Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

grief

Time To Grieve – How Long Will My Grief Last?

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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?

Comparing Grief – Can It Be Helpful?

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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.


The Healing Is In The Feeling

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… and that is why it doesn’t help to be told ‘you should just get over it’.

You are making a difference

So many times bereaved parents hear sentences that proclaim myths about their grieving and healing. We all have heard those myths, so much so that we have come to believe many of them. So it’s no surprise we, as the bereaved, struggle with healing after loss because it’s so different than portrayed or spoken about in society.

That’s where…

  • YOU (the bereaved) talking about your loss
  • YOU being open about your feelings and thoughts
  • YOU remembering your child
  • YOU openly sharing your tears when grief is triggered
  • YOU celebrating your child’s memory
  • YOU standing tall accepting where you are on your journey with grief

… are making a difference. 

You are a grief and healing warrior

You are a hope spreader, truth speaker, way bearer, silence breaker, taboo destroyer, meaning creator, new normal ambassador and a human resilient healer.

Some of the myths, that we have heard for aeons are the following, or versions of:

get over the loss, stop talking about it, move on, forget about it, time heals all wounds, have another baby (in the case of a bereaved parent), think about… (your husband, your other surviving children), keep yourself busy.

As you all know, most of those are not helpful and deny us of our experience that we have to the point where we ourselves say “I shouldn’t be crying…” or “I’m sorry I lost it” when we feel what is a natural part of healing.

Healing is in the feeling

Healing happens one conversation at a time, thought by thought, tear after tear that runs down our cheeks. Healing can also happen by doing something, creating new meaning, putting your brainpower into a project or your physical power into building something. Healing is so varied and often happens without us even knowing it is happening. It also happens when we think ‘I’m feeling worse again’ or ‘I’ve gone backwards’.

Natural experience

Stop denying your experience. Stop giving other people the power to deny your experience. What you experience naturally is just that: natural.

Yes, of course, you can increase your not so pleasant feelings by doing the very thing you know increases it: for example looking at photos, or listening to specific music. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do that, it means to be mindful of when and how you do it.

So, how can you own your experience? By becoming and being aware of your own emotions, thoughts, actions, behaviours and spoken words. By taking responsibility for those powers and not letting those be directed by what other people or society think or feel.

Surviving Child Loss As a Couple

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Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple

The loss of a child is without any doubt one of the most challenging experiences I have gone through in my life both personally and in my relationship.

The most important aspect I have found through my survey of more than a hundred people and through interviewing parents one-on-one are:

  • Understanding different ways of grieving
  • Accepting the differences
  • Allowing each other time to grieve.

The 5 steps to survive your loss as a couple

Grief and death are topics that make a lot of people uncomfortable. Since you and I have both experienced the loss of a child, we know this from personal experience. You as a couple have a common source for your experience of loss. Nonetheless, even though the source may be the same, the experience itself can be very different. When, where, and how the experience differs is the point at which you need to keep working with each other to stay connected.

The main causes for stress in the relationship post-loss are that couples:

A. Have different grieving styles and are unaware of them

B. Don’t recognize, don’t understand, or don’t accept each other’s style

C. Think / feel the other is not grieving properly

D. Expect the other to grieve like they do.

Overview

  • Step 1 ALLOWING
  • Step 2 AWARENESS
  • Step 3 ACKNOWLEDGING
  • Step 4 ADJUSTING
  • Step 5 ABSORBING & INTEGRATING

Step 1: Allowing

The first step is all about the initial response to the loss of your child. You are in shock, which emotionally protects you from being too overwhelmed by the loss. You are unconscious to most of what is happening to you and around you. Your life’s energy is focused on giving you the best support in dealing with this shock by experiencing numbness and disbelief. What is required at this step is to allow yourself to be taken care of by your friends and family and allowing your experience to unfold.

Step 2: Awareness

In the second step you become more aware and conscious of what has happened and try to deal with the irrevocable reality of death. You grieve but you don’t know what to do about it. You are becoming aware of the emotions like anger, sadness, guilt, and anxiety while also experiencing physical, behavioural, and cognitive symptoms as part of your suffering.

Step 3: Acknowledging

As time goes by and as you move to step three you are aware of how you process the loss and actively try to find ways to progress through it. This is most likely the time for you to pick up books and talk to other bereaved parents. You are starting to take steps towards your new life where the loss is still important but moves away from the centre of your life.

Step 4: Adjusting

In the fourth step, you begin to integrate your child’s memory into your life. Grief has become a habitual reaction to triggers. You have become familiar with it and are able to move with it. As recovery takes place, you are better able to accept the loss. You invest energy to create your New Normal life. You still feel the loss but that feeling becomes part of your more typical feelings and experiences.

Step 5: Absorbing and integrating

The fifth step guides you in (totally) integrating the loss in your life. You reflect on it. You recognize its gift in your life and are grateful for the evolution in your life since. The experience of gratitude and the understanding of the gifts from your loss prevail over the sadness. The loss has found an integrated place in your life and you focus on other areas of your life and the future ahead.

Relationships can be challenging without loss. It is my personal opinion that we enter any relationship to grow: emotionally and spiritually. Having said this, we definitely did not choose to add the loss of a child to our ‘personal growth to-do list’.

To read more about this, check out the book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss As A Couple.

10 Things About Relationship Changes With Grief

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couple from behind
Photo by Almos Bechtold on Unsplash

Grief and loss change many things and the people directly involved. There is no doubt that it also changes the relationship dynamics between directly involved people, as well as the way friends and family interact with the bereaved and vice versa.

1. The world has changed

The world of a bereaved person changes dramatically following a loss. The way they see and interpret what has happened influences their worldview.

2. I have changed

Many bereaved people are challenged with the way they personally are changed after a loss. There is a term, describing the time post-loss as the ‘New Normal’, which in most cases feels anything but normal.

3. My partner has changed

As much as the bereaved person changes himself or herself, their view of their partner changes. Especially for bereaved parents, where the grief and loss affect both at the same time, the changes are heightened. The New Normal self has to meet and get used to the New Normal partner, which requires patience and time.

4. People don’t know what to say

The truth is, the bereaved persons themselves are speechless in the face of the shock following loss. It is therefore to be expected, that people around them reflect that in their helplessness with words.

5. Friends don’t talk to me anymore

As mentioned in #4, grief and loss are not yet common topics of conversation. As a society in the western world, we have largely become unaccustomed to be with the bereaved in a supportive role. The loss also brings up existential issues, which can lead to fear and insecurity in people. Not knowing the ‘right’ words to say or the ‘correct’ way to connect, many stay away or believe the bereaved ‘needs time’. Another reason friends stay away is that the bereaved, at least at the beginning phase after the loss has occurred, often need to talk a lot about what has happened and about the person they have lost. This need can tire out many well-intended friends.

6. People say horrible things

As described before, speechlessness and helplessness in the face of tragic events can lead to hopeless attempts at trying to help and saying the most unhelpful things. Remembering their well-meant intentions and at the same time letting them know what would be more helpful instead are both ways to support our society to become better equipped at being with the unavoidable of life and death.

7. My friends have forgotten me

In most cases this statement has a couple of causes: either the friends believe that the bereaved do not want to talk and needs time themselves or they have become overwhelmed with the sadness and pain they see their friend go through.

8. Differences in grieving

There are differences in grieving, both in terms of how someone grieves, as well as the time they need. Many relationship changes are due to the fact that people believe there is one way to grieve.

9. The relationship to myself

Even the relationship to one’s self, the way we perceive ourselves, is turned upside down. The bereaved often struggle with intense emotions, changes, and secondary losses like friendships, potential future, dreams and hopes. The changes on the level of personality are huge and often come with challenges of self-acceptance.

10. Friendships change with or without loss

What bereaved people in the midst of their state often forget is that friends come and go with the course of life whether loss has occurred or not. It is the natural cycle of life.

Anything else you find important about the changes relationships go through post-loss? Leave a comment below.

10 Things About the First Year of Grief

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book cover surviving my first year of child loss
Book Cover – Image by Nathalie Himmelrich

The first year marks the first time you experience and do everything without the person you have lost. Traditionally, society believed that it gets easier after the first year. Some still believe this nowadays. The truth is that the challenging time post-loss is as individual as the bereaved themselves. Trust in your own timeline processing grief.

1. Shock and numbness

The very first phase of grief will most likely be spent in numbness from the shock. This is a protective way for the body to help you cope with the intensity.

2. Surviving the first year

Living through the first phase of grief may not seem survivable. It may even seem as no relief to know other bereaved have walked this path before. It is survivable and it takes time and energy.

3. It is so painful

Just today I have been reminded of how to deal with pain. Experiencing physical pain today, I stayed in bed all day. Three different kinds of painkillers didn’t change the physical pain I felt. All that was possible was to lie in bed, clutch a hot water bottle and breathe, slipping between lying awake and drowsy sleeping. Similar to this I remember the physical experience of grief.

4. Conserving energy

Three years post my loss; I still notice the need to conserve my energy. In the first year, I remember not being able to go out for anything else than absolutely necessary. It took me quite some time to engage in social activities again, let alone enjoy them. Take your time.

5. Accept help and find support

In my case, there was no choice but to accept the help that was generously offered. Friends brought meals, organized paperwork, and helped with errands. Let them help you, it also makes them feel that they at least can do something for you.

Also, find the most suitable support for you, whether that is group counselling, one-on-one therapy, talking to other bereaved parents in the community or talking to a friend. Most importantly, according to the suggestions of grieving parents in a survey, do it earlier than later.

6. The first year is the hardest

In my case, the first 18 to 24 months were rough. The time frame where grief is intense varies from person to person. Your time might be shorter or longer. It doesn’t matter, it’s no contest.

7. It’s been a year

It is a myth that some people still believe that after a year the bereaved should be over the worst. Every bereaved person grieves differently, every lost person held a different place in people’s heart. Allow yourself your own time.

8. Friendships will change

Friends become strangers and strangers become friends. Dealing with loss brings up everyone’s own mortality and existential questions. This can be deeply unnerving. Some people will not be able to cope with this or believe ‘you need time’. Remember their intention is mostly well-meaning.

9. Be true to yourself

… even if this means disappointing another. The first year of grief uses a lot of vital energy. It has required me to focus on the essentials and be true to my needs, more than ever before.

10. Crying is healthy

Crying is a way to release emotional stress. This is why babies and children do this a lot. As adults, we have un-learned the benefit of taking time for ourselves and releasing pent-up emotional stress. Research has shown that tears vary in their composition. Tears from grief are healing.

Anything else you find important to mention about the first year of grief? Leave a comment below.

Read Surviving My The First Year Of Child Loss: Personal Stories From Grieving Stories.
This book is a compilation of first-hand accounts of members of the Grieving Parent Support Network. Sign up to find out about any future anthology projects.

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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.

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