FORGET AND MOVE ON

One thing people who  have had a significant loss often hear is "You have to forget it and move on." It is the desire of friends that we continue to live our lives. They don't want us to hurt and they don't like the feelings they have when we do hurt.

But, when things fall apart, one of the most natural thing to do is to "re-member".  When things are broken and scattered, we want to put them back the way they were.  We want to "re-member" them.  That way we don't have to deal with the pain of brokenness or the the chaos of scattered pieces of our lives.

But, I think re-membering is also important because that which is lost needs to be integrated into the life that we live moving forward. The loss of someone or something that has been significant in our self-identity has to be processed in a way that we can move forward. Our past doesn't just disappear.  It isn't simply forgotten.  Our past has to be reintegrated into the self that is moving forward.

So my recommendation is that we re-member our past so that it can be integrated into our new life as part of who we are but in a different relationship to  our lives.  Whereas it might have been central to the way we do things, now, it might be more peripheral.  If your job was central to your self-understanding when you were employed, it now may be important for your understanding of who you have been and who you might be, but it isn't as central to who you are right now.  It has to be re-membered in a way that you can carry it forward in your life to give you courage and strength to move into the unknown future.

So, re-member well.  The past remains part of who you are becoming.

DIAGNOSIS

Grieving is what happens when there are endings.  When you have trusted your life to be lived in a certain way and then something happens to cause you to question whether it will continue to be lived that way, grieving begins to happen.

That is why a diagnosis is an occasion for grieving. If you have been able to be independent and self-supporting and then you are diagnosed with a disease that might compromise those self-supporting activities, you have to learn to live again in light of the new reality.

Because of this, we start acting in ways that we may not like.  We name our losses and feel the pain of fear and anxiety that comes with uncertainty.  We find ourselves getting angry at others, even those who have not had anything to do with our situation.  We get angry at others who are not threatened like we are.  We begin reminscing about days in the past when things were good. We look around for someone or something to blame and assign guilt.  

But, for us to be free to live with our disease or our altered circumstance, we need to be freed from our guilt and our pain.  Over time a forgiving spirit can emerge.  I don't think forgiveness is something that someone simply decides to do.  I think it is often a gift that comes to us when we work through our losses and when we gain strength to imagine new and different ways of being. We are resilient people and it is possible to discover new things about ourselves and new possibilities for our lives.

The emerging of new life can be terribly painful. Don't let anyone talk you out of your pain. But, find some friends to talk with about it. Shared pain can be more manageable. Explore your new new limits.  See what you can do with the new reality. It is not easy but it can be redemptive.  

TEARS

Some of us were raised with this directive:  "Grown men don't cry." Not everyone got the message.

Recent news from the sports world is about Knowshon Moneno and his tears. Moreno, a star player for the Denver Broncos of the NFL seems to not hold back his tears.  The publicity is about how generous the tears are, but some comment on how sentimental he seems to be. 

Now some of us were led to believe that tears were a sign of weakness. We look with wonder on a grown man who shed's tears without shame. We were taught that to be strong one had to buck up and not express our emotions. 

But, my experience of deep grief has taught me something different. "Tears are an important way for us to find release from the pain of our loss. Some people would advise us to give up our pain and get on with our lives. They believe the cure for grieving is just deciding that you are over it.  My experience suggests that pain and sadness are not something we can choose to surrender so easily.  Pain has to give up on us. Tears are a way of helping us rinse out our souls so that the sadness releases its grip on us. (Lose, Love, Live: The Spiritual Gifts of Loss and Change", p. 44)

But, it is more than being freed from the pain. Tears are also a sign of strength. When we are weak, we cannot allow ourselves to feel because it threatens our self control.  But, when we are strong, we can stand the feelings and we can express them.  So, in our learning to live without someone or something that matters, when we are overcome with tears we can take courage because we are gaining strength for living a new life in the future.

I am glad young men didn't get the message that "grown men don't cry." When macho men in the NFL are not afraid to express their sadness, there is hope for better healing of the heart.

GROWING SPIRITUALLY

Anger is part of the normal feelings that one has when one has had a significant loss.  But, it is more than that. I reflect on that in my book, "Lose, Love, Live:  The Spiritual Gifts of Loss and Change."

"Being in touch with our anger and fear and anxiety is a vital part of growing spiritually. To grow spiritually requires centering our lives in that which can sustain us in the midst of the changing world around us.  Spiritual strength is the ability to stay on course even when the winds of threat and fear would knock us off.  If we are in touch with our fears and our anger, then we are more aware of what we are putting our trust in.  To trust our souls to those things that can be taken from us is to be vulnerable to manipulation by the powers that would control us.  To trust in the energy of life that creates and re-creates us, ever calling us into a new world, is to be defined by that which has eternal qualities."

DIET OF THE MIND

I read recently of someone suggesting that we might need a "diet of the mind". Some of us are over-weight with information.  We gorge ourselves on data.  We have to know what is happening to people in the world. We must know what all our Facebook friends are doing.  We need to keep up with all the latest sports or celebrity news. We need to know what our church or social group is doing. We need to know the latest research about our profession. Information overload!

It's almost like we think that the more we know, the more we can protect ourselves from being caught off-guard. It's like there might be something out there that could save us if we just know what it is. But, what do we need to be saved from? Sometimes I think if I just knew more I wouldn't have to feel alone. If I could get enough friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter I will be OK. If I know enough about the latest global crisis I can keep safe from it's impact.

And sometimes this almost functions like an addiction.  Information overload insulates us from having to interact with the people around us. We can only feel so much. We may feel so much empathy and sympathy for refugees in Syria that we don't have enough energy left to allow the empathy we feel for the person in the nursing home to motivate us to visit them.  If we feel enough excitement over the victory of our favorite sports team, we don't have to interact with groups who are fighting for victory over cancer.

Maybe we need a new organization called Information Anonymous. Much as other addictions keep us from feeling our feelings and sharing our rich and sometimes confusing selves, addiction to information can be a shield against intimacy.  Caring about everything leaves us so little energy that we end up caring about nothing.  If we care so much about everything that we don’t have to decide what matters most.

I don't have to deal with physical weight loss at this point in my life, but I could certainly stand to lose some weight that over-consuming information has contributed to my heavy mind.