy. In this episode, a mother had just given birth to an extremely premature little baby. The doctors are fighting for his life, discussing chances of survival, treatment plans, etc. while the parents (who happen to be also doctors) watch in despair.

And then it hits me as I’m watching the part where two doctors are reviewing the board with all the children who once were born early, been in the NICU, and are shown here as toddlers and children. “Some of them survive,” Alex says.

Synchronicity or self-torture?

I turn it off. Still, I will return to it. It’s not (just?) self-torture, it is integrating what has happened and building the resilience of being with those places in my memory, in peace, with sadness but without absolute hopelessness and dread.

To me, that is the result of grief work. My grief work.

Birth and death

In my experience, birth and death have been experienced in close proximity. Ananda Mae and A’Mya Mirica were born 10 years ago today.

Three days later, A’Mya died in my arms. Big sigh.

Birthday, and not just for me but also for Ananda Mae, is closely intertwined with the fact that her sister isn’t here today. I’ve noticed that in my young daughter now more so than ever before.

On the weekend she cried saying I just wished I could talk to A’Mya.

Last night she woke and couldn’t sleep between 12 and 1 am – synchronistically the time where the two sisters were born if we take the time difference into consideration.

And – another synchronicity – just as I’m typing this, it is 8.40 am – the time of day they were born.

Just a coincidence?

I don’t think so. In the past 10 years and even before that I have experienced far too many of those seeming coincidences.

Image: Personal archives

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.

Four Ways You Can Support Someone After Loss

January 15, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Grief is Homeless Love — Handlettered Quote by Nathalie Himmelrich

In my book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple I wrote about ‘The Art of Presence’: “Be there, not merely in the moment of crisis. Walk alongside me in the months and years to come. Allow me my process of healing. Sit with me in the moments of painful emotions and the darkness of depression.”

Recently I have become more and more aware of the powerful healing that can occur if we just practice the Art of Presence.

So here is what I have found to be the important four things you can do for a friend who has experienced the loss of someone they love – and you might like to share this article with them, if you agree:

Be there
Sounds simple. Is it simple? It needs practice, practise to stay with someone in pain, practice to just be. Accept that you might be feeling uncomfortable in the other person’s pain, it’s ok, you may still remain there with them. You don’t need to do or say anything, just your presence will be appreciated.
It is an illusion that in times of crisis people need space. Respect someone’s wish, if they tell you so. Otherwise, be present.
Witness the pain
Bereaved people might openly show their sadness and grief. Others might show strong emotions like anger and rage at the injustice of death having taken their loved one too soon.
Allow your friend’s pain. Welcome their tears. Welcome their strong emotions. A person expressing strong emotions is relieving tension, it is a normal and healthy reaction unless they are likely to harm themselves or others.
Remember the loved one
After the loss, people often want to talk about their lost loved ones. Grieving Parents want to talk about their baby, their child. Remember their loved one with them. Mention their name. Talk about your memories. People are often afraid of the potential of increasing the bereaved person’s pain. Let me tell you, your mentioning the loved one’s name cannot increase the pain that they have already experienced through the loss. Even though the mentioning of my daughter’s name brought sadness, it also brought joy to my heart that people remembered and spoke about her.

Saying less is more
Do not try to fix their pain by saying something to cheer them up or attempting to remind them to be grateful of what the still have. There are so many statements made in a helpless attempt to relieve the person’s pain. Those sentences might be intellectually true but they are emotionally barren. This is why they hurt. Intellectual truth does not mend a broken heart.

I recently heard this beautiful statement, said to a friend of mine by the priest who buried their son:

Grief is homeless love.

Let the grieving people tend to the homeless love in their broken heart.

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

Name That Feeling, You Will Feel Better

October 31, 2007 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Putting feelings into words makes sadness and anger less intense, U.S. brain researchers said in a finding that explains why talking to a therapist — or even a sympathetic bartender — often makes people feel better. Researchers scanned the brains of people who were shown pictures of faces expressing strong emotions and asked to categorize the feelings using words like “sad” or “angry”. They were also asked to match the face to one of two gender-specific names like “Sally” or “Harry”.

The findings showed that when people attached a word like “angry” to an angry-looking face, the response in the amygdala portion of the brain that handles fear, panic and other strong emotions decreased. This seems to dampen down the response in these basic emotional circuits in the brain — in this case the amygdala. What lights up instead is the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls impulses.

So rather than talking about feelings leading to new insights, and that understanding being what transforms you, it may be that simply naming an emotion allows you to move on from it.
Source: Psychological Science