Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Uncovering Grief: Sharing Wisdom

By Shannon Calder

When we are forced to live in the midst of grief we find ways of coping that defy the everyday. Robert Romanyshyn (1999), psychology professor and author of The Soul in Grief writes, “Loss is a season of the soul – its winter – and, like the winter of the world, a moment whose time must have its place. I could neither hurry nor avoid these rhythms of soul any more than I could hurry or ignore those of the world” (p. 5).  Slowing down and feeling the rhythm of pain and loss forces us to sit in it like a small child in a bathtub whose water has gone cold but who cannot get out alone. Telling the story of your grief can assist you in getting through the utter devastation you feel. In this forum it has the added benefit of communing with people who understand. Romanyshyn further points out, “In this landscape there really are no maps, no markers to plot the course of grief. Here I was forced to find my own way” (p. 6).

As you may or may not know, but I am here to tell you, there is only one way to go through your grief. Your way is the way. I am here to start discussion and educate you and hopefully steer you in a few directions you may not have thought to take. Do not mistake that for your own wisdom. What fuels your healing is you. So lets focus for a second on what helps you grieve? Tell us what has worked for you. You have wisdom to help your friends, share it.

Be Well,

Shannon

Contact me at: Shannon [at] lifewithoutbaby [dot] com.

Resource: The Soul in Grief :Love, Death and transformation. by Robert Romanyshyn, writer, teacher and author.

Shannon Calder is a writer, psychotherapist, and survivor of grief. She has an MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and is currently in a doctoral program in Clinical Psychology. She works in private practice treating people suffering from a wide spectrum of symptoms. 

Uncovering Grief: How Does Grief Feel to You?

By Shannon Calder

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

~ William Shakespeare

What is grief?

First you have to decide that you have lost something. This is sometimes where people get stuck. A patient said to me, “I am losing my keys constantly.” Knowing this patient’s situation I asked, “What have you really lost?” This was a moment of realization for her. I saw it in the stunned way she looked at me. Her reply was “my hope.”

Sometimes loss is obvious and sometimes it is not.  Simply, you need to step out of your resistance and denial or simple unconsciousness, decide you have lost something, something you needed, something you need to grieve.

Paula D’Arcy, author of When People Grieve wrote, “Grief is the heart’s response to any deep loss.” I would argue that the most obvious home for grief is the heart but that grief is housed in our body, spirit, mind and soul. This is how someone can lose something and not be conscious of their need to grieve for it. Be mindful of your inside landscape and you will be mindful of what it needs.

For me grief feels like something inside of me is trying to drown me and the one thing that kept me from drowning is the thing I have just lost. Then, a sense of powerlessness pervades. I know that grief will not drown me literally and that I am not powerless literally however, my imagination knows what it knows.

How does grief feel to you?

I would like to suggest you not only use your words for this. Words are often where most of us feel quite comfortable and they also get us up in our brains. We’re looking for what gets us down in our gut, in our soul.

So I’m going to suggest you share your words here in the comment section but perhaps those words can describe your process of what your grief looks like, feels like, smells like, etc. You can look in magazines for pictures, on television for characters or movies that touch this deeper emotion in you, look for art work or artists, athletics, pieces of music and don’t forget pieces of music without words, those pieces that touch you in that guttural way.

If you become afraid, step out of the place you are in with these sensory triggers and breathe into a single breath of consciousness within you and do something comforting or even ritualistic like checking your email, something that gets you back into your brain. Then when you feel like working with grief again, go back to your senses.

And please, let us all know what you did and how it went.

Be Well,

Shannon

Resource:

Paula D’Arcy, author of When People Grieve, is an internationally known expert in grief counseling and pulls from her personal resources of having lost her husband and daughter

Uncovering Grief

This week, I’m very pleased to introduce a new Guest Blogger.

Shannon Calder is a psychotherapist, specializing in grief and loss. In this, her new column, she’ll be addressing some of the issues many of us are facing as we look towards a life without children. I hope you’ll find her guidance helpful.

Uncovering Grief

By Shannon Calder

“If we carry our storms like actors pretending to be brave, each swallowed tear will fill our hearts like a bag of stones.”

– Alison Asher

Grief is a sacred time, a sacred act and it is the way we honor the importance of what we lost. The amount of grief we feel is in direct proportion to the importance of the person or idea we have lost. It is an honor to grieve.

My name is Shannon and I am a psychotherapist and a survivor of grief. I phrase it that way because surviving something indicates that it is still with you, in you, but that you pulled through and gained strength and meaning from it. I am here to remind you that grief does not evaporate, but like the wind, it breezes in and then recedes, leaving you to respond in its wake. How fast it recedes and how much havoc it wreaks on your life is the result of how you respond to it. I am here to help you with that and to listen, because grief is with us no matter how long ago we lost something or someone.

I am all for moving on, moving up, moving around, being positive and letting go. Every now and then I may discuss these very ideas. However, my purpose, whether it is on this blog or in my profession, is to address where people are in the moment and to speak to who lives and breathes underneath the persona that we show the world. I think we can agree that we don’t always feel like moving on, letting go or being positive.

Frankly, I don’t think putting happy pants on everyone and sending them back out into the world does them, their spouses, or the drivers next to them any good. It leads to repressed, angry, sad, grief-filled folks running into or running over each other unconsciously.

Do not misunderstand me. In your life, away from this discussion, it is a brilliant idea to have a stiff upper lip in most situations. But in this discussion with me, or anyone else on this blog, and hopefully with the people you trust the most, invest in the emotions that come with grief and give them the attention they deserve. If you are honest with yourself and others about what you feel, they can give you what you deeply need.

This is my not so subtle call to arms to those of you who are grappling with grief. If you are having trouble deciding what you feel, figuring out if you’re grieving, then that is completely valid and we can address that. I want to encourage you to do as Alison Asher says and “soar straight into the storm,” but only do this if you have a lifeboat. I hope that this column, the resources discussed here and the exercises we try can be your lifeboat, along with the friends and family you find here on this blog and in your life. Rally your resources and bring them close to you.

Please write to me with questions and/or your stories. I will attempt to address many of them in this column.

Be well,

Shannon

Contact me at: Shannon [AT] lifewithoutbaby [DOT] com

Resource:

Alison Asher wrote Soaring into the Storm, a lovely book about anyone facing adversity. She interviewed people of all ages and backgrounds who endured tragedy and came out strong. She is an artist and a poet and she survived the loss of a child.

Healing Through Creativity Workshops

This fall I will once again be partnering with my good friend, Shannon Calder to host a weekend of Healing Through Creativity Workshops. This time we’re offering two days of seminars with an option to join one or both days.

 

On Saturday, we will be offering Honoring Grief, Loss, and Transition with Word and Image. This is Shannon’s area of expertise and she’ll be teaching a series of creative exercises to work through issues of loss and grief, as well as gathering tools to use going forward. Shannon is a wonderful teacher who has a perfect combination of gentle empathy and no nonsense. This workshop will be very hands on and suitable if you’re still trying to come to terms with being childfree and are wrestling with issues of loss.

 

Sunday’s workshop will be Finding Your Identity After Infertility, a subject that is very dear to my heart right now. In this workshop we’ll again be using creative techniques and writing exercises to uncover who we really are and discover who we’re going to be now that motherhood is no longer on the cards. I’m very excited about this.

 

So, the workshops will be run here in Los Angeles on the weekend of November 12 and 13. All the information is available on the website.

 

We’re running a wahoo, super-duper half-price early bird special right now. If you sign up before August 31, registration is only $99 for one day or $175 for the full weekend.

 

Please check out the website for all the info and I hope to get the chance to meet some of you here in L.A.