Spiritual Balance – Page 3 – Andrea Arthur Owan

Thanksgiving History: Being Grateful for Life’s Thorns

It’s all about thanksgiving.

I’m going to guess all of you reading this post have experienced a major life event you considered to be more of a thorn in your side than a blessing you’d give thanks for. No doubt 2020 has rocked your world with COVID-19 and maybe brought accompanied economic devastation.

It hasn’t been a normal year for anyone, or an easy year for many. We’ve all been turned on our heads to some degree.

It’s been a thorn.

We don’t like thorns. They’re sharp and often draw blood. They might leave bruises or infections that take time to heal. They certainly make life harder to handle.

But there are profound life-growing lessons to be learned from painful, blood-drawing thorns, and joy can result from them. For it’s in life’s thorns that we learn more about ourselves, become humbled, and learn how to persevere.

They can also—if you’re willing—turn us toward God and make us more reliant on Him.

But even with these thorns, we have so much to be thankful for. So I’m going to focus this post on our upcoming American holiday, Thanksgiving. It’s a special day to focus solely on giving thanks; a day set aside to express gratefulness with and for family and friends, even if you have to celebrate and thank them via ZOOM.

While we don’t often think about celebrating or giving thanks for the thorns in our lives, they may be the first and most important things we should look to and have at the top of our “I’m thankful for…” list.

Even the Pilgrims, who are officially credited with celebrating the first Thanksgiving nearly 400 years ago, (we were supposed to have a big 400^th anniversary celebration for their arrival this year), had encountered thorns prior to that celebration. Deadly ones. And the fact that any of them were still alive to tell about it may be the reason they gave thanks.

Pilgrim basics: my heritage—

Thanksgiving is special to me. It should be, since I’m a direct descendant of two Pilgrims who sailed from England to America in 1620. Actually, one was an true Pilgrim (Separatist) and the other was a cooper (barrel maker) who evidently wanted a change of scenery and a new life in a new land.

The group was a little band of mostly like-minded pioneers who wanted to worship God without fear, persecution or worldly influence in a way of their choosing. They bravely sneaked away to England on a tiny ship after signing a contract with an English company to plunk down a colony on our shores and start successful trading and businesses.

(On a side note, don’t confuse Pilgrims—Separatists, who wanted to completely separate from the Church of England—and the Puritans, who wanted to transform and purify the Church from the inside.)

When I think about the accounts of that first Thanksgiving—the three-day feast the Pilgrims celebrated with the Wampanoag Indians—I wonder just how many of them were thinking: “I’m so thankful.”

As the History Channel’s website, history.org, states:

“As was the custom in England, the Pilgrims celebrated their harvest with a festival. The 50 remaining colonists and roughly 90 Wampanoag tribesmen attended the “First Thanksgiving.”

One of the attending Pilgrims noted a Pilgrim attendance of 53, but let’s not quibble in numbers.

It was customary for these English people to celebrate a bounty with a feast and recreational activities, so that’s what they did. Food and sport. And they invited the Indians. (Yes, they really did.)

They were grateful to the Indians, especially for one of them who intervened early and miraculously in their lives to teach them how to add fish to the soil to improve the growing conditions for a good harvest.

They hadn’t expected the poor soil conditions in Massachusetts. It was not where thy planned to land and live. Farther down the coast in Virginia was the landing plan, but they had arrived too late in the season and had to settle for the more northern location.

They also missed planting adequately for the growing season in cold, bitter Massachusetts with its poor crop-growing soil. Their food rotted and became infested with bugs. Then disease, starvation and freezing temperatures decimated most of their tiny band of 102 immigrants in the first six months.

And this is where it gets personal.

My great, great, great, great… Pilgrim grandmother, Priscilla Mullins, arrived at Plymouth in Massachusetts with her brother and their two parents, ready and likely excited to start a new life. But within months, the teenager’s mother, father, and 14-year old brother had succumbed to disease and starvation, leaving her alone with the other survivors, which included only three other women. Her family, along with the other dead, was buried in unmarked graves.

Priscilla was suddenly an orphan in a strange, scary land.

A year later, what could she have been thankful for?

Was she at all thankful for those torturous thorns in her life?

I can only speculate, but knowing that she was a devout follower of Jesus Christ, I’m going to guess that she had a few items on her thankful list.

My thorns—

About twenty years ago I started deliberately thanking God for the thorns He’s allowed me to get skewered by in my life. Why? Because it’s been in and through these thorns that I’ve grown the most emotionally and spiritually.

My thorns remind me that I’m really a helpless, puny human without much control over my life, although I often entertain, placate and blind myself by thinking I have more control over it than I do. The thorns keep my humble, relying on Someone greater than myself. The One who’s always in control. And that keeps me focused on and centered in my faith.

Surely, the memory and aftermath of being punctured by my thorns still hurts. After all, thorns do make you bleed. And they can leave nasty scars. Yet they have a tendency to remind you where you’ve ben, what you’ve survived, Who really got you through them, and where you should be going.

A (shocking?) admission—

What I’m going to write may shock or offend some of you, while others will nod their heads in collective sympathy and understanding.

As much as I still grieve and lament over my infant daughter, Victoria’s, death; as much as I still long to have her here with us; as much as I day-dream at every stage of life what she would look like and be doing, and mentally replay the dreams I had for her, I am grateful—thankful—that I walked that dark, horrible, thorn-ridden road. Because doing so brought me into a vivid, eternal life with the Supreme giver of life. A deeper, more fruitful, fulfilling and joyful life in the here and now, and in the eternal.

I’d like to think that it really didn’t need to happen that way. But in my heart, I know it did. I would have kept going just as I was, with one foot in the world and the other on a spiritual banana peel.

I’m thankful for those thorns. They remind me to Whom I belong, to Whom Victoria belongs. And they remind me that I will one day see my daughter face-to-face. And I will rejoice that we’ll spend eternity together. They give me one more reason to look forward to heaven.

Each year I move closer to that precious reunion celebration.

And give thanks.

Back to my Pilgrim family—

So what was Priscilla Mullins thankful for that cold fall day?

I can only guess.

Even though she was a firm believer in God, His word, and His promises, I suspect she went through the normal stages of grief all of us encounter: shock, fear, denial, anger, depression, exhaustion. Being a Christian doesn’t make you immune to suffering the effects of losing a loved one, of experiencing profound loss.

Being a Christian does mean, however, that you experience something in addition.

It means you grieve with hope, rather than without it.

Your grief is hopeful, not hopeless.

Priscilla may have sat at the table, thanking God for His protection over her and the other survivors, for the memory of her parents and brother, for the hope of the future, and probably for the new man in her life—John Alden, with whom she would have 10 children and produce more descendants in the United States than any other Pilgrims.

I often think of her and wonder if her unwavering faith and prayers for her children and children’s children paved the way for the blessings I’ve received in my life. Many of my blessings may be the result of her generational faithfulness.

For that, I also give thanks.

As my older son once said to me while he was in college, after making some big mistakes and suffering for them, and struggling against events not in his control: “I wouldn’t change a thing about my life. I don’t regret any of the mistakes or the problems. Because they all make me the person I am today.

And that person he is today just became a first-time father last Thursday morning to a beautiful, precious baby girl. Another descendant who made me a grandma.

I have been praying for this baby—Baby Ellie—for months. My heritage, my reward.

I’m counting a plentitude of blessings this year.

And I’m sure you can count both thorns and beauty in your life this Thanksgiving!

Invitation—

What the thorns you’ve experienced in life?
Did you consider these thorns blessings in any way?
How is it possible for you to be thankful for them?
How did God see you through them so they might become a blessing?

Next week, we’ll look at Advent and the importance of celebrating the coming of Christ more than two thousand years ago, and His future coming.

Until then, may joy and thanks abound this Thanksgiving Day. I’m going to guess you’ll never forget your 2020 Day of Thanks!

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, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

Honest Grief

As we wrap up our series on grief recovery and completion, I want to return once more to an aspect of grieving that’s often overlooked or avoided.

Honest grief.

It’s the belief that it’s counterproductive and usually dangerous to avoid truth in grief, either with yourself, your family members, your friends or involved children.

Let’s look at this one more time.

Illusions and euphemisms harm rather than protect—

While avoiding the topic of grief, or any difficult topic, may look like a good idea in the short term, putting off truth-telling usually sets you up for future failure and larger problems down the road.

When you avoid, you often end up believing or spreading inaccuracies. Or allowing them to take root and spread. The way to avoid those inaccuracies is to communicate honestly about your emotional reaction to the pain of loss.

Author Alisa Childers describes grief as “harrowing.” Indeed, it is. It can feel as though you’re standing on a jagged precipice you’re either going to fall off or jump off. In her book Another Gospel? she notes:

“Something they don’t tell you in the movies is that upon receiving cataclysmic news, your body betrays you. My knees began to shake wildly, and my throat became dry and my voice creaking.”

Yes, as shock hits the body, which it did when Childers received news that her beloved 20-year-old nephew had died from a drug overdose, the bodily systems fail.

And right along with that, the emotion systems break down. It can feel as though your heart implodes. A weight that you can’t push off crushes your chest. Inflammation and the fight to survive tears through the body. And all that fighting and desperate attempt to equilibrate and normalize causes exhaustion.

Tell the truth about your feelings. Don’t hurt yourself, or others, (including children), with avoidance and lies or half-truths and euphemisms. As the Grief Recovery Institutes professionals note: “Silence or avoidance of the realities about loss creates more problems than it solves.”

Unspoken feelings can lead others to wrong conclusions about your feelings. Be honest. Be clear. Be effective at this process we call grief.

Being honest about your feelings gives you freedom to heal, and to thrive again.

When grieving progress, isn’t—

Before quiet, sterile funeral homes arrived on the scene, families usually gathered together to wash, prepare and dress the body of a deceased relative. It’s safe to assume that the mostly women and girls performing this task talked and reminisced about the deceased. They shared memories and feelings.

Then the body was laid in what used to be called the parlor, (now the living room, thanks to Better Homes Magazine), for several days so other family, friends and neighbors could come, pay their last respects, do more reminiscing and chat with the surviving grievers.

Food was shared. Time was offered and spent. Tears were shed. And stories told.

Now the process makes death more removed, more foreign, less personal.

Much of the important (and meaning-packed) ritual has been removed. Even a traditional funeral service, with the casket carried in, placed near the altar, and then carried back out to a waiting hearse, has largely been replaced with a “memorial service” to sing worship songs, chat (a little) about the deceased, and then maybe enjoy a potluck buffet in the church fellowship hall or a favorite restaurant or club.

Eighty years of life gets you an hour memorial and some sweet and sour meatballs, or a cheese ball and crackers.

The older I get the better raucous Irish wakes look to me.

This new minimalistic tradition can hamper grieving and healing. I would do all that I could to resist rushing through it, or be rushed through it because a well-meaning friend wanted to protect me.

And, yes, have a funeral or memorial (Do something!)—

In this uncertain and disruptive time we live in, I still believe we should do whatever we can to have a funeral or memorial service, even if that means inviting people to join via ZOOM, or some other recording technology to watch a service and burial; or join together in an online meeting to share eulogies, express grief, thankfulness or memories together.

There is a tremendous amount of healing and grief progress that comes with these rituals, these rights of passage for not only the deceased, but most especially for the remaining friends and loved ones.

Don’t deprive yourself or others of this passage. It will be difficult, but it will be worth—for you and others.

NEXT WEEK: a word on giving thanks in all circumstances and kicking off the holidays. They’re certainly going to be different this year.

But Thanksgiving will be BIG for our family, at least in spirit and celebration.

The engineer and I are going to welcome our first grandchild into the world this week. To say we are excited is an understatement!

Until then,

may God guide you through any grieving process you may find yourself traversing to the light on the other side of its darkness.

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, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

Grief: What keeps you from healing

A LOT OF THINGS CAN HAMPER OR CURTAIL grieving. One is the fear of and attempt to reject your feelings. Another is the use of psychopharmaceutical drugs to dampen the emotions and pain. We’ll briefly cover both on today’s post.

The danger of trying to reject your feelings and emotions—

Whether or not the attempted rejection comes from you, a domineering and opinionated family member or well-meaning friend, trying to reject or dampen your feelings can seriously derail your grieving.

The problem often lies with someone else trying to fix your feelings. Make them better. “Help” you get past them too soon. Or manipulate and change what feelings you are having.

Don’t do it to yourself and don’t let someone else try to do it to you. If they do try, lessen or curtail your interactions with them until you are strong enough to lay down boundaries or respect.

I can’t stress enough how much you need to respect yourself, your unique relationship with the deceased person, and the emotions and feelings unleashed during the grieving process.

Acknowledge those feelings, address them, understand where they’re coming from and why they’re there. They’ll come out now or later in some fashion. If you try to tamp them down, ignore or reject them, (especially the negative ones), they’re more likely to rear their ugly and disabling heads in other areas of your life—like relationships and physical and emotional health.

You want to be fully healthy—emotionally, physically and spiritually. You want to live again. Thrive!

The dangers of psychopharmaceutical drugs—

While using anti-depressants or anti-anxiety drugs might seem like a good course of action, and may be necessary for one’s sanity and being able to sleep and hold it all together in the early stages of grief, be cautious when considering or accepting a prescription for them.

First, some come with a host of side effects, one of which is suicidal thoughts. And that’s often what we’re trying to avoid with anti-depressant medication.

They can become emotionally habit-forming. While they’re not addictive in ways substances like methamphetamine, heroin or alcohol are addictive, Elizabeth Wurtzel notes in an Addiction Center online article that:

“People can still develop a physical dependence on the antidepressants. Individuals with depression are also more likely to abuse other drugs.”

Another danger with psychopharmaceutical drug intervention is the drugs can mask a person’s normal, natural responses to grief. Drug-free grieving may give the griever a better opportunity to feel his or her feelings, deal with them and complete the grieving process sooner and more completely and effectively.

So please don’t be in a hurry to ask your doctor for an anti-depressant prescription. Try the natural approach first. If you find the pain grief too debilitating, then seek counseling or pharmaceuticals.

NEXT WEEK, we’ll look at the fallacy of protecting someone from grief, misunderstandings of reactions to death, and the benefits of talking about death.

Until then,

Remember that grief is not easy, but there are concrete steps we can take to make it easier, and survive it and thrive after it!

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, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

How to Grieve Well: Successful Steps to Completing Your Grief Healing—Part 9

FOR THE LAST SEVERAL MONTHS we’ve searched, dug, uncovered, remembered and relived, all for the sake of grieving well and achieving what we call grieving completion. But does discovery mean we’ve successfully arrived at completion?

No. Awareness and discovery are not grief completion. We still have some work to do.

Why discovery doesn’t equal grief completion?

Let’s imagine the following scenario: If you learned that you had hurt a friend’s feelings, would just knowing you hurt them rectify the problem? Surely not. You would, hopefully, want to go to that friend and apologize to them, to have the relationship restored, if possible.

If you didn’t apologize, both you—and your friend—would remain incomplete, with that offense likely hanging over both of your heads and hearts for years.

Your realization of your offense does not naturally complete what was left emotionally unfinished.

You need to take action.

Keep sounding (and feeling) like a broken record, or enjoy freedom—

Maybe you know someone who keeps repeating the same story over and over and over again. Or maybe you know you’re guilty of doing that. You know they—or you—sound stuck in the past, and you don’t know how to get them, or you, unstuck.

When you carry the repetitive accounts around inside your heart and head, never able to let them go or bring a satisfactory end to them, you’re actually limiting and restricting your life from possibilities, freedom, peace and joy. And each time the story is repeated the resentments—or regrets—pile up.

You don’t need to relive the pain, frustration or anger the rest of your life; you can put a period on those emotions. You can apologize. You can forgive. You can state what you always wanted to say or what you know you should have said out loud and free your heart and mind from the burdens they’ve been carrying around for far too long.

What about exaggerated memories and embellished stories?

When a person is grieving, they often embellish their stories or create fairytale characters out of their deceased loved ones—both good and evil characters.

Unfortunately, doing this can put a serious barrier on the road to grief completion. The goodness of the deceased person is embellished; the person’s sins get expanded like hot air balloons. We can deify people just as easily as we can demonize them.

Be careful to not create or write a story that’s more untruthful than realistic. Believe it or not, these extremes can be covers for unfinished relationships, words and actions.

Tell the important positive things. Divulge the uglier, more hurtful events. Tell of wonderful promises kept and promises broken. In the end, your story and its ending will be realistic, and it can be a powerful witness to forgiveness, transformation and peace to someone aching to find those things.

For both positive and negative events, the freedom you gain from going through this sometimes difficult relationship review and grief completion allows you to acknowledge and let go of unrealized hopes, dreams and expectations about what transpired in the past and what could or should have occurred in the future. Or what you hoped would have occurred.

What we’re aiming for is freedom.

And exactly what does that mean for the grieving person? This statement from the Grief Recovery Institute drives the point home:

“Freedom does not mean the end of sadness, but it can mean the end of pain. Freedom allows fond memories to stay fond and not turn painful. Freedom allows [you] to remember loved ones the way [you] knew them in life rather than to be fixated on the images of the loved one in death.”

You can also be freed from haunting memories of a not-so-loved one. Terrible things that happened will take up less mental and heart real estate. The pain and hurt of broken promises will fade away and consume you less.

Next step: Completion—

Let’s return to the sample question list I introduced last week. How did you answer those?

Were you able to uncover times where apologies were warranted? Forgiveness needed to be given?

Did you remember significant events, both good and bad? Did you note what you wished could have been better, different, or you would have had more of?

Were you able to uncover events in the four critical areas that help you communicate those undelivered emotional thoughts and feelings?

Apologies
Forgiveness
Significant emotional statements that aren’t apologies or forgiveness. You know, really important stuff.
Fond memories—things you want to thank the person for, things you appreciated about them.

If you really dug deeply and answered them forthrightly, you’re ready to compile the necessary statements into a form where you are delivering, completing and saying goodbye.

Let’s see what that looks like.

Delivering your relationship review statements, completing grief, and saying goodbye—

So what, exactly, does a relationship review letter look like? How long is it? With whom do you share it?

The letter looks like any other letter you might write to someone, about the significant parts of your shared relationship, your joys, your hurts, your apologies, your forgiveness. The length will usually depend upon the relationship and the depth of it, how much life passed between you and the other person.

While you don’t have to include everything you noted on the emotional energy checklist, you’ll want to make sure you include the significant emotional comments.

The important things to remember about this letter are what it’s not, and what it is.

First, it’s not a journal or diary entry, and it’s not really a full story.

It’s a story that communicates the apologies, forgiveness, significant emotions and fond memories contained in a special or significant relationship. It’s a way to un-trap those bottled up emotions and release the energy surrounding a death or loss.

It also gives you a conduit to say a formal goodbye to the physical relationship that no longer exists. The letter makes it possible to say goodbye to the emotional aspects of the relationship when the physical relationship is over.

Let’s take the example of a young man (say, in his early twenties) whose father suffered from mental illness and committed suicide.

The young man might start his letter with stating just how difficult life has been since his father’s death. The pain, the shock, the way his dad was found. How he still feels numb. How much he hurts over what happened.

Then he might talk about all the wonderful things he remembered about his dad when he was younger, and talk about significant trips or events they shared. Say how much he enjoyed those. And he can talk about the significant disappointments.

Then he might move into talking about his dad’s mental illness and how it affected him and how he saw it affecting his dad. How it damaged their relationship. And then make a forgiving statement to his father about how he knows it wasn’t his dad’s fault that he suffered from something he had no control over.

And the young man might feel it was necessary to apologize for his behavior toward his father at certain times, when the mental illness came between them or had a negative effect on their relationship or the family. How he was impatient and treated his father in an unloving or even mean way because of it.

He might talk about how he blamed his mom for the problems, because she was the most available and easiest person to blame.

Toward the end of the letter, the young man might say how upset he was at his dad’s selfishness, for the time and events his dad had and his actions had robbed them of—like college graduation, birthdays, marriage and grandchildren. Maybe the young man is sorry that he’s feeling so angry with his father and needs to make a forgiveness statement about that and the future.

Finally, he could tell his dad just how much he misses him, loves him, and forgives him and is glad he is no longer suffering. How grateful he is for the time they did have together. But how he still doesn’t understand why his father would do something so extreme and unloving as to take himself away from all of them. Maybe he might ask his father in the letter if he didn’t feel loved enough. Maybe he feels as though his dad didn’t fight hard enough to get well, or stay alive for his family.

But at the end of the letter, he can tell him again how much he loves and misses him, and say “goodbye.”

It’s always important to say goodbye.

Then he can read this letter, which is likely to be lengthy, to a friend, a grief group member, or a trust family member. Someone who will just listen to his heart being poured out.

For this kind of tragic event, it’s not unusual for the surviving children (or spouse) to feel deep anger, deep regret, and deep guilt over what they think they could have done or should have done or wished they’d done differently. Or maybe what the doctors could have or should have done. These things need to be expressed.

Let’s look at another letter that might be written by a ten-year child at the events surrounding the death of her father to a terminal illness. Yes, even children should go through this relationship review exercise.

“Dear Dad,

Why did you have to die? The last time I saw you you promised you would see me soon, but you broke your promise. I know you love me and wanted to see me, and you didn’t die on purpose, so I forgive you. But I miss you so much, and I didn’t like it when Aunt Amy came to school to get me instead of Mom. But I forgive Mom, too, because she was with you.

I miss skipping to school with you, and visiting you in the hospital, even though you looked strange. I’m sorry I was rude to you that day when I told you I was fed up with you feeling so poorly and that it wasn’t fair I didn’t get to visit my cousins. I’m sorry you were sick so much. I was sad a lot because you were so sick. And I was worried.

I wish I could have been allowed to visit you that last week in the hospital. And I felt so confused when Aunt Mary came to pick me up at school.

I miss you, Dad. I don’t understand why you had to die. I’m still angry. I wish you were still here to look after me and Jack, and make my meals, and take me to school and pick me up. I just wanted you to know that.

I love you, Dad.

Goodbye,

Ann

This letter is very short, probably because of the writer’s age. But don’t put a specified length on your letter. Just make sure you say what you need to say, and then say goodbye.

Always say goodbye.

And when you’re satisfied that you’re finished, you must read your relationship review letter to someone.

As the experts at the Grief Recovery Institute note:

“The key to completion is that the thoughts, feelings, and ideas must be verbalized and be heard by another living human being to be a ‘completed’ communication.”

Undelivered communications of an emotional nature must always be verbalized.

And if you’re listening to someone deliver this kind of letter, think of yourself as a heart with ears.

So always, always, always listen with your heart!

What about other significant losses?

There are other significant losses besides death.

There is moving and leaving cherished friends, maybe nearby family, a job you enjoy.

There’s divorce.

There’s physical and emotional or psychological trauma.

There are a number of ugly and shocking things that can happen and that may deeply affect you in life.

These tools we’ve covered the last several months can be used for all of them. Hopefully, you’ll be able to put them to good use for yourself and perhaps others.

They’re game and life-changers.

Invitation—

This is your opportunity to put your hard work together. Take the time you need to compose a letter you’re satisfied with and then find a heart with ears to listen to your heart.

NEXT WEEK we’ll do a grief recovery wrap-up by talking a little bit about drugs used in battling grief and telling the truth when you’re grieving.

Until then,

Find a heart with ears, or be one.

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, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

How to Grieve Well: Successful Steps to Completing Your Grief Healing—Part 8

FOR SEVERAL MONTHS we’ve been exploring and working our way through grief—the importance of grief recovery and completion; leaning into and embracing our volatile (and sometimes scary, overwhelming) emotions; learning the basics and language of loss and grief; what emotional energy is and how it contributes to the grieving process; the importance of apologies and forgiveness; basic relationship reviews; the individual uniqueness of grief; the dangers of harboring resentment in grief; everything you need to know about grieving well.

Step-by-step we’ve explored the process, taken concrete actions to achieve a satisfactory grief completion.

With all of that work in hand, we’ll move onto asking the hard questions to expose all the emotional energy factors needed to write our relationship review letters.

Remembering and addressing the details of a relationship review in grief—

As we’ve discussed before, each relationship is individual and unique, so the answers we give to our emotional energy checklist for our relationship review letter will be individual and unique.

You are human and undoubtedly have emotions you want to honestly share or get out in the open. I don’t know too many people that enjoy bottling up emotions, although they may have been taught that’s what they should do following a loss or death. That teaching just isn’t true, or healthy.

Now’s the time to get it all out. Feel. Unload. Vent. Remember.

And complete what the death or loss started, unleashed or exposed.

Although not an exhaustive list, here are some of the things you’ll want to ask yourself or remember and make note of for your letter. They pertain to the relationship you had with the person you’ve lost or the friendship that’s been severed:

When did you first meet the person?
What events surrounded that first introduction?
Did you have a special name for the person?
What kind of personality did the person have?
What kinds of gifts did you share or receive from them or give to them?
What kinds of gatherings did you enjoy, at their house? Yours? Trips together?
What kinds of perfumes or aftershave did they wear, if any?
Did you ever have any arguments with them, and about what? How often?
Were they kind and loving or teases?
What kind of unique, personal mannerisms or quirks did they have?
Did you see each other frequently? Chat often on the phone? Worship together?
What personal events did you share?
What personal stories did you share?
How much did you trust this person, and why?
Did you love seeing and visiting with this person, or not?
Was there something about them that made communicating or living with them difficult? (Alcoholism, mental illness, attitudes, etc.)
Were you happy about the amount of contact you had with this person, or not?
If you lived a long physical distance from them, were you happy or unhappy about not seeing them more often than you did?
Were you together for major events?
If they died because of an illness, how often did you get to see them?
How did you learn about the person’s illness?
How did their illness affect them/you?
Were you able to talk about your feelings with them, or someone else close to them?
Are you willing to talk about the person’s illness now? Were you then?
How did the end of their life progress? How did you handle it?
What do you remember about the last days or end of your relationship with the person?
What kind of emotional response did you and they have to this illness, impending death, and your relationship?
Were you included in the end of life process, goodbye, funeral or memorial?
Did you get to say goodbye, or was there an abrupt end to the relationship?
Did your friend or the family leave you left out of the end-of-life or memorial process? How do you feel about that?
Is there anyone you feel safe talking to about your feelings and hurts or fears about this person and the loss?
Are you trying to take care of others’ emotional needs and disregarding yours in the process?
How did their death impact you emotionally as soon as you learned of it?
How did the severing of the relationship impact you? (Anger, shock, fear, frustration?)
What kinds of emotions did others express at the death?
Did you attend the memorial service? Why or why not?
What kinds of memories, regrets, dreams, or emotions have you experienced in the days, weeks, months or years since the death of relationship loss?
How have you recognized birthdays, special occasions, or holidays following the loss?
Did the person miss any significant events you wish they could have attended or you would have liked them to attend?
What kind of relationship do you now have with the survivors, or other, mutual friends?

Talking about the good, the bad, and the sometimes ugly parts of a relationship—

I know it can seem or feel wrong to talk about the bad parts of a relationship after the person has died, but it’s important to acknowledge and voice the whole truth. It’s a critical step in making us emotionally complete and completing the grieving.

Grief is often confusing, complicated, long and exhausting. And scary. This is what we’re walking through, in the best way we can do it. To continue with life and thrive.

That’s what we’re doing with the questions and the relationship review, which we’ll get closer to completing next week.

Until then, I invite you to work on these questions, answer them honestly and completely. Doing so will likely trigger more feelings, emotions and memories—both good and bad. You may cry again. Laugh again. Regret again. Rejoice over a loved one’s life and her impact on yours, again.

It’s worth the effort.

Invitation—

I invite you to take some time this week to answer all of the above questions to the best of your ability. Write complete sentences or thoughts and feelings. Don’t worry about chronology right now. We’ll be able to write and tidy up our letters later.

If you need to catch up on our discussion, see the following posts for this life-changing information:

Grief Struggles and Short-Term Energy-Relieving Behaviors

Understanding and Dealing with Undelivered or Unaddressed Emotions and the Important of Grief Completion

The importance of grief completion.

The basics of a relationship review in grief.

Importance of apologies in grief, for loss or death grief

The importance of forgiveness in loss and grief and dangers of harboring resentment.

Understanding and incorporating significant emotional statements.

Reviewing the good, the bad, and what you wish had been different.

What you need to know about grieving well, what contributes to the nervous energy you experience in grief, and the basics of loss and grief.

Until next week, may God give you wisdom and grace as you relive your life with the person lost to you.

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, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.