grieving

Comparing Grief – Can It Be Helpful?

December 19, 2019 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

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

September 10, 2019 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

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

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 were 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 the 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’.

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, listening to specific music. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do that, it means to be mindful 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 on those powers and not let those be directed by what other people or society think or feel.

Grief – A Very Personal Experience

November 5, 2011 By Nathalie Himmelrich 2 Comments

Today marks 2 months since Amya Mirica passed away.

Yesterday Chris and I went out for the first time in the evening and left Ananda Mae with my sister. We went to the classical concert of the Brandenburg Orchestra of which we have season’s tickets. The previous concert was exactly 2 months ago, the evening of Amya Mirica’s passing and the music gently reminded me of the presence of angels in the room as the beautiful angelic voice of the soloist soprano filled the concert hall serendipitously called ‘Angel’s place’. I was once again reminded that grief is a very personal experience and will be experienced in any unexpected moment and location.

This week we also went back to the hospital, where I gave birth, where we said good-bye to Amya Mirica and from where we took Ananda Mae home with us. The hospital will always hold an interesting energy and importance for me – both joy and bliss as overriding emotions associated with the birth and sadness and despair of losing my child. This time we went back to join a Bereavement Group.

It was a deep and intense morning as we shared with couples who also lost their babies. Each and every one of us is grieving. When I listened to their stories I felt connected in sharing a similar experience. In my career as a counsellor working with clients experiencing grief I was, according to their feedback, really able to support them in their process. Now however, I doubt that I was ever able to REALLY be there for them without fully understanding the depth of their experience. I think now that this is only really possible now that I gained access to this experience on a very personal level.

A few weeks ago I met my banker, who I have been talking to frequently before the birth of the twins. When I told her my story she said: I’m so sorry, I know what you’re going through. My first reaction inside was ‘I doubt you know what I’m going through’. She then however shared with me that she lost her second child through cot death at 3 months. This statement total y changed the meaning of her empathy. I have to say that I couldn’t imagine what she must have gone through in her personal experience and even though we share the part of losing one’s own child at a very young age, it’s still a very personal story and experience. She then said: ‘It will get easier’ and, in comparison to other people who could have said the same, coming from her it was founded in her personal experience and therefore I took it on board.

I also learnt this week that there are two fundamentally different ways people feel and deal with grief: the instrumental griever and the intuitive griever. The instrumental griever, historically the man, feels better by doing things as they feel unable to fix this. The intuitive griever, usually the woman, grieve through experiencing all the emotions and crying frequently. This can cause discordance in a relationship between an intuitive and an instrumental griever as they are rarely in the same place. Grieving has given our relationship a totally different level of understanding of each other, as well as ability to be with the other’s way of dealing with it.

Book Review – On Grief And Grieving By Elisabeth Kübler-Ross And David Kessler

January 4, 2011 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

This book about grief is one of my favourites and it is one of the most thorough coverage on this topic. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has helped many people find the meaning of grief through her introduction of the five stages of loss.

Summary

Basically, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross demystifies the process of grieving and helps people cope with themselves going through grief or with people they know, who have lost someone. According to her there are five stages of loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, which she explains in detail.

More in detail

Shortly before her death in 2004, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler, her collaborator, completed the manuscript for this book. On Grief and Grieving is her final book and a fitting completion to her work.

The first chapter of the book is a detailed description and explanation of the five stages of grief, each part containing stories to exemplify what it would look like in people’s lives. Even just reading this part brings relief to people struggling to understand what they are going through.

The next two chapters cover the inner an outer world of grief, covering various topics of interest like: your loss, tears, dreams, regrets, roles, the story, resentment, isolation, punishment, afterlife, anniversaries, sex, your body and your health, just to name a few.

The chapter following is dedicated to special circumstances like children, multiple losses, disasters, suicide, Alzheimer disease and sudden death. If you have suffered a loss in these areas please read the specific part to give you more insight into your story.

The chapters towards the end of the book include the changing face of grief and the authors’ personal stories of their own grief.

On Grief and Grieving has profoundly influenced the way we experience the process of grief.

About the author

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was a Swiss-born psychiatrist, who lived between 1926 and 2004. She pioneered near-death studies and wrote seventeen books over a thirty-six years period. Her groundbreaking On Death and Dying changed the way we talked about the end of life.

After studying medicine, to the dismay of her father, she later moved to the States and continues her studies in New York. She worked as a psychiatric resident where she became interested in patients who were dying, encouraging the hospice care movement, and believing that euthanasia prevents people from competing their ‘unfinished business’.

In her later life she suffered a series of strokes in 1995, which left her partially paralyzed on her left side. In one of their final writing sessions, Kübler-Ross told Kessler, “The last nine years have taught me patience, and the weaker and more bed-bound I become, the more I’m learning about receiving love.”

Recommendation

This is must to read for anyone working or dealing with people suffering the loss of a loved one, experiencing grief themselves or dealing with terminal illness, where anticipatory grief comes into play. Personally in my work I refer to this book often when dealing with clients.