The day we buried my children was the worst day of my life, of course. Afterward, emotionally exhausted and in extreme pain from two hours sitting up in a wheelchair, I was lying on my hospital bed. My mother came and took my hand. She said, “When you get this far down, there’s only one direction left to go.”
Somehow, that thought has stuck with me ever since. You can only get so low before things MUST change. Even the addicts call it “reaching bottom.” It seems to me like life is always on a continuum, from high to low. Every aspect of our life is on it’s own continuum. I have rarely in my life had “all the plates spinning” at the same time. There’s always one that’s broken or wobbling. Getting around to being OK with that inevitability seems like the path to peace.
Here’s the only guarantee of human existence that I’ve ever seen (beyond birth and death): if you’re at the bottom, things will start to go up again. You will start to move back up the spiral. You may THINK you’re at the bottom and find out it can get worse, but after that, it’s gotta start getting better. It’s a law of nature. After the wildfire took out my home – heck, my entire neighborhood – the landscape was black, gray and sooty. Drive there now, and other than some charred but living trees, it looks very green and lush. But to those who know, that’s not how it used to look.
If you’re is attached to how it used to look, used to be, used to feel, you’re in trouble. Getting used to How Things Are Now is about 90% of the trick of letting things get better. “Better” may not be the better you prefer, but the human soul cannot survive in anguish forever. Things will eventually change and you will be at peace, you will find joy, things will get better one day. You’ll see. Practice looking for the upswing – cuz it’s a-coming!
OK, so here’s the deal, best as I can figure it. Bad stuff happens. To all of us. In the worst possible ways and at the worst possible times. We hurt. Life hurts. It’s painful. It can be awful, sad, terrible, frustrating and more.
And you can still choose to be happy.
“Like hell!” you say. “This psycho woman has no idea what I’m dealing with here.”
“It’s true. You can do it,” I insist, standing firmly in my own journey through anguish and pain. (If you want to read my bio, go to this website and click “Meet Wendy”. I know whereof I speak!)
OK, Genius. Tell me HOW I’m supposed to be happy again after what’s happened to me.
Fine! I will! There are five steps, five secrets. I call them “secrets” because like most secrets, they’re not obvious. Not obvious, but incredibly simple. I learned these the hard way – I researched them when I was so far below Ground Level that just breathing felt like too much work. I applied these and plenty of others to my own formerly-miserable life, trashed the ones that were stupid, kept the ones that made a difference for me. Now I’m sharing them with you. Ready?
1. It’s a friggin’ choice.
I hate this one most of all! I have every right to be miserable and feel sorry for myself and the junk life has thrown at me. And so do you. But if even one little ol’ part of you wants to be happy again, ever, you have to say, “I choose to be happy.” Cuz that’s what will lead you to do your homework, test these and other things you’ll learn about how to get happy again, and start to push yourself through this. No one else can make you happy but you.
2. There is no Rescuer coming.
I don’t have anything against religion, men riding white stallions or guys in capes. Really I don’t. But frankly, I figured out long, long ago that even God only helps those who help themselves. Sitting around waiting for your next welfare check isn’t the same thing as figuring out what you can do to get your life put back together. It’s your life. Every day you screw around waiting for Ed McMahon to knock on your door and hand you a big cardboard check is one more day wasted. (‘Specially since he’s dead now!) Take inventory of what you’ve got left – skills, options, health, vision, the ability to hear, a good mind, friends, a place to live, knowing how to type or cook or knit, fresh air, online access or whatever. Figure out ways to use it to your own best advantage. Starting now, not in the morning. I know several people in chronic pain and with severe disabilities who run multimillion dollar companies by using their minds and their sense of drive. (Check out my friend: www.WMitchell.com)
3. Get over yourself.
I know. That’s mean. It’s like I’m a bully. But what I’m trying to say is this: if you want to be happy, you have to stop being so darn narcissistic, focusing so much energy on your life and your problems. Start looking for solutions. Start looking for what ELSE is going on around you. Start practicing empathy – looking at other people’s problems and letting your heart reach out to them. Or heck, go serve the poor or the sick or walk through the cancer ward or park yourself in the worst part of some inner city and see how those people live. You’re not the only one suffering. That’s both comforting AND a wake-up call.
4. Find six things every day that you’re grateful for.
Doesn’t matter if anyone else thinks those things matter. Clouds. A jar of pennies. The cute baby you saw in a stroller today. Your TV works and you’re paying the electric bill. Your whole body hurts…except for your eyelids. WHAT isn’t important. THAT you are grateful is. It starts to melt the ice in your heart and pretty soon, if you keep it up every day, you’ll tip your own scales toward happiness. Odd how that works, but try it. It’s free!
5. Stop comparing.
A friend asked me today what it would take for me to feel successful in 20 years, looking back at my life. I instantly quipped, “I’d need to have become Oprah, Tony Robbins and Mother Teresa all rolled into one!” We laughed, but truth is, that’s what it would take for me to think I’d hit the ball out of the park. Who do you compare yourself with? We’ve gotta stop. The more we compare ourselves to others we think are “better” than we are, the more less-than we feel. Do as I say, not as I do.
It’s an inside job, this happiness stuff.
It’s a game we play with ourselves. When I was a little girl, sometimes I played checkers with myself. Amazingly, I sometimes won and sometimes lost to my stuffed rabbit “Bunny Boy”. It all depended on my mood. Life is like Bunny Boy’s skill at checkers – you get to choose when you win and when you lose. We all get dealt a bad hand at times. What are you going to do about it? Play to win or walk away a sore loser?
by Wendy Keller, mother of 3 children, 1 still living
That’s my boy over there in that photo. Jeremy Winston, a few weeks before he died, playing with leaves and dump trucks in his sandbox. He lived for only four years, three months and ten days. Then, a simple error in judgment ended his life and his baby sister’s in a traffic accident. He’d be 26 now. My first daughter Amelia Louise would be turning 23 in August.
My only living child Sophia Rose will be 20 on July 8. I am amazed she has survived to adulthood – it’s more than I dared to hope. She was conceived after they died, because my then-husband and I figured we should start again.
The first days after Jeremy and Amelia died, I was in ICU. All the drugs they pumped into me couldn’t dull the stark anguish and incredulity I felt. There was no way they were dead! We were on our way to get Jeremy some British French fries (“chips”) for dinner. I’d promised them to him. Where was he?
My friend Lora’s son Sydney had died of SIDS a few months earlier. She called my hospital room and gently suggested I try to go 30 seconds without crying. It took me a few days, but eventually I mastered it. I worked up to a few minutes within the month. A year later, I could often make it for several hours. Now, I cry for my babies just a few times a year. It’s been more than 20 years and yes, I still can feel the weight of the pain, but the anguish has subsided.
“It’s hard to watch your child grow up…in your mind.” — unknown
If you’ve lost a child, you already know there’s nothing anyone can say. If it’s been a while, looking back you can probably see that you did irrational, illogical, insane things in the immediate aftermath. You started a charity you didn’t really have the energy to carry through; you removed every trace of your dead child or you built a shrine; you screamed at strangers or loved ones; or you laid in bed for days thinking you would cry out every drop of fluid in your body and find peace in your own death.When I was finally released from the hospital and able to sit in a wheelchair, I took a razor blade and wheeled myself into Jeremy’s room. I viciously sliced the smile off every last cartoon elephant on Jeremy’s bedroom walls, screaming at them that they had no right to be happy since he was dead.
What I’ve learned in all this…is that it’s OK. Your reaction is OK. As long as you don’t kill or harm yourself or someone else, it’s OK. I know you can be fine one moment and lying on the floor howling in agony another. You can be hyper-productive at work and completely comatose the rest of the time, walking through layers of gauze. It’s OK. There IS NO NORMAL REACTION to the death of your own child. It’s is completely against the order of things. Someday, you’ll realize it’s far, far, far more common than anyone can bear to admit. And that you are far from alone in your plight. But for now, be real. Feel what you’re feeling.
But there’s a catch.
The way other people cope with their grief over the death of your child is OK too. After my babies died, my husband became a (worse) alcoholic and I became a (worse) workaholic. Neither is healthy. I hated the way he was handling it. He hated how I was handling it. We judged each other harshly. Worse, when one of us had managed to yank ourselves a half inch out of the quagmire of pain that is the loss of a child, the other would be having a “bad grief day” (as we called them) and accidentally pull the other back down.
I didn’t like how he was handling it. Nor his father. Nor some of my friends. Nor plenty of other people who should have been more upbeat, less upbeat, more supportive, more helpful, less imposing, more sad, more happy or at the very least, more something. Anything other than what they were!
With the 20/20 clarity of hindsight, I’ve realized that EVERYONE grieves in their own way. Everyone experiences the losses in their life the way their life has trained them to suffer so far. Most people – the vast majority – even those who do or say stupid things in the wake of your loss – are trying to be nice and helpful. I wanted to slap the head off the woman who leaned over my wheelchair and told me she “understood what I was going through”…because her cat had died “…and he was like a son to me.”
This is what I know is true about the death of your own child:
It’s OK to grieve however you feel like grieving, for as long as you feel like it. When you’re ready to stop or to feel better, there’s plenty of help standing by (including some of my blog posts on this topic!) And you will reach the end of it someday. Promise. We all do.
Let the other parent, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, all grieve in their own way. Someday, you’ll be able to realize they were suffering too. Give them as much space as you can to be who they are.
Don’t let anyone feed you platitudes. If you’re polite, just listen, smile and say thanks. If you’re like me, give them a piece of your mind. “I guess God just needed another angel.” F*$& that! Other people’s beliefs are just their beliefs. You have a unique chance when your child dies to examine what YOU really believe – not just about religion, but about life and your place in it. Use it wisely!
It will get easier to manage as time goes on. Time doesn’t heal anything, but it does give you the ability to develop coping skills, get over the shock and start to make some serious decisions.
It is a dreadful, terrible, incomprehensible thing you are enduring. It is utterly and completely wrong, unfair and excruciating. There are legions of parents alive today who have survived what you now face and eventually found reasons to smile again – sometimes through their tears. I promise, you can get through this.
Sending each bereaved parent who reads this my best wishes for your life to overflow with love, joy and most of all, peace.
How Fear Shrinks Our Spirits and Damages Our Lives…AND What To Do About It
by Wendy Keller, author, speaker, woman who is afraid sometimes
Is fear keeping you from growing? From living the life your soul knows you were meant to live? Are you trapped by fears of there not being enough – enough love, enough money, enough hope, enough anything?
Maybe you don’t even realize how much fear is destroying and diminishing your life!
I was about to be hired as the marketing consultant for a small business today. I know I can triple their revenues by the end of the year, and next year would be the beginning of all their dreams coming true. I am familiar with their type of product and the talent behind it. But the owner is a fearful man, a negative thinker, operating from his panic instead of a place of abundance. He’s now negotiated me right out of my original enthusiasm for working with him. He will have to go back to his slow, plodding, methodical way of hopefully building the company one tiny step at a time. I’m supposed to decide today and I decided…to pass.
The minute I decided to stop operating from fear (“What if he becomes the No. 1 product in his category and I am not working with them, thus not getting commission?”) I realized that with his attitude, they will NEVER become the No. 1 product in their category. I can’t work with someone so mired in fear and lack. The second I made the decision, I felt exuberant. (Darn, life is such a school! So many pop quizzes!)
I’ve noticed this a lot in my life. When I am able to release my fears, my concerns about lack (of anything from money to time to love) I experience a buoyancy in my spirit unparalleled when I am allowing myself to imagine a scary future. If you’re also trapped in fear and worry sometimes, it might be worth giving these strategies a shot.
Five Steps to Releasing Fear and Worry
1. If Fear is defined as “False Evidence Appearing Real”, then it’s the “real” part that scares us most. Ask yourself, “Is this kind of fear real for everyone in my situation?” Even if one is facing down a terminal diagnosis, there are others who are not living their last days in fear and worry. Your view of what’s “Real” might be a figment of your own imagination. Consider that carefully.
2. Play a little game with your brain. Imagine, “What would be the BEST possible outcome here?” Not the “most OK” or the “least damaging”, but the very best. For instance, if you are going through a divorce and you are increasingly glad you no longer live with your former spouse, would the BEST outcome be that he/she becomes gracious and compliant and allows the split of the money and the child custody to go smoothly? Knowing this person as well as you do, what is it that you might be doing that is escalating their anger and their fear? Could you stop doing it and still achieve the deal you dream of? Has your lawyer talked you into agitating this person you know so well beyond what you know they are capable of handling? I’m not saying change anything, I’m just saying try to get an objective perspective on the whole issue.
3. Take a little baby step. I have a friend in a bad marriage. It’s at least as much her fault as it is her husband’s. She blames him constantly for everything, and truthfully, it’s not all him. I know she’s so committed to her point of view as “Woman Trapped In A Bad Marriage” that she is playing this long-suffering role for all it’s worth. It’s kind of boring for her friends, because she seems to have no desire to improve things, decade after decade. I notice in my own life and that of many others, though, that taking even one baby step in the right direction changes the whole game somehow. I ask her, “What would happen if you were just nice to him for a whole evening?” It applies in so many ways! If you just saved that $10 and put it in an envelope under your mattress instead of going out to eat…if you just said No to the next cigarette, just one….if you went through just ONE store and smiled at other single people and looked them in the eye…Do just a little extra work on the job today… You won’t know until you try it, but Change has to start somewhere. Why not with you?
4. Pay attention to your heart. As you walk into your own front door, as you wait to pick up your teenager in front of the high school, as you sit down at your desk on Monday morning, watch how you feel. Is it constricted, afraid, anger, defensive, on guard? There is no louder signal your body can send! It’s not like it can independently hire a skywriter to say, “MAKE SOME CHANGES! THIS ISN’T GOOD FOR YOU!” Get real with yourself. That feeling is NOT acceptable and YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ACCEPT IT! Don’t just depress yourself, day after day, dealing with what seems unmanageable or like you’re stuck. That’s stupid! Make a plan, any plan, to make it better. TRY. Try something. Try something different than what you do. I had a brilliant man, Mike Gurr, the director of Copper Canyon Academy, a therapeutic girls boarding school outside Sedona, AZ, tell me once that if “taking away her cell phone isn’t causing her to modify her behavior, then taking away her cell phone isn’t modifying her behavior. That means you have to find something else that will.” Sometimes we get so enmeshed in “This SHOULD work” that we forget to notice if it isn’t.
5. Finally, if you have TRIED all the above and it STILL isn’t working, then…News Flash! It isn’t working! That means this: Get Professional Help. That doesn’t mean “ask your friends for their opinion” unless your friends are therapists, life coaches or PhDs in Psych. It means figure out how to afford to get professional help. Most counties in the USA have free mental health services; there are less expensive group therapy sessions; there are HUNDREDS of coaches online (read their testimonials so you find a good one!) who do inexpensive phone consults. Even just one session might give you the two things those kinds of people provide: a different perspective AND the courage to try something different.
Whether it’s business or personal life that’s got you mired in fear and worry, you DO NOT have to live this way! I remember the old saying, “Swallow your pride and step inside!” Remember that? It applies to YOU right here and now. Everyone gets afraid of different things. For a decade, I woke up and checked several times a night to be sure that my only living daughter hadn’t died in her sleep, which is illogical because her brother and sister died in a car accident. We all have fears that are illogical, irrational and that seem SO real to us. Use the steps above and give yourself a teensy tiny break from the stress you live with now. It’s worth a try!
Jerry Sandusky may finally get what he deserves, but like most people, my heart goes out to the kids. I think most normal, healthy adults wonder how in the heck this could be perpetrated on a child. But Sandusky is not the only brute out there. CNN reported that ONE out of SIX BOYS and ONE out of THREE GIRLS is sexually abused during childhood!
Chances are high that SOME of the people reading this blog post have sexually abused a child, maybe even their own child! Chances are even higher that MANY of the people reading this have been the victims of abuse. It makes me ill to think of it.
Years ago in New York, I had dinner with a dear client who told me (while shaking and sobbing) that for FOUR years his big sister’s boyfriend had anally raped him every chance he got! The client told me he’d only told one other person this awful story in his whole life. From the intensity of his re-telling, for this grown man, a successful, married businessman, the pain was as fresh as it was when he was actually being abused in his own mother’s house. The older boy had told my client that he’d kill his sister if he told anyone, so for all those years – starting when he was just seven – he didn’t. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SUFFER IN SILENCE!
Here’s a surprise: the second largest percentage of people who respond to my work are adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse! (The largest group is people in grief.)
There’s no shortcut to healing from this trauma. Keeping it buried inside you will only cause it to fester, to come out in weird ways and to distort your relationships, including the one with yourself. Denying it happened, blaming yourself, perpetrating the same act on other children, or looking the other way while someone abuses your children won’t heal you and won’t stop the cycle. It WILL damage your relationships, it WILL damage your own children – unless you get it handled as best you can.
To be an adult, we have to take full responsibility for our lives. That includes the bad and the good things that have happened to us so far. You have a moral responsibility TO YOURSELF to get this handled. Imagining that you “can handle it alone” or “that was long ago” or “maybe I deserved it” is the exact same thing as saying, “I don’t really care about my life now.” Unresolved past issues cause depression, inappropriate behaviors, anger, paranoia, neuroses, psychological problems of every type. If you’re taking drugs to try to deal with adult life, it’s time to resolve this issue from your childhood.
Please, take care of yourself. If someone hurt you when you were small, seek professional help today. You cannot make your full contribution to society if part of you is still egregiously wounded. You’d get a cast if you broke a bone. Do this. Help yourself. It’s not your fault that someone hurt you like that but it IS your fault if you choose to stay a victim and not even try to heal from the awful thing that was done to you. I’m sorry for what you went through, but now it’s time to get this handled. Please. Please do this for yourself.
It’s IMPOSSIBLE to Stay Down Forever
