I am a woman who, according to the Texas government, lost my fetus during delivery at 38.5 weeks. When she died, I was given a “fetal death certificate.” There was no birth certificate and there was no birth despite the fact I spent 17 hours in labor and delivered a 7 pound 11 ounce “fetus.” She was a much loved and desired baby in our family, and her death 23 years and 2 weeks ago was devastating to us all.

For most of the past year, abortion has been illegal in Texas where I am after a “heartbeat” occurs at 6-6.5 weeks, two weeks after a person misses their period and only four weeks after conception occurred. These rapidly dividing cells are not viable at all. Many people don’t even know they are pregnant at that point. Yet the right wing in our country insists these cells are a baby, not a fetus, as my term child was labeled.

The short version logic of why my child was a fetus and not a baby: to prevent us from claiming a stillborn child on our tax returns. Had she lived for even one second, that tax credit would have kicked in. However, the government wants to make sure we and other bereaved parents didn’t get an ounce of money out of our child’s death. Therefore when it suited them, she became a fetus rather than a baby.

And now, in 30 days, all abortion will be illegal in Texas thanks to Roe v. Wade being overturned. If I should need an abortion due to my advanced age (48) and multitude of health issues that would make carrying a pregnancy to term dangerous for me, I will have to travel many states away, a huge challenge with my health problems. I use birth control when I have sexual partners, but we all know that the only birth control that is 100% effective is abstinence and/or removal of reproductive organs. Even vasectomies and tubal ligations fail. In the cases of rape and incest? Birth control is often not an option for the person with a uterus.

After losing my oldest daughter, I spent a great deal of time on infant loss boards in the early days of the internet. I met so many people who lost children to genetic conditions that were incompatible with life. I met people who chose to have late pregnancy terminations when they discovered their child was not going to live no matter how hard they prayed. Conditions like anencephaly, the absence of a brain, are not compatible with life. None who had late term abortions did so without extreme grief.

There is a huge hypocrisy of conservative leaders. My life and its safety don’t matter, nor do those of any other person who have a uterus. What matters is controlling women. It’s not about babies, as my daughter’s fetal death certificate demonstrates. It’s making sure those with penises control the bodies of those with vaginas.

My throat began screaming as soon as I read about the Roe v. Wade decision. The throat is the seat of our fifth chakra, the place where communication arises from, the place where we often react when we feel unheard. I feel so unheard today, as do so many millions of other Americans who lost the rights to their bodies.

©2022 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

​I recently had a new client reach out to me asking me to help find a missing pet whom the client suspected was deceased. Unfortunately, the information I channeled also said the pet was deceased. I was given information as to where the pet’s body might be found, and I shared that information with the new client. (The client has also given permission for me to share this story in a post.)

One of my oldest friends and I are both true crime fans; we’re both psychology-oriented people, and that aspect is definitely what fascinates me about true crime. I like trying to understand what was going on in the mind and spirit of the perpetrator. When I told my friend that I had received my first request to help find a body, albeit a pet, she asked me if that was something I would be interested in doing as part of my intuitive work. I had to think about it for a while.

My metaphysical gifts have been given to me specifically to help people with healing and growth. If a client asks me for information that falls outside of those fields, I often won’t get an answer. One client asked me about selling their car, and the answer from the client’s spirit guides was, “It doesn’t matter.” In terms of healing and growth, this was not relevant to the client.

However, there is a great deal of healing that can be obtained for loved ones who don’t know what happened to someone who disappeared from their lives. Even if the answer is finding a body rather than locating the person still alive, having answers as to what happened provides a great deal of closure and allows grief process move forward.

Thus, after thinking about it, I told my friend that yes, I would be willing to help others who are searching for missing loved ones. I have no interest in working with police departments or other official entities, but in terms of helping individuals heal after a loss, that is something I am more than happy to do and is part of what I consider my primary mission.

I always ask the spirit guides I work with if I can help a client before booking an appointment with them; I don’t want to waste their time and money if I can’t help them. Thus, I’ll always ask if I can help someone looking for a missing loved one to make sure that information will come through and that it’s in their best interest to receive the information.
​
©2022 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I received a free advance reader copy of Driven via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

When we think of heartbreak, most of us think of losing a romantic love. Yet the pain of losing a loved one to death is every bit as devastating – if not moreso—than the heartbreak of a lost romantic love. Both losses can launch us into a deep spiraling grief that consumes us, body, mind and soul. Melissa Stephenson vividly brings that raw emotional pain to her writing. The death of her brother Matthew is one of the primary storylines running through Driven: A White-Knuckled Ride to Heartbreak and Back. She describes the horrid experience all of us go through in the early days of a loss, waking from a sleep to remember that a loved one has died and our world is no longer what it was: “It’s a vicious cycle: the forgetting, the waking, and the fresh wave of grief and nausea that crash over me as I remember.” As her deep grief continues Stephenson describes the ensuing depression: “My life feels like roadkill, a mess beyond fixing, only my brain won’t stop thinking any more than I could talk my heart out of beating. I live because my body does, a black hole incarnate.”

These emotions are the brutal reality of what we experience when someone we love dies. Stephenson also isn’t afraid of exploring the thoughts that most of us don’t want to admit we have around death. She talks explicitly about wondering what Matthew’s life-ending wound looked like, a deeply personal thought that most would hide in fear that they would be judged “too morbid” or even worse. Yet all of us have these questions and thoughts about death even if we won’t admit that we’ve thought about them. As Stephenson reflects on her brother’s cremation, her vivid imagery shows clearly how the details surrounding his death invaded her mind:

(Potential spoilers about Parenthood, season 4, below)
 
As I watched Parenthood a few months ago, the Braverman family began dealing with major health issues in season four. Grandfather Zeek was diagnosed with heart trouble, and daughter-in-law Kristina was diagnosed with breast cancer. What these two family members had in common was that they began lying to their adult children about their health. Zeek didn’t want his adult children to know that he was having health issues since the problems might not lead any trouble. He didn’t want anyone fussing over him. He preferred to use denial to cope with his health issues. For reasons that are hard to define, Adam and Kristina didn’t want to tell the family that they were facing breast cancer; they outright lied to their college aged daughter because they didn’t want her to worry or get distracted from her education.
 
Unfortunately, this tactic of coping with stressful issues is all too familiar to me. My family of origin and my ex’s family of origin tend to take the same approach to health issues: Adult children are still seen as children, and parents try to “protect” the adult children from bad news.  Yet adult children are actually adults. They are, for the most part, capable of understanding and coping with issues about life and death.
 
In my own family, my father was not going to tell me when my uncle died of ALS until after the funeral. My widowed aunt made it clear that my father had to inform me. The death was not a surprise as ALS is horrible degenerative disease. My health was not going to allow me to travel to the funeral, yet it still was the right thing to tell me about the death. My father didn’t want me to tell my children (who were ages 10 to 13), but I insisted otherwise. They weren’t close to my uncle, but they needed to know that he had died. As my father finally came to terms with my decision, he said, “I guess it’s better than them coming to visit and him not being here.” While this attempt to protect us from the pain of death was well-intended, it also failed to respect our right to know and grieve about a loved one.
 
While they say we often marry our parents, I never believed that my ex-husband was that much like my father until after we separated. Soon thereafter, my ex’s aunt died. Even though I had been a part of his family for more than twenty years, I was very much not close to her. She was an odd bird, and that’s coming from someone who proudly identifies as weird. Her health had been declining, so to me, the death was not a surprise. However, my ex chose not to tell me or our kids about the aunt’s death for 48 hours after she died. When I asked him why he delayed the news, he told me that he didn’t want to upset me. In reality, I suspect he just didn’t want to face the reality of her death by speaking to me or our kids about it.
 
With my children, I’ve broken free of this dysfunctional model of hiding important information from younger family members. I treat my teenage children as human beings who deserve to be respected; I've always done so even when they were little. While I might filter information to frame it in a way that is age appropriate, I am honest with my children about big information even if it is painful. I believe that with children, both when they are young and when they are adults, honesty is the best policy. As a result, my children know that they can always trust me to be honest with them even when they ask difficult questions that other adults won't answer for them.
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(Apologies in advance for an insanely long blog post. ~Elizabeth)
 
I am a huge Josh Groban fan. I’ve loved his music since I first saw one of his earliest PBS specials. When I came out of my years of silence, his was some of the first music I found myself able to tolerate. On the nights when I was going through horrible intestinal pain that would last for untold hours on end but my now ex-husband was unwilling to be there to hold my hand and support me through that hell, it was the music of Josh Groban (and others) that I played on repeat all night long to keep myself as calm and relaxed as possible. His albums are still my default when I am dealing with pain that medication and meditation cannot control.
 
I have been battling health issues for 13 years; I was all but bedbound for two of those years and homebound for six. Slowly I have been fighting my way back to health. After successfully attending an event at a local church in September, I realized that I probably could start attending live theater and concert events again. This was something that I hadn’t expected to do be able to do for another several years, and it is a huge milestone for me in my healing journey. Fortuitously, my 15 year old daughter is taking a costuming class as an elective this year, and she’s required to go to a live performance every six weeks, anything from a free one person poetry reading in a coffee shop to a Broadway musical. As I looked for options for her (and me) to attend this school year in Austin, I found that Josh Groban was coming to Austin in October and that tickets were all but sold out (two individual tickets available in different balcony sections). I was crushed. I was talking about this with one of my health practitioners who encouraged me to look on Craigslist or to just show up the night of the show to find tickets from someone who needed to sell.
 
So back in October the week before the concert, I was looking at Craigslist for tickets to see Josh Groban. I was thoroughly annoyed at the number of businesses scalping tickets, but after a few days I eventually I found some seats on Craigslist for original purchase price located in the back of the orchestra section that were being sold by someone with a death in the family. As I sat there debating buying them, I got an intuitive hit to go check the concert hall website where I'd unsuccessfully looked for tickets previously: When this happens, it feels like there is someone in my brain loudly saying, “GO LOOK AT THE OFFICIAL SITE!” When I searched this time on the official site, there were two adjacent front row orchestra seats available (plus two adjacent seats a few rows back from that). This was actually fourth row seating because the pit was covered and three rows were added, but it was still close enough that my daughter commented after the show that Josh had a loose thread hanging from the back of the blue suit jacket he wore in the first act that was bugging her. (Yes, she is Type A, and yes, I do know which parent she got it from. Sigh. :) )
 
Josh Groban got seriously ill with a lung infection in October and had to reschedule the Austin concert. I knew when he canceled his New Orleans show a few days before that there was a huge chance that he would cancel Austin as well; I began praying for a reschedule because I didn’t want to lose those amazing seats I had gotten! When the rescheduled concert was set for December 19th, I looked at the calendar and discovered that my ex had just bought Star Wars tickets for the exact same date at the same time for the kids. Fortunately my daughter was able to grasp the concept that she could see Star Wars any time but Josh Groban wasn’t going to be available to sing at any other time. Her cousin took her Star Wars ticket, and our girls’ night was back on, just delayed by two months.
 
Last night, after overcoming all the hurdles of a disabled individual trying to attend an event at a major auditorium, my daughter and I were finally in the theater. Honestly, I sat there in shock for a bit with my hands shaking, so amazed that I was actually in Bass Concert Hall once again. A few years ago I would have said that this might never be possible. If Josh Groban had decided not to sing, I would have been disappointed but I still would have gone home incredibly happy because I simply made it into the theater. That’s how huge of a deal it was that I went last night.
 
Fortunately, though, Josh Groban performed last night despite a “full-blown sinus infection” which he claimed had him performing at only 86% though I don’t think anyone in the audience would have noticed if he hadn’t shared that information. I certainly wouldn’t have! His music was every bit as amazing as I expected it to be in person, and I enjoyed every minute of the evening. I didn’t take notes as I wanted to be fully present in and enjoying the moment, so my retelling of the evening probably has the setlist in the wrong order though it’s somewhat close to the original experience.
 
While I was expecting to be powerfully moved by this concert since Groban’s recordings can leave me in tears depending on the day, what I didn’t expect to happen was that the evening became a life review for me. As song after song unfurled, images from my life, past, present and future, marched through my mind’s eye. Some of the songs that weren’t favorites before suddenly took on totally different meanings as I found new, deep, and very emotional acceptance about parts of my life.
 
Josh Groban walked onto the stage opening with “Pure Imagination” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a song that speaks to me of the innocence of childhood. I spent my childhood with my head in a book, the safest and happiest place for me to be, though I was actually kind of freaked out by most of Roald Dahl’s books. Groban followed this with “Try to Remember” from The Fantasticks which was the school musical in my sophomore year of high school. While our El Gallo sounded nothing like Groban, the memories still flooded back to me of that time in my life when I was the stage manager and one of my still current friends ran one of the spotlights, terrifying me by scrambling up to its rather unsafe perch. This, too, was a time of partial innocence. While my life was far from happy, I still had my health, and in no way could I foresee the struggles ahead of me in life. Only three months after that production, I began my 22 year relationship with my now ex-husband.
 
After these first two songs, Josh Groban began talking to the audience. My daughter had asked before the concert started if Groban would be doing anything about Donald Trump like he did on Jimmy Kimmel. I told her that I doubted it, and while she was disappointed in that answer, she was not at all let down by the other humor that Groban amused his audience with between songs. During this first round of talking, he explained that he knew that Bass Concert Hall was probably named after someone with the last name of Bass, but he preferred to think of it as one of those talking bass fish like the ones he gets from his aunt for Christmas each year. After having an amusing conversation with an imaginary talking bass, Groban then said for the first of two times that evening that he was highly medicated. I still can’t imagine being able to perform that well while medicated!
 
From there, Groban sang “Old Devil Moon” accompanied by an Austin trumpeter. The song has been going through my head since then including when I woke up during the night. Groban was subsequently joined by the incredibly talented singer Lena Hall for the duet “All I Ask of You” which he sings with Kelly Clarkson on the Stages album. Hall performed a solo afterward, singing “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” originally sung by James Brown. I could tell my daughter was really impressed with Hall’s singing as she was Googling Hall during intermission. I listened to the song thinking about the strong woman I have had to be to survive this life and knowing that my daughter is also a strong young woman, filled with self-confidence, who is going to be able to make her way in a world where women often still aren’t treated as men’s equals.
 
As he had promised earlier yesterday on Twitter, Josh Groban began a few of the songs that he has not performed on tour or in recent history starting with “Dulcinea” from Man of La Mancha. That was probably the low point of the evening for me; both my daughter and I found the red moving images on the curtains behind Groban to be disorienting and distracting. Groban also sang the first of two Christmas songs he performed last night, “The Christmas Song.” He introduced the song by saying that his album Noël (2007) had been very successful, but after its success, he was very Christmased out and didn’t want to sing Christmas songs again until now. I found this amusing because when I announced to my sons that I had bought tickets for Josh Groban in concert, my youngest asked, “Is that the guy who sings Christmas songs?” It made me realize that I play Noël around my kids far more often than any of Groban’s other albums though it’s not the album I listen to most often by any stretch of the imagination.

To close out the first half of the evening, Groban sang “What I Did for Love” from A Chorus Line. This song was one of the most moving parts of the evening as the song touched a pain in me I hadn’t known was there. As I had been thinking about my love of theater throughout the evening, I realized during this song that it was something that my ex-husband had never truly shared. He came with me to various events, but he never understood the joy they brought to me nor the passion they ignite in me. Like many other things in our relationship, that power of music and theater was something that I abandoned, and now I am regaining that lost part of my life again. Yet despite what I gave up in my relationship with him, I looked at our beautiful daughter sitting next to me, and the lyrics “Won't forget, can't regret/ What I did for love” hit me hard. Everything I put myself through in my relationship with him and everything I sacrificed was worth it for the three amazing children we are raising. Though I wish I hadn’t gone through so many years of emotional pain in a toxic relationship, I would never give up the blessings of my children.
 
The second half of the evening was no less entertaining than the first. Josh Groban began after the intermission by singing his medley of “Children Will Listen/Not While I’m Around.”  This opened a whole new level of emotional processing for me. As I had dressed for the evening, I tried putting on a labradorite pendant, but I couldn’t do it. I was intuitively being told that I had to wear my clear quartz pendant. I didn’t understand why until this medley when my heart chakra began aching terribly as the music released a great deal of stored emotional pain and the crystal helped fill the emptiness it left with healing white light. The release continued through the next few songs. This medley in particular forced me to acknowledge how horribly painful it has been for me not to have had someone on the journey who would tell me “Nothing's gonna harm you/ Not while I'm around.” This journey has certainly been one where “demons are prowling everywhere,” yet it’s one that I have had to fight without the support of a partner.
 
Rejoined by Lena Hall in a different sparkling dress than she wore before, Groban sang the duet of “If I Loved You” with her; I actually enjoyed their version more than the one with Audra McDonald on the Stages album. As I listened to these lyrics, once again I was shown some of the happiness that awaits me in the second half of my life just around the next bend. I am impatiently waiting for the day when I have a partner for the first time in hundreds of years who will love me in the way captured so beautifully in the lyrics of this song. Lena Hall then followed this with another solo singing “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney and which she had recorded in honor of her father, a huge Beatles fan.
 
Moving on to another set of songs not on the Stages album, Groban announced he would be singing another Christmas song. Someone from the audience screamed out, “O Holy Night” which would have been my choice had I been able to vote on the song selection. To accommodate that request, Groban instead offered up a short version of Eric Cartman of South Park singing “O Holy Night.”  It was truly remarkable; Groban is a better Cartman than Cartman I think. (I also believe this is the point where Groban again blamed his medication again for his actions.) Having somewhat satisfied the audience member’s request, Josh Groban moved on to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” which he dedicated it to the troops who are not able to be home for Christmas as he does on Noël. During the song (which is actually my least favorite on Noël but which I enjoyed last night), I was flooded with an understanding that Christmas will never again be for me what it was in the past. It’s still a very fun event with my children who so far this year have put R2-D2 in the manger in lieu of the Baby Jesus, but it will never be the Christmas of my childhood again.
 
The next offering was “Unusual Way” which is from the musical Nine. As Groban related yet another one of his very amusing stories which in no way is captured by my summary, he said that this song was recorded but not released on the Stages album. He had seen Nine live with Antonio Banderas, and he was close enough to grasp one of Banderas’ chest hairs (ok, not really) and make a wish on it and now he was on a stage in Austin singing this song. “Unusual Way” is a song which I had never heard before but which is now on my playlist of favorites. I hope Groban releases the recording of it on a future album! This song again lead me to reviewing scenes from my past while simultaneously having an understanding of what is to come in my future.
 
When I was leaving my house for the concert, I had meant to put a wad of facial tissues in my purse because I was afraid that if Groban sang “Anthem,” I would melt into a puddle because his rendition of that song makes me cry every time without fail. Fortunately or unfortunately, “Anthem” was not on the setlist since I forgot to stock my purse. However, one of the last songs was the one which left me in tears, and not too unsurprisingly it was “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” from Les Miserables. Groban dedicated it to the victims of Paris, San Bernardino, and all affected by the recent terrorism and violence in the world. For me, it brought on a reflection of all those from my life who are no longer alive, a melancholic reflection that often happens for me around the holidays anyway.
 
As his closing song, Josh Groban sang, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel. If the tears hadn’t already started during the previous number, they would have commenced here. This was a song that had never particularly hit me when listening to the Stages album, but it’s now my favorite. Over the past year and especially in the last months, I have struggled with how lonely my journey back to health has been. Few of my friends have been strong enough to make it all the way through the years of illness. When I was separating from my ex-husband 4.5 years ago, I was terrified by the prospect of being alone in fighting the health problems, but what I rapidly learned was that I had already been facing it all on my own for a very long time. It was actually easier to fight the health battles without him in the same house as me draining away more of my energy. Yet that still hasn’t made it easier to walk this path alone. Finding faith and hope that I’m not truly alone has been the hardest challenge for me, especially in the recent months.
 
I’m also at a point where I’m deciding if I am going to be able to go forward in life without a wheelchair. I can walk, but on my bad days, trying to go more than a few feet is draining in an inexplicable way for those who haven’t traveled this same path I am on. So hearing Groban singing about walking, even in the metaphorical sense, prompted more tears. If the choice were just between attending events like this amazing one or not attending them, then I would have no hesitation in getting a wheelchair. However, it’s so much larger of a decision with so many other implications and issues attached that the decision isn’t simple. Thus, I was hearing something in the song that I suspect most other people in the audience didn’t hear: I was trying to understand if the “golden sky” is just around the corner or if I’m going to be living with this level of limited mobility for the rest of my life even once my health battles are done.
 
As the audience gave the first standing ovation and waited for Josh Groban to return for an encore, I couldn’t believe the show was over. It was like I had blinked and the evening was over. I felt like Groban had only sang a few songs until I came home and listed everything and realized it was really a longer evening than I thought! I also went into a bit of shock again. I had done it. I had attended a concert from beginning to end at Bass Concert Hall. I was so amazed and proud of myself for having conquered this hurdle. All I had left to do was get home which actually turned out to be easier than I feared.
 
Josh Groban returned for an encore with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” This song has never been the same for me since it was used for Mark Greene’s death on ER in 2002; it now carries a connotation of heaven and the afterlife. I’m sure Judy Garland’s youngish death also impacts the association of the song for me. Yet somehow I left this song with an impression and a hope that the second half of my life is going to lead me to happiness that I’ve never experienced in the first half. My journey through hell is almost over and I will be emerging on the other side, somewhere over the rainbow, in a much better place than I’ve ever lived in.
 
When Josh Groban returns to Austin, I will definitely be going to see him again. The privilege of hearing him sing in person was more than words can describe. Hopefully the next time he returns, the struggles I faced in getting to the concert last night will be a distant memory, replaced with an abundance of health and love.
 
© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Many years ago, I met a woman through a local internet mothering group who had been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. Doctors had given her six months to live, and she was determined to prove them wrong. She lived-- truly lived-- for another four years before her death. The woman (whom I’ll call K) entered a healing path even though she was going to be dying in the near future. She was determined to lengthen her life as much as possible. K undertook many holistic healing protocols. Among her discoveries that helped her to find more happiness and more health was facing whom she really was. After two heterosexual marriages that ended in divorce, K finally realized that she was a lesbian. By “coming out,” K found happiness that had been missing all of her adult life.

Around the same time, I was friends with a woman, C, who was in a national internet support group for people with illnesses like mine. We were in and out of each other’s lives via email for quite a while. As we both walked our healing paths, C made a personal discovery. While C identified as pansexual, she’d had many relationships that ended unhappily including a recent divorce. It wasn’t until C realized that he was actually a man named J that deeper healing began for him.

As I watched these two people find happiness as a result of the deep work that chronic illness prompted in their lives, I began to question what was holding me back in my personal healing. Given what both of these two people discovered about themselves, the first things I questioned were my gender and sexual orientation. After much introspection and internet research, I discovered that I was a heterosexual cisgender woman, exactly what I had identified as all my life. Thus, I made no amazing life changing discoveries about my sexuality as my internet friends had done.

I remained puzzled for many years about what was holding my healing back. If it wasn’t my sexuality, then what was it about myself that I needed to find? In my case, it turned out that it was my spiritual self than I needed to rediscover. I had spent the past five lifetimes trying to deny, repress and ignore my metaphysical abilities. Because I grew up in a family in and then married and divorced a man this life ​who aren’t believers in the metaphysical, it didn’t feel safe for me to be my true self. However, a major illness in this lifetime forced me to to come to terms with my metaphysical gifts and my need to use them for healing myself and others.

For many people facing chronic or terminal illness, finding oneself is one of the challenges that can help alleviate a great deal of emotional pain and suffering. Because our emotional pain often manifests as physical pain in our body, finding oneself can sometimes bring improvement or even remission of one’s physical misery. Regardless of its impact on one’s physical symptoms, being true to oneself always brings happiness that was previously unknown in this life. There is nothing comparable to being able to say, “This is whom I am. I am proud of me, and I love being me.”

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

​(This is another really long post. Apologies in advance!)

On September 25th, I attended “An Evening with Spirit” hosted by James Van Praagh. I had read his most recent book, Adventures of the Soul, earlier this year, so I was intrigued by the idea of hearing Van Praagh speak when my mentor alerted me to this event. The event was held at Unity Church of the Hills in northwest Austin, just 10 minutes from my home.

As I have had issues around disability accommodation in recent months (in particular trying to see another psychic medium), I was concerned about being able to access this event without challenges. In particular, there were no paper tickets issued for the event. Instead, one had to show one’s driver’s license to gain admission. I feared that this would mean a huge line at the door to get in, and right now, I am not physically capable of standing for any extended amount of time. Thus, I contacted the ticketing company through their website the week before the event. I received no response. A few days before the event, I tried contacting the organizing company through their website. When I didn’t get a quick response, I tried calling the church. A volunteer named Joan answered the phone, and she responded with compassion and friendliness. I felt completely welcomed by her. She didn’t know the answers to my question and the paid staff was in a meeting, but she called me back within an hour with answers. She told me that there were benches in the lobby and that there would be church volunteers in the lobby who could assist me if I needed help with the line. I would be able to hand one of them my driver’s license and they could get me checked in. I felt so relieved by this information. 

When I did eventually get a response from the organizing company, and it was far from adequate. The email I sent read, “I sent a message last week through your website but never heard back from anyone. I require disability assistance for the event and need to talk to someone who can assist me.” The woman who responded said, “The church is fully handicapped accessible, but we are not equipped to provide personal assistance.  What kind of assistance were you looking for?” That response is a “no” in advance of knowing what I need which legally is the wrong answer under the ADA. Public events like this are required to provide reasonable accommodations. I was not asking for personal assistance, but the woman responding made assumptions before finding out the situation. My response to her was, “‘Fully handicapped accessible’ is relative; it actually doesn't encompass several of my disabilities. What that means in most cases the building is wheelchair accessible. I am mobility impaired but not in a wheelchair and need different accommodations.” Mercifully I had already talked to the church who had given me a compassionate response unlike the event organizers who said no in advance of finding out what I needed. This is the kind of thing that is VERY frustrating for someone who is disabled and has found the strength to ask for the help that they need to attend an event.

The evening of the event, I arrived at the church at 6:57 for a 7:30 pm event, and when I drove up to the parking lot and a volunteer attendant, I held up my disabled permit. The volunteer had me stop and roll down my window. He informed me that all the disabled parking was already taken, and I felt my heart sink and my stomach clench in a panic. However, he quickly remedied the issue: The parking attendant “created” a disabled spot for me by having me pull on the grass next to his own truck not far from the door to the church. Had we been in Central Austin, I would have been concerned about getting towed for such a maneuver, but I decided to trust this man. On my way out, I noticed that he had done the same for several other disabled attendees who arrived later than me. Clearly the church was aware of the problem of having more disabled attendees than spots and had worked through this issue before. I was grateful.

Walking into the lobby of the church, there were six volunteers standing at podiums, each with a portion of the alphabet. That meant that there was absolutely no wait, and I did not have to stand for any length of time. I went straight up to the “G” person, was checked in, and got my wristband to enter the auditorium. It was that simple. Once again, I was so grateful. While I wanted to browse the offerings in the lobby including an amazing looking gift shop, I knew I had to sit down and save my energy just to get through the night. I pulled out a book and read for a great deal during the wait for the event to start. The people in front of me were pretty heavily saturated with fabric softener, and the woman had on some perfume as well, but I was doing ok. Another woman was wandering around looking for a seat, and I invited her to sit next to me as I could tell she wasn’t loaded with fragrance. While my skin felt mildly irritated from the fabric softener in the air around me by the time I left, overall my body did well handling all of the chemicals it faced that evening. I was so pleased with how my body did under circumstances that would have left me in horrid pain for days afterward.

James Van Praagh was a far more entertaining speaker than I had expected. The person who introduced Van Praagh noted he has been doing this for thirty years, and when Van Praagh took the microphone, he noted, “Thirty years. Wow I am old. And I’m still short.” He called himself a comedium (a comedian plus a medium). Van Praagh said that he works in the Light, but he also has to keep it light, and his humor throughout the evening did help prevent the event from becoming overwhelmingly deep and depressing. He also noted that life on the road is just him and the dead people, so he has to do something to amuse himself. He made puns on sicko, psycho, and psychic as well. I agree with him that spending so much time in contact with the spirit world definitely gives one a different perspective, and it has changed my sense of humor as well. I find many things funny that I never would have laughed at before.

While most of the evening was talking with souls on the other side, Van Praagh also presented some philosophical and spiritual ideas. He said that the two biggest illusions most of us have is a sense of separation and death. We are all one: We are drops in the same ocean. In addition, death is not an end. It’s just a change. The spirits are still alive. They refer to us as “the living dead” because so many of us don’t actually live our lives but instead act out of fear. In addition, Van Praagh stressed that thoughts are real things. We create our own heaven or hell based on thoughts and vibrations. Most importantly, Van Praagh brought a message of love, stressing how important it is that we love and be guided by love.

By this point in the evening, my heart chakra was hurting terribly. I couldn’t figure out why. I was in a good mood and was feeling so blessed that I had actually made it into the event without any major problems. However, when Van Praagh mentioned empaths, I wanted to do a facepalm. Der! It wasn’t my heart hurting. It was everyone else around me who was wanting so desperately to hear from their loved ones. I was picking up on that and feeling heartache. I worked to boost my shield a bit and offered thanks that I was not in a place of personal pain and grief as so many clearly were.

When Van Praagh asked how many people had been to a reading with a psychic medium before, I wasn’t sure what to do. I ended up raising my hand. I’ve never been to a reading with another psychic medium, but I talk to the dead on a regular basis myself and I receive messages for other people. That counts, right? A large number of people there were first timers, and it was obvious from the energy in the air that many were very excited to be there.

Van Praagh took questions from the audience before he began receiving messages from the spirit world. Someone asked if they could set up signs with a loved one before that person died so that they could know that the other person was around. Van Praagh said that it was absolutely possible, but it was easier in some ways to do it after the loved one died. In that case, one would simply ask the loved one to send butterflies or raccoons or whatever to show that the loved one was around them.

Someone then proceeded to ask a question about reincarnation which led to Van Praagh wandering a bit in his answer. However, it was the most interesting thing for me all evening. Van Praagh very much believes in reincarnation. He believes we are souls having human experiences. This is only one world, one communication. In comparison to the rest of the Universe, the Earth is only a grain of sand on the beach. Van Praagh also believes that only 20% of the soul is in the body, and 80% is outside. He thinks this is how one can experience several lifetimes simultaneously. He believes that we are experiencing far more than what is going on in our bodies right now and we just aren’t aware.

Before Van Praagh began receiving messages from the other side, he emphasized that what he does is a three way conversation between the other side, him, and the audience. It is communicating in different language that is thought based, and it is very different than spoken language. He was the translator for all of us. I realized why he gave such a strong preface once the readings were under way because Van Praagh often makes comments to the spirits saying things like “slow down” or “I don’t know.” He definitely serves as a channel, often speaking in the first person as if he were the spirit who is coming through. I found it fascinating to watch him work.

Also before beginning receiving messages for loved ones in the audience, Van Praagh lead the group in a mediation which was a great way to calm the energy of the room a bit. However, this was the one and only time during the evening where I strongly disagreed with what Van Praagh did and said, but that is influenced by my personal experiences. I can understand that others who have walked a different path don’t see the world in the way that I do, and Van Praagh’s experiences may be very different than mine. The meditation was based on the idea that the heart is the center of the soul, and idea I had no problem with. However, in the middle of the meditative exercise, Van Praagh encouraged people to let spirits around them merge with their bodies so that they could feel their deceased ones’ love for them in a deep and personal way. As someone who had many unhappy and unhealthy souls attached to me which we had to clear in my journey to health, this made me cringe. I don’t invite others to randomly share my body space if I don’t know whom I am working with, and most people in the audience had no idea whom or what they were inviting in (though they certainly wanted to feel the love of family and friends). Unless the setting were one where I knew that everyone was properly grounded and shielded, I would not lead an exercise like that because of the negative consequences it could have for less than spiritually prepared individuals.

From there, Van Praagh began receiving messages. In between messages, he would often take a metaphysical break, talking a bit about important topics related to what he had just related from the other side. Some of his wisdom included:

• Memories create our experiences.
• Prayer is unconditional love. It doesn’t matter what words come out.
• LIfe is a series of choices: We can act out of love or fear. When we work from a place of judgment, that is a place of fear, and that creates a false ego.
• After we die, love and thoughts live on. After death, we all have a life review when we discuss what we did and didn’t do with others who were part of our lives. We judge ourselves in the life review.
• We are works in progress.
• We should give unconditionally even if we know we’ll never get it back.
• We shouldn’t waste time. We should make the most of it.
• Van Praagh feels the movie Ghost is very true about presence of the dead. Also based on that movie, Van Praagh wants us not to think of our loved ones how they died. If we think about their deaths, we make them die every day. Instead, think of how they lived.

I didn’t take a lot of notes on the messages he brought through, in part because I was so captivated and in part because they felt very private even in a room of 500 people. One of the most poignant was a widow whose late husband came through. Their love for each other was palpable even across the divide. When the husband told her that he cuddles her in bed every night, the whole room let out a sigh because it was such an emotional sentiment. In another message, Van Praagh was bringing through someone who had committed suicide with a gun. When he said that, eight people stood up, to which Van Praagh made a comment along the lines of, “Oy. Texas and its guns” which caused the entire audience to laugh. When Van Praagh added that this person had a collection of guns, only two people sat down. Clearly Texans do love their guns. The other memorable message for me was a twenty-something son coming through for his mother (and his father who was not there). The young man was an empath who didn’t know how to deal with the energy he was feeling in this life which lead to him eventually overdosing. On the other side, he was helping animals who had crossed over alone, another comment that deeply moved the audience on an emotional level. Van Praagh asked the mother to remember this side of her son, the young compassionate man who rescued animals, not the man who died an unfortunate early death.

For me, the biggest takeaway from the evening was to be reminded how I am so blessed with my metaphysical gifts to be able to connect with the dead. It has given me a sense of power over death that many others don’t have. Watching people who don’t have such strong gifts connect with Van Praagh’s help was deeply moving, and it made me realize how much I undervalue on a personal level what I can do. I also realized during the evening that I really didn’t have anyone I *needed* to come through. For a moment I thought my paternal grandfather might be coming through because Van Praagh was in my area talking about one of the health issues that my grandfather had and that he was a veteran of WWII, but as he progressed, it was clear that it wasn’t for me. That was fine by me. I am comfortable with where my loved ones are. I’m fairly certain that my daughter has reincarnated, so I didn’t expect or need to hear from her either. Anyone else I might want to hear from, I have. As a result, seeing others connect with ones they needed to get closure with was a far more powerful gift than receiving a message for me.

I am grateful that I was able to make this event. I appreciated having such a great experience with Unity Church of the Hills which has made me quite willing to go back to other events there. I was thrilled to watch Van Praagh in action. I didn’t attend the rest of the events that weekend, but I am sure they brought a great deal of healing, hope, and education to those who did.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I am still at a point in my recovery where my health (or lack thereof) occasionally overrules my desire to participate in events. Most of the time, it’s no big deal. I just don’t end up going to whatever Meetup or festival I had in mind. It’s disappointing, but I understand that it is still my reality. The bigger problem comes with buying tickets for events that will sell out before the night of the activity or performance. I’ve unfortunately had it happen to me more times than I would like that I am not able to use a ticket for an event that I really wanted to attend. It feels like insult added to injury. It is hard in that situation to find happiness for others when not only am I in pain, but my body is denying me the chance to go to a live event I really wanted to go to. One of the ways I find to soften the blow is by finding someone who really wants my ticket and giving it to them.

Several years ago, Susan Piver was in Austin for a small discussion on meditation. As the evening approached, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to attend. As I was getting ready to find a friend to give my ticket to, Piver sent out an e-mail stating that there was a waiting list for tickets, and if anyone knew they couldn’t attend to please let her know and she would issue a refund so that someone else might use that ticket. I thought that her offering a refund was incredibly generous, and definitely not something most people would have done. I had already made peace with losing the cost of admission, though. So when I e-mailed her letting her know my spot at the evening was available again, I also let her know that I didn’t need a refund and I would prefer she gave my spot to someone else, asking them to pay it forward in return. She was happy to do so. Thus, even though I was disappointed not to attend the event, I was left with a feeling of happiness knowing that someone who had wanted to attend was not only getting to attend but was attending for free, and hopefully in turn that person would be passing on the love to someone else in the future.

This week, my practitioners and I have opened up a new level of healing for me. As we clear out a bunch of stored trauma from my body, I am going through very intense pain in my psoas muscles and my lumbar vertebrae where the psoas attach to the spine. Despite having seen my acupuncturist, craniosacral therapist, massage therapist and chiropractor on Tuesday and Wednesday, my back was still spasming and making life a little (ok, a lot!) less enjoyable. I am not enjoying this process, but I know that once this trauma is removed from my body, my health is going to be able to move forward immensely.

Wednesday night, though, I was having to accept that I was not going to be able to attend Stephen Jenkinson’s lecture promoting his new book, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, on Thursday night. I have been talking about this event for weeks to people I know because I was so excited about it. Our society does death so poorly, and I was looking forward to hearing someone speak who clearly understands that there is a good way to die. As I was struggling with my reality, an e-mail from the organizers of the event came in. It stressed the level of parking difficulty for the event. I pretty much knew I was sunk at that point. I sent an email asking if extra disabled parking had been allotted for the event because of the population that the talk was likely to draw, but I got no response. I was going to have to show up over an hour early to get parking next to the event rather than a few blocks away, and then the event itself was two hours long. Combined with the hour commute, it would have been a four hour evening. I knew my body simply could not do it in the condition it is currently in.

One of the people whom I had discussed the event with was my backup massage therapist. The tickets for the event had been sold out for quite a while when I talked with her about it, but I could tell she was very interested in it. She talked about a similar course she had taken that really enabled her to just be with her aging grandmother on her last visit. So when I accepted the fact that I could not go, she was the first person I thought of to offer the ticket to. She fortunately had no plans and was happy to take the ticket off my hands. She looked for a copy of one of his other books for me, texting me before the event started, though there were none to purchase. We’ve ordered some of his books from Canada, and I’m looking forward to getting together with her to hear more about the evening. Her getting to attend the event helped lessen my pain of not being able to.

Time passes, and speakers often returns to Austin. Susan Piver will be in Austin at the end of November to discuss her new book, Start Here Now. I am determined to be there this time! I’m going to be reading Stephen Jenkinson’s books which I have ordered, and I will watch his Griefwalker video online. While I was disappointed to miss events like these, knowing that someone else got to enjoy the event instead really helped soften the blow for me.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC ​

Trigger warning: This blog post explicitly discusses infant and child death and the pain surrounding them.

Today, October 15th, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day; October is Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month. However, in the hubbub of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this other issue that affects at least one in four women does not get much publicity. However, it’s an important day for many who have lost a child. It’s a time to gather and share in the grief of having a child die way too soon. It’s a day to say to the world, “It’s ok for me to miss the child I lost so many years ago even when society says I should be ‘done’ with the pain by now.”

I have experienced both an early miscarriage and a term stillbirth. The summer after my daughter Rebecca died in 1999, I watched a great deal of television as I healed from my physical and emotional pain. When John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s plane disappeared five weeks after her birth and death, I was glued to the non-stop news, not because I was a fan of his, but because I had the tv on as a distraction. As it often does, life forced me to face my pain even when I was trying to ignore it. As the newscasters tried to fill dead air time when there was really no new news to report, they began recounting the many tragic deaths within the Kennedy clan. They spoke of John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy’s son Patrick who was born and died two days later in August 1963. I had previously heard of him, and his death did not bother me at all.

However, what hit home all too closely was when the announcers began discussing the firstborn of JFK and Jackie Kennedy, an unnamed stillborn daughter. This little girl had been largely ignored by history to that point, never named, rarely acknowledged. That was how stillbirths were handled by society in the 20th century until towards the latter years when stillborn babies were finally being acknowledged as beloved children. I cried very painful tears at that point, weeping not for JFK, Jr. but for his forgotten sister and for all the stillborn children of the world whom people had tried to forget rather than facing the deep and horrible pain of their loss. Any time I approach the subject of the Kennedy children, I end up in tears thinking of the little girl whom history tried to forget.

Five years later, I was watching news in the aftermath of the December 26, 2004 tsunami which killed an estimated 230,000 people. One report showed a bereaved mother, holding her young dead son in her arms and keening. As I watched the woman wracked with emotional pain, I thought to myself, “I can’t even imagine what she’s going through.” And then, from nowhere, it hit me. I did know what she was going through. I had held my dead child in my arms, too. There were some big differences in how our losses happened and the age of our children, but I knew all too well what that woman was feeling in that moment. Even though we live half a world away from each other, I have never forgotten this stranger’s face, her pain or loss. That was one of the last times I watched the news for the constantly reported suffering became too much for me to bear.

Much more recently, I was watching “The Quarterback” episode of Glee in which the cast mourns the death of character Finn Hudson whose actor had died from an accidental overdose three months before in July 2013. The episode was poignant and well-done in my opinion. One of the most painful moments for me was listening to Carole Hudson, Finn’s mother, talking about the loss:

Again, I knew exactly what she was describing, and obviously one of the people who wrote those lines understood the pain all too well, too.

Losing a child inducts mothers into a “sorority no one wanted to join.” In the US, an estimated 1 in 4 women have experienced miscarriages and approximately 1% of mothers have experienced a stillbirth or neonatal loss. Today, as many of us join together around the nation and the world to remember our losses, we understand each other’s pain all too well. There is no other pain in the world that comes close to the death of a child. It’s no wonder our society wants to try to forget about this horrific part of life.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When my daughter Rebecca died in 1999, one of the things the social worker intern told us as we left the hospital was that we needed to find a funeral home. As my ex-husband and I did not grow up in Austin, we had never been involved in the planning of a funeral here, and we had no family attachments to a particular funeral home as our families did in the city where we grew up.

When we got home from the hospital, my ex-husband went and fell asleep (after having been up all night with me in labor), but I had the post-childbirth hormonal surge going through my body. Sleep was not going to happen for me. So I started doing what I do in any crisis: dealing with all the details and arrangements. I had no idea how to choose a funeral home, though I knew that funeral homes had a reputation of being expensive. Hence, I opened the phone book (in the days before everyone had websites) and started calling various funeral homes and asking prices. The first funeral home I called quoted me a price of $500 for an infant cremation with no service (since we were planning on having a memorial at the church we belonged to then). That was far less than I expected. The second funeral home I called charged $300. The third and final funeral home I called said they handled infant cremations for free. We had a winner!

The funeral home that I selected had only one seeming drawback: It was on the other side of town, 25 minutes away without traffic. In my physically uncomfortable postpartum state, that was a bit of a challenge, but it was doable. My ex-husband and I made the trek down there the next day to fill out all of the paperwork since both our signatures were required; two weeks later I went back alone to pick up my daughter’s ashes (something I definitely should have taken a friend with me to do).

While we were filling out the paperwork, we learned the reason that the funeral home handled infant cremations for free: The funeral director who worked with us had lost his prematurely born infant daughter about 30 years before. He started crying as he talked about her, his child who would have been close to the same age as my ex-husband and me at that point if she had lived. The funeral director apologized for being “unprofessional” with his tears, but we found his tears very consoling. The tears supported the pain and grief we were feeling and let us know how powerful the loss of a child really was. His compassion and empathy toward our grief was incredible, and we were grateful to him for all he did for us. Sixteen years later, it still brings tears to my eyes to think about him.

Despite how positive of an experience it was working with this funeral director, this was still a horrible circumstance. No one wants to have to make cremation and memorial arrangements for their child. Thus, that funeral home became a painful site in my mind. I rapidly became incredibly grateful that it was on the opposite side of town. There was a cemetery and funeral home by our house that we drove past almost every day on our way home from school/work. I was glad that I didn’t know what the inside of that funeral home looked like and that I didn’t have to relive the memories of making my daughter’s cremation arrangements every single day when I drove past.

Thus, that is my one bit of advice for picking a funeral home when making arrangements for a loved one: Consider a funeral home that isn’t on a path you drive by on a regular basis. The memories of your child’s cremation or funeral arrangements are going to be difficult, and having to drive by that building regularly where you felt pain will be difficult for many people. While I wish no one would ever have to make funeral arrangements for a young loved one again, the reality of our world says that they will. Finding ways to make that difficult time easier can be helpful in the healing process.

(9/16/17 Comments closed on this post due to the preponderance of spam from funeral homes!)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Trigger warning: This blog post discusses infant and childhood death.
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Spoiler warning: This blog post discusses crucial elements of the plot of In the Bedroom (2001).

Other information: October is Pregancy and Infant Loss Month. This is a part of a series of articles I will be writing this month on the topic of losing a child to death.

One of my favorite books of all time is Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s work of nonfiction, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. Reading this book in my second year as an undergrad, I made up my mind that I wanted to go do my Ph.D. in American Studies. (The professor whose course included A Midwife’s Tale actually ended up becoming my dissertation director.) During grad school, I read Ulrich’s 1991 Bancroft Prize acceptance speech entitled, “Martha’s Diary and Mine.” In it, she describes, “At some point in all this a 250-year old lady took up residence in the loft above my bedroom, alternately cheering me on and chastizing me for my lax habits and flagging spirits.” I’ve loved that image because I found it to be very true in my own research and writing. Your subject becomes an integral part of your life.

When my daughter Rebecca died in June of 1999, I was midway through writing my dissertation on 19th century Irish-American Catholic women. These women had become a part of my life, just as Martha Ballard had become part of Ulrich’s. Ironically, it was also among these women where I found some of the greatest comfort when my daughter died. In the modern American world, we’ve reduced our infant death rate to less than 1%. Few women know the pain of having a baby or child die. This contrasts greatly with an estimated 10-40% mortality rate for children under the age of one and up to a 50% childhood death rate for the earlier 19th century. (Exact numbers are difficult to pinpoint because of poor record keeping.) When women were having an average of seven or more children, having at least one child die was a default expectation, and many women experienced the death of several of their offspring before the children reached adulthood.

Thus, as I immersed myself in the world of 19th century women while I wrote my dissertation, I found a comfort that I never would have expected. At that time, none of my living friends had experienced the death of a child, so in the modern world, I felt very alone. Yet as I read the poetry and letters which many of these bereaved 19th century women wrote, I found myself surrounded by peers even though we were separated by over a century in time. They understood my pain. They understood my loss. Many of them had lost far more than I had, and yet somehow, they managed to carry on.

All of these thoughts came flooding back to me recently as I watched In the Bedroom (2001). This mistitled movie is incompletely described as “A New England couple's college-aged son dates an older woman who has two small children and an unwelcome ex-husband.” However, the movie is far more than that. It’s actually a very powerful drama about parents losing a child to a senseless death. In one scene, the local priest, Father McCasslin (Jonathan Walsh), is speaking with bereaved mother Ruth Fowler (Sissy Spacek) in the cemetery adjacent to the church where she had just been visiting her son’s grave. Father McCasslin says,

The character of Ruth Fowler was not powerfully moved by this vision, but I was because I understood all too well the pain and comfort that McVey described. There is something powerful to being surrounded by those who understand your pain. A local blogger who had experienced the death of one of her sons once described it in a post as joining the sorority that no one wanted to be a member of. You didn’t sign up for the sorority, and you didn’t want to be there. None of the other members wanted to be there either. And yet, there you all were, sharing a bond of sisterhood that no one ever wants another to have to endure.

I am grateful to those women of the nineteenth century whose words reached out from the paper and microfilm to comfort me in my time of bereavement. They helped less my pain and helped me to feel like others understood all too well what I was going through. The internet now provides a multitude of venues for bereaved mothers (and fathers) to connect with others like themselves so that they can find others who have endured the same horrible losses. Compassionate solidarity in suffering can make a huge difference in reducing the pain of life’s greatest burdens.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

My maternal grandmother died 24 years ago today, or at least that’s what the record books say.

Her death started in the week beforehand when she was taken to the ER in the middle of the night for congestive heart failure (CHF). The type 2 diabetes she had for the 10+ years before her death is an established risk factor for CHF. She was given six months to live at that point. My mother (and possibly her siblings) decided with the doctors that the best thing for my grandmother to do was to have heart surgery. However, surgery on patients with diabetes has higher risks than on the general population. My paternal aunt, who was an RN/BSN, warned me that doing the surgery was the wrong decision because the risk of stroke was so high. She told me that if we were lucky, my grandmother would die from the stroke during surgery. If we were unlucky, she’d live in a vegetative state for many years with her newly repaired heart. I repeated this information to my mother who discounted and ignored what I said because she was certain her decision to do the surgery was the right one. Her words were along the lines of, "No. This surgery is the only chance your grandmother has."

The night before the surgery, almost all the adults in the family (including me at age 17) gathered in my grandmother's hospital room. She had given birth to six children, five of whom were there along with several spouses and two other grandchildren. The room was quite crowded, but it was filled with laughter. It struck me as such an odd gathering since the family never really got together except for weddings, funerals or major holidays. I left earlier than most of the crowd because I had to be at work at 5 or 6 the next morning. As I left, I had the distinct feeling that it was the last time I would ever see my grandmother alive.

My paternal aunt was correct in her assessment of the situation as my grandmother had a stroke during the surgery but survived. She was in a coma for several more days before she died. What I didn’t expect was that my premonition was correct, too. When I went to the hospital a day or two after the surgery with my boyfriend, my mother was the only one in the room. We were already estranged at that point, so it was an awkward situation. I went and stood by my grandmother’s body, but I could tell her spirit was already gone. As I left, my mother ever-so-helpfully told me, “You know this is likely the last time you’ll see your grandmother alive, don’t you?” My mother was always right (in her mind) as she has narcissistic personality disorder, so I had learned quickly as a child that there was no point in ever trying to tell her otherwise. I simply nodded my head while inside my brain I was screaming, “She’s already gone!”

I don’t know how one tells that the spirit is gone in a patient in a coma, but I do know that I was certain my grandmother’s spirit was not there. The friend whom I have asked to “pull the plug” on me if I were ever in a similar situation is friends with many who have metaphysical abilities who will easily be able to tell if my spirit has already left. Knowing me, I will probably already be trying to communicate from the other side to tell them how to handle things!

My grandmother's body passed away a few days later; mercifully the time her body spent in a coma after the stroke was short. However, to me, the decision to have surgery was the wrong one. I understand why my mother (who had power of attorney for my grandmother who was already showing early signs of dementia) made the decision. My mother felt doctors were gods, and if any of them offered to do something, she would have rapidly agreed even if it was a procedure with terrible odds. She, like most others, also wasn't prepared to lose her mother yet. Many of us make decisions to try and keep our loved ones here longer because of our emotional attachments. However, death is inevitable for all of us. Sometimes the better option is not to medically intervene. In this case, my grandmother’s chance at six months with her family was the better one than the surgery that was likely to cause a stroke due to her risk factors.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(This post is based on an Advance Reader Copy of Upside won through Goodreads’ First Reads program.)

As I read through Upside: The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth by Jim Rendon, I had plenty of thoughts that didn’t necessarily fit in my official review of the book. The book certainly prompted some thinking and questioning on my part; I always appreciate it when a book stimulates my brain cells. Some of these questions I’m asking probably haven’t been answered by studies yet, so I can’t fault the author for not including things that don’t yet exist! The following are some of those thoughts shared in a rather random order.

- It wasn’t until very late in Upside that a divorce was mentioned among the case studies of those who have undergone trauma. However, I suspect that this representation is not accurate. Chronic illness and PTSD were major contributions toward my divorce, and I know I’m not alone in that. I’d be curious as to what the actual divorce rate is among those who suffer from PTSD as well as what the divorce rate is among those who suffer from PTSD but have come to a place of positive growth. Further questioning would ask how many people saw their divorce as a part of their positive growth (as I definitely do).

- As I read the chapter on family support, I questioned, “What about those who didn’t have family support?” I would like to see a study of how support for patients with cancer compares to those with other illnesses. Because Rendon focused on cancer, he may not be aware that other diseases actually can cause families to abandon loved ones. This certainly was my situation with extended family, and again, it was a contribution to the end of my marriage. In my experience with late disseminated Lyme disease which is legally diagnosed as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, compassion and support was not overwhelming. In many cases, friends and extended family abandoned me and my family unit. One extended family member pointed out to me not so subtly that two other family members with type 1 diabetes and gallstones had REAL health problems (implying that mine were not significant, real and/or valid despite the fact that I was homebound and mostly bedbound at that point).

- While Rendon completely failed to discuss the problems surround childbirth and infant loss as they apply to women, he did devote a chapter to a group of dads who have lost children. This is a rare perspective that is often ignored in our culture, and I appreciate that he shared this reality with the world. Too often, men’s grief is poorly processed and disregarded contributing to the ongoing problem in our society of men who are out of touch with their emotions including grief.

- I felt like the chapter on religion and spirituality was one of the weakest. From what was written, I suspect that the author does not identify with religion or spirituality and may in fact be hostile towards them. I felt like he neglected the major differences between religion and spirituality, for they are two different things. It is very possible to be spiritual without being religious. I also wondered as I read the chapter how many people with PTSD experience a radical change in their beliefs or spirituality. In my life I went from being Catholic to being agnostic to experiencing PTSD and becoming highly spiritual without identifying with any religion (and in fact shunning most of them). I suspect I am not alone in this process of spiritual growth that is a part of personal growth with PTSD. This spiritual growth I experienced is a far different experience than someone becoming more vested in an established religion or turning to their pastor for counseling.

- Rendon argues that support groups are instrumental in the personal growth of individuals because they allow those with PTSD to be with those “who get it.” On one hand this is very true. However, I am curious about the reality of support groups for a wider population. I actually found that the pessimism and negativity of many support groups were pulling me down and were impeding my personal growth. They weren’t “better-informed optimists” as Rendon writes. Instead, they were people filled with unhealthy attitudes, bitterness, and often ignorance. I switched to digest for many online groups to avoid reading the posts of the worst offenders; some groups I left altogether. The two health related in-person groups I tried attending, one for those who had lost a baby and one for those who were chemically sensitive, I quickly left because the energy in them was awful. My better-informed optimism did not fit there. Thus, I would be curious about studies that showed that support groups actually have an ability to hamper personal growth rather than assist it. My experiences show that this is a potential reality.

- I cringed at the idea of 46 pills being a lot as Rendon dramatically presents when discussing a cancer patient. I currently take 14 Western medical pills per day plus 65 pill supplements, seven doses of liquid supplements, and a nebulizer treatment per day. At times my pill total has been well over 100 a day. This is what it has taken to get me functional and to continue to heal. I look forward to dropping back to “only” 46 pills and then the day when I need less than 20 per day to maintain my health. Again, if Rendon had talked to people with other health issues outside of cancer, his perspective would have been broadened and enlightened in many ways.

- Rendon has an implicit (and very valid in my opinion) judgment of how deficient psychological treatment is for soldiers and vets with PTSD. He also notes how others involved in other traumas also received very little or no psychotherapy as part of their recovery processes. It would be great to see what the studies show about why this happens other than the lack of funding for mental health care that is an endemic problem in our nation.

- I appreciated the way Rendon approached the topic of “gratitude as a way of life.” As I’ve noted in another blog post, gratitude is the only way I got through many days when my illness was at its worst. I think most people who have not undergone a major trauma understand what gratitude really is and what it can do for us.

- The chapter on activity and exercise as healing was very frustrating to me. I think this is a concept that is fairly well understood in our society as almost all less-than-informed healthcare practitioners I have worked with over the years have pushed exercise as one of the main solutions to healing. However, there is an important distinction between using exercise during a time of hellish illness and using it after one has regained significant health. Rendon discusses women who have survived breast cancer and now row together; he mentions but does not dwell on the fact that they could not have done this kind of activity when they were in the worst phases of their treatment. That distinction is very important for those undergoing health trauma because the overwhelming pressure to exercise when they are too sick to do so can be very emotionally defeating. As someone whose Lyme disease has caused chronic fatigue syndrome, I have had to deal with the conflict that exercise can actually cause more damage than good a great deal of the time, and our society does not seem to understand that because it is so pro-exercise as the cure to all that ails you.

- I really loved that Rendon stressed the importance of not pushing post-traumatic growth on those with PTSD. This book would have been devastating to read in the worst years of my illness; I was not ready to hear its message. I definitely would not give the book to someone who was at a point when they were at rock bottom. The lesson of “bitter blessings” is one that each person has to come to individually on their own time.

- When discussing one person who has survived brain cancer, Rendon reveals the very unhealthy brave face platitudes that are a very problematic part of emotional health in our society. However, Rendon doesn't expand on the problem that "the brave face" ideology creates in relation to PTSD. Rendon writes, “[The patient with brain cancer] maintained a brave face, but beneath it all he was terrified. ‘He never once said, “This really sucks,”’ said [his best friend]. ‘But you could see it in his eyes, you could see him thinking, Holy heck what am I going to do?’” Society expects those with chronic illness to hide behind those brave faces. They’re expected not to show the pain they’re in or the suffering they’re enduring. If they do show that illness, that fear, that pain, that loss, then they risk losing those around them who are unwilling or unable to deal with the realities of health challenges including the possibility of death. This only contributes to the issues surrounding PTSD when one is expected to put on a brave face but is actually falling apart inside.

- I would be curious to see studies about those who manage to achieve positive post-traumatic growth without most of the key items that Rendon cites as contributory factors. I am someone who is lacking in extended family support. I was isolated and alone because of my chemical sensitivities. I was the person whom others looked at and said, “It doesn’t get much worse than that.” Yet somehow I have grown in ways I never would have believed possible. I wonder how other characteristics such as personality and intelligence factor in for those whom growth seemed to be unlikely to happen even according to the standards Rendon establishes.

- Finally, in the last paragraphs of Upside, Rendon writes, “And given that they came so close to death, that they lost so many things they once took for granted, they understand on a much deeper level, in a much more informed way, what it means to be alive.” This association of PTSD with facing death is a flawed one, and it’s something that contributes to a large portion of people enduring PTSD not seeking appropriate help in my opinion. Our society erroneously interprets PTSD to mean former soldiers or those whose lives were endangered. Yet as Rendon demonstrates throughout the book, for many people, PTSD does not result from a life threatening event. I would have added a clause to this sentence about how “some have come so close to death.”

(I do have another upcoming blog post motivated by Upside that I will link to once it publishes.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I am reviewing an Advance Reader Copy of this book won through Goodreads’ First Reads program.)

I came to Upside: The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth by Jim Rendon as a woman who has endured PTSD caused by multiple sources: abuse, childbirth, health trauma, and if you believe in past lives, World War II. I have been able to achieve major healing with most of my wounds through alternative therapies; conventional therapy was only serving to retraumatize me. Yet as someone with a Ph.D., I have a great deal of respect for science and the advances it can help bring. Rendon's work questions why so many people who have endured traumas and PTSD are able to come to a place of positive growth through examining the influence of personal narratives, community support, honest communication, optimistic thinking, religion, creative outlets, physical exercise, fellow sufferers, and therapy. The studies and examples Rendon cites demonstrate that these factors can all contribute to a lifelong positive change.

Rendon’s work is firmly grounded in scientific studies which demonstrate how trauma can lead to growth. The book is well-researched, fluently integrated and easy to read. Rendon’s writing style makes academia accessible to the general public. Despite the heavy topic, I breezed through Upside much quicker than I read most nonfiction books. The stories Rendon relates about others who have suffered traumas are painful to read, but only one was horrifying to me because of the explicit violence it contains. (For those who are highly sensitive like me, I recommend skipping the details in the last chapter on Jake Harriman's trauma, an event that occurred in the war in Iraq.)

Rendon was drawn to the topic of post-traumatic growth because his father was a Holocaust survivor; he makes no indication of having endured major trauma in his own life either explicitly or implicitly. There were times where I felt his text would have benefited from an extra reading and feedback before publication by those who have lived through trauma themselves because Rendon’s perspective sometimes doesn’t quite grasp the full reality. However, for the most part, Rendon does an excellent job of vividly relating the pain and the growth that his subjects experienced. He also gives one of the best summaries I’ve read about how PTSD creates a hypersensitive response in individuals whose “fight or flight” response is perpetually in overdrive. The first few chapters of the book could be incredibly helpful to someone trying to understand their loved one’s new reactions to the world.

If one were to survey the trauma-inducing events that Rendon discusses in detail, one would conclude that trauma is caused by cancer, accidents, warfare, and natural disasters. I realize that Rendon had limited space in his book, but he chose to relate cancer patient after cancer patient’s experience. This is typical of our culture which actually creates additional trauma for those who aren’t enduring cancer: they are second class citizens in the world of medical trauma. This blog post discusses how Lyme patients like me are abandoned by friends and medical practitioners in their search for health while simultaneously being told, “At least it isn’t cancer.” By not addressing other illnesses beyond cancer and accidents, Rendon contributes to the cultural mythologies of what illnesses “should” look like.

My largest complaint about Upside is that it contains a blatant disregard for women’s traumas. It was not until chapter five that Rendon discussed a female case study; from there on, women were mentioned fairly regularly in the book. However, Rendon does not discuss a single case of rape, sexual harassment, or abuse in detail. These are major causes of trauma, but they are barely mentioned in passing and there are no specific examples of them in the text. Most frustrating to me was how Rendon described trauma from childbirth: “People can be traumatized from the happiest of situations: childbirth.” While on one level this is a true statement, on another level it shows a total lack of understanding for the epidemic proportioned reality of what most women still endure during childbirth in our nation. There are two primary times when no doesn’t mean no: when a woman is being raped or when she is in labor. Had Rendon taken the time to talk with women who have experienced what is known as “birth rape” in some circles or tbose who have lost their babies, he would not have made such a flippant comment about the joy of childbirth, and the trauma around childbirth would likely have merited more than a few brief paragraphs in this work.

I will definitely recommend Upside to many clients, primarily the family members and friends of those enduring traumas around war, cancer, or accidents. I will also recommend it to individuals who, as Rendon notes in the text, have already come to the recognition on their own that their traumas can serve for positive growth. The book would serve well in a college classroom of psychology, medical, nursing or social work students trying to begin to understand trauma. However, for those who are dealing with childbirth trauma, rape, or abuse, Upside is not necessarily the best place to find information about healing.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

In the past week, a high school friend and her wife have endured the death of their one week old son. In most situations, I advise people to use the name of the deceased child as often as possible because it is helpful and healing for for the bereaved parents to know that others recognize the brief life that their child shared with them. However, in this case the parents are very private people who prefer not to share details. Out of respect for that, I’ll be writing about the son as “C” rather than calling him by his name.

As a mutual friend shared the news with me this past week that C had suffered oxygen deprivation during delivery and had suffered massive brain damage as a result, I found myself in tears as I talked about this dying baby with others. Clearly, since I had a child die during delivery 16 years ago, C’s tragic birth and impending death were stirring up deep personal issues for me. I found myself crying in a restaurant as I replied to an email on my phone, and yet, I didn’t care. If I had silent tears streaming down my face in public, that felt ok to me. I needed to release that emotion.

This new loss of C reopened the old wounds around my daughter’s death as I remembered in detail the grieving process I went through in the months and years immediately following her death. This is not uncommon for those who have suffered a tragedy or trauma: from time to time, something will trigger the emotions around the incident. When this happens, it can feel inconvenient at best and horrifically painful at worst. However, this reopening of old wounds is always a chance for us to grow and heal in new ways that weren’t available to us before.

In my case, I experienced very deep healing around my daughter Rebecca’s death several years ago. I have also experienced an incredible amount of personal growth in the past five years which has shifted my worldview almost 180 degrees. While processing C’s death this week, I approached the issue of infant death with a very different perspective than I’ve ever experienced before. I found myself grieving for the parents primarily; my own loss only played a background role in the tears that I shed as an empath because it gave me an understanding of the intense and unbearable pain that they are enduring right now. However, I was not afraid of that pain I felt nor the emotions I was experiencing in the present. All of it felt like a safe and healthy place for me to be.

One of the biggest issues for me to process around C’s death has been around the hypotheticals of my daughter’s death. We all ask the relatively difficult “what if” questions around any tragedy: What if he hadn’t decided to go out to dinner and wouldn’t have been in that auto accident? What if she had decided to go to a different college where she wouldn’t have been raped? What if something different had happened during my delivery and my daughter might have been able to take a few breaths? These questions are ultimately pointless because the past is what it is. There’s no way for us to change what actually happened. The only thing we can do in the present is work through the trauma as it happened and find healthy ways to cope with, accept, and move forward from what happened. That’s much easier said than done in the aftermath of a trauma, though, because it is perfectly natural for us to explore these hypothetical questions as part of our grief.

For me, one of the things I had always been grateful for surrounding my daughter’s death was that I did not have to make the decision to stop life support for my daughter. That decision was made for my ex-husband and me by higher powers because she never took a breath. If things had been just slightly different, though, we would have found ourselves in the situation with a baby who had been severely oxygen deprived and unable to live a life of any quality. This week as I explored the “what ifs” of my loss from a very different viewpoint, I realized that I would have been able to handle that decision. It would have been horrific, but no more so than pain of never seeing my daughter take a breath. The pain just would have been different. I finally have reached a place of peace surrounding this "what if."

My heart aches for C’s moms, sibling, and extended family as they are going through this horrible loss. Even though I’ve experienced the death of an infant, I am still just as helpless as any others outside of their direct situation to help them in ways that would seem meaningful at this time. All I can do is let them know that they are in my heart, and that I am always open to lending a virtual shoulder for them to cry on as they process their grief. At the same time, as I revisit my old wounds, I’m able to find a place of gratitude for how much healing I’ve experienced and how much I’ve grown in the years since my daughter died. She changed my world forever, and I am grateful to her for that gift she gave me.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

On a recent afternoon, I curled up to watch The Best of Me, a Nicholas Sparks film from 2014. The movie was a good romance, though it wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen. At one point, however, a young woman asks an elderly gentleman about his late wife:

Amanda: How long were y’all married?
Tuck: We’re still married. We’re just on different schedules.

That line definitely tugged at my heartstrings. My paternal grandparents had been married for 57 years when my grandfather died; my grandmother lived for five years after that. During the majority of my life, my grandfather could not drive due to macular degeneration, a condition that can cause major vision impairment. Every year on their wedding anniversary, my grandfather would have my grandmother drive him to the grocery store so that he could buy her roses.

After my grandfather died, I knew how much my grandmother missed him even though I was living in another state. When their wedding anniversary occurred six months after his death, I decided to continue his tradition, and each year on their anniversary I sent her flowers with a note that I was remembering them both on their special day. Love did not end just because he had died. It just transformed. Every year on their birthdays, death days, and anniversary, I still remember them even though I can only send them energetic roses now.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Beginning on January 1st of this year, the city of Austin went “hands free.” What that means is that using a mobile device such as phone for calling or texting while driving or biking is now illegal unless one is using a hands free device such as a Bluetooth. When this law first passed, I thought it was a great plan. I still do on a certain level. My ex-husband was in a car accident a few years ago where the other (sober) driver was clearly distracted: she plowed into his car from behind when he had been at a complete stop at a light for over a minute. Fortunately, no one had any major injuries from the accident, but it did create a whole lot of expense and hassle for those involved including my ex having to go to court to testify against the woman who initially challenged the ticket that Austin police had given to her.

However, I don’t think the law has played out in the way that was intended. What I’ve noticed, especially in the past month or so, is that people are still texting while driving.They’re not openly texting, though. What they’re doing is holding the phone down low so that no one can tell that they are texting (in theory). Instead of having their eyes half on the road, they are completely ignoring everything around them except what is down below the steering wheel. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this in the past month, but it has to be close to a dozen.

I also had an experience about a month ago involving a bicyclist. I drove through West Campus, an area near UT where many students live. There was a college-aged man riding a bicycle the wrong way on a one way street. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and he was texting while riding one-handed. His eyes definitely weren’t on the road. Aside from nominating himself for a Darwin Award, this young man was clearly in violation of the new hands free law.

I’m not sure how one goes about solving this problem. Clearly the fines and other results of the law are not threatening to many people. Even scarier is that the people violating the no-texting law are not being realistic about the potential for life destroying accidents. In 2011, 23% of accidents involved cell phones. Texting while driving makes one 23 times more likely to have an accident. Other statistics demonstrate that texting while driving is six times more likely than drunk driving to cause an accident. Eleven teens die every day due to texting while driving accidents; 21% of teens involved in fatal accidents were distracted by their cell phones. In actual numbers, “3,328 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver” and “an additional, 421,000 people were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver in 2012.” Yet somehow those scary statistics aren’t enough to convince people to stop texting and driving. Why is it that our society has become so obsessed with instant communication that we can’t even wait ten or fifteen or even sixty minutes until our next stop in order to reply? Why do we have to respond immediately even at the threat of loss of life and limb? From the view of someone who is very outside the mainstream, I am puzzled by how people let their cell phones rule their lives to an unhealthy extent.

I’m not sure what it is going to take for society to change its behaviors, but I hope it happens soon. I am dismayed by how little positive impact the new laws have had in Austin, at least from an informal survey of what I see in driving around town.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC