death – Page 4 – Andrea Arthur Owan

Difficulties with Grief

THERE IS OFTEN A SPECIFIC DIFFICULTY to combat in grieving, and that difficulty is our attitude.

Changing our attitudes about grief and the grieving process is hard. Even if you want to change your attitude, behavior and grief language (see last week’s post), your family members and friends may resist.

It’s important to examine our beliefs about grief—what good grieving looks like, how you talk about it and address it. I’ve had to examine and reshape my grief attitudes.

Change is often difficult.

But it can be critical to your grief recovery.

Having a safe space to grieve and express yourself—

You need to feel safe and may find grieving and grief recovery/completion is best done in a group of like-minded, understanding people. People who are also walking a similar path you’re on, or those who can walk beside you to help you in the process.

Old, stifling ideas about grief may be holding you back. It may take someone with experience and training, looking in from the outside to help you recognize where change should and can occur.

As the experts at the Grief Recovery Institute remind us:

“It is very easy to do things just the way we have always done them. But traditions generally signify familiarity, not always value.

“…even very willing people sometimes cling to old, ineffective ideas. It may be a struggle for you to let different and better information in.”

Evaluating what you’ve been taught about grief—

From a young age we’re usually given wrong, often detrimental signals and instructions about how to deal with grief and sadness. These lessons or signals can affect us the rest of our lives and make future, successful grieving difficult or impossible.

Some of us grew up in environments where our families tolerated few if any human feelings or outward expression of emotions. And now that we’re adults, our siblings and family members may still balk at or reject our need to self-express.

Those experiences can permanently color your world, and often not with a pleasing palette.

You need to paint your own grief picture—with your own emotions.

Tell your own story.

You’re the protagonist in it, and you—not others—need to provide the ending.

Make grief personal—

To complete your grieving, you’ll want to communicate your wants, your needs, your thoughts and your feelings. Not what you think someone else wants you to feel, or what someone else has told you to feel, but honestly communicate what’s going on in your mind and heart.

It’s not about feeling dumb or smart. It’s about tuning into your sadness, your joy, your deepest emotions and being able to express them. Working through the intricacies of the loss. Weaving a unique and complete tapestry.

Learning to identify and communicate your individual, positive or negative feeling and then moving on to uncovering, identifying and dealing with the next one.

You can’t move on to the next feeling if you haven’t dealt sufficiently with the one that came before it.

The danger of ignoring and suppressing emotions—

We often think ignoring an emotion will make it disappear and stop bothering us.

Unfortunately, that’s not what usually happens. The brain remembers, and the body keeps the score.

Suppressing your emotions can lead to a build up that eventually gets unloaded like a pressure cooker erupting and scalding everyone around it.

And when you don’t allow others to express their emotions, you’re likely to be the one getting scalded.

Another danger of suppressing sad emotions is all the energy it takes to do it. It’s hard on the physical body to keep them suppressed. And all that suppression often ends up putting pressure on your physical body. The stress causes chronic inflammation that can lead to devastating illness—both mental and physical.

Don’t be afraid of emoting with tears—

Ever heard a parent say this to a child? “I can’t understand you when you’re crying. Stop crying so I can hear you.” (I’m cringing because I’m sure I’ve said it to my kids at least once.)

While it may be true that the parent is unable to understand a child’s speech through the crying, a child probably interprets a different way—that it’s not okay to cry when expressing emotion.

So, the first thing you remember as a grieving adult is: I shouldn’t cry while sharing my emotions with someone. It’s a sign of weakness, and they probably won’t like it.

But in order to successfully and comfortably express your grief emotions, it’s important that you not feel judged; and that you do not give the impression of judging others when they’re expressing their personal emotions.

One last thought—

Before we leave today’s session, I want to leave you with one last thought from the Grief Recovery Institute, which expresses all we’ve addressed in this and previous posts:

“Unresolved grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative. Unresolved grief does not go away by the counterproductive nonactions of trying not to fee bad or by replacing the loss or by grieving alone or by being strong or by keeping busy or by the passage of time.”

All the things we’ve likely learned along life’s way need to be changed.

The question is: Are you ready to complete your grief healing?

Invitation—

I invite you to answer and work through the following questions:

What kind of family dynamics, training or signals affected your emotions? The way they/you handled loss?
Can you identify any loss you haven’t fully grieved, or any uncompleted/unresolved grief?
In regard to that grief, what emotions did you have that you didn’t express or didn’t feel you were allowed to express?
If you wanted to cry and didn’t, why not? Who or what stopped you? Would you feel comfortable crying now, even if the loss happened years ago?

NEXT WEEK we’ll explore the many short-term behaviors we resort to in grief that temporarily relieve our grieving emotions and energy. You won’t want to miss it!

Until then, open yourself to a new attitude toward loss and grieving. Give yourself and others the space needed to resolve grief.

Blessings,

Andrea

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to thrive — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Incomplete Grief: Part II

HAS ANYONE ever said to you that you don’t seem as though you’ve finished grieving yet? Have you ever felt that way years after a loss?

Perhaps what they really mean to say is that you’re experiencing incomplete grief.

What is the real goal of grieving?

Many of us think the goal of grieving is to experience deep, painful emotions and finally arrive at the point where they aren’t as noticeable or don’t bother us as much as they did when the loss was fresh. A point where we feel as though we can get back to some kind of normal life.

But is that really the point of grieving?

It is. And it isn’t.

The point and task of grieving are to first grieve, feel all those emotions, and then complete the relationship with all the unfinished emotions you had when the relationship ended or the loss occurred.

You can think of it as unfinished business that niggles your brain and causes frustration or regret.

While grieving occurs automatically, completing the grief—or grief completion—results from specific actions you take to make that happen.

Well-meaning but bad grief advice—

You’ve probably heard someone say, “It’s best not to dwell on the past.” Or “Better let bygones be bygones.”

They sound like good practices, but in the long run they can be dangerous.

Why?

Because the human mind functions in a very different and specific way than the human heart. And vice versa.

The human mind tends to hang onto and replay what ifs—what could or should have been different, better or more. And those different, better and more thoughts can devour us emotionally, year after year after year.

It’s natural for us to do this. And where grief is concerned, it’s better to go along with that persistent brain, answer those questions, and take some steps to complete the thought and the revelations that come with it.

Incomplete grief can be about good things too—

As the experts at The Grief Recovery Institute note:

“Incomplete grief exists when there are any undelivered communications of an emotional nature.”

With that definition, you can easily see how incomplete grief can come from both good and bad events. They can be positive or negative.

For example: Let’s say you received a gift from a special friend and written and mailed a thank you note. But the morning after mailing the card, you learn your friend has died of a stroke. Besides the pain of losing a good friend, what feelings would you have about the loss?

One thought probably replaying over and over in your mind is that you wish your friend had known just how much you appreciated her gift. And now she’ll never know. Something has been left unfinished. And it hurts.

What if the last thing your spouse heard before driving off to work and getting killed in an auto accident was your snippy comment about something he did that morning that irked you? You would likely chastise yourself repeatedly over your unloving last words. Replay what you should have said to him; wish you could have apologized.

As Grief Recovery Institute experts point out:

“As a generality, undelivered emotional communications are going to be about things that we wish we had said or done, or about things we wish we had not said or done.”

And they’re also about something else, like the things we wish the other person had said or done, or not said or done.

But they can be about good things too. And it’s important to replay those.

Consider the happy scenario, where you share a kiss and a long hug with your spouse before you both depart for work. Later that day you learn he’s been killed in a freak work accident. Along with your heartache, you replay in your mind your last embrace, your loving goodbye, his joyful wave to you as he drives down the driveway. Those thoughts make you smile and bring gladness to your broken heart.

The reality of life is that we never know when our last encounters with someone will occur, and it’s more than likely that every loss brings with it unfinished details—words you wanted or planned to say, discussions you wanted to have, plans you were in the midst of making. Not procrastination but planned for events and get-togethers.

These types of things can leave you with a feeling of incompleteness in a relationship loss.

When others hinder your grief completion journey—

You may experience incomplete grieving when others cause or exaggerate your incompleteness.

Ever know someone who won’t allow you to express meaningful things to them? Your communication with them remains shallow or frustrating. We can’t force anyone to listen to us, and their refusal to hear or listen can leave us with incomplete feelings about them and the relationship.

Sometimes we’re fearful of being honest and saying things we know are emotionally loaded. We fear another person’s reaction, or their misunderstanding of your intentions.

We want to wait for the right time, but it never comes. And death ends the possibility of it ever coming.

We lose our nerve and never say what we need to say to the other person.

These events can leave us with incomplete emotions.

I can give you a personal example in my life that I still find frustrating. An event that left me with incomplete emotions.

For a reason I don’t understand, someone I considered a precious friend and loved like a sister decided “the season of our friendship had come to an end.”

That’s how she put it in the email she sent me. Not in person. Not in a phone call. She wouldn’t talk to me about why, explain her reasons, or tell me what I might have done to hurt her to cause that decision. I even asked her so I could apologize for how I might have hurt her.

She did tell me that we hadn’t communicated that much since she moved across the country, so I did get an inkling that she felt that, to remain good friends, I didn’t meet her frequent communication expectations.

It’s been a year since that happened, and I still experience incomplete grieving over it. My heart still cries about it. I miss her. But I feel as though she tied my hands and made my grieving difficult. I don’t think she acted loving or fair toward me.

And that makes me angry.

I feel as though her actions robbed me of the opportunity to be complete.

But her actions do not need to become the final say in this friendship ending. I need to heal, completely. So I’m going through the actions I need to take to complete that grieving, the actions I’m going to teach you in this incomplete grieving series. Actions I’ve taken before that helped me complete the grieving process and close open, festering wounds that took their toll on not only my mind but my body.

Goal of complete grieving—

Your goal is to discover those undelivered emotional communications occurring in both minor and major life events.

It’s the uncovering of all the undelivered communications, both large and small, that have emotional consequences for you. And it’s likely there is a heap of these undelivered communications that need unearthing and examination.

Where my former friend is concerned, I’m going to be exploring all of the unfinished communications and feelings I had when the relationship ended. I’m going to detail how the way she ended it makes me feel.

In the process I’m going to take into account the numerous overwhelming burdens in her life: the recent and unexpected death of a loved one; the illness of a beloved relative; the serious accident she incurred a year earlier that seemed to leave her mentally foggy and fearful of life.

In this specific instance, it’s a combination of juggling truth with love and mercy.

And in the process, I can’t tell myself I shouldn’t feel the way I feel. I already feel a certain way, have experienced certain feelings. Telling myself I shouldn’t feel them isn’t going to make them go away. Examining them, figuring out what to do with them, and then doing it will ease the burden and complete my grief.

And that’s the end goal.

Invitation—

Can you identify any relationships that ended by separation or death that still feel incomplete? If so, start jotting down those happy, sad, or unfinished events you wanted to continue, wanted to fix, or wanted to finish. You’ll use those in a future post to be able to complete your grieving.

NEXT WEEK we’ll dig deeper into incomplete grieving: how holding onto feelings may be stifling the grief completion process, and learning to express the feelings that will help us heal.

Until then, don’t be afraid to feel those feelings, and don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t have them.

Blessings,

Andrea

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Incomplete Grief: An Introduction

A LOT of people ask how long grief will last, when will it finally be over.

When will the pain end?

How we answer those questions depends upon how we approach grief and the recovery process caused by the grieving experience. The recovery process should lead to completion of grief.

How we handle the fallout of loss and the accompanying pain is what’s important.

Because if we don’t handle the loss well, it can lead to incomplete grief.

And that’s the important subject we’ll be exploring for the next few weeks.

What’s really behind all that grief pain?

When you’re deep into grief, unspeakable pain is your constant companion. No matter what you do, it seldom lets up. You just know the pain is never going to go away; you’re going to have to live with this the rest of your life.

If someone tries to tell you things will eventually get better, you don’t see how that’s possible. You don’t believe them. And you may be angered that they even made the comment.

It’s true, though. Things do and will get better—if you can identify the sources of emotional energy contributing to all that pain.

While there are some deaths—like grandparents, friends, and even siblings—that we can rebound better and more quickly from, other deaths leave us paralyzed and stuck.

The key is asking the right questions to identify what’s causing the emotions and then providing answers to those questions.

Key grief recovery questions—

We all look back over relationships and ask ourselves internal questions about them. The answers can help us complete the grief healing process.

One key question to ask yourself is:

What makes this death or loss different from others?

Was there something about the relationship that made it special? Was there “unfinished business” that will never be completed?

And we can go further with other important questions, like:

Are there things you wished would have been different about the relationship?
What could have been better?
Was there something more you would have liked to see fulfilled?

In my case, in the death of my daughter during an emergency delivery in the fifth month of pregnancy, I had a lot of emotions.

I’d spent five months with my daughter as she grew in my body, feeling her move. And I was seriously ill with morning sickness soon after the beginning of the pregnancy—so ill I couldn’t keep food down and had to undergo home IV therapy and intra-muscular anti-nausea treatment shots.

But I recovered from that and was just starting to enjoy the second trimester when tragedy struck, and our precious Victoria had to be taken too soon to survive outside my womb.

For a little over five months, I’d focused on my growing baby, wondering about what the baby would be like. Wondering if the little one was a boy or girl. Dreaming. Making plans. Mentally designing the nursery.

Then one night it all abruptly ended. My dreams and hopes were snatched away.

One of the things I wrote on the death announcements I sent out was: “Our dreams are certainly going to miss her—“

And that’s where I could have started the grief recovery process, writing down what I wished had been different, better or more.

Of course, I wish it didn’t turn out the way it did. That Victoria wouldn’t have died, or I would have been able to carry her further into the pregnancy and given her a better chance at life.

I wish I had better medical care. That the doctors would have responded to my concerns and to the concern of the ultrasound technician who picked up the problem during an examination. I wish they had been more concerned about the baby and me than the money they were trying to make and save.

I wish I could have had more time with her after her birth.

Victoria’s death had abruptly ended my hopes, dreams and expectations for our life together, as mother and daughter, and for our family’s life as a foursome. It killed my dreams of having a little girl to dress in frilly dresses and hair pinned into pigtails.

It’s important to remember that all these questions are critical to explore because hopes, dreams, and expectations happen in all relationships—even relationships that struggled or fell short; the ones that weren’t so great.

When we speak of grief, and grief recovery, we need to use these grief recovery terms:

“different, better, more;” and

“broken hopes, dreams, and expectations.”

They need to become part of our grief recovery language.

Communicating your grief—

When you’re first thrown into the grieving process, the emotions and myriad of them seem overwhelming and suffocating. You don’t know what to do with all the painful, sometimes incoherent thoughts.

In order to heal and recover, we need to be able to identify and communicate what’s going on within us. What the source is behind those complex feelings and thoughts.

When we do that, we gain control and reclaim a sense of purpose in life.

We can say to ourselves: I know how I feel. Now what do I need to do about it?

And that’s what we’ll be exploring in the next several weeks of posts.

What we can do about those feelings.

Invitation—

Is there any grief you feel you haven’t worked through or fully recovered from? Would it help to ask these questions we’ve covered today:

What feelings am I experiencing about this grief and why?

What makes this loss different from others I’ve experienced?

What do I wish would have been different?

What could have been better?

What did I want more of?

I encourage you to start exploring those questions and jotting down answers to them. You might be surprised at what you learn, and what relief you gain from the process and learning.

I encourage you to explore and ask yourself these questions. To become actively engaged in moving forward into grief recovery.

NEXT WEEK we’ll look at incomplete grief, what it is and how to avoid living with it.

Until then, remember that the grief process is normal, and that there can be a full life on the other side of it.

Blessings,

Andrea

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

COVID-19 Virus Battle Emotions: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

The world has fought a lot of wars throughout history, and it feels as though we’re fighting a war now. A battle against a tiny microbe—officially named COronaVIrusDisease-19 (COVID-19)—invisible to the naked eye. That’s one of the problems with this particular battle. We like to see our enemy, be able to predict what he’s going to do next, calculate how to handle him and thwart his plans.

But with this little halo-surrounded enemy, it seems we can only develop hypothetical models that keep changing, shut everyone behind closed doors, and hope for the best.

It’s obviously a little more complicated and sophisticated than that, but to the average person on the street—who has now been told in some places to continue staying off the street (or beach) or get arrested—it all seems about that simple.

A time of stark contrasts—

The times we’re living in, the battle we’re fighting, brings to mind the opening line from one of my favorite books, one of the best books ever written: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. A lot of you could probably recite it without looking it up—

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

This beginning of the very l-o-n-g first line pretty much says it all for us. We can relate.

Dickens tells the story about life in another war, the French Revolution, and he continues with a string of contrasts.

…it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,

we were all going to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

A far-flung range of emotions—

How many of us have gone through, or are still going through, these wildly contrasting emotions?

For those of us who cherish our families and time spent with them, we feel doubly blessed to be around them so much.

But domestic violence is on the rise, and tensions are developing in families suffering from too little personal space, or outdoor space. And upended orderly, hyper-scheduled lives.

Drunk driving accidents and arrests are way down; but drinking and drug use have increased dramatically.

We’re looking to trained professionals to give us answers, and we get a multitude of opinions.

A possible breakthrough medication is mentioned, and a couple thinks their fish tank cleaner containing some of the same chemical will work for a homeopathic treatment. After all, they don’t want to get the virus, so—without doctor recommendation or consultation—they ingest their fish tank cleaner. (Who does this!?) The husband dies, and his wife blames our country’s president for her stupidity.

It’s a time of people being terrified and too self-protective, and a time of people throwing caution to the wind, inviting trouble, and putting God to the test.

It’s a time marked by notable events, when we desperately want to believe someone, and a time when we’re so shocked by the unfolding circumstances we doubt everything.

For believers in God, it’s a time when they see Him moving, showing His power, fulfilling prophecy; for the unbeliever, it’s a time of sadness, anxiety, and paralyzing fear.

For those able to maintain their jobs and support their families, it’s a blip on the inconvenience scale. (For some, like my husband, it’s a blessing to not have to rush to and from work every day.) For those watching their lives and livelihoods unravel, they feel stunned, betrayed and helpless. Their futures look dark and impossible. Hopeless.

For them, there is nothing before them.

For others, their greatest fear is whether or not they’ll have enough toilet paper to last through the lockdown. For so many around the world, they don’t know if they’ll have food to feed their children their next meal.

For all of us, we only know what we have right now—before us—and see only a question mark for our and our countries’ futures.

What next?

When will this end, or will it? Will we have to permanently adjust to a “new normal?’

Will staying quarantined, hunkered down, and apprehensive change our brain chemistry so much that we wouldn’t be able to return to normal even if we wanted to?

Rarely in history have we felt the collective “we” we’re now experiencing. The global “we” that for a brief blink in time puts us squarely in the human fragility boat.

As a young man said during an international prayer call I joined in on a week ago: “Thank you, Lord, for bringing us to our knees and showing us just how small, helpless and vulnerable we are.”

It was an admission of humility, of God’s omnipotence. And it was also a plea for mercy to a God that listens when His people cry out to Him. He’s not the detached, aloof God of the Deist; He’s a God of His creation, His people, His children, who listens when they say, “Abba (Daddy), help!”

It may not seem as though He’s listening or moving, but He is. He always is.

What’s in a name—war or not?

Some people don’t like referring to this pandemic as a war. While it may not be in the strictest sense, for many people it certainly is a battle—emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially.

As during Dickens’ story, we are living in a time of stark contrasts:

hope and fear
knowledge and ignorance
trust and suspicion
resignation and obedience and blaming and rebellion
hope and hopeless
Light and Darkness
hope and despair
joyful solitude and despairing isolation
resolution and waffling
meditation and anxiety
acceptance and rejection
prayer and self-focus
gain and loss

Good emotions versus bad emotions—

I could fill pages with these contrasts. And strike up a passionate discussion.

Are these negative emotions bad?

No. They’re honest emotions, reasonable and human reactions to upended lives, unknown futures, unanswered questions, and death.

The negative emotions aren’t bad, unless we allow them to swallow up or control our thoughts, kill the positive emotions, and rule our lives.

But the ultimate question is: which contrast do you want to cling to, to practice, to emulate? To grow in. To emerge from this pandemic a better person than you were when you entered it.

Because it is a time of change and growth. A time when we’re confronted with difficult decisions. And we need to look to Someone who can shine a Light on the best ones and guide us down the best paths.

Ultimately, we do have a choice to make it our worst of times or our best of times. Or the opposite.

I don’t mean to imply that this is easy. It’s not. It may take every last ounce of energy we have to successfully emerge and resume a more “normal” life. One that’s hopeful and purposeful. God’s been known to do that to people throughout history to make alterations permanent.

It helps us remember.

A little encouragement—

Before I sign off with the invitation for today, I want to leave you with a couple of encouraging truths:

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” —Thomas Merton

“It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” —Lamentations 3:22-23 (KJV)

Invitation

Write down all of the emotions this pandemic and chaos has caused you to experience. Don’t judge them, or yourself. Just jot them down.

Then write down why you think you’ve felt these emotions—like fearfulness, anxiety, weepiness, peace.

Draw pictures to accompany your feelings.

Continue to do this as your lockdown progresses or restrictions are eased.

Do you see changes in your emotions and their ability to control you?

Write the steps you can take to make sure your emotions and physical and spiritual life end up on the positive side of the contrasts.

Or turn it into a prayer, asking God to help and guide you to accomplishing those attitudes and behaviors.

Better yet, turn it into worship. It’s hard to feel negative emotions when you’re singing praise and worship songs!

Here’s one of my favorites to get you started.

And I’ll see you back here next week (or sooner)!

Blessings,

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, chaplain, and award-winning inspirational writer. She works and writes to help people recover from grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Post-Holiday Grief Symptoms and Care

Did you and your grief make it successfully through the holidays?

I hope so. But don’t let your guard down just yet.

Post-holiday stress and grief accumulation can show up—right about now.

It was exactly ten years ago this week that my husband, Chris, and two boys were enjoying a week of skiing in the White Mountains of Arizona. The trip had been planned for months. We were excited.

That was until my father rapidly deteriorated the end of November and beginning of December and then died the evening of Friday, December 11.

The grief I experienced from his loss was deep; the pain was accentuated by the falling out (an understatement) my mother had due to the circumstances surrounding his abrupt death.

My bright older son had uncharacteristically tanked his sophomore semester in college after a bout with depression. He completed his final, final exam—physics—forty-five minutes before his grandfather’s funeral. His dad picked him up on a campus street corner, and he changed into “funeral” attire in the car on the way to the mortuary.

We desperately needed this ski vacation R and R, and I thought getting away would help us heal. I wasn’t prepared for what happened to me during the trip.

Several days into the trip, I felt tired but relaxed as I prepared for bed. I took my time getting ready and then lay down on the floor next to do some stretching. Chris was watching a movie on the television. Without warning, my heart galloped into race-mode. My chest tightened in fear, and then my airway cramped up. The best I could manage were jerky little breaths that definitely weren’t providing sufficient oxygen.

First I tried getting control over my breathing, but the heart pounding only intensified. My chest tightened to the point of pain. I thought I was having a heart attack, and I wondered if I should call out to Chris that he needed to call an ambulance.

My sports psychology kicked in.

I managed to roll over onto my knees and hands, and, like any trained athlete, started talking to myself. I took several deliberate hyperventilating breaths and then forced myself to take several deeper and slower ones. Seconds ticked away as my breathing became less labored, and my heart rate slowly dropped. Another minute longer and my heart beat registered normal.

And it hit me: I was having a panic attack.

But it took several more minutes of self-reflection to figure out why.

I had managed to pull myself together to get everything ready for the holidays and successfully get through them, but the stress of grief finally bubbled to the surface and overwhelmed my body. Not just my emotional, psychological body but my physical one. It was a perfect storm and was a perfect example of the mind-body connection.

A couple of days later, grief and melancholy struck again. As I was swooshing down a beautiful run at the top of the mountain, my gaze landed on the sweeping horizon and miles of snow-covered prairie. Instead of paying attention to what I was doing, my mind took a trip down memory lane. Happy times with my father gathered in my brain.

Taking your eyes off your run while skiing to gawk at the landscape isn’t recommended. Neither is losing your concentration. The inevitable happened. I splatted. Not a rough fall, but an abrupt one that knocked my conscious back to the present and my activity. I sighed. I was more tired and overwhelmed than I had imagined.

It was then that I realized I needed to be even more careful and protective of my emotions, my body, and my spirit. No matter how tough I was, or how much I thought I could handle, I wasn’t anywhere near being healed. Walking through this new type of grief would take months.

It wasn’t the last time I would experience a panic attack. Lying in bed one night, realizing that my father was truly gone from this earth and would not be coming back to it in my lifetime—to talk to, laugh with, get advice from, share a happy even with—sent me into another hyperventilating and heart-pounding session.

And so it is with experience that I gently suggest that you guard your heart, your body, your spirit, and your mind as you continue to walk through any new grief. Just because the holidays are over, and you’ve survived them, doesn’t mean the worst has passed.

Take extra good care of yourself, and don’t apologize to friends or family for what you may need to do—or not do—to protect yourself and heal.

Until next time,

May your 2020 be full of blessings you hadn’t expected as you continue to heal.

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro, and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.