grief support

This really hurt

October 25, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich 30 Comments

With a pain in my stomach, I write to you today. This week I received an email from one of my subscribers that really hurt.

She wrote:

I wish ppl would stop trying to make money off us. If you’ve known this kind of tragedy (losing your only child) you know there are setbacks, depression, loss of job, spouse, etc. It’s so unnecessary. So I’m unsubscribing and marking spam.

It pains me to be misunderstood, my passion to be taken the wrong way.

I do know of setbacks: I have experienced the loss of a child, dealt with trauma from the aftermath of my mother’s suicide, sexual abuse, and burnout. And – most recently – divorce.

This is part of why I’m doing what I’m doing!

I want to be honest with you: This is my passion:

–> to support YOU who are dealing with grief and trauma.

It is my life’s work.

My heart is in my work

Still, I also earn my living from supporting people: working with clients, writing and selling books, giving courses. All of this requires my time and my creative work.

It requires investment in my personal as well as professional resources outside of myself. For example:

costs for book self-publishing: cost for a editor and interior designer,
costs for my therapeutic work: on-going professional training and memberships,
everyday business expenses such as: web hosting, book keeping and accounting, membership for the platform that sends you email newsletters.

…just to name a few.

I also do and have done a lot of unpaid work for the community and outreach work, donate my books regularly to grief support groups, give away free spots on my courses, etc. I feel in balance.

My work is not only born from personal life experience, it is grounded in solid professional training and years of professional experience.

Making money from people’s pain

If you believe, people like me ‘are making money off people in pain’, you’ve got it the wrong way around:

We are not making money off your pain, we are supporting your healing because we are passionate about healing and are earning our living while doing what is our passion.

Unsubscribe

The subscriber I quoted above did not unsubscribe. I deleted her email address because I do not need to pay to send her stuff she does not want.

Please, if you no longer benefit from the content I provide in my newsletters, unsubscribe through the link at the bottom of the email. No explanation is needed.

And: I’m surprised you’re reading this far.

Much Love ♥️

💭 I daydream…

September 15, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich 18 Comments

I daydream about … 💫 who they would have become ✨

Last night I went to Ananda Mae’s parents’ evening at the school. Every parent had to introduce their child given it was a new formation of kids.

As I heard the other parents describe their child, mentioning their siblings, I went off daydreaming about AM’s sister, A’Mya.

Who would you have become? What would it be like for the two to go to the same school, or even class? To share friends, experiences, and birthdays?

Just the other day Ananda Mae had asked me to daydream with her about her sister. She asked exactly those questions. “Mum, would A’Mya look just like me?” “I imagine very similar, given you are identical twins,” I replied.

Go ahead, daydream

Daydreaming about a future that cannot be is a way of remembering. Remembering your loved one. Living a relationship, learning to be in a new relationship when the kind of relationship we would have wanted to live is no longer possible.

Whoever came up with the notion ‘not to grow up the child/baby who died’ (I remember it was a therapist 🤦🏽‍♀️ – not me though) was wrong. It is completely normal and natural to do so, at least in my experience and the experience of her surviving twin.

Thank you for being right here and now with me 🕊

Anniversaries – birth and death

September 1, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

Death anniversaries are the hardest.
Annonymous client

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 of 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.

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

The Relationship Between Trauma & Grief

August 24, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich 2 Comments

Many of the people I have been working with have shown signs of Trauma & Grief intertwined. So, you might wonder, what is the difference and how do I know whether I or someone else is experience grief, trauma, or both?

Defining experiences

Normal Grief, as defined by MedicineNet, is: The normal process of reacting to a loss. The loss may be physical (such as a death), social (such as divorce), or occupational (such as a job). Segen’s Medical Dictionary says: Grief over the loss of a loved one begins to fade into adequate coping mechanisms within six months. This is obviously a very general definition. It leaves me wondering what they define as adequate coping mechanisms. It also does not incorporate the fact that it is highly dependent on which loved one it is (child, parent, partner, or friend?) or through what circumstances the loss occurred (old age, illness, accident, or, for example, murder?)

There is no such thing as ‘normal’ grief. Grievers know that there is nothing that feels normal in their experience. Grief makes them feel like they are going crazy. Normal Grief is grief that follows expected reactions and responses (check out Chapter 2 – Understanding Grief and the Bereaved in the book Bridging the Grief Gap). From a therapeutic point of view, grief progresses in a normal way when the bereaved gradually moves towards acceptance of the loss, and, as time goes by, they are able to re-enter life and engage in daily activities. It can also be called Uncomplicated Grief.

Traumatic Grief is a normal grief response to a loved one’s death that is perceived to be horrifying, unexpected, violent, or traumatic. This includes accidents, murder, abduction, abuse, or cruelty happening to the loved one. Trauma needs to be treated as well as the grief response. The distress experienced may be severe enough to impair daily functioning.

Trauma isn’t what happens to you
It is what happens inside of you as a result of that.
Gabor Mate

Grief, trauma or both?

If you or someone else is experiencing a loss that is paired with horror, violence, or happened suddenly, out of order, or unexpected there is also trauma involved.

Trauma is stored in the body, in the tissue, in the muscles, bones, ligaments. It leads to people’s responses that can be classified into four categories:

fight
flight
freeze or
submission

Most often we are used to or have heard of the fight or flight reaction to trauma. In the event of traumatic loss, freeze is more often the case. Traumatic loss often leaves people helpless, hopeless, overwhelmed, and in despair.

It is important to be aware of the trauma aspect and have support in treating not just the grief, but also the trauma.

Permanent change

Grief changes people. They see life in a different light and speak a different language. One sentence I hear from grievers over and over: “I will never be the same again.” And even though they can’t know for sure what happens until the end of their life, they express the immensity of the effects of the life-altering experience: a significant loss.

Having studied trauma and the effects on human beings, I’ve come to realise that even though not all losses are experienced as traumatic many grievers grapple with the effects of the trauma related to their loss. The following paragraph is a summary of the effect of trauma in relation to loss, and its neuroscientific effect on the brain.

Following the death of her dad, journalist Amy Paturel wrote a story which appeared in the Discover magazine called The Traumatic Loss of a Loved One Is Like Experiencing a Brain Injury. “According to a 2019 study published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, grievers minimize awareness of thoughts related to their loss. The result: heightened anxiety and an inability to think straight” wrote Paturel. Additionally, Paturel shares scientists increasingly view the experience of traumatic loss as a type of brain injury.

Grief affects the brain. The loss of someone meaningful is a stressor that triggers the pituitary gland to release adrenocorticotrohin (ACTH). This sends a signal to the adrenal glands to release cortisone, a stress hormone. Given that the stressor isn’t temporary but intense, the body remains flooded by cortisone. This can cause your immune system to falter which leads to a run-down feeling. A traumatized brain leads to the primitive areas (including the fear centre) being overactive adding to feelings of stress and despair. Higher cortical areas are underactive, for example, the area that regulates emotions.

“The problem isn’t sorrow; it’s a fog of confusion, disorientation, and delusions of magical thinking,” writes Lisa Shulman, a neurologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, in a blog post for Johns Hopkins University Press about her book Before and After Loss: A Neurologist’s Perspective on Loss, Grief, and Our Brain. Shulman also explained that the emotional trauma of loss results in serious changes in brain function that endure.

References:

Paturel, Amy (2020). The Traumatic Loss of a Loved One Is Like Experiencing a Brain Injury,

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-traumatic-loss-of-a-loved-one-is-like-experiencing-a-brain-injury

Shulman, Lisa (2018). Before and After Loss: A Neurologist’s Perspective on Loss, Grief, and Our Brain, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press

Photo by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash

How Did You Survive Child Loss?

July 11, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

This is probably the question that most would want to ask, did they have the nerve to listen to the answer. In fact, some do, because – really, how does one survive the death of one’s own child?

Let me tell you – you will survive this loss.

The perspective of time and the myth of time

Writing this article, I’m now looking back 10 years to the time my daughter A’Mya, the younger of identical twins, died in my arms, just three days old.

But time in itself didn’t do the surviving, the healing.

Grief takes a lot of work. Work dealing with strong emotions, with the bleakness of life without your child, with finding the will to live again, even if it’s hard.

“Time does NOT heal all wounds”, especially not the pain of grief. It does however give perspective because looking back, I can see the gems of wisdom, understanding, and the practice of letting go I have gathered along the way.

The helpful…

So, what specifically does help?

I suggest you try to …

find someone to talk to, preferably someone professionally trained with grief or someone who does understand, because they have been where you are now.
find a community of supportive, understanding companions, such as a peer support group or a grief support group.
find someone specific who you can relate to who is a couple of years ahead of you in terms of their loss and talk to them about what you are experiencing. In the best case, they will normalize what you experience.
find something that you find supports you with strong emotions. This is individually different: for some it is the above mentioned, for others it is reading how others dealt with it, for yet others it is a creative, healing activity or phyisical activity. For me, for example, it was walking in the forest along a stream, which really supported me.
share your story, talk about your child, remember and celebrate them.

And the not-so-helpful…

There are other things that didn’t support me. Some of those, I noticed right away, others only much later. Let’s see if they ring a bell:

people proclaiming grief myths (you can read about some here, here or in the book Bridging the Grief Gap).
people no longer talking to me. I would have wished for them to stick around and say things like: “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here” or “I don’t think I’m a big help… I don’t know what to do” and at least stay in contact with me.
exposing myself to grief triggers early on, in my case identical twins. That really made me angry at the perceived unfairness of life.
people sharing their religious or spiritual beliefs about “there is always a reason for everything” or “God has a plan”. Those sentences really pissed me off!
people implying I should ‘move on’ or be ‘feeling differntly to what I was feeling’.
people giving advice who had no idea of the situation we were in. They were just trying to make themselves feel better.

Do not just survive, thrive

If you’re in your early, raw stage of grief this paragraph might not make sense to you. Believe me, it didn’t enter into the realm of possibilities for me either at that time.

For the first two years, I didn’t even put on any mascara, let alone make-up. I didn’t care. I had a baby to care for and I did my best but I didn’t have the energy for much else. Having said that, we moved from Sydney, Australia to Zurich, Switzerland, 11 months after her loss, so I really don’t remember who on earth I managed that.

I was angry A LOT of the time and remember telling my husband, about 18 months post-loss: “You can leave anytime, I’m stuck with myself.” I was so fed up with the ‘new normal self’ that was supposed to be me. I was angry at my mother, who died of suicide just 4,5 months after my daughter. I wrote a lot, I walked the forest, I growled, I cried and in the second year I was pulled to write the first book, Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple.

In writing that book, I interviewed about 20 bereaved parents and support professionals. I got to see ahead in time as some of them were further out from their loss. I understood more and more about my grief, even though I was already a trained counsellor before my loss.

With time, I found that I didn’t want to just survive this. I wanted to thrive. As a friend of mine says: I wanted to gather all the vitamins this life challenging situation had in store for me. Big sigh. It was hard work, but worthwhile nevertheless.

The Truth About “I’m Sorry”

May 7, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

In the book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple, in Chapter 12 for the supporters of the Grieving Parent, I suggest the three simplest things to say to a bereaved parent, among a whole list of other do’s and don’ts:

I am sorry for your loss
I am here for you
I don’t know what to say, I’m lost for words

Sparked by the varied feedback I received to “I am sorry for your loss” and in line with what I wrote about in Chapter 10 (Inner Support) on meaning making, I have thought about the different ways in which people understand and perceive that simple sentence.

What does it mean to you?

First of all I have to say that English not being my mother tongue I might have a completely different understanding and meaning that I place upon this sentence. This is however not only specific to people speaking a different language but between any two individuals. Any individual word in fact holds specific meaning to each and every person depending on their history with it.

I remember a course with 400+ attendees who were asked to write down 5 synonyms to the term Love. Not two of the people had five identical words written down and only a handful had three identical words. This shows how individual the meanings are that we place on a topic, in the example love, even one that everyone is familiar with.

For me personally the sentence “I am sorry…” makes sense to me when used in a context where someone is apologizing for their wrongdoing. In regards to my daughter dying there was no one being responsible for her death so even though I understand what the people meant, it didn’t completely fit. Still, it was better than the clichés like “time heals all wounds”.

Think about what it means to you and maybe how the meaning has changed since your child passed away.

I scream if I hear those words one more time!

Every sentence, if heard over and over again, can become stale and over-used. It is in fact the most used statement after loss and can become like a broken record for the bereaved. Especially if it’s not matched with real compassion and empathy, it’s useless.

It is understandable that you might become weary of hearing “so sorry for your loss” from people who have never experienced a similar loss.

Maybe it is the best thing for you to scream, or alternatively start by telling those that matter in an honest way what else you’d prefer they said or did. Yes, I hear your tiredness of educating your surroundings on which satin gloves to wear or what to say or do that would support you.

But honestly – and in quoting famous John E. Lewis statement:

If not us, then who?
If not now, then when?
John E. Lewis

There will come a time – if it hasn’t already – that most things that bothered you at the beginning stages of your grief, won’t bother you anymore. Then it’s too late to help people understand what it is YOU needed then.

The ‘complete list’ is incomplete

Really, there are no perfectly crafted sentences, attitudes, or ways of being which fit all bereaved parents. Just as your baby or child was and is still unique, so are you.

Having said this we, the bereaved parent community, can only benefit if we can help those around find better words, if not for us, then maybe for another couple who has a miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, or who lost a child at any age.

Where does that leave you, the supporters, and your desire to know what to do or say?

Whatever my complete list of do’s and don’ts says, it needs to be used in reference to the specific situation and bereaved person. If in doubt, ask the person you are trying to support.

A guide or a list with suggestions is only ever that: a guide. Bring your intuition, at the same time be open to ‘go wrong’ and be humble enough to learn from the bereaved – sooner or later in your life you will be the bereaved missing a loved one and experience grief, even if it’s not for your child.

This article was first published June 3, 2015 in Still Standing Magazine.