Sunday morning, the 1st text I saw was that someone I loved and used to nanny for, had died earlier that morning. My shock was short lived as when I went down to make breakfast, he was right there with me as a spirit, excitedly sharing away.
Having experienced grief, I know how devastating it is. And certain losses, quite honestly I don't know how people recover from. AND simultaneously, I am so aware that the love never dies. It changes form but it's still there. For some, that'll bring comfort. For others reeling from a profound loss, that may only bring anger because we want our loved ones here with us now, in body. I get it, I really do. Even knowing what I do, loss is so unimaginably painful. I made a short video about my experience Saturday morning, for those who wish to tap into the love that’s ever present. May it help anyone who needs it. YouTube video
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Through the years, many of you have asked me to talk about grief.
It can be hard to define but what I know for sure: grief comes in waves. You never know when one will come crashing in and all you can do is follow it to its completion and let it move through you, and out. You cannot try to stop up the damn of emotion, that will only cause harm down the line. I told you last week that I’ve done so much work on my emotional state regarding the symbolism of my garden, and while the first day of re-potting was wonderful this past weekend, the next day with the tomato plants… let’s just say I was unprepared for the explosion of sadness that followed a bout of crabbiness. I completely left present time; I was not in my body. I knew I hit a pocket of grief and the best thing to do was to ground myself (even though I really didn’t want to be in my body), and allow myself to express the sadness. I thought I had healed everything, so it really surprised me. That’s the thing about grief, even when you’ve done massive releasing and healing of it, there might be more. And that’s totally normal! I happened to hit something I hadn’t given voice to or acknowledged, thus its appearance. A healer friend of mine suggested that I separate out energy, like I’ve taught you all to do (on the resources page), with the aspect of me that went through the trauma. To release that me and give her back her power and call my life force back to me. That made a tremendously positive impact. Back to grief in general- everyone grieves differently; you cannot judge yourself or another for your/their process. Some people feel sad, some angry, some irritated, and some in denial. Sometimes all of these exist simultaneously or seem to flow from one to the next, moment, by moment. This is why surrender and gentleness is key. You don’t know what’s going to surface when, so self-compassion is the name of the game. In the midst of my grief, be it from a miscarriage or the loss of a loved one, I’ve run into bathrooms in public places to vent out whatever was surfacing and give it whatever voice it needed in that moment- a quick cry, a temper tantrum, or a moment of reverent silence. If you're somewhere where that's impossible, acknowledge and release the emotion later that day but don't ignore it; it'll come back stronger if you do. Grief isn’t limited to losing people by the way, you can grieve whatever loss you’re experiencing: a pet, a house, a business, a dream, a brief relationship, etc. If it’s a loss, it’s valid. It’s not the years involved, but the impact. You cannot diminish your grief and loss and think it’s not as meaningful as someone who lost their spouse of 50+ years, or a parent or child. Yes, that grief is far more intense in scope and takes infinitely more time to heal, but no matter your grief, you have a right to express it. Be aware that grief is exhausting. I mean- can’t get out of bed at times- exhausting. You have to surrender to that and not judge yourself for it. Fatigue is part of grief. I was once asked how to heal grief more quickly. That’s the thing, you can’t rush the process, but acknowledging and releasing the emotions helps. What if it seems never-ending? Then reach out to a grief counselor, or a support group, or someone who can guide you on your journey and help you to process the pain. Sometimes we can’t do it alone; don’t try or expect yourself to be a superhero. I can see and talk to dead people. I’ve helped people pass away and see the beauty that awaits them. Even with these skills, death sucks for those of us in a body. It’s painful and you want to hold those you love and talk to them in person. You can know they’re there listening and loving you, because they are, and you can mentally understand the concept that love never dies, because it doesn’t, and still, saying goodbye is excruciatingly difficult and horribly painful. And it’s part of life. Ironically, if you let it, it can actually open your heart- I know, it seems like it would do the opposite, but that’s because many do close down their hearts. However, there is the ability to recognize your capacity for love and open your heart despite your pain. Not easy, but possible. Know as well, with a major loss, the anniversaries of that event may have triggers for a long time. That’s okay too and totally normal. Year two can be hard in different ways, so gentleness again. No, ‘I thought I was done with this!” As I said, I feel completely healed from that old pain and a deeper hidden part got triggered. I moved through it quickly, it didn’t take days as it would’ve in the past. Again, grief is like the ocean, it will ebb and flow. Sometimes you’ll be on a surfboard riding the waves, and sometimes you’ll crash. The key is, when you’re ready, to get on that surfboard again because I promise you this, one day you’ll ride those waves all the way to the shore and know that you’re more of your true self from having loved so deeply. “Grief comes in waves.”
I tell all of you that who are grieving the loss of a person. But it’s also important to recognize that it appears at the loss of a dream as well. Many of you read my infertility blog from a year ago. I had truly moved on and made peace mentally with the situation. I did tremendous amounts of healing and it absolutely shifted things. Unbeknownst to me however, the physical and emotional traumas were still active and festering in my subconscious and unconscious minds. I got on a cleaning binge three weeks ago, I love to rip apart areas of the house and re-organize them. I’m definitely not someone who has trouble throwing things away! During my cleaning binge, I went through old tax etc. files from years ago, and started finding reminders of the infertility time. Then I found a whole stack of journals written during that time, and I reread many of the entries. The pain smacked me over the head, it was heart wrenching reading years worth of pain, trauma, rage, betrayal, and grief. I’m sure it didn’t help that I also found all the eulogies I had written for my 3 grandparents during that time. The next day was Mother’s Day, ironic huh, and I really didn’t have the energy to do anything. I recognized it as grief, and allowed myself the day to just disconnect and heal. I thought that was that, and I moved forward. Alas, grief doesn’t work that way. I know that, and I remind all of you of that. And yet, I didn’t delve into it and express what needed expressing. Things seemed to be getting worse and worse fatigue wise and with an autoimmune issue that I have. It took a friend on Saturday to point out to me that I was still grieving, and specifically, grieving the loss of a dream. “How could this be?” I thought. “I’ve done so much grief work, I finally made peace!” Yes I have, and reading all that pain cracked open a part of me that I didn’t realize I had tucked away and not acknowledged or released. That part has been suffering in the background for years. In some ways, it was overt with certain physical issues, but in other ways, it was definitely below the surface. I don’t think it was an accident that I found all those journals, the energy needed to be released fully so that I could truly move forward, to create a new dream. So many things make sense to me now, after seeing this truth. As I’ve said to many of you, grief can be a myriad of emotions simultaneously so there could be rage, mixed with sadness, mixed with apathy, sometimes concurrent. I’ve found that with this issue, betrayal is my starting point: the betrayal I felt from God/Goddess/The Universe. It doesn’t matter that on a greater spiritual level, I can know they are not to blame and I can look at why I created and allowed this situation. But that won’t serve me when I’m in emotional pain, because I am human and as such, I need to vent, to rage, to blame, and then to release. It’s important to really dive into the pain of betrayal, the, “How could you do this to me? Why would you allow this to happen? You gave me so many signs and symbols that it was coming and happening.” The raw pain of it. When we hold ourselves in opposition to the Divine, we will not allow ourselves to receive the love, support, and healing, etc. etc. that we really need. So it is vital to look and see if there’s any part of you that feels unloved or betrayed by God/Goddess; rationally or irrationally. There are a myriad of ways to move through this: you could journal it, you could speak it, and my personal favorite is the rage bubble- interesting that I thought to send it to all of you recently. These are just some ideas, find what works for you. You must give it voice though, however you do it. Shoving it down only allows it to fester and grow. After the betrayal, it’s vital to work the pain. If you ever would want some details on this, reach out to me personally. I’ve recently learned new techniques that are designed to excavate and release stuck pain. Ultimately, forgiveness work will be the key to shift your reality. The other work does need to be done first though. I’m detailing my process for you, to give you one map of how to move through loss. There are many maps, find the one that works for you. Most importantly, gentleness with self is a requirement. It’s not a luxury, it’s not being lazy, it is required to augment the self-love that’s needed for when you move through the dark. So when you hit a pocket of grief, and you feel the need to just zone out or disconnect from others and be quiet, allow that. Without judgment! Sometimes we need to go full force in our healing efforts, and other times, we need to step back, step away, and allow support and help from the unseen world. Sometimes just being with what is, without having to do anything to “fix” it, allows the healing to move through more elegantly. I am in the being stage, not fighting what is, not rushing through the process I detailed above, because I had previously worked it so thoroughly, and this pocket is different. This one requires acceptance and allowance to more powerfully step into a new dream, a dream that exceeds my imagination. I cannot get there if I am constantly doing, but I can if I create extra down time to just be, and to process through everything while I am sleeping and creating. I must say, in writing this a few days ago and allowing myself to just be, I feel fantastic this morning, the day of what would have been my due date. I hope that next year, I’m not even aware of this date. But if I am, I will again be gentle and compassionate towards myself. I wish I had known more and approached things differently for those few years, but I could only do what I knew at the time, so I will forgive myself for all the pain, all the subsequent suffering, and love myself for what I went through. That me needs healing, and I will happily give it to her. Today I want to give voice to a very specific pain, the pain of miscarriage and infertility. I think it’s important to give voice to this pain because there is still such shame and stigma around it. I’m here to speak my story to help lift that.
If all had gone according to our plan, yesterday we would have celebrated a 4 year old’s birthday. I will never forget the first time I became pregnant. I was on my way to a healing workshop and while in the car, this presence came into my body. It was pure love itself. I still do not have words for the expansiveness of love that I felt. I recognized rather quickly what had happened. That was the first time that I met my little guy and I loved having him in my space. It was a remembrance from lifetimes and filled me with elation and joy. I was so excited. Unfortunately, the day before my period was to come, he left. He was suddenly no longer in my space, and I was very confused because he had been so clear and so present. I didn’t understand what happened, it made no sense, and it was incredibly traumatizing. Wasn’t getting, and staying pregnant, supposed to be easy? Since I felt such grief over the loss, I decided that to help, I would do everything that I was supposed to: fertility acupuncture, take herbs, have sex in the correct window- do everything perfectly because he’s mine and he is supposed to come in. He came in three more times briefly that year, each time he left, the loss becoming more difficult to bear. But the third time, he stayed for eight weeks; and that was the most extraordinary eight weeks. Every day was an infusion of love and light that was palpable to both my husband, and myself. On Halloween, 2013, we went in for our 8 week ultrasound, and when the nurse put the ultrasound machine on my stomach, everything moved in slow motion; there was no sound coming from the machine, as much as she kept moving it around, and we then watched in horror as she leapt up hurriedly, saying she needed to go get the doctor. There are no words to describe the pain of when the doctor came in solemn faced. I saw her lips moving, but couldn’t wrap my head around her words; “lost”… “at your age”… what? The shock comes first: the numb, the disbelief. Slowly going through the motions while feeling incredible shame and failure. “What’s wrong with me? Why isn’t my body working? What does this mean about me as a woman? I did everything perfectly.” Shame, silent shame. Compound that with the hellish experience of going in the next day for a D&C, a grueling trauma of physical assault to coincide with the emotional and spiritual one that was already occurring in my mind, in which they remove what we most wanted. I went dark. I was in unbearable pain. It made no sense and it felt so cruel; a dashing of our hopes and dreams. I wanted to know why, but that why never came. I felt abandoned, lost, and so very alone and ashamed. I was angry at everyone and stopped going on social media because seeing pregnant women or happy families was too much for me. I would sob and sob. It was all so unfair. I was especially angry at the Universe. How could they be so cruel? Why would they take away what I wanted? Was I being punished? It took many, many months of healing, processing, and grieving. I needed to be dark for a while. We eventually chose to try again because I still had faith, and I wanted desperately for my dream of motherhood to come to fruition. I always wanted children, and I always assumed it would happen. One year later, we agreed to try IVF to help the process along, going in with full expectations of success, (because, how could it not succeed?), while also knowing that this was our last shot. We did all the tests, all the numbers were great- awesome! This would succeed for sure. After a disappointing first round, the second round brought with it a successful fertilization. We were over the moon! Finally, our little guy would arrive. A few days before Christmas, we got the devastating news that the embryo didn’t survive and wouldn’t be implanted the next day as was planned. I went so dark that I couldn’t speak. I got incredibly ill. To add insult to injury, just as I was speaking again, I got pregnant on my own in Jan 2015; we weren’t even trying. Since he didn’t come in, I knew it would end. It felt like a sick joke. We weren’t even trying! That messed with my mind in unbearable ways. The pain was extraordinary. I did serious damage to my body from the amount of rage coursing through it. I was very inconsolable for a very long time. I went dark, dark for months and months. “WTF just happened?! How could this not manifest? What about all the signs I received? I did everything right! What is wrong with me?? I am a healer! If I can’t fix me, what good am I to anyone else? What kind of a woman can’t have a baby?!” and so on, and so on. It took me a year of deep grieving and bouts of terrible darkness and depression. But I let myself go there fully, because I couldn’t not. I had to dive bomb completely and allow the rage and grief etc. if I was ever to heal. Year two was easier, but with unexpected moments of grief, especially if I heard about someone being pregnant. I let myself sob and grieve as needed, venting my rage, never judging it, so I could eventually get to peace and happiness for the other person. As I tell my clients, grief comes in waves, and you have to be gentle with yourself, and I was. I will eventually detail the process of healing I went through to help others find peace, but for now, I will say that my love of children was what pulled me through. I never wanted to be someone others tiptoed around. I wanted to be the best auntie I could be to the children in my life. And during that first year, I learned how to mother and nurture myself, in ways I had always done for others, but not myself. I have a bit of an understanding as to why it maybe happened the way it did, but I’ll never know for sure, and I have had to make peace with that. It’s been a process but I am finally in a really good place. At some point, I will share what never to say to a woman who has been through this, but for now, if you know someone going through infertility or who has had a miscarriage, simply say, “I’m sorry.” Period. Please don’t offer solutions or platitudes, just be there for her. You can even ask, “how can I best support you right now” as one friend said to me. That was beautiful, even if there wasn’t an answer. And don’t forget the husband, they need support too. I know some women have had it worse than I did, but I can only speak from my experience and share myself. Comparisons only increase the pain and separation that is already present, and my goal is to reach those who have been through this and say, “you’re not alone.” I have made my peace, even though it didn’t work out the way I had “planned,” and I hope to help others do the same. My husband and I now have a goal to build schools in various countries to help children get an incredible education. We are both extremely passionate about this and can’t wait to make it a reality. Making beautiful lemonade out of lemons, and in so, giving back and helping children. I will always love and champion children. And I will be the best momma to those who cross my path. I have a lot of love and nurturing to share, and I plan on continuing to live a life of love and joy to change the world. It starts with me. |
AuthorMe, Tina Germain, just sharing ways to make you the best you can be! Archives
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