Trying to find positive things

[Guest]

Today I am grateful for those of you, on this site, who are reaching out daily to help my find my way.  I can only hope to reciprocate the caring and love that has been extended to me.  Here I can open my wounds and receive healing from you.  The kindness and compassion is helping me.  I so appreciate those who are able to reach out and extend a helping hand inspite of dealing with your own grief.

I am grateful for my neighbors who open their homes and give me a place to escape the grief.  We talk, we laugh, we share stories.  I live on a loop where most of the people have been here longer than me and I've been here nearly thirty years.  We all raised families together, we were there for each other throughout the various trials and tribulations of life and now we are there as we are starting to lose our spouses.  We've had six deaths in the past couple of years.  We have always referred this place as the Circle of Love and it has held true over time.

I am grateful to have had a career I cherished.  I spent forty-five years, from the time I graduated from high school, working where I never once remember not wanting to go to work.  I was blessed to work with doctors, lawyers, politicians, nurses, soldiers, merchants, truckers, cowboys, and yes even a couple of rocket scientists.  I loved being a teacher; so did my Deedo.

 

[enna]

Brad,

I love your expressions of gratefulness and I am so happy you found your teaching career to be so satisfying. I spent four decades in education and I loved each day of it. Thank you for the A.A. Milne quote ~ one of my favorites. 

Anne

[Guest]

Anne

I was lucky - during my forty-five years I was able to teach everything from self-contained special ed. and regular ed.  grades 5-12 and junior college.  People asked which I enjoyed the most and I loved my special ed kids but I really found joy in each group I taught.  The gratitude thing is working for me right now; doesn't mean it will tomorrow but I'll take right now any day over where I've been.  Sun is warm so it's time for a hike.  

[Guest]

Hike was good.  Sun warm, pleasant breeze and lots of mud.  Forest is getting a good soaking as we prepare to go into our dry season.  Spent a lot of time thinking about Deedo those last two years.  C.S. Lewis in his book A Grief Observed spoke of how over time his wife changed in his mind.  I can see that with Deedo.  I venerate her so much that to listen to me she should have been sainted numerous times.  So I'm trying keep things in my mind, hopefully, with more realism than veneration.  It's hard to do since I adore her so much.

 On the hike I spent a lot of time remembering Deedo as the failed Yenta.  She always saw herself as a matchmaker but truth be told I can only think of one match that was not a disaster and it was already in the making when she stepped in.  When her mother died, Deedo tried so hard to find a companion for her dad; all disastrous.  After it became clear that she probably would not survive her lung cancer she set to work trying to find a companion for me; again disastrous.  However, it was amusing watching her.  It feels good to look back, not at the horrors because while they were there, over those two years there were lots of laughs, smiles and hugs as well.  

[Gwenivere]

It was so selfless of Deedo to try and play matchmaker for you and her dad.  People that love deeply know that losing that will take a horrible toll on those left behind.  What they forget it is they we want and cannot be replaced, no matter how painful.  Steve and I never even talked about that.  It was only about insuring the dogs would have homes if something happened to the other.  Crazy unless you are dog/cat parents.  I guess it was a given if we found someone else that was certainly OK.  But neither of us felt that would be a possibility.  It took too many years to achieve what we had and we started at a young age with lots of beg and a lot less baggage.  Even the thought of another fictitious man has me comparing him to Steve.  If my imagination can't do it, reality is way behind.  

[Guest]

Grateful for having strong relationships with my kids.  They are able to buoy me even though they are struggling as well.

Grateful for my four grandkids.  Their joy and innocence is infectious.  I am starting to move past the sadness that the two youngest will never remember Deedo except through stories and pictures.

Grateful to have a comfortable place to call home away from the noise and confusion of urban dwelling.  I love being able to start a hike right from my front porch.

Grateful for the kindness I find here.

 

[Guest]

Also grateful for granddaughters who love pillow fights. 

[Cookie]

I think the problem with the gratefulness thing is that you think that if you find things to be grateful for, you will start really feeling better, happier, etc.  The truth is that there are many things to smile at and be grateful for.  I have those moments almost every day, but what I have realized is that they are just that....moments.  I was brutally disappointed when I realized it couldn't take away all the awful stuff, sad feelings, intense pain.  I was working at finding things to be grateful for like a job.  I even did that thing of smiling in the mirror for 2 minutes every day, which is supposed to make you feel better overall.  You can't hand that out as a prescription and expect an award winning recovery.  I think people are also looking for approval by doing the right thing, showing how much gratitude they have, which is upsetting.  The fact that we have all loved greatly and had so much joy tells me that we have all been grateful and probably still are.  It's just that the circumstances are so difficult.  Cookie

[brat#2]

I agree Cookie, being grateful is great and yes we do have things to be grateful for, but it's difficult to feel that way all the time.  Even when our beloved was alive, we didn't spend all our time being grateful for things, so why should we try to do that now??  Yes I have moments that make me smile or even laugh and being thankful for the things I do have, but like you said it is so difficult.

[kayc]

It's an acquired art that takes practice, and the point of it is that it really does change us.

[Gwenivere]

6 hours ago, Cookie said:

You can't hand that out as a prescription and expect an award winning recovery.  I think people are also looking for approval by doing the right thing, showing how much gratitude they have, which is upsetting.  The fact that we have all loved greatly and had so much joy tells me that we have all been grateful and probably still are.  It's just that the circumstances are so difficult.  Cookie

I so agree with you.  I do not begrudge people that feel gratitude.  There were times in my early grief I did, but it was part of the protection of the shock which lasted for months.  I do feel grateful for food, a home, that I don't have financial worries.  But gratitude about what I had slips thru my fingers like sand right now.  I've become selfish or hardened as I want what I can't have.  I don't have children or grandchildren, friends that can truly relate or any close family.  I'm not sure any of those would help where I am right now.  I watch my dogs living and loving life, but I cannot connect with it.  Of course I am 'grateful' I had Steve in my life, but it doesn't help now as I spend more time without him, unlike what outsiders think.  I dont think I have to explain the waking to the pain of yet another day without him.  Going to bed knowing it will be no different tomorrow.  I am hoping this is just a phase of the grief, but each one feels it will last forever.  I especially don't like this one because the few things I depended on that pulled me out of myself do not work.  I think about losing them and I would lose any purpose in this life and that is a very dark place to be.  My logical mind says....you've been living this for 16 months, why so glum?  Then my heart steps up,and says...but you never lost your best friend and love of your life of 37 years.  So the month count is but a pittance in what is missing big time.  

[MartyT]

I don't think an attitude of gratitude is easy to develop and maintain, especially in the face of devastating loss. It takes a great deal of time, hard work and conscious effort. Still, lest we lose sight of the original intent of this thread ("trying to find positive things") I'd like to share an excerpt from an article by bereaved mom Elaine Stillwell, Thinking Positively ~ (bearing in mind that the author is 26 years into her grief journey, following the loss of her two children!) 

Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up.  They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all you were intended to be. (Viktor Frankl)

 

 

After all Viktor Frankl suffered and endured in the Holocaust, he was asked what kept him going and he replied, “To tell the world.”  I thought to myself, that’s a great motive as I deal with all this pain – tell the world about my children and how much I love them. That got me out of bed in the morning and filled me with a burning passion to write and speak about surviving. I lovingly call it “sharing Peggy and Denis with the world.”   You will find your niche too, without warning, falling gently into God’s Plan as I did, and someday He’ll explain it to all of us.

Gratitude is an appreciation of your life right now, versus where you want it. (Dr. Robert Emmons)

This one you have to practice to make it become part of you.  Dr. Emmons reminds us that people who write down things they are grateful for every day have stronger immune systems, more happiness and less reactions to negative events.  Rather than affirming what’s lacking, we bless all we have and use it wisely.  A few years after my children died, I retired from a 35 year career teaching young children, but now I am using those teaching gifts, energy and passion for a new audience – the bereaved, which has filled a big void in my life. So, get busy. This is the time for you to buy a little notebook or one of those pretty journals that are so popular these days, to start keeping track of your daily blessings. Nothing is too small to count, a lady bug, a daisy, a dog’s eager welcome, a phone call – something that you can really appreciate today. Our local newspaper called me the “Voice of the Bereaved” and that made my day. Little things count. Read on here >>>

[This article originally appeared in Grief Digest Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 4.]

[Guest]

It is important not to confuse gratitude with happiness.  Quoting from Janice Kaplan:

“As I threw myself into the survey and research, I quickly realized that gratitude wasn’t the same as happiness—it has a much deeper resonance. Most of us feel cheered when something nice occurs—a friend sends flowers or we spend an afternoon in the park. But those moments can be fragile and fleeting, and what happens when they’re over? Because it’s not dependent on specific events, gratitude is long lasting and impervious to change or adversity. It requires an active emotional involvement—you can’t be passively grateful, you actually have to stop and feel it, experience the emotion. So it creates an inner richness that’s sustaining in difficult times as well as good ones.”

Excerpt From: Janice Kaplan. “The Gratitude Diaries.” 

For me the focus on gratitude has been cathartic.  I am feeling less emotional pain.  It is becoming easier to focus on the wonderful life I have had and it is also becoming easier not to look into the future where I see so much emptiness.  I am staying more in the here and now.  I will continue to note my gratitudes in a journal in the hopes of developing a stronger Grattitude- some of you may have seen the Grattitude billboards.  

 

[MartyT]

Brad, your determination to focus on gratitude reminds me of bereaved mom and author Kelly Buckley, whose son died by drowning. She survived her devastating grief by writing in her journal and trying to focus each day on just one little thing for which she could be grateful. Her efforts turned into two books, Just One Little Thing and Gratitude in Grief, (both of which I've read and highly recommend), a huge and loyal Facebook community and dozens of speaking engagements.

Here is the review I wrote for Amazon after I read her first book:

5.0 out of 5 staAn attitude of gratitude

By Marty Tousley on July 30, 2012

Format: Paperback

I absolutely love Kelly Buckley's fairly unique perspective on managing grief (and life, for that matter) with an attitude of gratitude. She writes straight from her heart, with the genuine voice and hard-won wisdom of a mother in mourning, whose world was shattered at the sudden and tragic loss of her first-born son. Still, through all of her pain and suffering, she offers the bereaved the firm hope and powerful belief that life is still worth living, if along with fully experiencing and expressing our sorrow, we strive to find ways to focus on the goodness and love that remain. This is an extremely important message to share, and I'm sure with all her writing, publishing and speaking, Kelly's beloved son is celebrating from his special place in Heaven his mother's successful efforts to make meaning out of a life cut short. Stephen's earthly life was done too soon, but he certainly lives on in the beautiful legacy he bequeathed to his mother. I've mentioned this beautiful book to many clients and colleagues as one I've read and personally recommend, and will continue to do so.

[kayc]

That is exactly what I learned from my dragonfly magnet that I bought just 11 days after George's death "Find joy in every day", and it was life changing for me!  I would look back over the day and think of something positive in the day, no matter how small.  I began to recognize the small joys in life as they came, and focus towards them rather than just the losses.  Yes you still have grief bursts.  Yes you still miss the person.  Yes, you grieve.  But there is something very real and life altering about looking for joy and positives in your life and embracing them and being grateful for them.  It changes you.

[Guest]

Thank you Marty!!!!  I have already downloaded and will start reading today.  I know that I have choices and I need help in finding ways to keep my focus where I want it.

I do appreciate your wisdom and compassion.

[hollowheart]

Gwen and Cookie, I feel as you do. Gwen, I'm the same in I've also become selfish and hardened in wanting what I can't have. I also kept a gratitude journal before all this  (it was an iphone app) and my sister had a gratitude channel (Thankful Thursdays') on youtube that I looked at often. I felt gratitude about a lot of things, I didn't necessarily wake up smiling saying I"m going to find the good in today! but I was better at not sweating the small stuff and having a good day regardless.

Brad, I'm glad you said some people mistake gratitude for happiness. That is true. When people say "you should be grateful you have a roof over your head" they also assume that will automatically make you happy and take you out of your sadness/grief.  So like Cookie pointed out, it is disappointing that feeling that gratitude didn't really do much.

I have more things to be sad for than to be grateful for. It might take a lot of time for me and other people who feel the way I do to feel differently. I do have things to be grateful for, but right now they mean nothing. I feel miserable 90% of the day. The weekends I feel like killing myself they are so horrible. Because I always already felt gratitude I feel like 'I was already doing my duty and look what it got me' It's hard to keep feeling that way.

Cookie you mentioned that some people are looking for approval by showing how much gratitude they have. I think society pushes that agenda too. You know people love a great story of someone being super grateful and having this positive outlook on life after a tragedy. Some people are better at that than others.  I'm trying to find something, but it's like looking for a ghost. I don't even feel like I have a life anymore. I know, baby steps. I'm hoping.

[Cookie]

I didn't mean that you shouldn't be looking for things to be grateful for or acknowledge them when you see them.  What I meant was that I have kept the joy lists, acknowledged the wonderful things I still have, etc., but it hasn't helped me out of this pain.  I'm happy for those of you who it has.  You're so lucky.  I guess I just think personally that it's one of those things to beat people up with if they don't have the success expected if they try it.  When I hear someone say that they feel so much better because they are focusing on the positives, I guess I'm jealous, which makes me angry.  Why not me?  Am I doing it wrong?  I must just be holding onto negative things?  You see what I mean?  Sometimes looking at things or writing downs things that are wonderful actually makes me sadder if that's possible.  Oh well, great for those it works for.  Good luck for those it doesn't.....Cookie

[brat#2]

hollowheart and Cookie, I agree with what you both said.  Maybe we are still too new to this loss and pain for the positive things to much good.  I too am glad for the ones that it does help and I'm hoping that someday I will get there too.  Right now (even though I have a lot to be grateful for) all I feel is empty, sad and alone.

[kayc]

Hmm...newer than 11 days?  

[MartyT]

I am reminded of the old saw, "Different strokes for different folks." We're all at different points in our own grief journeys, with our own histories, personalities, past life experiences, available resources, and all the rest. No one is implying that what works for one of us will work for all of us. If that were true, we'd have no need for a website such as this. What we do here is offer and share information, comfort and support with one another. Everyone is free to try on whatever is offered ~ or not. This is like a giant buffet table, where each of us can take what we like (or maybe try something we've never had before) and leave the rest for someone else to try. There is no right or wrong way to "do" grief ~ but there most certainly are healthy and unhealthy ways to do it. We're all working hard to find our own ways through our losses, and hopefully we are learning something of value from one another as we move along. 

[brat#2]

I didn't mean to offend anyone with my post.  I understand that all of this is difficult no matter where you are in your grief journey.

[kayc]

That is true.  And no one is saying you "have" to try this.  Nor should anyone feel a failure for not feeling they can.  

[Margm]

Did any of you see the coach from Oklahoma give his address at his wife's funeral?  I watched it and my heart is too frozen to comprehend the faith that man demonstrated.  I admire him and I am so selfish that I envy his faith.  I used to have it.  I used to be so thankful to be alive that I could and did praise God.  Now my heart is so frozen that his speech did not even melt a small part.  How selfish am I?  That man was so faithful to his faith that he forgave the driver that killed his wife. He is left alone to raise five young children.   Billy was my husband for a long time, but some of you have lost children too.  I am such a selfish hard person. I am afraid to be mobile and this man has such faith, and I am jealous.

Well, I think I got totally off subject.  I was in awe and picked the wrong place to put it.  I was envious of the peace this man seemed to have.  In reality though, of course, he is in pain too, just in a numbed public place.  I think about this sometimes, about all the families that lose someone, not from diseases, from terrorist acts, and they suffer just like we do.  We all suffer and there is no weight or skale, no tape measure to gauge the depths. One good day, one bad day.  All bad days. I just wish moments of peace. 

[hollowheart]

1 hour ago, Cookie said:

I didn't mean that you shouldn't be looking for things to be grateful for or acknowledge them when you see them.  What I meant was that I have kept the joy lists, acknowledged the wonderful things I still have, etc., but it hasn't helped me out of this pain.  I'm happy for those of you who it has.  You're so lucky.  I guess I just think personally that it's one of those things to beat people up with if they don't have the success expected if they try it.  When I hear someone say that they feel so much better because they are focusing on the positives, I guess I'm jealous, which makes me angry.  Why not me?  Am I doing it wrong?  I must just be holding onto negative things?  You see what I mean?  Sometimes looking at things or writing downs things that are wonderful actually makes me sadder if that's possible.  Oh well, great for those it works for.  Good luck for those it doesn't.....Cookie

I didn't think that's what you meant Cookie, but I absolutely agree with what you said here. I don't go around LOOKING for anything positive to be grateful for, but I do enjoy moments when they happen. I'm with you in feeling jealous and angry when I hear people say they focus on the positives. I feel like when I try I'm just pushing and forcing myself and it does not feel genuine and makes me feel even more alone and sad.

Lately some of the distractions I've been using have been falling apart. They're getting boring. They mostly consist of forced TV/computer viewing which has started to make me even more angry because I'm more of a social person, believe it or not. Still looking for social outlets, but it's not easy. So I think my gratitude goes out the window most days.