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Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

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grief myth

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.

Filed Under: child loss, from personal experience, grief/loss, grieving parents Tagged With: grief is misunderstood, grief myth, grief myths, grief truth, misunderstanding grief, understanding grief

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.

Filed Under: child loss, emotions/feelings, grief/loss, grieving parents Tagged With: downtown abbey grief theory, grief myth, grief myths, grief truth, grieving a child, grieving parents, showing grief

You Have Got To Be Strong Now

December 4, 2020 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

be strong
Photo by Heather Ford on Unsplash

“You’ve got to be strong now…” I heard my Dad’s voice as if through fog, my sister and her daughter standing behind him as they all looked at me through the computer screen, connected via FaceTime. Before he would say anymore, I knew exactly what had happened.

Just 4.5 month earlier I had given birth. Elation, amazement and deepest despair and sadness only laid days apart. Giving life to my child and having to accept their death in a matter of days, two events that should never be so close together in time. Unspoken rule of time in regards to live and death would expect the parent to die before their children. And even though it ‘shouldn’t’ happen, that children die before their parents, it does. Most likely as you’re reading this it has happened to you too.

I experienced first hand that life has no rule about spreading out challenges in neat 5 year brackets. Dealing with the death of my daughter left me raw. There was no choice of being strong or not – I was overwhelmed at the sheer intensity of early grief’s ups and downs. Dealing with my mother’s decision to end her life revealed just another layer of rawness that left no space to be anything else than ‘in the moment’, to be with any emotions present.

Any of those well-intended messages like ‘be strong’ or ‘you have to keep it together’ are useless. They might bear some resemblance of intellectual truth but on an emotional level they are hopeless, rigid and unattainable. The truth behind those messages is: ‘I can’t deal with the intensity of emotions, yours or mine, so please hide them.’ Yes, emotionality makes most of us feel uncomfortable.

We all have some of those messages internalized to the point that we believe them without any doubt:

  • I’ve got to stay strong
  • I’ve got keep it together
  • If at all, I should cry when I’m alone
  • I shouldn’t feel so bad, at least I have…
  • If I keep myself busy, I won’t feel it

We actually believe they (or at least some of those) are true. When have you last said to yourself something like: ‘I made it through the day without crying’ or ‘I stayed on top of my emotions’ or ‘I couldn’t keep myself together so I had to leave’? If those strong emotions are there, don’t you think they have their purpose? Why would a human eye have been constructed with a tear duct if the eyes can stay moist without actually crying?

Those messages, those beliefs that ‘we got to be strong in the face of loss’ are myths, they have been told so many times that we accidentally started believing them. We are pushing ourselves to live up to those standards. They make us swallow our true emotions. Did you actually know that the composition of tears of grief are different to other tears? Did you know that expressing your emotions is helping you heal? Did you know that unexpressed emotions can manifest in your physical body and lead to illnesses?

Upon my dad’s helpless plight not to cause any more pain to my already broken heart, a guttural sound escaped my chest, then I sobbed and sobbed – there was no choice but to feel and express. And when those emotions were given room to let go I was ready to organise our trip to attend my mother’s funeral 20.000 km away.

To be clear, those waves of grief came again and again. After some time the tides were less high and more time passed between them. Now, 4 years later, the waves come from time to time. 

¸.•´*¨`*•✿      ✿      ✿•*´¨*`•.¸

I’ve befriended them, embrace them, express them and let them go.

¸.•´*¨`*•✿      ✿      ✿•*´¨*`•.¸

This article was first published February 3, 2016 in Still Standing Magazine.

Filed Under: authenticity, child loss, emotions/feelings, from personal experience, grief/loss, grieving parents Tagged With: be strong, grief myth, grief myths, real emotions, waves of grief

Healing After Child Loss? Possible Or Impossible?

June 2, 2020 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Photo by Rossina Abril on Unsplash

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

In the same way 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?

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

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

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

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

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.”

Another example is comparing your own losses. I know that my daughter’s neonatal loss has impacted me in a completely and utterly different way to my miscarriages and my mother’s suicide.

Even the different miscarriages have not caused the same pain, physical as well as emotional.

Does it support your healing?

Comparing your grief experience within the different losses you have experienced can help you gain perspective and understand your varied responses given the different losses.

Comparing your grief to someone else’s grief is only helpful for you if it supports your healing.

It’s not something you need to share with that someone as that again would potentially invalidate their experience.

In my work as a grief psychotherapist, the most important question I ask is: Does it support your healing?

That’s when you know.


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

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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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