Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

dealing with emotions

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

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Book Cover May We All Heal
Book Cover May We All Heal

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

The Sensitivity Of A Grieving Parent

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Photo by BENCE BOROS on Unsplash

The sensitivity of grieving parents is huge. The trauma associated with the loss of a child leaves lifelong wounds. Eventually, they turn into scars, but they can remain utterly sensitive, even while seemingly invisible to the eye.

Hurtful comments

It’s true. Those who haven’t experienced child loss even though they have good intention often try to make helpful suggestions. The effect, however, is pain upon pain. For the grieving heart, it’s unbelievable that others don’t realise. Mostly they don’t. Still, where does that leave the ravaged broken parents’ heart?

Lost friends

Those hurtful comments can also lead to secondary losses of friends. Emotional firefighters or builders are a rare breed and so many friends lack the stamina it takes to truly support parents after a loss. Relationships become strained from the long-lasting effects of the emotional rollercoaster. Those unaffected cannot relate to the grief remaining and find it hard to fully comprehend why parents still talk about their child years after the death.

Unprepared

A society focused on ‘happier, more successful and busy’ doesn’t know how to deal with those frozen in time, shell-shocked by the always untimely death of a child. We were unprepared in our own grief. We all lack education on how to be with someone who has experienced it. Death is removed from old people’s homes and hospitals. We no longer tend to experience death in our family home and remove ourselves from the emotional consequences.

Overwhelmed

This is my personal most used statement. I’ve lost my ability to be productive, to multi-task, to remember names, places etc. If my computer fails to be working without interruption, I walk away. I just can’t deal with it as I did before.

Who am I?

If I am somehow puzzled with who I’ve become, still trying to find archived skills or long-lost memories in my brain, what happens to those who knew the ‘Nathalie-from-before’? I’ve heard some comments, disguised cries for me to ‘come back’ or ‘focus on the living’. Let me tell you, I’ve done nothing else but that: It’s a continuous step-by-step process to ‘come back’ and daily I’m living in the here and now, focusing on finding and creating meaning. But it’s hard work and that’s what makes me tired and sensitive.

Like a burn injury is said to be a lifelong injury, so is the grief after child loss.

Vulnerability Is Bravery

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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.

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.

I Want To Stop Feeling This Way – Wisdom On Allowing Feelings

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Photo by Vladyslava Andriyenko on Unsplash

I have stopped counting the number of clients coming to see me asking for ways to stop feeling what they are currently emotionally experiencing. Let’s shed a bit of light on the reasons why and when it might be suggested that you actually do exactly the opposite: allowing it.

Emotions versus feelings

First of all, let’s make some clear distinction of terms. Feelings are what you experience at the moment. They are usually clean and fresh, like tears of joy when you attend a beautiful wedding ceremony or the sadness when hearing the news of someone’s child dying.

Emotions however are, as the word says, “energy in motion”. They are a form of residual energy which is stored in the body’s connective tissue from past experiences which come up in a moment when triggered. These emotions are leftovers from a situation that have not yet been fully dealt with. You might notice the difference through the intensity which, when looking back at the moment, is out of context. Emotions usually make you become defensive or overly critical, condescending or argumentative.

Emotions/feelings versus words/actions

Another important differentiation has to be made between what we are experiencing on an emotional level, whether it is an emotion or a feeling, and the words and actions that follow. Generally speaking, emotions will make you want to speak or act out much more than feelings and usually in a negative or hurtful way.

Feel and be aware

The significance which I am trying to make here is that whatever you feel (or emote) you still have (some) control over your reactivity. If you feel that you are out of control, you can be sure that you are experiencing emotions from undealt with past hurtful situations.

[Tweet “The more emotional you are, the more you will feel reactive towards what is coming to you from outside.”] This is an invitation to look at those things and deal with them once and for all.

I don’t want to deal with old stuff

If you hear yourself think or say out loud that you are not interested in dealing with this old stuff, you are consciously or unconsciously afraid of what it might bring up. Let me be clear: we all have those things we would rather not look at! It is common to feel uneasy, especially about those things that you are not really conscious about yet, but also about those situations that you would rather not look at again.

Allowing emotions and feelings

Whatever you stuff down or avoid on an emotional level will be stored in your connective tissue whether you want it or not. The more intense a situation is, the more energy you will need in future to keep it down. This is the energy that you are lacking in your day-to-day life. It is also what people often are trying to avoid by drowning it with alcohol or any other excessive activity.

So when exactly is it time for you to deal with it now?

Avoiding the Present Experience

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thunderstorm
Photo by Micah Tindell on Unsplash

It is fairly common to avoid what we experience, specifically if we don’t like what the experience brings with it. Often, dare I say ever, it is the emotional component that is disliked, unaccepted or denied.

I don’t like anger

I am aware of this right now. Today marks what would have been my mother’s 70 birthday if she had not chosen to end her life prematurely in January this year. Today is a heavy day for me and I struggle with the mixture of anger at her decision to leave, her not being physically present and celebrating with her and her one-year-old grandchild, the feeling of missing her and on the other side the desire for me to be compassionate, accepting and seeing the positive in everything. Right now, the anger is much more prevalent and in my head, I hear the screaming voice saying: ‘What the hell is there positive in this???’

I just want to feel better

I’m reminded of one of my client’s session this week where my clients said: ‘I want to feel better, I don’t like feeling the way I’m feeling and it doesn’t make sense anyway.’

As a starting point, the desire to change isn’t wrong. It might just be premature to want to change from anger to joy in one step. There is a good reason for the emotion at the moment, whether we like it or not. There must be, otherwise, we were we as human emotional being constructed this way? Besides the obvious, the release of the various emotional responses helps us deal with what is and release tension. Tears help you heal. So do the emotion that is present, with or without tears.

Charge versus memory

If you look back along the timeline of your life you will notice that there are memories that have no or little emotional charge. These are the events that you have dealt with and emotionally released. No matter how far back in time, those which still hold some emotional negative emotional charge have not been fully released. These are the topics for therapy or self-awareness and processing.

Present situation, past charge

Often we are reminded of past charges when something happens in present daily life that is somehow connected. This does not have to be logically understandable. All that matter is your awareness of the past memories coming up and relating to the present situation. This is your invitation for release and allowing.

I feel so bad

The other end of the scale from avoiding the emotional experience is prolonging it. If you enjoy ‘feeling bad’ or have some secondary gain attached to drama, then you’re living the other extreme. It’s not better than avoidance, it’s just another strategy to get what it is that seems more desirable. In the case of a drama queen, it might well be what others avoid.

What to do in the present moment?

Coming back to my present situation of the emotional components of my mother’s 70 birthday – what shall I do? I don’t like anger as it alienates people, I’m short-tempered and impatient with my daughter and husband. These are behavioural projections of the anger, whereas I’m reminding myself to stay with it, without needing to express it beyond informing my husband: “I’m angry today and if I might project please don’t take it personally.” His response, knowing of the effect of the date: “It is totally understandable that you’re angry.”

There again, I’m reminding myself that acceptance of what is, is paramount. Not just from others, but from myself first and foremost.

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    Nathalie Himmelrich

    I accompany people therapeutically as a holistic counsellor and coach.

    I walk alongside people dealing with the challenges presented by life and death.

    I’m also a writer and published author of multiple grief resource books and the founder of the Grieving Parents Support Network.

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