How We Heal in Grief
ten years ago
i didn’t know anything about grief
i was 25 years old and death came
knocking at my door
it was bad enough getting a surprise
visit from death
but even worse to find out that he was
here for my daughter skyler
who was just two months old my husband
and i
found out she had a terminal condition
called spinal muscular atrophy
we’d be lucky to see her first birthday
i told death that i would do everything
i could to keep him out of our home
but def knew from experience that it was
just a matter of time
and so he waited patiently on our front
porch
and every day i would see him and every
day i would look at my daughter’s face
and know that i didn’t know how much
time we had left
or how much time any of us had left for
that matter
i would sit with my daughter at night as
she fell asleep
wondering if tomorrow would be the day
that death would come for her
i cursed death almost daily
but i realized that the fear and the
worry that i felt
watching her and wondering was robbing
me of peace
and joy so
eventually i committed to letting go
letting that fear and worry to stay
focused on the present
and eventually i started to find peace
even with death sitting by my side
over the next months death even began to
inspire me
his presence reminded me to focus
on the present to make the most of her
time together knowing
we might not know how much we have left
my husband and i spent time walking
around our neighborhood
enjoying walks exploring the georgia
aquarium
snuggling and watching movies that was
my favorite
we even had a friend gift us a
professional portrait session to
preserve memories
over the next months death and i became
closer
we spent more time together he even came
inside to sit with me
there were several days that skyler
would turn blue and i would be able to
get her back
several evenings that my husband and i
would sit around the table
and talk to death knowing
that he was going to somehow fit into
our future
with the help of other sma families and
an sma researcher
we were able to have 21 beautiful
and challenging months with our baby
girl skylar
before we had to say goodbye
the time came for death to transition
skyler out of this world
and that day was the hardest day of my
life
as i held her in my arms as she took her
last breath
the pain in my chest was indescribable
i understood how people could die of a
broken heart
i knew that i would survive
with each inhale and with each exhale
found that i was getting through those
moments
that grief in that raw moment after
losing skylar was
nothing like the grief that i learned
about through the five stages
i had heard about the argument arguing
i’m sorry the anger and the bargaining
the depression and the final acceptance
of
of grief but what i realized was that
resonated with me so much more in her
diagnosis
than in her actual death and in
researching grief and learning more
about it i realized that
these stages of grief were actually
researched and discovered for people
facing their own
death
that was really revolutionary for me
because that made so much more sense
there are these five stages that lead to
an endpoint
someone’s death
i wondered what else we had gotten wrong
about grief
we chose to bury skyler in a natural
cemetery
my husband built her box
with so much love and grief it was
heartbreakingly beautiful
ramsay creek preserve let us dig her
hole
and bury her ourselves something that
was so painful
but it felt so right something that we
could do
to honor her and take care of her
our last act as parents before putting
her in the ground
as we really just went to
that burial ground and dug we took the
shovels and
pierced the ground and used our grief
and despair to help us
we were slinging dirt and eventually it
just led to disbelief
how could we be doing this how are we
burying
our little girl
it was not an easy thing but it also was
so good
and healing i’ll never forget when it
was done we were soaked
in snot sweat and tears
we were working so hard
and that georgia red clay is tough man
and it was just so hard but it was so
good because with each piercing of the
ground
we were able to let some of that energy
and emotion flow
out and when it was done we went down to
the creek
and we washed our hands that were
covered in clay
and as the water poured over them it
felt as if
there was a cleansing happening and my
hand slowly went
from dark red to white
and as i watched the clay drift off in
the current i felt a little piece of my
pain go with it
skyler’s memorial service was just a few
days later
and it was the first time i was taught
anything formally about grief
our pastor did a phenomenal job honoring
schuyler’s life
our pain and our grief he did
such a beautiful job i hope i can do his
words justice here
but he said sometimes
in the rush to fix things to make things
better we say things that we ought not
to say
it is not okay let’s not hurry this
process
i promise you there is nothing you can
do
or say to make this better
and he looked at my husband and i and
said kyle and ashley
we are not going to try and fix your
pain
or hurry you but we’re gonna sit with
you
in this and we’re gonna ask for god’s
help
his mercy and his grace
he went on later to say that one of the
most damaging things we can do
is to ignore the pain of grief to
pretend like it doesn’t hurt
as bad as it really does we’re not doing
grief justice when we do that
his words were such a relief when i was
growing up no one really told me about
grief
i had lost relatives and friends in high
school
and really from observation i just
learned to
be sad at first and that was okay but
after some
undetermined amount of time it was just
known that you
stopped talking about it and that you
just keep it private as if it were
something that’s not acceptable
or to be ashamed of
as i went through those losses
you know i had well-intentioned people
trying to comfort me and maybe you’ve
had this experience too
where you have a pet maybe that you
lost as a kid and your parents went out
and replaced it quickly without really
talking to you about it
maybe you had a heartbreak and that’s
something that
your friends tried to encourage you with
to say
it’s gonna be okay you’ll find someone
else someone better
well what they’re basically saying is
that it’s not okay to be pain
in pain right now and they’re trying to
force you into the future
but the future isn’t here yet and
we need to sit with the pain in the
present because that’s where the healing
happens
we can only experience life in the here
and the now
on the inhale and the exhale each moment
that we have together
if we try to live in the past it can
lead to depression and if we try to live
in the future it can lead to anxiety
life and hap life and love happen in the
present moment
and grief and healing happen in the
present too
after the memorial we returned home to
an empty kid’s room
i could barely stand it but i really
wasn’t ready to change it either
as i would look around the room i would
see her photos
framed around on the shelves
and they were such a stark reminder of
the permanence of her loss
and my heart would see her all over
again and i would just have to turn them
down
but as the weeks went on i just missed
her
and i wanted to see her sweet smile
again
and so one by one i started turning the
photos back up
and on ugly like on hard days
i would ugly cry with them like the kind
of ugly crack you don’t do in front of
other humans
like snot pouring out of your face
sounds that even scare your own
self and that was just such a freedom to
have to sit with those photos and let
that out
on the good days i could look at them
and smile at them
and see her smiling back at me and tell
her how much i missed her
on the lonely days they gave me a way to
hold her
when she wasn’t here to hold
over time i realized that these photos
were the greatest tool i had in my grief
they gave me
a space to feel the fullness of whatever
i was feeling without
fear i didn’t have to worry about
judgment from anyone else or
expectations
it was amazing and i wanted to give that
gift
to others in that time of grieving i was
able to transition
from focusing inward and being in
survival mode to starting
to look outward again and so i keep my
ears open
and any time i heard of anyone facing a
terminal diagnosis
i would volunteer a portrait session
i knew how special those photos were and
the cool thing is people took me up on
it so
i showed up for this family and
the impact was incredible this little
girl
was able to introduce her new friends to
her daddy
through this book after he died of
cancer
a mom was validated on mother’s day
weeks after she had lost her first baby
i wish i could tell you all the stories
but
for the sake of time i’ll just let you
know that
every single story had a profound impact
on me and inspired me to keep showing up
even when times got hard
this led me to create love not lost a
non-profit organization
focused on supporting people in grief
with love and empathy
as we showed up to serve families facing
a terminal diagnosis
we were listening to their stories to
their struggles
and we learn that there’s this trend of
people not showing up
people who they thought they could count
on for support friends and family
just disappearing we would hear
that they were afraid to lose their jobs
because
of their underperformance in grief or
even losing
their job because of missing too much
work caring for a loved one on hospice
as love not lost grew i was invited to
speak to more places
and in that i met so many incredible
people
and i would hear that you know
afterwards people would line up
afterwards to talk to me and
they would tell me how much they
appreciated my talk and how they didn’t
know how to support their loved ones or
their friends or co-workers
and so i started realizing like that’s a
big gap okay
then i would have executive leaders come
up to me and tell me
how they weren’t sure how they were
going to support people on their teams
going through grief
and they needed help
so without um
you know it’s like there’s so much of
the unknown
and misconceptions if that’s you and
you’re feeling like yeah i don’t know
what to do with either i don’t know what
to do with grief either and i want to
show up for someone
please know you’re not alone
there are so many misconceptions that
can make grief
even worse people having unhealthy
expectations
or grieving people feeling like they’re
doing it wrong
that only adds to the pain so let me be
clear
grief is not a singular emotion that
anyone can just
move on or get over it’s complex
we grieve because we love grief is just
love in another form
it’s the yen to the yang of love
we never lose love and we never lose our
grief
it’s a state of being it’s a process of
healing
and what i learned is this to heal we
must grieve
to grieve we must feel and to feel we
must be present
even in those hard and uncomfortable
moments
that are so challenging to sit with
2010 is the year that death came
knocking on my door
it’s 20 20 now it is a wild year
we are all experiencing loss and trauma
of all kinds
and i want you to know if you’re
grieving you’re human
and you’re not alone grief is a natural
and normal response to loss of something
we loved or valued
there are many types of grief we are
experiencing
collective grief as we all go through
this together
we have anticipatory grief of the loss
yet to come
we have ambiguous grief where you’re
losing
not the person but maybe who they were
you’re me you’re sorry we’re all going
through
different losses and we have compounding
losses too
grief that happens with more grief
happening behind it before we can even
process what’s already happening
we have losses that are domino affecting
and creating secondary losses
we are all going through this together
and it is so
so hard the acute grief that we’re
feeling now
and the chronic grief that we’ll be
feeling for years to come
and it’s easy to think of grief in the
hard moments
but grief happens in the happy moments
too with a marriage
you lose the sense of independence
with having a baby you lose a sense of
freedom
those losses often go unacknowledged but
they’re important to feel
you may not be able to put into words
what you’re feeling in your grief
it may feel like you’re foggy or cloudy
or you’re sick
physically or anxiety or depression but
whatever grief you have in your life
i believe that 20 20 is asking you to
listen
with each instance of loss and trauma
in the midst of pain we receive an
invitation to heal
to slow down to be present
to listen and respond with intention
healing for you won’t look the same as
healing for me
just as grief doesn’t look the same for
you as it does for me
we all experience it uniquely even
myself
the different losses that i’ve
experienced are all unique in their own
way
but the good news is that grieving is a
skill it is something you can get better
at
it took me a while to realize that my
body was designed to heal
and that grief was working for me and
not against me
as i improved in the areas of
mindfulness and meditation
and self-care i got better at healing
and grief
truly listening because after all our
emotions
are the core of being human
emotions our energy a frequency
their energy e motion in motion
and as we can feel them and let them
move through us
we can heal i think that’s a big reason
why
digging our daughter’s grave was so
great because they helped us with that
motion
getting those feelings out there’s a
narrative in our society though that
emotions are bad that if you’re a man
feeling too much can make you seem weak
or too feminine
and for women that you can be seen as
dramatic
or too much this is a really dangerous
and damaging narrative in our society
and it’s something that i hope we can
change
our emotions are the language of the
body
they help us connect to ourselves and
each other
and so our battle is against
distractions
and staying present we have so much
noise in our lives
the physical noise of traffic and
construction to the digital noise of
advertising consumerism
scrolling on social media 24-hour news
reporting
and then we have the noise inside of our
heads
that noise the lies that were not good
enough that we should be ashamed of
something we’ve done
or that we’re not worthy of love that is
the noise that can cause us to check out
to disconnect from ourselves to avoid
pain
and our society tells us that pain is
bad but what if pain
is here to help us heal
i believe that if we can lean into that
pain
if we can be present in those hard
emotions
we can stay connected to ourselves to
heal
we can’t focus on other people until we
focus on ourselves
i don’t know if you’ve heard of the
phrase hurt people hurt people
but i believe that to be true but i also
believe
that healed people heal people
and so as we continue to show up for
ourselves
and face the things that we need to face
we learn how to hold space for ourselves
to love ourselves with
uncondition and acceptance so that we
can show up for others and do the same
i think being present in life is one of
our greatest challenges pain
loss and grief can be really hard but
they can be really helpful
as a catalyst to change change that we
wouldn’t have otherwise made
i can never go back to the person i was
before skylar and nor would i want to
healing is a process of becoming whole
not reverting to who we were i joke
around that
my life before skyler was bs like bs
uh before skylar but also bs total bs
because
i cared so much about image and name
brand
and awards and what people thought of me
so much more than i cared for myself
it was hard but that grief
wrecked me in good ways too it gave me a
fresh perspective
something i’m so grateful to have at
such a young age
to realize that love is the most
important thing that we have
on this earth it connects us all
it connects us to ourselves and to each
other
i believe it brings healing too and at
love not lost the driving question
of our organization is how can we love
people better
remember how i told you that there were
people who were hurting
and people who were not showing up for
them
well we saw a way that we could bridge
that gap
and help people show up in love
and so we connected them through tools
like how can i love you better.com
when we heard about the people who at
work were feeling
um concerned that they were losing their
job or
going to be bullied we created a grief
and empathy support
program for executive leadership to
bring healing to the workplace
the key in showing up is not to be
afraid of your own emotions whatever
they are
and create a safe place for others and
not trying to fix or change
anything just letting it be
our mission is to revolutionize the way
we heal in grief
because death doesn’t discriminate it’s
here for each one of us
we just don’t know when that time is but
death isn’t the bad guy
distraction is disconnection
disconnection keeps us from loving
it keeps us from feeling and it keeps us
from healing
can we learn to be mindful can we
choose to be people who fight
distraction and anxiety
and intentionally stay present even in
the hard moments
i believe we can and i invite you to
join me
as we become healed people who heal
people