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Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

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sensitivity grieving parent

May We All Heal – Why It Is Good To Reflect On Your Grief

April 15, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under: child loss, emotions/feelings, grief/loss, grieving parents, health Tagged With: child loss, creative grieving, creative healing, dealing with emotions, grieving parents, hurtful comments, sensitivity grieving parent

The Sensitivity Of A Grieving Parent

March 19, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

flower tulip
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.

Filed Under: child loss, depression, emotions/feelings, grief/loss Tagged With: child loss, dealing with emotions, grieving parents, hurtful comments, sensitivity grieving parent

Vulnerability Is Bravery

March 5, 2021 By Nathalie Himmelrich Leave a Comment

woman leaning on window

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.

Filed Under: authenticity, child loss, grief/loss, grieving parents, writing Tagged With: child loss, dealing with emotions, grieving parents, sensitivity grieving parent, vulnerability

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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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