Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

grieving parents

A Letter To The Friend Of A ‘New Normal’ Grieving Mother

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letter
Photo by Kate Macate on Unsplash

Dear Friend,

It’s been awhile since I’ve contacted you. I was busy. Busy surviving. Busy grieving.

I have been more focused on my journey and me than anyone else’s. I had to. For my own and my family’s sake. Otherwise I might no longer be around.

My child has died and even if/though this is months or even years ago, my memory is as fresh as if it was yesterday. For the outside world it has become a story, the story people tell each other at the shop about the woman who lost her baby. But even those conversations have started to die as the news is no longer headline worthy. In the best of cases, it has become a memory. A fading memory.

I might seem better from the outside and in comparison to the first weeks and months I am… Or so it seems. And then grief rolls over me like the unexpected wave that catches me from behind. These were the moments I didn’t recognise myself. The moments I was the crazy ‘new normal’ woman loudly cursing every detail about her life, wishing death upon her to end this pain. This however usually happened (not so) quietly behind closed doors. They have become less frequent… By not contacting you, you were spared those moments. You wouldn’t have liked them. I didn’t and still don’t. You might have been so shocked by your ‘new normal’ friend that you never contacted her again.

It has been a hard road to get used to the ‘new normal’ me, which honestly is nothing like the normal me you and I knew. Ask the husband, the rock – who knows how he managed to not walk out the door. I’ve kept the ‘new normal’ inside a lot because you see, she has no (or little) social grace. I prefer to spend time with her by my own, not that she is pleasurable company but she just doesn’t fit in my life pre-loss. It was my way to save whatever face was left.

I haven’t just been a crappy ‘new normal’ friend I’ve also been crappy ‘new normal’ mother, wife, sister, daughter, human being. Once I’ve realised that I actually had to merge with the ‘new normal’ myself, I struggled with this truth. She or rather I had to relearn what it means to live, to treat people, to care for myself, to be in relationship, to be a responsible human being, to treat things and people respectfully… Most of all myself.

The ‘new normal’ doesn’t have energy nor desire to be pleasing as I was before. I’ve given up on returning to or getting back the self that used to be me – I’ve given in on being ‘new normal’. Resistance is exhausting and fruitless. The more honest and straight-forward I’ve noticed the ‘new normal’ was and is, the less socially digestible I’ve found myself to be. A simple ‘starting-a-conversation’ question like “and how many children do you have?” make the ‘new normal’ a party killer. And for those who know the story, I can imagine them rolling their eyes and thinking: “Here we go again…”

The sad truth is I’ve become quite used to the fact that my friends prefer to stay away from ‘new normal’ and I can sort of understand their potential motivation. As much as the ‘new normal’ has needed to talk about it she/I might have also strained your ears and overused your capacity to listen. I myself would prefer the ‘new normal’ would be able to tell a different life story.

Now I want to be a good new normal friend.

The new normal good friend is honest, real and authentic.

When I integrate the new normal…

I will call or contact you when I truly feel like it.

I will tell it like it is.

I will always mention all my children, dead or alive.

I will learn to love myself, life and what I’ve come here for.

I will appreciate your patience, love and care.

I will be human, fallible and imperfect.

And I’ll hope you to meet your humanness too.

Thank you,

Your friend

This article was first published July 1, 2015 in Still Standing Magazine.

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 Misunderstanding About Grief And Death

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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.

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.

Do More Than Survive The First Year After Loss

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writing in a book
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

They did not survive. I did.

Having lost our daughter at 3 days old and then my mother through suicide just four and a half month later I often doubted I would survive this emotional intensity called grief. I was tired of living. I was exhausted from the emotional rollercoaster. Yet suicide was totally out of the question for me as I was acutely aware of the emotional turmoil my mother had left behind in the family surviving her self-chosen death and I was absolutely clear of the important role I played as the mother to my other child.

Did I do more than survive?

How did I survive the first year? I wonder as I’m looking back. Big sigh. Something in me knows but somehow my memory can’t take me there because it’s not necessary to re-live those days? I don’t know. I find it hard to recall the time besides certain moments that have carved their mark on my soul. Luckily I ofter wrote so I can go and read about it. Journal entries, notes to my friends and family, emails, poems and I wrote a blog. All these writings are what lead to friends encouraging me to write a book.

Writing a book wasn’t part of my life’s aspiration. I regularly wrote articles as part of my professional website as a psychotherapist. Even though I had no idea what writing a book would entail, I knew everything could be learned. Fast forward to today I have written and self-published three books and am working on a not-for-profit community project book. The fourth book I’ll be publishing will be an anthology containing the writing of many mothers and fathers like you. They describe the challenges of the first year after the loss, an account of how they managed to survive.

Writing helps

Having just emerged from reading the submissions we’ve received I was taken on a journey back into the experience of the first year. Not just mine but in fact over 50 mothers’ and fathers’ experiences that they candidly shared with me. These essays took my breath away, left me gasping for air and drying my tears. Even though each parent’s experience is unique I could relate, as a mother, as a bereaved mother and as a human being, touched by their loss in the many-faceted challenges it brings.

What I didn’t fully realise when calling for submissions for this new book, was the potential for healing that this project offers. Writing and its healing potential has been researched widely (for example here and here) but reading the essays I noticed so much more. I remember now that I had already noticed this when doing the research and interviews for my first book Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple. The intense involvement with my own and other people’s stories, their ways in which they confronted and handled challenges and what happened inside of me in effect to all of this offered a huge shift in my grief towards healing. And it won’t end with me because given the end product is a book many people will receive; it offers this potential to all those who read it.

This post was originally posten on March 1st, 2017.

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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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