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

(Trigger Warning: Infant Loss)

Eighteen years ago I held my firstborn daughter for the very first time. She didn’t move. She didn’t cry. Her spirit had left her body hours before.

Her labor had been typical until she was crowning (the very last stage before birth). Then, her heartbeat suddenly disappeared. When she was born, the midwife took her away and began working on her immediately, shouting for someone to call the paramedics. I couldn’t see my daughter. No one told me what was going on, but I was so exhausted that I didn’t actually understand what was happening anyway. My daughter hadn’t begun breathing, and CPR wasn’t working.

Her father rode with her in an ambulance to the children’s hospital. They continued working on my daughter at the hospital until an hour after her birth when they called it. She was gone. She had come so close to living and yet she hadn’t made it.

A few hours after her birth, the midwife drove me to the hospital to meet my daughter for the first and last time. As I held her in my arms, I was shocked to look on her face. I knew children looked like their parents, but I hadn’t realized my daughter was going to look like me. We spent a precious but far too short amount of time with her in the hospital until we needed to leave.

Eighteen years ago as the midwife drove us back to the birthing center to do an exam on me and then to send us home, I looked out over the rush hour traffic. It made no sense to me. How could all of these people be going on like nothing had happened? My daughter had died.

Eighteen years ago.

​© 2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

There is no question that the first holidays after a baby dies are difficult, just as it is with any person who dies. The first year without my grandfather (who died December 8th) at Christmas was difficult for all of us. But with an infant, it’s different. Holidays, especially Christmas, are supposed to be about the kids. It’s about their joy. My daughter Rebecca would have been 6.5 months old at her first Christmas-- the perfect age to love the paper and the boxes far more than anything they contained.

The first Thanksgiving after my daughter died, my now ex-husband and I took the escape approach to the holidays. We didn’t normally visit family for Thanksgiving, so instead we took a week long hotel camping trip to west Texas and east New Mexico to see Big Bend, El Paso, Guadalupe Mountain, Carlsbad Caverns, and White Sands. We spent Thanksgiving Day with a friend’s parents who were on their own, too, since the grown children lived in other cities. When we got about an hour outside of Austin, my ex broke down over the fact we were taking the trip without Rebecca. I tried to point out to him that if she had lived, we wouldn’t have taken the trip because there was no way I was taking a six month old on a float trip and caving, but my point was moot. His distress was just another part of grieving her absence. She wasn’t going to be with us no matter what we chose to do that Thanksgiving.

On Thanksgiving day, I got a positive pregnancy test. By Christmas, I was deep in the throes of all day sickness (falsely called morning sickness by some twisted soul). We also had two foster dogs in addition to our two canine family members; one of the foster dogs was very sick with what turned out to be distemper. The message that our families gave us that year was painfully clear: They didn’t want us to come visit them for Christmas. That was one of the hardest parts of the holiday. It felt like no one wanted to see us because it would have forced them to deal with their grief about our absent daughter. If we didn’t show up, they could pretend the whole thing never happened. The following year when our subsequent babies had safely arrived we were welcomed back in the fold. But that first year after her death, we were personnae non gratae. We were harbingers of death.

In years since then, we’ve done various observances to keep Rebecca’s memory alive and part of our family celebration. We have several Christmas ornaments given to us over the years by various friends that commemorate her life. We put an angel teddy bear on top of the tree. When the kids were young, we took Christmas pictures with an angel teddy bear (pictured above) in them, too, to symbolize her absence. We often adopt a child who is the same age she would have been the same age through a social relief organization to provide gifts in her memory.

Honestly, though, that first Christmas hurt like hell. There’s nothing that can stop that pain. All the remembrances help a slight bit, but there is nothing to fill the absence of a loved one. The only thing to do is feel the pain, grieve the loss, and know that one day things will be different. Each “first” is incredibly hard. One day, though, the pain will no longer feel so hellishly deep. There comes a point where if one does intense healing work, the memory of a loved one lost too soon can bring happiness rather than agony.

© 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

(I received an Advance Reader Copy of Upside from the Goodreads Giveaways program. The opinions expressed in this review are mine and mine alone. Previous blog posts I have written on Upside are located here and here.) 

One of the things that drives me nuts in life is when people use denial as a justified coping technique. They create distorted and dysfunctional mythologies around their particular issues which allow them to believe that they have healed when the reality is far from it. I am not unfamiliar with this technique on a personal level: I used it unsucessfully for many years myself. I often see the Law of Attraction warped in this way as people believe that if they confront negative aspects of themselves, then they will draw the negative to them. Thus, they believe it's best to ignore and deny those negative issues. However, the reality couldn't be further from the truth. When we have something negative festering within us due to repression and/or denial, we continue to attract similar energies to us in order to help us heal that wounded part.

As I read through Upside: The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth by Jim Rendon, I cringed far more than once as I read the words of those who had purportedly experienced post-traumatic growth. Rendon held these people up as examples of those who had been able to turn a traumatic life experience such as cancer or an accident into a motivation for positive growth and change. All of these people had done just that, and all had experienced growth and gratitude for the positive change their traumas brought to their lives. However, many of the people who were quoted used words that clearly demonstrated that a deeper level of healing was still needed in their lives.

Rendon recognizes denial as a problematic coping technique. He writes, "Some people try to block memories of the trauma entirely. Unfortunately, that doesn't work. The memories remain and can be triggered with little warning by seemingly unrelated sights, sounds, or semlls. Other people protect themselves from the trauma by separating all emotion from the events. But this often leads to behavior problems... And some people simply try to duck the issue entirely, using what is called avoidance-- making great efforts to avoid any events or siutations that might bring traumatic memories flooding back." Yet even though he recognizes the problems around denial and avoidance, Rendon's book still utilizes examples of people in denial as those who have experienced post-traumatic growth.

One common method of avoiding one's one true situation and one's horrible pain is by comparing one's pain to others'. In Upside, one man in a wheelchair states, "'I feel normal because I can help these people. I have the use of my hands. Some people can't feed themselves.'" This is a very clear example of using someone else's pain to ignore the reality of pain of one's own situation. The author's own father denies the true depths of his own pain from World War II by stating that "he hadn't gone through anything like what today's soldiers experience in combat." A researcher cited in the book even advocates this method which I see as a cousin to avoidance as uplifting and healing. She says that by "comparing their terrible plight to the even worse situation of so many, they could begin to see how they were in fact better off than some. And that might give them a tiny strand of something positive to hold on to." However, as I've written before, many people are the "worse off" ones, and being placed at the bottom of the healing heap by others with struggles does not help those in the worst case scenarios. Instead, this method of healing can lead to a great deal of pain for both those using it and those who are compared against.

Rendon also presents patients who are obviously still living with horrific side effects of trauma in their lives. One former soldier in Iraq still suffers from severe sleep deprivation and difficulties in relationships. Rendon writes that "The horrors that he witnessed have not faded with time," a true sign that healing has not happened on a deep level because the pain should fade during healing even if the memories remain. Yet Rendon holds this person up as one who has experienced post-traumatic growth because even though he has not healed, he is still able to help others. Examples like this lead me to question how much healing is necessary to achieve post-traumatic growth and how much healing is needed to be fully healed because the two are clearly not the same.

In some cases, I feel what Rendon has lauded as post-traumatic growth is actually denial and not post-traumatic growth at all. He shares the story of Bob Carey and his wife Linda Lancaster-Carey's Tutu Project which has brought laughter and healing to many who are dealing with cancer. Yet at the same time, Carey states, "'One of the reasons I do what I do is that [the possiibility of Lancaster-Carey's death] scares the hell out of me.'" Rather than confronting his own pain and fear, Carey is avoiding it through humor and art. To me, it's questionable whether this situation should be called post-traumatic growth even though it is using a trauma to create good in the world. According to Rendon, Carey continues to talk "critically about himself, his motives, and his work, as if the entire enterprise might fall apart if he were to relax and enjoy the good press and the success the couple has earned with the Tutu Project." To me, this is a sign of someone who is not willing to actually process grief and fear rather than a sign of growth.

While Rendon's work does not examine these options, I have experienced great healing from alternative therapies which address PTSD from different perspectives. Unlike the mainstream therapeutic desensitization technique which re-traumatizes patients with PTSD by forcing them to relive and discuss the worst of their experiences, it is possible to slowly and carefully unpack the traumas that contribute to PTSD in such a way that the patient will minimize new trauma. It is not a 100% pain free method, unfortunately, but it is a far less painful one than what the mainstream offers. I am going to periodically be offering a low-cost trauma and PTSD workshop for therapists and patients discussing how one can truly process and relieve trauma which is stored in the body. It's a workshop I wish that I could give to many people who are suffering from deep pain and not finding relief with current mainstream therapeutic options.

Unlike one bereaved parent in Upside who declares that "Five years is nothing for a grieving parent. The pain lasts a lifetime," I believe that it is possible to lessen or eliminate the pain of trauma without desecrating the memories of those whom we have lost in death. There are ways to find this peace without retraumatizing those who have already suffered greatly. The memories will always be there, but being free of fear and grief is truly a possibility. I know because I have experienced it as a bereaved parent. Not only have I reached a point where I no longer feel that brutal pain relating to my daughter's death, but I am also able to see all the positive things her death brought about. While I would never say I am grateful for my loss, I am able to say that I am incredibly grateful for the changes it has brought about.

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

(This is a continuation of yesterday’s blog post about my college roommates.)

My second roommate (“A”) and I were good friends within a few weeks of meeting each other. We both shared a warped sense of humor that helped cement the bond. Though we were both introverts, she had a need to explore the world that I didn’t really share that point. She didn’t like going places alone, though, so she would often tell me, “Get ready. We’re leaving.” I’d ask where and she’d respond a movie, driving in the Hill Country, antiquing, or whatever she had already decided she wanted to do. I would tell her that I didn’t really want to go, and she would talk me into going with her anyway. In retrospect, I am glad A did because we went on some fun adventures that I would never have done otherwise. One night, A decided she was going to use sidewalk chalk and draw a cartoon figure of hers all over the campus sidewalks. She took me along as her lookout. That’s definitely not something I would have gotten up to otherwise!

At the end of the school year, A decided she wanted to move out of the dorms. I didn’t have a car, and so living off campus seemed daunting and inconvenient to me. I knew I only had one more year left, so I decided to stay on campus. By then, I had other friends in the dorm. One of them was losing her roommate as that woman moved off campus to live with her boyfriend, so the two of us decided to be roommates the following year.

During that second and final year of my undergraduate studies when we were no longer roommates, A and I would get together periodically to do fun activities. Things seemed off for a while between us, but I couldn’t figure out what was up. Towards the end of the school year, A finally came out as being gay. Suddenly so much about her and some of her behaviors made complete sense. My instinctive response was to be mad at her for not telling me sooner! However, I understand she was still figuring it all out herself. Once A came out, our friendship really didn’t change except that she was a much happier person now that she was able to truly be herself.

After I graduated and moved to Boston for nine months to work on my master’s degree, A and I stayed in touch via e-mail. She made plans to come to my wedding with her then-girlfriend, a woman whom I really liked. A and I watched with great amusement as one of my future brothers-in-law flirted with her girlfriend at the rehearsal dinner. At one point I asked A if we should be merciful and tell him that A and her girlfriend were a couple, but A told me, “No. I’m having way too much fun watching this!”

When I moved back to Austin in 1994, A and I continued to be friends through her final year of undergrad and beyond. When she would get together with my then-husband and me to do things, it was him who became the third wheel, not her. A and I were like the sisters neither of us had ever had. We often wouldn’t talk for weeks but then we would see each other multiple times within a short span. It was just how things worked with us. We could always pick right back up where we left off with things.

In 1998, four years after I got married and moved back to Austin, A took her turn to move to Boston for nine months. I helped her finish packing her apartment and took her to the airport with her cats. It turned out she couldn’t stand living in Boston, but while she was up there, she met a girlfriend who eventually became her life partner. When I went to visit A in Boston while I was doing dissertation research, I got to meet her partner, “J,” and liked her. When they moved back to Austin together, I was happy to have J as an additional friend though I never got to know her well.

Shortly after that, my firstborn daughter died. A called and offered to do whatever she could to help. Since she had previously worked at a photo developing store at the mall, I asked her to help me find someone whom I could trust to make enlargements of the very few photos I had of my daughter. She found someone she felt was trustworthy, and I took my negatives to him. He did a great job and was very compassionate toward us. I was incredibly grateful to A for that assistance. Her parents, whom I had met several times and been at their house outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area twice, also sent a bereavement card which really touched me.

Then, a few months later, everything changed. A and J decided to move to another state to pursue grad school and better jobs. I was sad to see them go, but I understood. However, a great silence ensued. Even before they moved, I didn’t get phone calls returned. Any attempt to make contact was thwarted. I had no idea what went wrong. Before the one year forwarding period ended, I sent a letter to her old address in hopes it would find her in the new state. In that letter, I offered apologies to her for anything I might have done and let her know I missed our friendship. More silence. As the internet blossomed, I tried to make contact with her through various social media sites, but I again was met with the stunning silence.

It took me over ten years beyond the last time I talked to her to finally let go. While she had been one of my closest friends for almost a decade, it was clear that A was unwilling to have me in her life any longer. The only possible understanding I had for why she might have cut off our relationship was if her new partner felt uncomfortable with the bizarre and close but definitely platonic relationship A and I shared. A and I both knew that there was no chance in hell of me dating a woman (or her dating a man), and we accepted that we were friends and nothing more. However, I could completely understand how a insecure partner might have been threatened by the close friendship we shared. Yet not knowing for sure was torture. This was someone for whom I had a platonic love and whom I wanted in my life no matter what the conditions were.

Oddly, it was my unrequited love for a man which actually helped me let go of A and the desperate desire to make contact with her again. That man and A reminded me of each other because of their incredibly warped but wonderful senses of humor. The friendship I had with each was similar in some odd ways. And when I finally accepted that I would never get over that man while I was still friends with him, I also reached a place of peace with no longer having A in my life either. I realized that after all that had happened in the intervening decade in my life, we might or might not have anything in common anymore. But most importantly, she had made a decision to cut me out of her life. While that hurt because I had no understanding of why it happened, I still had to respect her decision and let her go.

Today is A’s 42nd birthday. I still remember her every year and wish I could send her an email telling her to have a great day. If A were ever to show up in my life again, I would welcome her with open arms. But until the time when we meet again, if that ever happens, I have to be content with sending her good wishes in my heart. I hope that wherever she is and whomever she is with, that her life has turned out better than she ever dreamed it could.

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

One of our society’s common reactions to difficulties, struggles, and challenges is for people to respond, “At least….” So if you have had your foot amputated, a friend might tell you, “At least you didn’t lose your whole leg.” If you are struggling with finding a job, you might be told, “At least you still have a roof over your head.” If you were emotionally and sexually abused during a bad marriage, you might get told, “At least he didn’t beat you.” If you are suffering from health problems, you will  very likely get the statement, “At least you don’t have cancer.” If you experienced the death of a baby, someone might respond, “At least you won’t have to raise a severely disabled child for the rest of your life.” (Yes, I did get the last two personally.)

On one hand, there’s an element of truth in these statements that could lead a person to issue gratitude for what they do have rather than what they do not have. However, all of the statements are judgmental and opinionated. They deem to know better than the struggling person what would be worse for that person. To me at the time of my daughter’s death, the prospect of raising a severely disabled child seemed far less daunting than facing a future with no child at all.

Furthermore, this method of comparative trials can be devastating for those who are suffering with the “at least” situation. You may be telling your friend that they are blessed that their child died rather than ending up severely disabled, but what about all those who are raising severely disabled children? What is their comfort in this situation? What if someone has been physically abused? What about all of those people who do have cancer or who have lost multiple limbs or who are homeless? What does the “at least” statement that puts them in the worst case scenario do for their self-esteem, their confidence, and their motivation as they wrestle with difficult challenges in life?

It also can seem that when someone creates purportedly worse scenarios, their examples actually downplay the suffering that people have endured. Trauma is trauma, and all of it is devastating to those who are undergoing it. While it might seem comforting to some to pretend there is a worse case scenario, the reality is that the person undergoing challenges doesn’t need to hear those comparisons. What they need to hear is support for them in their own struggles. They need to come to terms with what they are dealing with, not what someone else has endured. What they need is not to be unintentionally judged for not suffering enough to merit sympathy or empathy.

The reality is that every human on this planet endures challenges and issues throughout their lives. Each of us has our own struggles, and each of us handles them differently. There really is that there is no better or worse when it comes to suffering. The reality is that the challenges we all endure are just different. The differences may lie in the type of trauma, the severity of the trauma, and the response of the individuals to the traumas. All of the various elements create unique situations. Each of the people involved must work through these struggles on their own but hopefully with a lot of support of those around them. As we work through these traumas, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, our souls grow and change. In my belief system, these are the struggles we are each meant to face to help us become the best people that we can be.

One of the hardest comments I had to endure in my time of being homebound and mostly bedbound was the statement from clueless people that they would think their lives were challenging until they looked at mine and then realized how much worse it could be. (Yes, they said this to me directly.) These people made me into the the worst case “at least” scenario, and they used my suffering to bring themselves dysfunctional comfort about their own struggles. That doesn’t feel great when you are the one at the bottom of the heap. Rather than making such awkward and painful comments to those you know who are struggling, the best thing to say is “I’m sorry you are struggling.” Or grieving. Or hurting. Or fighting for your life. Whatever it is that the person is enduring that you wish they didn’t have to go through, tell them that you wish they weren’t undergoing such a difficult challenge. Then, if you really want to show your support, ask them what you can do to make their burdens lighter during their time of need. Those are the kind of friends people need when they are in crisis.

© 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

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

I am not a big believer in miracles. Most of the time when people proclaim something to be a miracle, I can see logical reasons for what happened even without any supernatural intervention. I think true miracles are rare. They are the things that defy all understanding without a supernatural influence. When someone is in an accident that leaves the car crumpled like a tin can yet they walk away with nary a scratch, it defies any logical understanding. Those type of miracles do happen on occasion, and when they do, I believe higher powers are involved.

In December 2000, my then-husband and I traveled to Missouri with our new babies. While we were there on Christmas Eve, we visited the park where we had scattered our eldest daughter's ashes in the summer of 1999. My former mother-in-law gave us a clipping from an evergreen tree in their yard to leave at the memorial site. It was from an ordinary evergreen tree (probably a variety of spruce or fir) and ordinary clipping, slightly larger than my hand. When we went to the park, we left that clipping on rocks near the opening of an underground spring. It was a cold but clear winter day at 15 degrees Fahrenheit, and there was about 12 inches of snow on the ground. 

Four months later, we made another visit to Missouri. On April 23rd, we went out to the park to visit the memorial site again. When we arrived, we spent some time around the spring, and then I noticed something amazing. In the creek near the grotto entrance was the exact sprig of evergreen we had left there four months previously. And most amazingly, it was completely green. It was no different than the day we had left it there; it was just located a few feet away from where we left it. All the trees in that local area are deciduous, so it was not a similar looking branch from any of them. It was the same clipping.

Can this be explained logically? Maybe. The weather was cold in December, and the constantly cool fresh stream water probably helped the cutting stay fresh. However, the temperature in Missouri in April is usually in the 40s overnight and 60s during the day, higher than the sub-freezing temperatures we had experienced in December. Furthermore, there had been many rains during those four months, and the rain and the regular current of the stream should have moved the evergreen cutting downstream long before our return. Anyone who has had a real cut Christmas tree can also affirm that even with water, it does have a limited lifespan before needles begin falling and the whole tree turns brown. One wouldn't usually expect an evergreen clipping to stay green for four months even in ideal condition.

For me, though, this is one of those situations where I think the probability of all the perfect conditions lining up are very unlikely without the influence of higher powers. I believe that the green evergreen branch was kept in that condition at that site as a measure of comfort for me, a way of affirming for me that life does not end with death. Even if it was just a series of amazing odds, the power of the experience was incredible for me. 

As a footnote, while I was finishing this blog post, Spotify began playing unprompted in the background on my computer. The synchronistic song selection? "Watching Over Me" from the Canadian Tenors. Its lyrics proclaim:

The pure, the bright, the beautiful that stirred our hearts in you
The whisper of a wordless prayer, the streams of love and truth
A longing after something lost, the spirits yearning cry
Striving after better hopes: These things can never die!
There will always be a shining sun
There will always be the rising of the sea
There will always be an angel watching over me

~Rememebering Rebecca, died and born, June 10, 1999~
 
©2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

For a long time as an adult, I did not celebrate my birthdays. This was because my deceased daughter’s birthday is only a few days away from mine, and it felt horribly unfair to me that I was getting to celebrate another birthday when she didn’t get to celebrate even one. It took many years of grieving before I finally reached a place where I was comfortable enough with my daughter’s death and to be able to celebrate my own birth again.

Once I had worked through my issues around my daughter’s birthday and was ready to celebrate again, I found out that there were other reasons that I hadn’t been celebrating my birthday, reasons that were almost as painful. What I rediscovered was that my now ex-husband doesn’t want to celebrate holidays, especially birthdays. He says that birthdays aren’t important to him, so he doesn’t do them. Even though they were very important to me, he wasn’t willing to budge on this one.

I talked to many therapists about this issue and about how hurt I was by my husband’s refusal to celebrate my birthdays in the way I wanted to celebrate. I’m not a person who needs or wants glamorous gifts. I don’t even need a store-bought card. I just need those around me to acknowledge that I am special and that they appreciate having me in their lives in whatever way they can. However, my ex-husband was so against birthdays that he couldn’t even do that. Unfortunately, most of the therapists I saw during that part of my life gave me very poor advice: they placed the blame on me, not my ex-husband, and said that the problem was mine alone, not his. They told me that he had made his position clear, and that I only had one option, to accept that he would never be willing to celebrate my birthdays with me. This only compounded my insecurities and made me feel like there was something wrong with me for wanting my partner to celebrate my birthday in some way.

Not surprisingly, I could not accept my ex-husband’s position of being unwilling to even say happy birthday to me most years. I felt as though I was being completely reasonable in wanting a partner who was willing to make that small amount of effort to show me he loved me. I also did have a choice, but it wasn’t one that my previous therapists presented to me: I could leave the marriage to find someone else who was willing to celebrate me as I want, need and deserve. There was absolutely nothing wrong with me wanting to get my needs met. I understand that the therapists were trying to teach me that we can’t change others: we can only control our own behavior. However, in trying to teach me that lesson, they missed the forest for the trees. There was a very fundamental problem in my marriage that went much deeper than the issue of birthdays.

Participating in marriage therapy with a really amazing therapist and reading books like The 5 Love Languages helped me recognize that in a healthy relationship, partners do things that they don’t always enjoy, but they do it because it gives pleasure to their partners whom they love. I certainly acted this way in my half of the marriage, doing things I didn’t really enjoy on a regular basis because I knew they would make my then-husband happy. I even asked the marriage therapist at one point, “Why is it that I always do things to make him happy but he’s not willing to do the same in return?”  For the first time in my life, the therapist gave a great response: “That’s a really good question!” The answer that he eventually helped me to discover was that when both partners aren’t able to meet each others’ basic needs from a romantic partner, it’s not a good relationship, no matter how much they love each other. In this situation and many others, my ex-husband and I were not well-matched, and divorce was the healthiest option for us based on our circumstances.

Now that the marriage has ended, my ex-husband still is unable to say happy birthday or happy mother’s day to me. I can accept it now, though I still wish it was different. I recognize that he has emotional issues of unknown origin from his past that interfere with his ability to celebrate both himself and others. While it certainly is his choice, it’s not my choice for how I want to live my life. There is too much joy to be shared in this world, and I’m grateful that I am now in a place that I can embrace that joy with those who love me and celebrate me on my birthday and on other days, too.

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

During grad school and while my older children were young, I watched very little tv. I had no real need for it in my life. Yet in the days after 9/11, I left the tv on more than I had previously. In that time, I stumbled upon Crossing Over with John Edward, a show in which psychic medium John Edward gave gallery readings for those who were wanting to reach loved ones who had died. I was captivated by the show, but I hid my viewing habits from my then-husband because I knew he would ridicule such things.

Many years later, I better understood my attraction to Crossing Over as my metaphysical gifts came to fruition. As I started to develop my gifts, I wanted desperately to read John Edward’s books, but because of my multiple chemical sensitivities, I could not read the paper versions and there were no digital editions available. I bought the paperback books and put them on my shelf, waiting for the day when I had enough health to read them. Eventually that day came, and over a few weeks, I happily read through most of his Edward’s non-fiction works. They were easy, fun, enjoyable books for me.

As I read through the books, I quickly recognized that Edward’s dysfunctional father was both an alcoholic and a narcissist; as a result, Edward was mostly estranged from his father as an adult. I understood completely from personal experience how and why that narcissism can create a situation in which it’s best for the child to separate from the toxic parent. It’s a very difficult situation for the adult children involved. Our society does not support this kind of “divorce” between a parent and child. Instead, adult children are chided for breaking the Judeo-Christian commandment “honor thy father and mother.” However, in situations where the converse of “honor thy child” is not being respected, a parental-child divorce can be the healthiest thing for all those involved.

My mother undeniably has narcissistic personality disorder, though for the almost 17 years she was in my life, she never received an official diagnosis. It’s rare for narcissists to receive diagnoses because they are often able to present themselves very well to strangers. It is only in living with narcissists or working extensively with them that their true natures are revealed. I have dozens if not hundreds of stories that typify my mother’s narcissism though for the purposes of this blog post, one will suffice.

After my daughter Rebecca died, we received abundant condolence cards for the month afterward. About eight weeks after her death, a card arrived from my mother, whom I had not had any contact with in over seven years at that point. I had not informed her of my pregnancy or my daughter’s death, but we still had common contacts; she likely found out through one of those channels. Unlike most people who sent us bereavement cards, my mother sent me (and not my husband) a card that was about how wonderful daughters are. To someone who doesn’t understand narcissism or my mother, this would seem like a cruel and demented sentiment: I had just lost my only daughter (at that time) to death, yet my mother had sent me a card telling me how wonderful daughters are. However, if you analyze the situation with the knowledge that my mother is a narcissist, the situation makes a great deal more sense: She was only thinking from her point of view. She was trying to express emotion about my loss, but the only way she could do it was by vocalizing her position: She missed her daughter. She couldn’t think through the whole process that I had actually lost my own daughter and that her card was incredibly inconsiderate of that.

For years, many people had told me that I would regret my estrangement from my mother when she died. I would suddenly realize that it was too late for us to work through our differences. There would be no second chance. But as I read chapter 11 of John Edward’s book After Life: Answers from the Other Side, I found a very different perspective. Edward discovered that he was actually able to begin working through his issues with his father after his father’s death once his father was freed from some of his earthly burdens such as alcoholism. While Edward clearly encourages that people should “communicate, appreciate, validate" every day before they lose their loved ones, he does offer hope that reconciliation can happen after death. Working from that place, I finally came to true peace with estrangement from my mother. I realized that even when she dies, I don’t expect to grieve for her. I may once again grieve for the healthy mother whom I never experienced, but I know I will be fine whether she is in this world or the next. I’ve spent many hundred years attached to her soul, and I no longer have any desire to be associated with her. Losing her in no way seems like a loss.

My mother’s parents have both come to visit me from the other side. I never met my grandfather in real life as he died ten years before I was born; my grandmother died when I was 17. Interacting with them after I opened to the metaphysical helped me to understand that while they might have shed burdens such as alcoholism, unless they choose to work on their souls after death, they still carry their soul level issues with them. Neither of my maternal grandparents had done extensive work on themselves, and thus, interacting with them was not inspiring or sentimental. They were very spiritually unhealthy people whom I didn’t want to have around. Quite honestly, if my mother takes the same position of not working on herself after death as her parents have, I definitely don’t want to get back in touch with her then either!

I am grateful for the peace I have reached with being estranged from my toxic mother. I have known from early on that it was for the best, but our society doesn’t always understand that. Instead, mother-daughter relationships are glorified in a way that isn’t always true. While I didn’t receive that love as a daughter, I have been able to experience it as a mother with my living daughter, and for that blessing, I am truly grateful.

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

Back sometime between 1995 and 1998, I was a subscriber to Austin’s only daily newspaper which I read thoroughly (except for the business, sports, and classified sections). One year on Mother’s Day, there was a huge article with several large photos in the lifestyle section. The piece described a woman whose three children had been murdered by their father, her ex-husband. I was horrified. I didn’t understand how the paper thought that was an appropriate article to run on a day like Mother’s Day. In hindsight, I understand all too well.

Despite the greeting card and flower vendors’ cheerful endorsements of Mother’s Day which falls on the second Sunday of May each year in the U.S., not everyone finds the day to be one of celebration. For many people, Mother’s Day is filled with painful memories and/or current stress. The reality is that not everyone loves their mothers. Many have endured abusive relationships with our mothers, and thanking them for the “care” they provided for their children seems hypocritical at best. Some people are estranged from their mothers: Sometimes gratefully and sometimes with a lot of pain still attached to the separation. Our society provides a lot of support around divorcing a spouse, but there’s almost nothing there for those who decide to “divorce” a parent.

Other people were blessed enough to have wonderful mothers in this life, but those mothers have died. For those whose mothers aren’t here to celebrate because of death, the day can be horribly painful for surviving children, especially in the first years after their mothers’ deaths. While it will not eliminate the pain of the loss, sometimes doing something to celebrate the deceased woman can greatly help ease the discomfort of this holiday. Making your mother’s favorite meal, going to her favorite park, making a donation to her favorite charity… all of these are great ways to remember a mother. In my belief system, our deceased relatives are aware of us and our prayers, so I believe if you send thoughts to your late mother, she will hear them. It’s never too late to tell someone you love them, even if you aren’t able to hear them say it back.

If you are feeling particularly giving, know that there are always people in nursing homes who are terribly lonely on holidays. Either their children live far away, they have no descendants, or they’ve been abandoned by family. Regardless of the reasons why, these people can always use company, but especially on holidays when others have visitors and they do not. Most nursing homes will be happy to pair you with someone who would love to have you show up with a flower in hand and a willingness to talk for a while. (Please note that food gifts are not always the best with the elderly due to health-restricted diets.) If you don’t have a mother of your own to visit, know that there are many other women who could symbolically stand in her place.

For others, Mother’s Day is painful because they have had miscarriages or have lost a child (or even multiple children) to death. This is especially true when the child who has died was the firstborn but no subsequent siblings have been born. The women in these situations know in their hearts that they are mothers, but they don’t have children here to celebrate with them. Our society is less certain about whether these women are mothers, and people often don’t know how to handle the bereaved mothers. As is our society’s dysfunctional tendency, the usual result is that bereaved mothers are ignored on Mother’s Day (not to mention the other days of the year).

For many women, Mother’s Day is a dagger in their heart because they are suffering from infertility. They desperately want to be mothers, but they are not able to for whatever reasons. To see motherhood glorified all around them can make the women enduring infertility feel even more hurt than they already are by the traumas of infertility.

For biological mothers who have put their children up for adoption, Mother’s Day can also create a great deal of pain. While the choice to let another woman become a mother when one is not able to raise a child oneself is an amazing gift, the child that the biological mother gave up will always be in her heart. For some women, Mother’s Day may be a day of “what ifs” and mourning because they are not with their biological child even if they know they’ve made the best decision. For others, it may be a day of regret for making the choice they did.

Thirteen years ago when my twins were still toddlers, I attended Mass at a friend’s Catholic church on Mother’s Day. In what I’m sure the planners thought was a beautiful ceremony, all of the mothers were encouraged to come forward and receive a carnation at the end of the service. I was horrified. I knew that at least one of the women in the congregation had to want to be up in the front but she wasn’t able to be for some reason. While it’s one thing to pray a special blessing over those in the congregation who’ve given life to others, it’s another thing to bring them to the front so that all the non-mothers stood out like sore thumbs among the sea of men. In a probably unnoticed act of solidarity, I refused to go forward even though I had a toddler in my arms.

For me personally, Mother’s Day used to be a painful day. I am estranged from my narcissistic mother by choice. I haven’t seen her in 22+ years. I don’t miss that particular woman at all, but part of me will always miss the fantasy of the healthy loving mother whom I never had. For many years, I used Mother's Day as a time to pay tribute to the women who were mentors for me and who provided me with healthier role models of what women should be like; they played a role in mothering me in when my own mother could not. I also had many years where Mother’s Day was a painful reminder to me that I had lost a child. I now choose to focus on the beauty of the children who are with me, though it took many years for me to get there. I’m grateful that I can now find joy in the celebration of being a mother, but on Mother’s Day, my thoughts and prayers are always with those for whom it’s a day of pain.

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

(spoiler alert and trigger alert regarding the death of a child)

My kids and I continue to work our way through Star Trek: The Next Generation. We’re now watching season 7. In episode 7, Counselor Deanna Troi’s mother Lwaxana Troi is aboard the Enterprise as a diplomat assisting with communications with a telepathic race. In the process of working with this new species, Lwaxana begins to have debilitating fatigue and headaches. The medical doctors and others on the crew suspect that her overuse of her telepathic abilities with this new species has drained her. Eventually, Lwaxana collapses and enters what we would describe as a coma.

However, the truth about Lwaxana’s collapse was far more dastardly than just exhaustion. One of the members of the telepathic species, Maques, believes that there is a part of Lwaxana’s mind that she has shut down. As Deanna and Commander Will Riker investigate the past to see what Lwaxana might be repressing, they find a great number of missing years in Lwaxana’s journals, supporting Maques’ theory that there is something major that Lwaxana is hiding. Eventually through a mind meld of sorts, Deanna is able to help her mother’s subconscious process the truth about a situation that was so painful that she’d had to deeply repress it until it festered and caused her body to collapse. The trauma involved was that Lwaxana’s oldest daughter Kestra (Deanna’s older sister whom she’d never previously known about) died in a tragic accident when Deanna was only a baby.  Lwaxana blamed herself for the death of her elder daughter. The pain of losing her child was so excruciating that Lwaxana tried to block it all out so that she could avoid and forget the pain.  Eventually that mental and emotional pain caught up with her and shut down her body.

This isn't science fiction. While the details of the case are very much fictional, the reality of how the body, mind and spirit interact is true.  It is entirely possible for us to store our pain in our mind and our body eventually leading to our body’s collapse. For most of us this process doesn't result in a spontaneous coma. Instead, we have unexplained back pain, fibromyalgia, the flu or cancer among many other health issues. I am in no way denying that all of these conditions have physical, biological roots as well. The flu, for instance, is a virus. However, why is it that with two people in the same family with the same diet one might get the flu every year while the other never gets sick? Clearly genetics may play a role, but stress and other life experiences also condition our bodies to be predisposed to illness or health.

As someone who has experienced the unexpected and tragic death of a child, I know firsthand that it is something that is so traumatic that it could eventually destroy our health if we do not thoroughly process our grief about the situation. The pain that a child dying causes is unlike any other pain in the world.  It’s excruciating. Every day the bereaved parents wake up to feeling that part of their future has been stolen from them. Their empty arms may literally ache from the absence of their child, and they almost certainly will feel the pain of heartache in their chests. In my case, it took thirteen years of work in order to fully process the pain that came from my daughter’s death, in part because I thought I had already processed it all. I didn't realize that there were subconscious memories stored in my body that I still needed to release. Once I finally released those traumatic emotions, I finally found true peace around my daughter’s death.

When we face health challenges, it is important that we work not just to eliminate the pathogens or the pain but that we also relieve and release the emotional pain that is often behind our poor health. This is not always something straightforward and easy. It sometimes takes time to find the roots of our pain or illness and work through them. This process is entirely possible, but oftentimes it requires the assistance of a professional such as me to clarify the issues behind the problems. Lwaxana needed the assistance of Maques and Deanna to go into her mind and find her issues. While I definitely can’t meld with anyone’s mind, I can speak with higher powers who help me find issues stored within the bodies of clients so that they can release whatever is making them ill. I've gone through this process myself; it is what helped me to regain my health after many medical professionals had given up on me. Working with the mind-body-spirit connection can provide incredible healing for us in the real world just as it did for Lwaxana Troi in the fiction of the 24th century.

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

I freely admit that there are a few songs that immediately cause me to cry when I hear them played.  One of those songs is Garth Brooks’ “The Dance” which was originally released in 1989.  For the first decade or so after it was popular, I viewed the song as a beautiful breakup song about a couple who were no longer together. 

Then, sometime in the early 2000s, I was looking at a list of suggestions for infant memorials on a random website.  One of the songs suggested for playing at the service was “The Dance.”  I listened to the song again reframing it in the light of infant loss, and suddenly the song took on new meaning for me.  “The Dance” became the story of the love between a parent and a child who was never going to grow up.  The song described a very different kind of lost love.

That new perspective on "The Dance" left me wondering about my own experience of my daughter, Rebecca, who died at birth in 1999.  I questioned whether I would have chosen the path I had walked if I had been given the choice.  Would I have rather never been pregnant with her if I had known what the outcome would be?  The lyrics state, “Holding you, I held everything/ For a moment, wasn't I a king?/… I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance.”  I truly only held my daughter for moments—just hours—yet I’d do almost anything to have a few more hours to hold her again.  I definitely could have foresaken the agony of her death.  There is nothing comparably painful to losing your child.  However, Rebecca's death has changed my life and the lives of many others during those moments she was with us.  

Ultimately I came to recognize that there is no point in arguing the “what ifs.”  We have experienced what we were meant to, and then it is up to us to learn and grow from those experiences.  Despite the pain, we can become better people through our struggles and loss.

Now any time I hear "The Dance," I am left in tears thinking about my daughter.  Yet under those tears, there is gratitude for the beauty of the dance, for the “moment [when] all the world was right.”

© 2015 Green Heart Guidance

To me, one of the definitions of a great book is that after I finish it, I continue thinking about its content and/or characters for days afterward.  The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope by Rhonda Riley (Ecco, 2013) is just such a piece of fiction.  While technically a work of fantasy, this novel is also grounded in some very deep ideas about love and loss.

The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope tells the tale of Evelyn starting from her Great Depression and World War II childhood and continuing to her declining years of life at the end of the 20th century.  Along the way, she negotiates the challenges that many of us face in life.  As a farmer in rural North Carolina, Evelyn experiences quite a bit of independence for a woman.  It is on her farm, inherited from her beloved aunt, that she begins encountering her lovers, both male and female. One of the lovers, Adam, becomes her husband and the main focus of the story.  Together, they find a deep love that many of us strive to find in our lives, filled with intimacy and passion.  They have a large brood of children together, and the tale continues to walk their lives’ journey as parents. 

During the course of the story, Evelyn and Adam must cope with the deaths of both a child and a parent.  Riley’s descriptions of their grief pulled me back to the days and months after the loss of my daughter.  Her words capture the emotions one experiences in such devastating times in a way I’ve never seen so clearly described.  She writes,

In particular, Riley relates the intimacy of sex after a loss in a way that I’ve rarely seen discussed nonetheless described so powerfully:

The book branches into fantasy as one of the leads is not human, and yet that plot line helps feed much of the deeper philosophy in the book about our identities.  The questions of what it means to be human, to live, to love, and to die are at the core of the work.  

© 2015 Green Heart Guidance

This past Monday, the radio hosts on one of the local morning shows were discussing various individuals with metaphysical abilities, particularly palm readers, tarot card readers, and psychics.  I don’t read palms or tarot cards, though I know others who do.  I am, however, what many would call a psychic though I usually use the term "intuitive."  The discussion they were having on the morning show was rather interesting; I wish I’d been in the room there to address some of the concerns that were being brought up.  So instead, I’m discussing them on my blog.

One of the very valid concerns that was voiced was about people becoming dependent on psychics to make all their decisions for them.  That is what one would refer to as con artists.  There are con artists in almost any field, so this is not something unique to the metaphysical community.  Unfortunately, they do exist, and con artists bring down the reputation of everyone in their fields.  In contrast, great psychics don’t want their clients to be dependent upon them.  Instead, they are working to help their clients develop their own metaphysical skills and abilities.  In addition, great psychics don’t ever tell their clients what to do.  Instead, they present options that let clients use free will to determine the best course of action in their own lives.  If a metaphysical practitioner ever starts demanding you do certain things or that you have to return to see them at certain times, then you should seriously consider walking out the door.  Those aren’t healthy behaviors.  Likewise, if a psychic medium promises you that they can definitely connect with a specific someone who has died, you should also consider discontinuing using their services.  Mediums really can connect with those who are dead, but they can't control who actually shows up for your session.  Claiming to be able to do so can be a sign of a con artist.

One of the radio hosts brought up the issue that he doesn’t want to know the future, and so he didn’t see the point in going to a psychic.  I actually completely understand that one.  I really don’t want to know most of what’s in my future.  When I am doing metaphysical work on myself, I usually am seeking information on my past so that I can work to heal it and on my present so that I can make wise decisions.  On occasion my future does come up, though I would rather not know the details about the future unless they are about something malleable that my actions can change or improve.  There are also times when knowing the future can be a horrible and painful burden:  I had premonitions that my daughter would die unexpectedly.  That was an awful thing, but at the same time, it prepared me mentally for her death and allowed me to function when others around me collapsed.  Not wanting to know parts of the future is really understandable.

So why see a psychic if you don’t want to know the future?  With the work I do, I help people who are “stuck” in their lives.  They might have health issues that they can’t get past.  Their doctors are out of options, and the clients can’t figure out what might help them.  The insight I get from higher guidance can set them on a path of healing.  Likewise, I’ve assisted people who can’t find employment due to blocks they were creating but couldn’t see for themselves.  I’ve also helped people clean out negative energy in their homes that was making their lives less than pleasant.  The bottom line is that people utilize my services in order to improve their lives.  The work I do is not just a fun party trick, but it can really make a difference in people's happiness and health.

The radio hosts questioned whether or not a psychic was obligated to tell clients things about the future if they came up.  This is a matter of personal ethics that varies between psychics and their belief systems.  In my work, I do generally tell clients what I see, but I always frame it clearly so that the client understands the role of free will in our lives.  Our futures are not written in stone.  For example, I might foresee a client dying in a car crash because he was driving while intoxicated.  This is something that is completely within the power of the client to change.  Thus, I would relay to him that it could be possible for him to die in a drunk driving accident, but that this tragic death could be prevented if he chose to quit drinking while intoxicated.  At that point, the client has the information, and he can make his own decisions as to whether he wants to continue driving drunk or not.

The radio discussion ventured onto a question of how much some psychics, palm readers and tarot readers must be making based on the high rent locations of some of their businesses.  First of all, in Austin, there is a weird disparity that involves certain locations in town. If one bought the property 20 or 30 years ago, then one probably has it paid off or is still paying on a very small mortgage.  Thus, some people are able to live or work in areas of town which they could never afford to buy in nowadays.  If one is renting, that’s a different story unless one is locked into a long term low rent deal.  Otherwise, metaphysical businesses are still businesses.  Those who have offices in prime locations can charge more for their services because of conveniences.  They also are more likely to gain clients from drive by publicity.  Aside from that, there are some well-known or popular psychics in Austin who do amazingly well for themselves.  Not everyone does as well as they do, though.

Overall, one of the radio hosts kept stating that he wanted to believe but he just couldn’t.  That’s called healthy skepticism, and any good psychic will encourage it.  Prior to coming into my own abilities, I definitely wanted to believe, but my rational brain just couldn’t accept it all.  Even since developing my own metaphysical gifts, I still am a healthy skeptic of anyone I meet who claims to be psychic until I’ve witnessed their abilities in action.  Just as in any profession, there are a wide variety of abilities among practitioners.  Until one has experienced a great metaphysical session firsthand, it can be hard to believe, and that’s completely legitimate.  However, declaring all metaphysical experiences bogus before one tries a session (or several with different practitioners) is simple prejudice.  That's like going to one doctor who can't figure out why your stomach hurts and then declaring all of Western medicine to be bogus.

At some point after the discussion, a call was played from a listener who clearly has metaphysical abilities herself.  She correctly stated that all of us are psychic and that this is most often demonstrated through our intuition when we get a gut feeling about doing something or not doing something.  How much we each choose to use or develop our individual abilities varies, and the level of our metaphysical giftedness varies as well.  Some people can hold a basketball, some people can dribble a basketball, and some people can make a three point shot from half court.  The same is true of metaphysical gifts.  We all have different abilities.

The best way to find a psychic, intuitive or other metaphysician is through word of mouth.  Talk to friends about their experiences.  Picking up the phone book and dialing a number or walking up to an office you see on the street often isn’t the best approach as it could lead you to a con artist.  Alternatively, you can check out practitioners’ websites, read their reviews, and ask them questions before booking a session if you have any.  Most of all, listen to your own intuition.  If you don’t feel good about a certain psychic, then no matter what your friends are saying, then don’t use their services.  Just as with doctors, lawyers, and other practitioners, there is no perfect match for everyone.  Find someone who is able to work with you as you need them to.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery. ~Dante Alighieri

With all due respect, I have to disagree with the great Dante on this one.  There are two ways that one could interpret the quote.  In the first, Dante could be saying that when one is feeling miserable, it is painful to recall what it feels like to be happy.  In the second, Dante could be saying that the presence of happiness in an otherwise miserable time is sorrowful.  Both of these are incorrect in my opinion.

Laughter is healing:  We all know the adage, “Laughter is the best medicine.”  Scientific studies have proven the healing power of laughter time and again.  Our society has taught us, though, that in times of death and loss, we should be somber.  Laughter is falsely seen as an improper response even though it can be quite healthy.  Recently, Jenny Lawson (a.k.a.The Bloggess) wrote about her grandmother-in-law’s death, and on her Facebook page she described, “That amazing moment when … you find yourself in an unexpected room full of people who make you hold new babies, and make you eat too much food, and make you laugh even when you're crying. Nights like these are the ones that get you through mornings like tomorrow.”  I’ve also found that laughter in times of grief helps make the whole experience more bearable.

One of my strongest memories of my grandmother’s wake 23 years ago is of going out to dinner with family during the viewing the night before the funeral.  My two year old cousin sat at the table eating salsa with a spoon as though it was an entree, leaving us all in tears of laughter.  The release was surely good for us during an otherwise stressful time.  Likewise, it was my two year old niece-in-law who sent us all into laughter during the funeral mass of her great-grandmother twenty years ago.  Someone was speaking of the deceased’s family including her two great-grandchildren, and my niece-in-law piped up quite loudly so that all in the church could hear, “That’s me!”  It was a welcome relief in the somber grief of the service.

When it came to the time of my own daughter’s death, a moment of laughter also remains one of my strongest memories.  When my ex-husband and I were at the funeral home signing the release papers for cremation, there was a clause verifying that the deceased did not have a pacemaker because pacemakers can explode during cremation.  To the outside viewer, including the funeral director who was assisting us, there is absolutely nothing funny about that.  However, for some reason, it sent my ex and I into peals of laughter.  It became one of the funniest things we’d ever read.  The stress simply had tipped us over the edge, and we desperately needed to laugh until we cried.

Oscar Wilde stated, "Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one"; I agree with him.  Some of best funerals and memorial services are those that include much laughter as the life of the deceased is truly celebrated.  When I die, I hope my memorial service will be filled with much laughter and joy as friends and family remember the good times we spent together. 

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

Such a seemingly simple question can strike terror in the hearts of bereaved parents.  It’s not really all that simple for them to answer.  They are faced with only a few options, and none of them are perfect. 

The first is to say, “My child just died” or “I have three living children and one who is deceased.”  This is a great way to end a conversation most of the time.  Many people in our society are scared of death in general and more than terrified about the deaths of children.  They’d rather not acknowledge such things happen.  So if a parent answers in this way, the parent likely will create a great deal of discomfort in a social situation.  The unease that it can create is harsh and palpable.

The second option is to simply not count the deceased child and answer, “I have three children.”  However, for the bereaved parent, this can be an emotionally difficult answer.  It feels as though the parent is discounting the child who has died, something no parent ever wants to do to any of their children.  While it’s easier in a social situation to answer this way, it just plain feels wrong, at least to me and many other bereaved parents.

I tend to take the third option:  I usually state, “I have three living children.”  For me, this statement acknowledges my deceased child albeit in a passive way.  People who are in tune with what I am saying are aware of the fact that I have a child who is no longer living.  Those who are oblivious miss what I have truly said and the awkward discomfort in the first option is avoided.

Similar questions and comments that are just as hard are “Is s/he your first?” or “How lucky you have one of each sex.”   It really depends on the situation as to how I answer such question.  When I was pregnant with my twins, I never said that they were my first; I always responded that I had a little girl who died previously.  When someone commented about me having one of each sex, I usually spoke up to say that they had an older sister, and sometimes I would acknowledge that she was no longer living. 

I’m really not sure what the best way to respond when someone says to you, “I have three living children and one who is deceased.”  Most people’s responses are “I’m sorry for your loss.”  That’s sometimes a difficult response to receive because you as a bereaved parent know the other person feels like s/he’s opened in a messy topic.  However, you also know that it’s not their fault that your child died and so “I’m sorry” feels a little odd.  I usually respond, “Thank you” and change the topic.  However, “I’m sorry” is a far better response than the stunned silence that some people respond with. 

The most meaningful response for me comes from the parents who do truly understand and can respond, “I lost my daughter, too.”  I’ve had some amazing conversations with strangers who have also lost children, struggled with infertility, or had other parallel struggles.  While not everyone can respond that way, it’s how I respond when someone says something to me about having lost a child. 

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

(Forewarning: This is a long post!)

After my daughter Rebecca’s recent birthday and death day, a relatively new friend sent me a message asking, “I believe every person has a reason for being - if you also believe thusly, have you discerned what Rebecca's purpose in her much too short life was?”

First of all, I would like to acknowledge how beautifully this question is phrased.  This friend is a spiritual adviser and has worked with people of many faiths as they are dying.  She recognizes that her beliefs are not the beliefs of everyone, and her question left room for me to disagree with her.  It turns out that I do agree with her:  I believe that every life, no matter how short, impacts the world in some way.

Second, I want to point out that this is not a question that anyone should ask a recently bereaved parent.  It’s been 15 years since my daughter died, and this friend knows that I am willing to talk openly about my daughter’s death.  That greatly changes the situation.  In the situation of a stillbirth or neonatal loss, though, a recently bereaved parent is more likely to be in a stage where they can’t see what purpose their child’s life and death has served. They are surrounded by pain, grief, anger, depression, and many other dark feelings.  They may feel they were cheated out of the future they had envisioned.  To ask them what purpose their child’s life served will feel insulting and possibly amplify their pain.  If they bring up the topic, it’s certainly appropriate to talk to them about it, but until they have healed some of their wounds, they may not be ready to move on to this stage of understanding.

So what purpose did Rebecca’s life serve?  I think that there are many answers to that on many levels. One of the first things that came from Rebecca’s death was that my ex-husband and I established a scholarship in her memory.  We used the memorial donations from friends and family towards this scholarship, plus we put in a large amount of our own money over five years.  The Motorola Foundation matched our donations as well.  This is something we never would have done if it hadn’t been for Rebecca.  Now each year we get the joy of seeing the scholarship reward someone who devotes time and service to the Marching Owl Band (aka the MOB) at Rice University.  The annual report on the scholarship often brings me to tears, but they are good tears!

One of Rebecca’s other gifts was to her siblings who were born after her.  I had planned to breastfeed Rebecca, but I wasn’t very passionate about it.  I knew it was best for the baby, best for mama, cheapest, etc.  However, when I was holding Rebecca’s dead body in my arms, I was hit with the most overwhelming urge to nurse her.  I knew logically that I couldn’t nurse her, but the hormonal urge was amazing.  That response drove my dedication for breastfeeding my subsequent children.  I had a very rough start with nursing my twins due to their slightly early arrival (36 weeks 5 days) and rampant thrush which impacted my supply, but I was determined to breastfeed them.  Eventually we succeeded and nursed until they were almost 18 months old.  If it weren’t for that experience with Rebecca, I probably would have given up as so many overwhelmed and undersupported mothers do.

As part of my breastfeeding devotion, I discretely nursed all my subsequent children in public.  It was something I never questioned that I was going to do with my twins since I knew if I left society while breastfeeding them, I’d pretty much never see other people for many months.  This actually triggered a chain reaction.  My friends, who hadn’t publicly nursed their first children, realized that if I could discretely and comfortably nurse my babies in public, they could do the same with their younger babies.  I am sure these women’s change in their stances on breastfeeding in public helped other women feel more comfortable, too.  I see all of that change as having been instigated by my experience with wanting to nurse Rebecca so desperately.

On a much deeper level, Rebecca’s death taught me a level of compassion and understanding that I would never had known had I not lost her.  While I had lost family members and friends prior to Rebecca’s death, the death of a child is incomparable.  Only a few years after Rebecca’s death, I began speaking publicly to help health care providers, especially those in the natural childbirth community, have better resources for dealing with infant loss.  Through feedback I received from those who heard my presentations, I know I made an impact in the lives of others who subsequently lost babies.  My e-mail address and phone number were circulated for a while in the midwifery community of Austin, so I would periodically get messages or calls from women who had lost a baby and who needed to talk to someone who truly understood.  This in turn has led to the life coaching work I do with bereaved families.

On a metaphysical level, Rebecca’s spirit periodically stayed near me for almost four years after her death.  At the time, I didn’t really believe in such things, but I knew what I was experiencing.  I didn’t discuss it with anyone because I didn't think anyone would believe me.  I unfortunately didn’t know that I could interact with her, but I was aware when she was around me.  She was the first departed soul I know I encountered and experienced.  After her youngest sibling was born, I believe her spirit moved on to whatever her next mission is.

I believe in reincarnation though I respect that others don’t.  I think that my experience with Rebecca in this life ties to my most recent past life in the 1920s-1940s wherein I had both a late miscarriage (four or five months gestation) and an abortion (not my husband’s child).  I have also seen another male life of mine hundreds of years ago wherein I lost a child in battle; that loss greatly shifted my soul’s beliefs and actions in this world.  Somehow I think that my losing Rebecca in this life was to help me process those previous losses in a way I did not or could not in the previous lives.  I can’t be certain of this, but it rings as truth for me.

One other meaning for Rebecca’s short life came up for me in recent months that was deeply profound for me.  In a healing session, I learned that Rebecca’s soul also needed the experience of coming into this world and leaving it so quickly.  She was not happy about her quick departure, but it served some purpose in her soul’s growth.  This isn’t all just about me and my loss of her!  I still haven’t fully understood what that purpose might have been for her soul, but I know that she too gained something from the painful experience.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

The fifteenth anniversary of my daughter Rebecca’s death and birth was last week.  This year, there was no intense grief surrounding Rebecca’s loss.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t miss her or don’t wish that I could have known her better in this lifetime.  However, it does mean that her birthday was not a day of pain and grieving for me. 

Several years ago, I had a powerful spiritual, metaphysical, physical and emotional experience surrounding Rebecca’s death while working with my mentor.  The full story is long and probably unbelievable to many who don’t share my metaphysical views.  The short version of it is that we were able to release stored emotional pain that I didn’t realize I had in my body.  I was aware that I had stored pain related to her as any time I thought of her I would feel a very painful ache in part of one bone of my body.  I didn’t realize how deep that pain was and how much it entailed.

Prior to this powerful experience with my mentor, I had done many, many things across a variety of modalities as I attempted to heal the wounds from Rebecca’s death.  Each effort chipped away at the pain, but this experience working primarily with energy, crystals, words, and emotions was what set me free.  Releasing that stored pain changed my life.  It allowed me to be grateful for the all too brief time I spent with Rebecca.  Having her birthday be just another day this year was a bit odd after so many years wherein it was a painful wound that got reopened annually.  However, I’m grateful to be in this new place.

For those of you who are mourning the loss of someone you loved, please know that healing can happen. It’s not easy, and it does take work that can be painful in and of itself.  However, when that healing happens, your life can be much better than it previously was.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

Fourteen years ago, my oldest daughter Rebecca died unexpectedly during her birth.  She was moments away from being born when her heartbeat disappeared.  There was no malpractice; we never got a definitive cause of death.  It was simply one of those awful things that happens. 

Since then, I have often been asked what to do when someone else’s baby dies.  It’s a horribly heartbreaking situation, and those who haven’t experienced it personally feel at a loss for how to help.  The following are some of my suggestions based on my experience.  Always use your best judgment to decide what is best for the bereaved family you want to help.

Attend the funeral or memorial service if possible. 

Even if you don’t know the family incredibly well, your presence will mean the world to the grieving parents.  The sheer number of people who turned out astonished us and helped us feel loved and supported in our time of grief.

Yes, you will likely cry.  So will they.  It’s part of what happens at funerals.  No one will judge you for crying.  We knew it was going to be an issue and had boxes of tissues in all of the pews in the chapel we had Rebecca’s service in.  We were sitting in the front row, completely oblivious to what was going on behind us, but a good friend said that during the song  we played near the end, the boxes of tissues were moving fast and furious between people in the pews.

Even if you don’t know what to say to the family, shake their hands or give them hugs and say, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”  That will say it all.  One woman in the receiving line that spontaneously formed after the memorial service for Rebecca couldn’t even get that out.  She was completely choked up, but she gave me a huge hug and moved on.  She has a daughter who was born only three months before my daughter.  I understood what she was processing and why she couldn’t say more.  Silence can be the right choice at times.

Donate to the charity of choice if you are able.

Unless you have a huge moral opposition to the charity of the family’s choice, your gift will mean a lot to them.  My then husband and I chose to set up a scholarship fund in memory of our daughter. We truly appreciate all the donations that went toward it.  It has been a gift that keeps on giving as many years we hear from the actual scholarship recipients in the annual financial update on the scholarship.  That annual letter never fails to bring me to tears (in a good way).

We also had people send flowers to our home immediately after the death.  This is a tradition in our culture for many, but not everyone appreciates it.  Unless you know the family wants cut flowers, it might actually cause issues for them.  To me, cut flowers are just dying in front of me.  I didn’t want to deal with another aspect of death at that point.  I also am allergic to many varieties of flowers, so many of the flowers we received were problematic.  We lived in a smallish home, and there wasn’t much of a place to put them on display where they wouldn’t bother me.  I finally put the worst offender on the front porch.  While it was generously given as a way of sending sympathy, it was making me miserable!

If the family does not ask for charitable donations, offer to create a charity gift fund and follow through with it.

Perhaps the family often visits a local park where you can donate funds and have a plaque or tile put up in memory of their baby.  Other locations have tree planting memorial programs. Perhaps they belong to a church where there is a memory wall that you can donate to.  Whatever you offer to do, make it something that would provide a meaningful gift to the family and their community.

Offer to set up a care calendar for food donations.

Our daughter died before the wonders of the internet.  We were overwhelmed with food being brought to our home.  We truly appreciated the food, and the spicy Indian food our next-door neighbors made for me will forever be in my mind as one of my best meals ever after months of pregnancy-induced heartburn preventing me from eating such things.   However, there was just too much.  We didn’t have an additional freezer to put things in.  It would have been great to have a calendar set up so we could have spread out food and visits from friends over the next month or two.

Be specific in your offers of help.

I have found throughout my life that when people say to me, “Call me if you need anything” that I almost never do.  However, in times of intense stress including after Rebecca died, I responded incredibly well to specific offers.  One friend and his wife offered to do the music for the service and then did the music for our subsequent twins’ baptisms as part of their compassion and their healing.  They brought us hymnals to look at, and once we had selected the music, they took over everything from there.  We didn’t have to worry about anything.  It was a wonderful gift to us.

Another friend was a Type A organizer amongst our social group.  When she called and asked to help, it felt perfect to let her to take over plans for the reception after the memorial.  She did a fabulous job, and when anyone else asked about it or about giving us more food, I would just send them to her.  Even though I love organizing events, I was so grateful not to have to plan that.

Other specific things you can suggest include offering to drive to the doctor’s office for postpartum visits and to be there to hold a hand.  Returning to the doctor’s office near the hospital (if they used one) might be difficult.  If you are going to the store and live near them, call on your way out the door and say, “Hey, I’m headed to the grocery store.   Can I pick you up anything?”  Trips to pick up other supplies at big box stores might also be appreciated.

If you are a close friend, be aware that the parents may need to do things like return to the mortuary to pick up ashes, go to the coroner’s office to pick up autopsy results, or spend hours on the phone wrangling with insurance over bills for the child who died.  If you can help with those in any way, please offer.  I did all of the above by myself not realizing that I could have asked a friend to come with me and help support me.

We did not have any other living children at that point, but other families may need help with transportation and playdates for their living children especially while the mother is recovering from the birth.  Even though she is not staying up countless hours at night taking care of a newborn, her body will still need to heal from the birth.  Offer to help with the other children just as you would have done if their baby had lived.

Respect the family’s grief.

The family is dealing with their own emotional turmoil at this time.  Do not put your problems on them.  One friend was experiencing a miscarriage at the time of Rebecca’s memorial service.  She walked in the door to the chapel with her personal box of tissues under her arm and a very red nose plus tears running down her face.  That was ok.  She was mourning her own loss (as well as two previous ones), and I knew it.  She had managed to come to the memorial service despite her pain, and I was grateful for her presence.   However, another friend showed up on my doorstep and literally fell apart in my arms, bawling about her own issues that weren’t related to my daughter’s death.  That was very much not ok.  The last thing I needed to do was console her.  I was the grieving mother, not her therapist.

Provide the family with a safe space to talk about their grief and their loss.  Don’t change the subject when they talk about their child or their struggles in the postpartum days.  Show them you care by listening.  It’s an amazing gift for you to give to them.

If you are friends with them, continue to go out with them socially as you did before the birth.

Invite your bereaved friends to social events, even if they turn you down.  Continue offering periodically.  When they feel up to it, they will be glad you are still offering.  We lost a few friends after the death of our daughter, and that hurt deeply.  I know this post-loss rejection is a common event as I have heard this from other bereaved families as well.  People feel awkward when a baby has died and don’t know what to do.  Some chose to shut the bereaved family out of their lives rather than facing their fears and issues.

At the same time, respect limits set by the grieving family.  If they tell you, “We think it will be a few months before we are ready to go out again,” then wait two months and ask again.  Also understand that many bereaved parents have difficulties seeing young children.  After the first few days, I was ok with seeing children who were not born near Rebecca’s birthdate.  However, girls with the same name as her or babies who were the same age as her remained triggers for quite a while.  We had some friends who had a healthy baby boy five days after our daughter was born and died.  They were incredibly respectful to us about how the baby (and his baptism and birthdays) might affect us.  The wife talked honestly and openly with me, and through our mutual tears, we were able to find a way to make it all work out for both of us so that they didn’t worry about hurting us and at the same time didn’t feel like they were excluding us.

Mourning doesn’t end after any set period of time.

After the first month, the sympathy cards stopped coming.  That seemed to be the point at which society expected us to move on.  However, that entire first year was very rough for us, and I’m sure it is for many other families as well.  Continue to send them e-mails or cards letting them know that you are thinking of them.  Call and check on them.  If they aren’t feeling up to going out, offer to come to their place with the clear expectation that they should not cook or clean for you.

Continue to send them cards and e-mails as time passes.  In this digital age, program your calendar to remind you each year on their child’s birthday and/or deathday to send them a note saying you are thinking of them.

Also know that other holidays may be rough for them, especially Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and child-focused holidays such as Easter, Halloween, and Christmas or Hanukkah.  Respect that they may be having a rough time around the holidays and might need some extra support at that time.

Honor their tears.  They will continue to cry over their loss of their child.  No calendar will dictate when that will end.  Even as I have typed this blog entry, my tears have flown and a mound of tissues has accumulated next to my keyboard.  It is far healthier for the tears to flow than for the emotions to be stuffed and stored inside of us to fester and cause harm.

Honor their child as a human being.

For a parent who has lost a child, it is a blessing to hear their child’s name spoken out loud.  They know that s/he has not been forgotten.  If they have pictures of their child, be sure to look at them and say anything positive you can. 

Offer to help them frame the photos or set up a display in their home to honor their child if that is something they would like.  I have some of Rebecca’s belongings in a shadow box, a project I did on mostly my own.  I also made a scrapbook of notes and cards I received after her death, a cathartic activity for me.  However, if one of the parents is not crafty and you are, this might be something you could help with.

Things to Avoid

There are no universal truths when it comes to infant loss, but the following points are pretty close to it.  In my discussions with other bereaved parents, mainly mothers, these are issues that many of us faced and resent.

Don’t impart your religious beliefs on them.

You may believe this is part of God’s plan, but they may not.  Even if they were previously religious, many families lose their faith after the death of a child.  Others’ faith grows stronger.  Follow the lead of the family.  If you are meeting in a religious Bible study with them, that is a different story.  However, when you are offering your condolences, do not talk about their guardian angel or God’s mysterious ways.  Simply say, “My heart hurts for you” or “I’m sorry for your loss.”  Nothing more is needed.

Don’t compare this loss to another.

Someone once said that in losing a parent or a grandparent, you lose your past, but in losing a child, you lose your future.  While losing a grandparent or a pet is terrible, it has little in common with losing a child.  Losing a child is unlike any other loss someone experiences in life.  Don’t compare them.  Unless you have lost a child yourself, please don’t say you understand, because you actually don’t.  I have suffered an early miscarriage, and even that didn’t come close to the experience of holding my dead baby in my arms.   Just tell the bereaved family that you are sorry for their loss and that you will be there to help them however you can.

Don’t speculate about future children. 

First of all, no baby replaces another.  If you have children of your own, you already know that.  Every child is unique and individual.  The child these parents lost will never be replaced.   If this child was a twin or other multiple, don’t presume that having other surviving babies will help in some way.  They are still grieving for the child they lost.

Don’t speculate about when they are going to get pregnant again.  It won’t help them to have to answer nosy questions.  The family may not be able to have other children for health or financial reasons.  This may not have been a planned pregnancy.  It may have been an IVF pregnancy using limited funds to finance it.  The mother may have had an emergency hysterectomy after the birth that you aren’t aware of.  The couple’s relationship may be falling apart.  Don’t presume that they will be able to or even want to have another child.

Secondary infertility is an unfortunately common problem.  The couple may have difficulty conceiving again.  They may also choose to postpone conception until a time when they feel they have fully mourned and healed from the loss of their baby.  If and when they announce a subsequent pregnancy, then you may say congratulations.  Until then, their family planning is their business, and you should refrain from inserting yourself into it.

Don’t pretend like their child never existed or deny their parenthood.

Finally, even if they have no other children, this baby’s parents are still parents.  They have a baby they love dearly.  That child is dead, but the child is still theirs.  Do not imply that they are not parents.  Do not imply that the child does not count.  Their child is their beloved child now until their deaths, and in the beliefs of some, even beyond.

One of the most awful things someone said to me was years later after I had given birth to three more living children. Someone with three children asked me, “Isn’t three the most perfect number of children?”  The other people we were with had looks of horror on their faces, knowing full well what the person had said despite knowing about Rebecca’s death.  In a rare moment of actually being able to come up with the perfect response on the spot, I told her, “I wouldn’t know.  I have four children.”

© 2013 Green Heart Guidance