Articles Worth Reading: Grief During the Holidays

The holidays can be a very difficult time to deal with during our grief.  There's an article over at Pathways Health:  Why Grief Can Seem Worse During the Holidays.  It's no secret why this time of year can be difficult for so many who are grieving a loss.  Quote:

"Grief in and of itself is bad enough, but it can be magnified when the holidays roll around. That’s mainly because the holiday season is filled with reminders of the one you lost, as you’re surrounded by others who have their loved ones with them and are celebrating a season of joy and togetherness." 

The author(s) have lots of good suggestions for how we can better deal with this time of year, including creating new holiday traditions, setting limits on how much you may or may not want to socialize with others, and donating to charity in your loved one's name.  All in all, a a nicely-written and concise guide for how to make this time of year a bit more bearable.

Words to Ponder Over: We're Dying All The Time

Not so much a "Words of Comfort" post, as much as a "Words to Ponder Over/Think About".  I was listening to Brian D. Smith's podcast Grief 2 Growth, while he was interviewing Clare Goldsberry.  Clare is the author of the book "The Illusion of Life and Death: Mind, Consciousness, and Eternal Being", and is a student of Buddhism.  At one point in the interview, she talks about the impermanence of all things, a theme I personally have been hearing more about lately:

"So we don’t really like the unknown, and we don’t like change. And I think one of the things about the Buddhist tradition....It’s a philosophy of change, and how to adapt to change, because everything will always change. And whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, even our bodies are constantly changing. Day by day,  our cells die....we experience little mini deaths every day as our cells die. We get....new hair, we get new skin, we get new fingernails, things are always changing. We’re just not that aware of it. And I think this lack of awareness, about change and about impermanence really keeps us from looking at at death and what it is, and how we can have a good death and what it means. People think death is the end."

You can hear and/or read the whole interview here.

Brian's interview with Clare reminds me of an old science article I read years ago about how the human body replaces its cells every 7 years.  Actually, according to livescience.com, the truth is more complicated than that -- skin cells and cells in our digestive tract replace themselves in a matter of months, while certain cells in our brain are with us from birth until death.  But it does raise a fascinating perspective -- that, for the most part, the earthly bodies we inhabit now are not really the same earthly bodies we inhabited 10 years ago!  As Clare points out, everything in our world is in a constant state of flux, a constant state of change, and that leaving our physical earthly bodies behind at the time of "death"  is really about us going through another change as we go onto something new.

Videos That Have Helped: TED talk with Nora McInerny

Nora McInerny is no stranger when it comes to dealing with grief.  Over the space of 3 months in 2014, she lost both her husband and father to cancer and had a miscarriage with her second child.  Since that time, Nora has re-married, authored several books, including "The Hot Young Widows Club" and "Bad Vibes Only".  She also is the host of the podcast "Terrible, Thanks for Asking".  

Nora has the rare gift of handling grief with equal parts grace, wisdom, and humor.  In 2019 she gave a TED talk: "We Don't 'Move On' From Grief.  We Move Forward With It":

 

Nora's talk has been one of the most insightful videos on grief I have seen to date.  Some of my favorite quotes:  "Everyone you love has a 100 percent chance of dying."  "I'm just trying to do what I can to make more people comfortable with the uncomfortable, and grief is so uncomfortable."  "We don't look at the people around us experiencing life's joys and wonders and tell them to 'move on', do we?"  Again, I say: watch the whole thing from start to finish.  I think that Nora really understands some of the emotions we go through when we grieve.

Articles Worth Reading: Grief and the Orthodox Church

I recently stumbled upon an article from the St. Paul Orthodox Church in Frehold, New Jersey, USA.  Lots of good advice here about how those professing the Christian faith can handle their grief.  The author(s) point out that getting through grief takes work, that different people don't grieve the same way, and that Christians oftentimes cannot feel hope without a corresponding sense of loss -- and that's OK!  Also noteworthy is that Jesus himself could not hold back his grief in the Bible:

"For we must be reminded that Jesus is recorded as having wept on two occasions. He looked out over his beloved city, Jerusalem, and poured out tears of grief because she had denied her destiny. His grief was an expression of His love and His disappointment at the coming tragedy for the people He so loved. Jesus wept at the thought of the unrealized dreams and the unfulfilled hopes which the eventual destruction of Jerusalem would mean (Luke 19: 41 - 44).

Jesus also wept when He visited Martha and Mary after the death of Lazarus. Those who stood near Him on that day were quick to interpret His behavior, for they said, 'See how he loved him' (John 11: 35, 36)! Grief was rightly seen as an expression of love."

 

The article can be read in its entirety here.