Everybody Hurts

In some of my recent correspondence, I've been telling people that I've incorporated grieving into my daily living. By that, I mean grief in a much wider context than my status as a widower. Going back to my 29 January post about Letting Go Emotionally, we can get a good idea about what grief is in the context of our dead spouse — the loosening or defusing of the emotional energy we have tied up with our lost loved one. Therèse Rando says grief is withdrawing emotional energy and investment from someone we love. I would also add that grief is the process of changing all our habits from our old, married life: thought habits, feeling habits, physical habits, mental habits, emotional habits, sexual habits, spiritual habits.

What I've discovered, though, is that there is a much wider context to grief. I'm now noticing references to grief concerning getting older (grieving the loss of youth), illness (grieving the loss of health), the empty nest (grieving the loss of parenting), and community (grieving the loss of an era). The grief principle remains the same in each case, namely changing our habits to free up our emotional energy and investment in these concepts.

I'm discovering more and more that our emotional energy is not so much tied up with these concepts per se, but rather with accumulated memories we have related to these concepts. The more accumulated memories we have acquired, the heavier the emotional investment and the stronger the emotional energy. And a subtle process occurs somewhere along the way — we come to believe that we are those memories.

This struck me today when I was reading the following from an interview on BeliefNet:

Do you feel like you're reinventing yourself for a second life?

Reinvention doesn't really say it for me. Nature doesn't reinvent itself every spring. It does what it does. God invents you. As you get older, the spiritual opportunity is to drop that which is false and to reclaim your true self. T.S. Eliot in "Four Quartets" says, "You're always going home. You're going back home." So, it's not so much that you're going forward, you're coming full circle. You are dropping this artificial self that accumulated -- the burdens, the disappointments, the fears, the falsehoods.

What are these accumulated burdens, disappointments, fears, and falsehoods? Memories. Nothing but memories. And we are not our memories. We are something much more than our memories.

I've been thinking of a bus-stop as a good analogy to living life from our memories. Picture yourself sitting peacefully at a bus-stop on a pleasant summer day. Suddenly, a bus screams up to the curb and slows, not stops. Without thinking, you jump on the bus and it careens around the corner, headed off to goodness knows where. You don't know the route exactly, although you have likely ridden this bus many times in the past. You probably don't even know the number of this bus, nor can you clearly articulate what possessed you to climb aboard. After an exhausting journey, you get booted unceremoniously to the curb, only to have another bus pull up, which you dutifully board, again oblivious as to what number it is or what route it will take. And why do we do this? Habit. And some of us get quite skilled at this on-off bus syndrome to the point where we can jump buses mid-stream. And we wonder why we are tired all the time!

As I continue to study alternative healing methods, a similar methodology emerges. The trick seems to be to notice the bus (a memory) pull up, but consciously refuse to board (don't replay that memory). Simply let the bus come and let the bus go. Remain peacefully at the bus-stop. Whether the technique is reciting a mantra, focusing on breathing and recognizing the impermanence, using the Theater of the Mind, or the Ho'oponopono technique of reciting, "I love you; I'm sorry; please forgive me; thank you," each technique seems to serve to occupy the mind long enough to distract it so that the bus can drive away.

I was reminded of this when I read this blog entry yesterday:

Everybody hurts.

You know, there's one little saying I carry very close to my heart:

"Everyone's having a rough time. Don't give them any more grief."

And isn't that just the truth?

We all get down. I mean, sometimes really down.

Down as in wanting the earth's crust to open up and swallow what little pride we have left.

Yes, indeed. Everybody hurts.

However we can always take solice in the idea that everything passes.

Today we hurt. Tomorrow we smile.

In the words of Hercule Poirot, (that oh-so-famous self-help guru), "Now, it is cloudy. In the morning, the sun shines. Such is life, madame."

I hadn't watched the R.E.M. video for this song before, but I was quite interested to see all the subtitles representing people's thoughts as they are stuck in traffic. Notice how many of those thoughts are related to memories:



I'll close with another part of the interview I quoted above:

When the mirror is no longer telling you what you thought you would like to hear and the culture is no longer telling you what you thought you would like to hear, sometimes that's when you finally have ears for what God wants to say to you. That's when you hear him say things sweeter than the mirror ever told you and sweeter than the culture ever told you. That's when you finally realize that you are loved, and you finally realize you are enough.

One Hour At A Time

If there's a most frequently-asked question from the bereaved, it is probably "how long will I feel like this?" And while there's no standardized answer in terms of months or years, an appropriate answer is, "a lot longer than you may think." Certainly the 1 year marker is no magical "Get Out Of Grief Free" day, and while not my personal experience, many widow/ers report that year 2 was in many ways harder than the first year. If you are reading this and are within the first year, this is probably not what you want to read, but it is important that you read it somewhere. Grief takes as long as it takes. That is, of course, assuming you do the heavy lifting of grief.

And what is the grief work to be done? I find it is almost always helpful to read what others further down the road have written regarding their journey and things that have helped them. Recently on Widownet, one poster explained 11 specific things that helped her get through 21 months of grief. I hope you find something here that can help you find peace:

---

Even with our loved ones wanting us to go on and be positive..... and you will..... down the line..... it isn't your time now. G-R-I-E-V-I-N-G is a long hard process which takes lots of time, energy, thinking, praying, sobbing.... And it seems like the timing for all of us is different. Yet I know for me at 21 months, I haven't made it over the marathon hills to even see the finish line (And in reality I don't think there is a finish line).

Things that worked for me along with this wonderful widownet site:

1. A GriefShare group


2. Journaling (I was never a writer but boy does that help. I write myself an email and put it in a journal folder. The date is stored on it. I have gone back and read some of my past posting and it helps me see that I have made some progress.)


3. Devouring every grief book I could.


4. Allowing myself to let the process be what it was. I just let it happen no matter how embarrassing and blubbering I was at the least expected times.


5. Learned about those who DGI (don't get it) and learned how to put my boundaries up.


6. I knew within myself that if I didn't grieve now (not trying to avoid or stuff it) it would manifest itself in crazy ways, down the line, for years to come


7. I knew who my 'safe' people were to be around.


8. I spent horrible sleepless nights where nothing helped me sleep (that's getting better). I used the sleepless nights to read, mediate, cry out to God for help and just plain CRY.


9. I knew the saying, "time heals all" wasn't completely true. I knew it was what I was going to do in that time that would help me heal... And sometimes 'doing' was doing nothing.


10. I have come out of the "why me" stage to "what am I suppose to learn from all of this." Now truthfully that still comes and goes somewhat. From reading my journals I have learned much.


11. I am not so much a DGI person in others lives now. I have more compassion for others. I listen more intently when others share with me their losses of any sort. My heart has been ripped open and I want to be there for others in my life whose heart is ripping too.

This is all happening to me slowly. I had numerous months of wailing, and being simply frozen with grief. I am starting to defrost. And I want all of you new ones on here to know your day will come. But until then just do the next thing. One step in front of the other. One hour at a time. Please know you are not going crazy, it's called GRIEF. A foreign emotion many of us never experienced to this degree before now.

Who Gets in Your Bucket?

Many times on our journey of grief, we run into people who want us to feel better, mostly so that they will feel better. We scare them. We are in more pain than they can imagine, and they think that platitudes or constant chiding will miraculously cure us of our grief. In the grief community, these folks are not-so-affectionately called "Don't Get It"s or DGIs for short. I like to call them the Clearly Clueless™. This kind of behavior is to be expected from strangers and acquaintances, and DGIs are simply part of the grief landscape. But what about when we get this behavior from close friends and family? Wouldn't it be helpful if we could print out a short article and have them read it? The following article by Doug Manning does a great job of explaining to DGIs why their reproaches are not at all helpful, as well as offering them a simple suggestion to truly help us:

Who Gets in Your Bucket?
— By Doug Manning

The best way I know to picture how we receive help from others in grief is to imagine you are holding a bucket. The size and color doesn't matter. The bucket represents the feelings bottled up inside of you when you are in pain. If you have suffered a loss, hold the bucket and think through how you feel right now. If you are reading this to learn more about helping others, then imagine what would be in your bucket if a loved one had died very recently. What is in your bucket?

Fear. Will I survive? What will happen to me now? Who will care for me? Who will be with me when I need someone near? Most likely your bucket is almost full just from the fear. But there is also:

Pain. It is amazing how much physical pain there is in grief. Your chest hurts, and you can't breathe. Sometimes the pain is so intense your body refuses to even move. There is enough pain to fill the bucket all by itself.

Sorrow. There is devastating sadness; overwhelming sorrow. A gaping hole has been bitten out of your heart and it bleeds inside your very soul. You cry buckets of tears and then cry some more.

Loneliness. There is no lonely like that felt when you are in a room full of people and totally alone at the same time. Loneliness alone can fill any bucket ever made.

I could go on, but that's enough to get the idea across, and hopefully get you started thinking through your own list. What is in your bucket?

Now picture someone like me approaching you and your bucket. I also have a bucket. My bucket is full of explanations. I am armed and ready to explain why your loved one had to die, how they are now better off and how you should feel.

I am also well equipped with new ways to look at your loss. In politics they call that "spin doctoring," but most human beings seem to know this skill by instinct.

I have almost a bucketful of comforting words and encouraging sayings. I can also quote vast amounts of scriptures. I seem to favor the ones that tell you not to grieve.

So we face each other armed with full buckets. The problem is, I don't want to get into your bucket. Yours is scary. If I get in there, you might start crying and I may not be able to make you stop. You might ask me something I could not answer. There is too much intimacy in your bucket. I want to stand at a safe distance and pour what is in my bucket into yours. I want the things in my bucket to wash over your pain like some magic salve to take away your pain and dry your tears. I have this vision of my words being like cool water to a dry tongue, soothing and curing as it flows.

But your bucket is full. There is no room for anything that is in my bucket. Your needs are calling so loudly there is no way you could hear anything I say. Your pain is far too intense to be cooled by any verbal salve, no matter how profound.

The only way I can help you is to get into your bucket, to try to feel your pain, to accept your feelings as they are and make every effort to understand. I cannot really know how you feel. I cannot actually understand your pain or how your mind is working under the stress, but I can stand with you through the journey. I can allow you to feel what you feel and learn to be comfortable doing so. That is called, "Getting into your bucket."

I was speaking on "Guilt and Anger in Grief " to a conference of grieving parents. I asked the group what they felt guilty about. I will never forget one mother who said, "All the way to the hospital, my son begged me to turn back. He did not want the transplant. He was afraid. I would not turn back, and he died."

I asked her how many times someone had told her that her son would have died anyway. She said, "Hundreds." When I asked her if that had helped her in any way she said, "No."

I asked her how many times she had been told that she was acting out of love and doing the right thing. She gave the same two responses. "Many times" and "No, it did not help."

I asked her how many times she had been told that God had taken her son for some reason, and she gave the same responses--"Many" and "No help."

I asked how many times someone had told her that it had been four years since her son's death and it was time to "Put that behind you and get on with your life." This time she responded with great anger that she had heard that from many well-meaning people, including family members, and that it not only did not help, it added to her pain and made her angry.

What I was really asking her is, "How many people have tried to pour their buckets into yours?"

I then said, "Would it help if I hugged you and said 'that must really hurt'?"

She said, "That would help a great deal. That would really help."

Why would that help? Because I was offering to get into her bucket with her and to be in her pain, instead of trying to salve over her pain with words and explanations.

If you are in pain, find someone who will get into your bucket. Most of the time these folks are found in grief groups or among friends who have been there. It is not normal procedure. It is hard to swallow our fears and climb into your bucket.

If you are reading this to find ways to help others in grief, then lay aside your explanations and your words of comfort. Forget all of the instructions and directions you think will help, and learn to say, "That must really hurt." I think that is the most healing combination of words in the English language. They really mean, "May I feel along with you as you walk through your pain?" "May I get into your bucket?"

Debriding Emotional Wounds

debridement

surgical removal of foreign material and dead tissue from a wound in order to prevent infection and promote healing

One really neat aspect of blogging that I wasn't aware of when I started this Grief Recovery Tools project is that I would meet really neat people through my writing. By registering as a Spousal Bereavement Expert on SelfGrowth.com, a great website whose mission is "to provide informative, quality Self Improvement and Natural Health information to help people improve their lives," there have been many invitations to join other Expert networks. One such Expert is Elizabeth Bohorquez, and she has written some amazing articles that I'd like to share with you. Here's the first one. Enjoy!

Inside My Critical Nature & Being

"Blessed is the man who can take bricks thrown at him & build a sound foundation"....Tom Pryor

Related SpokenWords, Thoughts & Emotional MindState - captious, carping, caviling, cavillous, censorious, critic, faultfinding, hypercritical, overcritical, discerning, discriminating, penetrating; finicky, fussy, particular; belittling, demeaning, disparaging, humbling, lowering.

Over the past few days I found myself journaling about criticism that tend to initiate conflicts...self-delivered & delivered by others. I learned from one of my patients that Gemini was in retrograde or something like that, meaning that communication is off. Of course this made me feel better immediately, knowing I had little to do with all the criticism floating around me.

Automatic writing or journaling is very helpful for me personally & I often recommend it to my patients as well, even if they balk about writing. The balking is usually fear-related. Yes, writing is committing ink to paper....or at least it was in the past. I still journal with real paper & pen. It helps to slow the mind down, allowing the images or ideas to form.

After so many years of working in this field, I'm still amazed at how the subconscious mind will cooperate with emotional reframing & healing. Sometimes all I really need is a good metaphor to manage my heavy-air days.

As I broached the subject of critical words, here are some things that came off of my pen....delivered directly from my subconscious mind.

1. Criticism can be a good thing, even if the person delivering it does not mean it as such.....myself included. Of course we are our biggest critic. That's no secret. I'm also well aware of constructive vs destructive criticism. However, I often have a problem with accepting the term constructive criticism, especially when it is delivered in what appears to be a destructive way. Or, is this just a matter of Gemini in retrograde?

2. It doesn't really matter if the criticism is constructive or destructive, nor if Gemini is having a problem or not. I can benefit from all of it... & if there is plenty of it around, it follows that I would could have a wealth of benefits, if I just did what I needed to do. Hmmm....

3. The subconscious mind often connects things in strange ways in order to make it's point. I was brought back to my time of nursing in Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center & to the memory of debriding wounds. Wounds cannot heal properly until the dead or infected tissue is removed, often speck by speck. The job of the wound care nurse is to utilize different techniques to achieve this. However, it cannot be done all at once. It is a process, sometimes taking months, depending on the depth or complexity of the wound. The metaphor is forming....

4. Emotional wounds are similar to physical ones. They must also be debrided. Criticism is like pouring acid into certain emotional wounds. Anyone who has experienced this phenomena is certainly familiar with the combination of physical & emotional pain that results. I know that I am....

5. Many of us were born into a very critical environments, thus making us highly sensitive to critical words. Simple words, even if delivered in a constructive way, can be very frightening & debilitating. As a child I had no power & had to develop ways to survive this type of environment, but as an adult I do have power & so it is my responsibility to debride mywounds so I can heal & continue my self-growth.

6. Managing stress is not the same as debriding wounds. While it is very important to eat correctly, meditate, exercise & practice mindfulness, if I truly want to heal & manage my emotions at higher levels, I must be willing to cleanse & debride my wounds.

7. Emotional wounds are debrided through awareness & timely releasing. When criticism is painful, there is a wound that needs to be cleaned. The process is simple, but not always easy. I remember that when treating a patient's wound, I'd often tell them, Yes, it hurts & no, it won't hurt forever. I remember....the patient learns to bring his/her attention to the breath & to ride it, just like riding gentle waves in the sea. The physical pain begins to move to the side & then diminishes. The patient learns to see/sense the wound healing from the bottom up.

8. The same holds true for emotional healing. As the wound heals from the bottom up, the mind will often send fragments of the debris. These may be in the form of old memories or emotions that need to be released. Opening & healing is now in process...

More About Criticism & Connected Conflicts...

There are other things that are helpful for me to remember. First off the bat, conflicts & criticism are inevitable, as long as I'm willing or interested in standing up for what I believe are my rights or beliefs.

It does help to simply the actual word conflict or criticism. The subconscious meaning of words can be so powerful as to disallow any scrutiny because of the attached, automatic mind fear patterns. Conflicts are simply two sets of demands, goals or motives that appear to be incompatible. I must remind myself that I deal with conflicts all day long. Some might be small & I may not even label these as conflicts, but they are nevertheless. This is a very important awareness because as I view them under the conflict or criticism label, I'll come to know that I have been developing excellent resolution skills for a very long time, some actually from early childhood.

Conflicts & accompanying criticisms come in sizes including small, medium & large. Some are more uncomfortable than others. The more uncomfortable tend to be connected to deeper wounds or more sensitive areas in the subconscious mind. Keep in mind that these are very valuable as debriding tools.

The conflicts or critiques I play in the theater of my mind tend to be more frequent & often larger. It's important for me not to forget that these also effect my body physiology & bring more debris to old, deep wounds. Engaging the thought process in awfulizing is a very bad habit & one that can have serious physical & emotional consequences.

This happens to be one of my habits & so I've asked my own subconscious mind to wake me when I'm doing this, so I have the opportunity to break the habit & release the stress. At the same time, I'll take advantage of the self-criticism & do a very more steps to debride any old wounds.

Simple Metaphors for Managing Criticisms...

Here's one I utilize for myself quite often. When someone is critical of me, I change those words in my mind. They are critical of something I've done. This simply means that we have a difference of opinion about this something. That is easier for me to accept & curbs the production of stress chemicals. Remember, I was born into a very critical environment, so I am very sensitive.

Next, in the theater of my mind, I take the "something" & rinse it off under my very beautiful golden faucet. I want to remove the emotional component that was part of the delivery. This way, I am free to examine the "something" & decide if I want to change anything about my part or my beliefs. I may do this immediately, or decide to wait. Then, I might simply thank the other person for bringing this to my attention & to let them know that I'll think about it. This moves me out of a defensive position, into one of maturity & self-control.

Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht is a Clinical Medical Hypnotherapist, who works in the area of loss & healing. Her websites offer many articles & discussion on the subject, as well as complimentary mp3 downloads.

To Live Is To Die

As I continue to tweak this Grief Recovery Tools blog to make it easier to find in the search engines, I often find myself re-reading my posts from when I first started writing. Today I was re-reading my post entitled "My Experience With Despair," and it struck me that I had written that grief is for life. I was struck for several reasons.

Firstly, I no longer believe that we have to live with unending pain for the rest of our lives. Certainly, that can be a choice for those who decide to become professional widow/ers, and 25 years can easily go by with little relief from that pain. I do remember that when I wrote that blog entry, a part of me was still against "settling" for a life of grief. At some level, it was unacceptable to me to settle. Probably, this was because I had made it a goal early on to reach the stage where I was totally at peace with Deb's death, and living with pain precludes being at peace. So, I continued to search for that peace. Since attending a free Vipassana Meditation course, I believe I have found that peace that I was seeking. The Vipassana website promises that "Life becomes characterized by increased awareness, non-delusion, self-control and peace," and I have certainly found that to be true.

Secondly, however, I was struck by the idea that grief is, in fact, for life. No, I'm not contradicting myself ;-) Grief is a healing process of letting go, and in that sense, we are grieving all the time. As humans, we like to live with this illusion that things can stay the same for long periods of time. The reality is that nothing stays the same for even one second. Everything is always changing. Even when we drill down to the atomic level of existence, we find that atoms are changing at the rate of billions of times per second. In fact, we use this principle to define what a second is.

So, this whole notion of stasis is really just a mental construct at a very high level of abstraction from reality. As the saying goes, "There's nothing as constant as change." The notion that I was married to Deb for 12.5 years exists only in my head. The Deb who died was not the same Deb whom I married, nor am I the same man today who I was on my wedding day. I'm not even the same guy who woke up this morning. Every cell in my body has regenerated trillions and trillions of times just in the last hour. Thus, when I talk about "me" in reference to my body and collected memories, there is in fact no such entity. It is an illusion.

So, while we constantly use these illusory terms to describe how long "we" have owned our house, car, dog, job, etc, at some deep level we are aware that these things are always in flux, always changing. And the determining factor between those people who appear to be always happy and those who appear to be always unhappy is often how they react to change.

Take the instance of a car breaking down. One person can be very upset because they remembered their car as working fine, and now they have a negative reaction to this new change in the status of their car. Another person can laugh it off, accepting the change and letting go of the idea that the car was working fine a while ago. Same scenario, two different people, two different reactions.

My friend Gary Scott tells of an instance he saw in northern Ecuador where a man who was walking down the street was passed by a truck and drenched in water from a resulting puddle splash. After the shock had worn off, the Ecuadorian started smiling and let out a big belly laugh. To me, this suggests a highly evolved perspective on change. Would you expect to see a similar reaction here in North America? I think not. North Americans tend to have rather negative reactions to events such as puddle splashes.

So how does all this relate to grief? Am I suggesting that we can get to the point where we can laugh off the death of our spouse? Hardly. However, I do believe we can begin to recognize that everything we hold dear is constantly changing, and that in fact we are not holding "things" dearly, but rather we are holding our memories of those things dearly. And, as we learned from Ho'oponopono, memories are the causes of all our problems.

What we need to learn to do is to let go of our memories, and, in a sense, grieve for those memories. As we develop this habit, we can become more aware of, and appreciate, life as it is, not as we wish it was. And with this new awareness, we can begin to find that peace we are seeking.

Survival Breakdown

I've always had an interest in human psychology and why we as humans do what we do. Once I became a widower, this interest only intensified. Grieving is not a uniquely human experience by any means, but it is certainly one of the most intense, if not the most intense, human experience. As the intensity of my grieving picked up, I started consuming books about psychology and grief. I wanted to know: Why do we grieve? Why pain? What is the purpose of grieving? How long will this go on? My thought process at the time was, if I can understand why I am going through this living hell, then I can find the Grief Recovery Tools I need to help get me out.

While I was in Tampa last month, we talked about the three primary drivers of all human action:

1. Survival


2. Reproduction


3. Survival of our offspring

These three desires fuel all our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Now that our spouse is dead, we have had to confront our primary drive, Survival, and acknowledge that no, we don't all survive, and, more to the point, this drive for survival will ultimately end in failure. Yet we are still driven to survive. It's like that joke — Despite the high cost of living, it remains popular ;-)

I have previously mentioned The Sedona Method, a super-important book that I feel strongly every widow/er should have in their Grief Recovery Toolbox. This book will lead you through the maze of your emotions and help you to release them all. Big promise, yes, and it certainly delivers.


The Sedona Method further breaks down our primary drive for survival into three primary desires:

1. Wanting Approval


2. Wanting Control


3. Wanting Security

It probably helps if you are able to visualize these three and understand their significance. In the book, they use a tree diagram that they call "the imaginary tree of limitation." Here's how they describe it [pp 181-183]:

The Anatomy of an Imaginary Tree of Limitation

Imagine that you are lost amid a dense forest of imaginary limitation. What's the anatomy of these trees? At the subtlest level, they are made up of atoms, which, in our world, we call "thoughts." Moving toward a little more density and structure, the leaves on this imaginary tree represent your individual feelings. The branches represent the nine emotional states. The trunk and the roots spreading out laterally from the bottom of the trunk represent wanting approval and wanting to control, as well as their opposites. The taproot, growing straight downward into the soil, represents wanting security and its opposite. Lastly, the soil represents wanting to be separate and its opposite, wanting to be one. (See illustration)

If we wanted to fell these imaginary trees of limitation and clear a path through this imaginary forest by releasing, there are several ways we might go about it. We could let go of one atom at a time by working to change our thinking. But that would take a long time. We could be even more active and proceed by plucking off individual leaves (feelings). But leaves tend to grow back. Or we could start pruning the branches (the nine emotional states). If you've ever pruned a tree, however, you know that branches often come back healthier than before. We would only start making significant progress once we began chopping at the trunk and lateral roots (the wanting approval and wanting to control). Of course, many trees have grown back from stumps even after some of their roots were removed.

There is not much certainty of eliminating this imaginary tree until we set about severing its taproot: wanting security and its opposite, wanting death. Now remember, in the forest of limitation where you're lost, every tree is imaginary. All limitation is imaginary.

At any point in this process, you can get a glimpse of what lies beyond the trees, the background of perfection and infinity that supports yet is unaffected by the forest. So, allow for the possibility as you use the Sedona Method that big chunks of the forest itself can fall away. Often, when you least expect it, you'll let go of big chunks of your imaginary limitation quite spontaneously. This will happen more and more frequently as you release at the level of the four basic wants.

The entire book is The guide for releasing and letting go of your emotions. Now that I am re-reading it, I can see how well it dovetails with Vipassana meditation and Eastern Thought in general. Why my interest in Eastern Thought? Simple: in the West, all advice to the bereaved is, "learn to live with your pain — it will be with you for the rest of your life." In the East, the advice is different: "Learn to let go of all your emotions, needs, and desires, and experience real peace."

It should be clear which advice I chose. You do not have to feel this pain forever. You can let it go. And it is easier than you think.

The Practice of Mindfulness

I kind of fell into meditation as a Grief Recovery Tool, and rather late in the game at that. Certainly, it was not suggested to me in any of the typical grief books that I read, nor do I recall hearing about meditation at my monthly grief support meetings. I attended my free Vipassana course more as a personal development thing, not specifically for grief recovery. Since then, and especially after receiving the amazing benefits of meditating, I have been wondering how far into bereavement one should be before learning some simple meditation techniques. I'm thinking more and more that, had I attended Vipassana earlier, my grief recovery timeframe would have been significantly shortened.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I've been reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. It explains very clearly the benefits of being completely open to fully experiencing grief, especially within a meditation framework [pp61-2]:

Meditation is bringing the mind back home, and this is first achieved through the practice of mindfulness.

Once an old woman came to Buddha and asked him how to meditate. He told her to remain aware of every movement of her hands as she drew the water from the well, knowing that if she did, she would soon find herself in that state of alert and spacious calm that is meditation.

The practice of mindfulness, of bringing the scattered mind home, and so of bringing the different aspects of our being into focus, is called "Peacefully Remaining" or "Calm Abiding." "Peacefully Remaining" accomplishes three things. First, all the fragmented aspects of ourselves, which have been at war, settle and dissolve and become friends. In that settling we begin to understand ourselves more, and sometimes even have glimpses of the radiance of our fundamental nature.

Second, the practice of mindfulness defuses our negativity, aggression, and turbulent emotions, which may have been gathering power over many lifetimes. Rather than suppressing emotions or indulging in them, here it is important to view them, and your thoughts, and whatever arises with an acceptance and generosity that are as open and spacious as possible. Tibetan masters say that this wise generosity has the flavor of boundless space, so warm and cozy that you feel enveloped and protected by it, as if by a blanket of sunlight.

Gradually, as you remain open and mindful, and use one of the techniques that I will explain later to focus your mind more and more, your negativity will slowly be defused; you begin to feel well in your being, or as the French say, être bien dans sa peau (well in your own skin). From this comes release and a profound ease. I think of this practice as the most effective form of therapy and self-healing.

Third, this practice unveils and reveals your essential Good Heart, because it dissolves and removes the unkindness or the harm in you. Only when we have removed the harm in ourselves do we become truly useful to others. Through the practice, then, by slowly removing the unkindness and harm from ourselves, we allow our true Good Heart, the fundamental goodness and kindness that are our real nature, to shine out and become the warm climate in which our true being flowers.

You will see now why I call meditation the true practice of peace, the true practice of nonaggression and nonviolence, and the real and greatest disarmament.

Because a major goal of mine early on in my bereavement was to be at peace with Deb's death, you can see how I have been attracted to the mindfulness aspect of meditation. I wish for you the same deep peace that I have experienced. I believe that meditation should be investigated for grief recovery before the shock phase has fully worn off.