Mental Health – Page 4 – Andrea Arthur Owan

A Summer of Grieving

Just when my heart felt as though it was healing a bit, pain tore through it again on Saturday, August 22 as we sad goodbye to my younger son’s dog Hami and helped him pass peacefully over the Rainbow Bridge.

We were, and remain, heartbroken. As anyone who has loved and nurtured a canine companion knows, the pet’s passing tears open a wound in your heart and life. Schedules and daily routines are warped. Attention focuses disappear. Wet noses, happy tongue slurps and silky fur strokes disappear. Even other pets in the house grieve and whimper as they scour the house looking for their companion.

Try as I might, I couldn’t function or concentrate well enough this past week to work on anything other than my upcoming manuscript. So I am using this post to honor Hami, who has been laid to rest near my citrus trees (where he reveled in nosing around and digging up beetle grubs).

I’m honoring him by printing the story I wrote about him that appeared in the recently released (last month) Chicken Soup for the Soul book, The Magic of Dogs.

Here is “Transforming Hami” in its entirety.

Transforming Hami

Hamilton von Watts was the last dog I would have adopted. When we first saw him, the big German Shorthaired Pointer/black Lab mix lay abjectly in his cage. A yellow identification tag noted his name.

But I wasn’t going to have much say in the adoption matter. This was going to be our thirteen-year-old son’s dog, and he was doing the selecting. I groaned when Cory asked the shelter employee to let Hamilton out of the cage to visit with him.

The seventeen-month-old mutt looked worse on inspection—filthy, with open wounds and a battalion of ticks. Touching his punctured ear elicited a sharp whine; patting him produced a dust cloud. His puffed right eye oozed, and he emitted an odious scent. But I could see the love pass between Cory and Hamilton when their eyes locked.

And then Hami plucked our heartstrings by flashing a toothy smile, a grin he produced by wrinkling up his nose, and baring his brilliant white teeth and chomping them together several times. An energetic snort punctuated each chomp. He even mustered enough pizzazz to happily paw the air. I could almost hear him cry out, “Please give me a chance!”

An hour later, after Cory and my husband, Chris, filled out the paperwork and plunked down the money for him, Hami bounded around the back of our Suburban. He seemed so grateful. I, however, remained dubious.

Hami’s introduction to our home was rough. He charged our cat, Tibbs, who attempted a warm nose-to-nose welcome. Our Queensland Heeler, Sydney, gave us an alarmed, now-you’ve- ruined-the-neighborhood look.

And while he clearly adored Cory, he cowered and scampered away from our eighteen- year-old son Parker and his buddies and acted anxious around Chris. When Chris removed his belt while undressing, Hami bolted from him. When friends visited, the sixty-five-pound dog growled and hid behind my legs or beneath my skirt. His legs quivered as he peered out at intruders. When frightened, which happened often, he urinated on the floor.

Hami was also undisciplined. He ignored commands and boundaries and led us on lengthy hunting expeditions for him through our hilly, cactus-filled neighborhood. A frequent refrain around our house was “Cory, come get your dog!”

I felt guilty about my uncharitable feelings, but Hami aggravated me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like dogs. Chris and I had cared for six of them so far during our marriage. And Chris said he knew I was “the one” because I was the only female his Border Collie, Felina, had ever liked.

But I liked high-IQ, compliant dogs. Classy dogs with manners and respect for my personal space. Not unruly dogs who barreled into rooms, knocking things—and me—over. I tried to avoid him, but as much as I tried, he insisted on following me around like a

sheep to a shepherd. He got underfoot when I worked in the kitchen. When he’d had enough roughhousing with Chris and the boys, he’d scurry away from them and lean against me for protection. I’d shoo the guys away and tell them sternly that the dog had had enough.

He seemed so grateful for everything I did for him, no matter how small it was—stroke his back, acknowledge his presence, or feed him. He’d give me that big, chompy smile and slurpy kiss and then tap dance in front of me.

I think Hami knew his perseverance would wear me down eventually. His smile, gratitude and amusing antics chipped away at my defenses. I couldn’t keep my heart from surrendering to this hurt dog. But my rigid brain needed coaxing to follow suit. I wrestled against frustration and expectations, prayed for divine patience, and changed my behavior.

Instead of avoiding Hami, I gritted my teeth and embarked on a mission to uncover his potential. I knew it had to be there under all that fear and pain. But could the trauma be undone?

I instructed Chris and the boys to top his kibble with nutrient-packed chicken and duck eggs. Cory spent hundreds of dollars of his own money to heal Hami’s wounds and eradicate his external and internal vermin. We lavished love and attention on him and made sure we avoided his anxiety triggers. When I sat on the floor next to him and massaged the right hip that caused him to limp and whine so much, he’d heave exaggerated sighs and lick my face. It took weeks of scrubbing ground-in grime from his broken body to uncover his sleek, dark chocolate coat.

And with all that love and attention, a miracle occurred. As the grime washed away, and his body and heart healed, Hami transformed. His formerly ragged coat glistened in the sunshine. He started trusting and obeying. His once fearful eyes emitted security. And he gained confidence in himself.

He started doing surveillance patrols around the house. He learned his boundaries and responded to commands. He became comfortable with our friends and made the rounds among them for fanny scratches and ear rubs. Every morning, primed to enjoy another day, he smiled and tap danced. In fact, he smiled all the time—when he went outside and when he was invited back in; when he was fed; and when he got leashed up for a walk. The refrain around our house became “Everyone should be as happy as Hami.” Even Sydney started to pal around with him.

In the process, I realized I was learning from Hami.

He taught me to be eternally grateful for everything, even the small things. Especially the small things. And to lighten up. He’d wheedled the dormant Type B personality out of me, the one I had long ago discarded. In the chaotic swirl of wifedom, motherhood and work, I’d become uptight, rigid, and preoccupied by trivial things. Hami re-directed my attention and taught me to smile at each new day.

And I’m still learning.

The ravages of time and a neurological disease wasting his hind leg muscles have taken their toll. But thirteen-year-old Hami is teaching me how to decline physically and age gracefully. I’m taking notes:

If you feel inclined, sleep a little more, and make the most out of what you can do when the body parts are limbered up and operating properly, which may take a while after a nap.
Don’t be too proud to let someone help you stand upright to get moving. Hobble outside to do your business, bark at the Amazon Prime guy, and soak up the sunshine. Life is good.
If you forget the rules and do something wrong, give your person a brilliant smile and bury your head in their lap. It works every time.
Never let your infirmities steal your gratefulness.

Not long ago, I gazed into Hami’s clouded eyes, cupped his gray muzzle in my hands,  and thanked him for what he’d done and for being patient with me. He heaved a sigh, plopped onto the floor next to me and fell asleep, seemingly satisfied that I’d understood his purpose.  Cory’s selection had been divinely directed.  Love and patience had transformed Hami—and me.

—Andrea Arthur Owan—

I’m looking forward to being reunited with this special dog on the other side of the Bridge.

Until next week, when we’ll return to the next post in our grieving recovery series, love your pets well and thank God every day for them.

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).

How to Grieve Well: Successful Steps to Complete Your Grief Healing—Part 2

HOW ARE YOU at completing what you started, taking it all the way to the end? Would you say you’re a great starter, AND a great finisher? Or are you better at getting all excited about starting something, delving into it, only to find yourself fizzling out and leaving it undone?

I confess I’m a better starter than finisher. I usually burn up all my enthusiasm and energy for a project before putting the finishing touches of completion on it. All I have to do is glance around my house to prove it. Or open a craft box. (To my joy, many of those years-left-partially-finished-and-undone projects were recently completed. Hallelujah! But I had to really give myself a lot of pep talks and fanny kicking to do them.)

Complicate the matter with my ADD tendencies, and the fact that I often have too many projects going at one time, and you have a recipe for lots of starts but few completions.

But after a project is really finished, it feels soooo good. Not only does the project look and feel completed, and gives me pleasure, but I kind of feel completed too. Really satisfied. And better. Looking at undone projects depresses me, and makes me feel a little tarnished, like the threads of my life are hanging frayed and knotted.

Grief and grieving can follow the same course.

But just how do we ensure that we complete the grieving well and don’t leave any suppressed grief festering in our souls?

The “How” of Grief Recovery and Completion—

If statistics are correct, we are people who love to learn how to do things. We constantly search “How to” do this or that on the Internet. We want to learn, so we can accomplish things, grow, share our new knowledge and achieve. Change.

But as much as we want to be able to get through the grief we didn’t start on purpose, we don’t always ask “How?” or know what steps we should take to finish the grief, or complete it. Deep in our hearts, we still feel as though something’s not quite finished with the grieving process.

Last week we started our discussion on the grief completion process, and I introduced the term and idea of using a relationship review to help with that completion. Before we move on, though, let’s review the Grief Recovery Institute’s definition of completion.

“Completion is the action of discovering and communicating, directly or indirectly, the undelivered emotions that attach to any relationship that changes or ends.”

Sounds simple, straightforward and easy enough, doesn’t it?

But maybe it’s not.

Like any project we endeavor to start and complete, there are steps we need to take to get it done. We usually can’t do the steps out of order, and we sometimes need to wait patiently for one step to be completed (maybe dry or cure) before moving onto the next one. And if we bungle one, sometimes we need to tamp down our frustration, back up, and redo it. Otherwise the finished product looks kind of crummy and unfinished.

**What’s involved in grief completion?**

Again, before we move on, let’s review the truths of this completion definition.

Completion is an action. It requires the griever to do something for herself; to be an active participant.
Completion is an act of discovery, which implies uncovering hidden truths or tangible items. Bringing into the light what was once hidden from sight or recognition.
Completion is communicating, verbalizing what was once unspoken or unexpressed.
Completion uncovers or sheds light on emotionsthat have not previously been acknowledged or expressed.

Grief completion is the process you go through. It’s where you dig deeply into your heart and memory banks to find and expose those emotions that naturally accompany any relationship. The emotions you buried or were lying dormant.

The emotions that brought you joy.

The emotions that brought you pain.

The emotions you felt guilty for having.

The emotions you wanted to express, but, for whatever reason, you didn’t or couldn’t.

Through that act of discovery—identifying those honest emotions and expressing them—you move forward to completing your grief. Putting yourself back together, to be whole and thrive.

And the means by which we can do this is the relationship review.

What is a relationship review?

A relationship review happens when we dig down deep and draw out and express those emotions we had, and may still have, surrounding a relationship and its loss.

Happy emotions. Sad emotions. Regretful or guilty emotions. Unfinished emotions.

Emotions directly related to your relationship with the person, job, or pet you lost.

The family member that died. The house and community you had to leave. The beloved pet you had to put down. The job you walked away from, or lost. The friend that decided they no longer valued you or your friendship and said goodbye.

Those are the emotions swirling around what you wished could or would have been different, better, or more about the relationship. Unrealized hopes and dreams about the future. The ones you had to say goodbye to or walk away from.

The discovery of those emotions can be used to complete what is emotionally unfinished.

Who’s responsible for making the correct action choices?

In spite of exhaustion or a desire to ignore and hope it goes away, it is the griever who needs to take these decisive actions. A concerned friend or family member can’t do it for them. While you may suggest and encourage, go first, or walk alongside, or be a listening ear, you cannot force or do.

You cannot complete this difficult project for them.

Recovery from grief or loss is achieved by a series of steps—small and correct actions—made by the griever.

Each griever had his or her own unique relationship with the person, family, pet, or circumstance. The actions they take are entirely about their relationship—not anyone else’s—with those people or things.

Other people’s relationship emotions must not be planted into the griever’s mind.

And therein lies the danger of sharing your emotions with family members.

While some siblings or other family survivors are good, sympathetic listeners, others may try to guide, put down or dismiss another survivor’s emotions. This only causes a griever to clam up, shut down, and then never revisit the grief. Or, they might claim others’ expressed emotions as their own.

All these things must be guarded against, which is why joining a grief group, or connecting with someone trained in the process can be so helpful and effective. You feel freer to really bare and share your heart and all those emotions. You won’t need to worry about being judged, criticized or belittled for your feelings or voiced expressions.

When to begin the relationship review in the grieving process?

It is never too late to do a relationship review. If you feel stuck in grief or that you have unfinished relationship or circumstance emotions you never addressed, the review is helpful.

And there is no perfect time to begin the relationship review, although the sooner you start after the acute pain wears off is a good time. Sometimes it’s when you just feel and know it’s right to venture into the waters.

But watch out for negative grief influences!

What might hamper a relationship review?

Our Western world tends to look down on “sad” emotions. We negate emotional pain and suffering and tuck it into the “weak” category.

You may have been influenced by this pervasive thought and feel self-conscious or fearful of baring those different, more, and better thoughts and feelings.

Again, this is where a grief group or knowledgeable and sympathetic guide can be helpful.

Other things that might hamper a relationship review are myths, like saying everybody dies eventually. Or just pull yourself by your bootstraps and move on. Don’t feel bad, as though feeling bad is evil. Or believing if you just stay busy enough it won’t hurt as much, or it will go away.

None of those beliefs or tactics work. In fact, they can be detrimental to healing.

How to embark on a relationship review—

The first thing to remember is that all grief is experienced at 100 percent. Everyone experiences a loss at her own level of intensity. And that level is usually based on the uniqueness of the relationship.

While I am still suffering the loss of a dear friend and confidante, my friend’s husband and children are suffering in infinitely different and deeper ways. I must be very careful not to compare my suffering with theirs, or presume to know how each of them is feeling.

Like the physical effects they might be experiencing.

The physical effects of grief—

Grief fills up your entire being. No part of your body, soul, mind or spirit is left untouched. That’s why you can feel physically ill and in real pain. Just look what WebMD had to say about the physical effects of grief in a July 2019 article.

“A range of studies reveal the powerful effects grief can have on the body. Grief increases inflammation, which can worsen health problems you already have and cause new ones. It batters the immune system, leaving you depleted and vulnerable to infection. The heartbreak of grief can increase blood pressure and the risk of blood clots. Intense grief can alter the heart muscle so much that it causes “broken heart syndrome,” a form of heart disease with the same symptoms as a heart attack.”

Several weeks after my father died, my family went on a ski trip. I thought I was “managing” my grief, until the night I suddenly and unexpectedly had a rapid heart rate and started hyperventilating and had to lie down on the floor. For a moment I thought I might be experiencing a heart attack, until my mind landed on what was really going on.

A panic attack.

My body was reacting to my grief, throwing out symptoms of my pain. My heart muscle and lungs were suffering right along with my mind. After several minutes of controlled breathing and relaxation techniques, my heart calmed down and my breathing normalized.

A warning sign that things still were not well. I needed to continue the healing process.

The dangers of trying to intellectualize death and grief—

Ever have the question “Why?” run through your mind after a loved one dies?

What seems like an intellectual reaction is actually more an emotional lamentation.

Before you try to answer that question of why with a scientific explanation, it’s better to examine the real question. And sometimes, even after all the scientific evaluation is done and satisfied, the answer to that question is: “I don’t know why.”

So be careful of trying to shift your or a griever’s responses away from emotions and toward intellectual reasoning.

You want to maintain safety of expression so you, or the griever, can tell the emotional truth. You’re angry. You’re feeling upended and lost. Your heart feels splintered, or aches to the point of bursting. You’re upset about something the person said to you before they died. Or didn’t say. The way the whole thing happened.

When do feelings of loss end?

Don’t expect your grief feelings to end right after the funeral or memorial service. Feelings continue. Sometimes for a long time.

It’s never too late to review and address the emotions that pop into your mind and heart.

As Amy Davis, a recovered griever who was quoted in the WebMD article noted about grief:

“Lean into it. You only get to grieve your loved one once. Don’t spend the whole time trying to distract yourself or push it down….you will miss feeling that connected to that person again. And if you feel like your whole life has fallen apart, that’s fine! It totally has. Now you get to decide how to put yourself back together. Be creative. There’s new life to be lived all around you.”

Right on, Amy!

Invitation—

Who in your life would make an ideal grief listener? Someone you could share your innermost feelings with and not be made to feel weak or bad after voicing those emotions.

Is there a grief group in your area or online that you could access, to honestly share your pain?

How do you think you could benefit from it?

NEXT WEEK we’ll take a step further in undertaking a relationship review by looking at the initial questions to ask yourself and examining the emotional energy checklist.

Until then, don’t hide from your grief or try to wish it away, or cover it up with busyness. As Amy Davis said, “Lean into it.” If you take the right steps and make productive choices, you can and will thrive again!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people to thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

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.