Grief

[MajestyJo]

Thursday, November 1, 2012

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Transformation through Grief

We're striving for acceptance in recovery - acceptance of our past, other people, our present circumstances, and ourselves. Acceptance brings peace, healing, and freedom - the freedom to take care of ourselves.

Acceptance is not a one step process. Before we achieve acceptance, we go toward it in stages of denial, anger, negotiating, and sadness. We call these stages the grief process. Grief can be frustrating. It can be confusing. We may vacillate between sadness and denial. Our behaviors may vacillate. Others may not understand us. We may neither understand our own behavior nor ourselves while we're grieving our losses. Then one day, things become clear. The fog lifts, and we see that we have been struggling to face and accept a particular reality.

Don't worry. If we are taking steps to take care of ourselves, we will move through this process at exactly the right pace. Be understanding with yourself and others for the very human way we go through transition.

Today, I will accept the way I go through change. I will accept the grief process, and its stages, as the way people accept loss and change.

[MajestyJo]

Friday, November 2, 2012

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

The Grief Process

To let ourselves wholly grieve our losses is how we surrender to the process of life and recovery. Some experts, like Patrick Carnes, call the Twelve Steps "a program for dealing with our losses, a program for dealing with our grief."

How do we grieve?

Awkwardly. Imperfectly. Usually with a great deal of resistance. Often with anger and attempts to negotiate. Ultimately, by surrendering to the pain.

The grief process, says Elisabeth Kubler Ross, is a five stage process: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and, finally, acceptance. That's how we grieve; that's how we accept; that's how we forgive; that's how we respond to the many changes life throws our way.

Although this five-step process looks tidy on paper, it is not tidy in life. We do not move through it in a compartmentalized manner. We usually flounder through, kicking and screaming, with much back and forth movement - until we reach that peaceful state called acceptance.

When we talk about "unfinished business" from our past, we are usually referring to losses about which we have not completed grieving. We're talking about being stuck somewhere in the grief process. Usually, for adult children and codependents, the place where we become stuck is denial.. Passing through denial is the first and most dangerous stage of grieving, but it is also the first step toward acceptance.

We can learn to understand the grief process and how it applies to recovery. Even good changes in recovery can bring loss and, consequently, grief. We can learn to help others and ourselves by understanding and becoming familiar with this process. We can learn to fully grieve our losses, feel our pain, accept, and forgive, so we can feel joy and love.

Today, God, help me open myself to the process of grieving my losses. Help me allow myself to flow through the grief process, accepting all the stages so I might achieve peace and acceptance in my life. Help me learn to be gentle with others and myself while we go through this very human process of healing.

[MajestyJo]

Saturday, November 3, 2012

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Denial

Denial is fertile breeding ground for the behaviors we call codependent: controlling, focusing on others, and neglecting ourselves. Illness and compulsive or addictive behaviors can emerge during denial.

Denial can be confusing because it resembles sleeping. We're not really aware we're doing it until we're done doing it. Forcing ourselves - or anyone else - to face the truth usually doesn't help. We won't face the facts until we are ready. Neither, it seems, will anyone else. We may admit to the truth for a moment, but we won't let ourselves know what we know until we feel safe, secure, and prepared enough to deal and cope with it.

Talking to friends who know, love, support, encourage, and affirm us helps.

Being gentle, loving, and affirming with ourselves helps. Asking ourselves, and our Higher Power, to guide us into and through change helps.

The first step toward acceptance is denial. The first step toward moving through denial is accepting that we may be in denial, and then gently allowing ourselves to move through.

God, help me feel safe and secure enough today to accept what I need to accept.

[MajestyJo]

Sunday, November 4, 2012

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Anger

Feeling angry - and, sometimes, the act of blaming - is a natural and necessary part of accepting loss and change - of grieving. We can allow ourselves and others to become angry as we move from denial toward acceptance.

As we come to terms with loss and change, we may blame our higher Power, others, or ourselves. The person may be connected to the loss, or he or she may be an innocent bystander. We may hear ourselves say: "If only he would have done that... If I wouldn't have done that... Why didn't God do it differently?"... We know that blame doesn't help. In recovery, the watchwords are self-responsibility and personal accountability, not blame. Ultimately, surrender and self-responsibility are the only concepts that can move us forward, but to get there we may need to allow ourselves to feel angry and to occasionally indulge in some blaming.

It is helpful, in dealing with others, to remember that they, too, may need to go through their angry stage to achieve acceptance. To not allow others, or ourselves, to go through anger and blame may slow down the grief process.

Trust the grief process and ourselves. We won't stay angry forever. But we may need to get mad for a while as we search over what could have been, to finally accept what is.

God, help me learn to accept my own and others' anger as a normal part of achieving acceptance and peace. Within that framework, help me strive for personal accountability.

Was working on this today, as I was in touch with a couple of very angry people.

[MajestyJo]

Monday, November 5, 2012

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Let's Make a Deal

The relationship just wasn't working out, and I wanted it to so badly. I kept thinking if I just made myself look prettier, if I just tried to be a more loving, kind person, then he would love me. I turned myself inside out to be something better, when all along, who I was was okay. I just couldn't see what I was doing, though, until I moved forward and accepted reality.
—Anonymous

One of the most frustrating stages of acceptance is the bargaining stage. In denial, there is bliss. In anger, there is some sense of power. In barraging, we vacillate between believing there is something we can do to change things and realizing there isn't.

We may get our hopes up again and again, only to have them dashed.

Many of us have turned ourselves inside out to try to negotiate with reality. Some of us have done things that appear absurd, in retrospect, once we've achieved acceptance.

"If I try to be a better person, then this won't happen...If I look prettier, keep a cleaner house, lose weight, smile more, let go, hang on more tightly, close my eyes and count to ten, holler, then I won't have to face this loss, this change."

There are stories from members of Al Anon about attempts to bargain with the alcoholic's drinking: "If I keep the house cleaner, he won't drink.... If I make her happy by buying her a new dress, she won't drink... If I buy my son a new car, he'll stop using drugs."

Adult children have bargained with their losses too: "Maybe if I'm the perfect child, then Mom or Dad will love and approve of me, stop drinking, and be there for me the way I want them to be." We do big, small, and in between things, sometimes-crazy things, to ward off, stop, or stall the pain involved with accepting reality.

There is no substitute for accepting reality. That's our goal. But along the way, we may try to strike a deal. Recognizing our attempts at bargaining for what they are - part of the grief process - helps our lives become manageable.

Today, I will give others and myself the freedom to fully grieve losses. I will hold myself accountable, but I will give myself permission to be human.

[MajestyJo]

We go through a grieving process daily. Even more so during the holiday season, especially if we are alone.

Those of us who suffer from chronic pain, no matter what the source of that pain, goes through the grieving of:

1) What was, prior to our disability which causes our pain

2) What it use to be like, if we are so fortunate not to have been born with our challenges.

3) What we use to be able to do and can no longer.

4) The loss of our routine, mobility, memory, jobs, relationships, friends, family, etc.

You can probably add to my list, and please do. This was made just to make you aware, and to start you thinking, so you recognize that often grief and the feelings of often trigger more pain.

When we don't deal with our grief issues and keep things inside, we add more pain.

My pain was the root of my addiction. I tried to cover up and not feel it instead of looking at what caused it and what could be changed within me because so often emotional pain makes itself known physically. That can be a two way street as well.

As my chiropractor said many times over the years, "A healthy mind makes for a healthy body. I have never met someone who is so in tune with herself and her body. I can trust you." Not words you expect to hear after many years of addiction.

Have been going through several grief issues, you can get caught up in things in the moment, and not able to recognize them for what they are.

http://www.webmd.com/balance/tc/grie...eving-symptoms

[MajestyJo]

Grieve the Warrior, You
Author: Earl Davis

Every decision made is the result of a choice, sometimes mine, sometimes yours. It was my choice to join. It was your choice what I was to be. God did not make the Warrior, man did. In the life we live, the Warrior is a necessity. It is the responsibility of the Warrior to protect and defend the freedom of others, no matter how high the cost. The color of freedom is red.
Grieve the Warrior, You.


Once a Warrior is made, there is no going back. He is forever changed. It is up to you to honor and respect the Warrior in his transformations. A Warrior has wisdom you will never know, let alone understand. Among Indian tribes of old, only a Warrior could become Chief, and only a Chief could advance to Sage.
Grieve the Warrior, You.

There is a Wall filled with bygone heroes, honored and respected. A virtual Wall exists with four times the names, fallen Warriors that shouldn't be, but driven there by dishonor and disrespect. There are many, many more who are alive, but dead at the same time. You have chosen to put it all behind you. It is past now, so let us forget it, like it never happened. Warriors can't put it down, can't forget because it is still happening to their minds.
Grieve the Warrior, You.

Whatever you think of them, or not think of them, doesn't change a thing. You have made them Warriors and Warrior forever they will be. You see I am a Warrior. No one ever says, "I was" or "I will be", but "I am." I am the price of your freedom. Your world exists because of mine, and mine exist because of yours. Your visions are many and varied, of bright and beautiful things to come. The visions of a Warrior are contained in one _____ A thousand-yard stare.


Never mind, the Warrior will grieve You.

Origin unknown