grief spirituality

Grief Anonymous

/ Holly C Barker / 13 Comments

I am more than excited to launch this organization.  It has been several years in the making for sure and it will continue to evolve and transform over the days, weeks,and years to come.  I have so much to say about this organization that there just isn’t enough time here in this one post to describe it in its entirety.  So let me just start with a few words about the  beginnings of GA. In the days to follow I will continue to add it all to this blog with a book to follow shortly. GA’s roots began to form after I transferred my writings from Caringbridge from when my husband was first diagnosed into http://www.hollycbarker.com after my husband passed away from cancer as a means to cope and to share in hopes that maybe my journey might help someone to know they are not alone in their grief.  What came to pass was a growing membership of people from around the world and right here in the USA coming to the page to connect and read someone’s shared grief experience.  From this catalyst of losing my husband, the writing has also allowed me to continue to write about the connection we all have to humanity and to a Higher Power.  Through my husband’s diagnosis and into his passing and onward through my recovery that Source of Love and Light has never left my side.  During the summer of his original cancer diagnosis in 2006, I was shown a vision of a bright, loving, beautiful light.  It was shown to me during the lowest and saddest time of my life.  I was shown and was able to feel the love God has for me, and also the pure simple love we all have for one another.  It is from this experience that the circular gold light has been created from the vision  into what is now the GA symbol.  The small circles surrounding this Light are the Tenets of Recovery.  Ten actionable concepts to follow in order to recover from grief.  These Ten Tenets are the premise and bedrock for this organization.  This group is for all to attend, no matter what your religious beliefs are or not.   No matter your ethnic origin or race.  Male or female.  Young and old. Social situation.  Grief is a collective human experience that has been in the shadows for way too long.  Now is the time for cumulative action to be taken to link us all who are on this path.  We can then be there waiting for those who will join us.  Grief Anonymous will be the light where there is darkness and bring hope to those who are bereaved and in need of fellowship, understanding, and support.

The Ten Tenets of Grief Anonymous:

  1. Belief in a higher power or consciousness
  2. Find or create a sanctuary for healing
  3. Focus on the physical fundamentals of sleep, diet, and exercise
  4. Practice baby steps and leaps of faith
  5. Acceptance of your loss
  6. Facing your fears
  7. Learning to forgive and what forgiveness really means
  8. Finding a creative outlet for your grief
  9. Embracing your new authentic self
  10. Giving back

http://www.griefanonymous.com is under construction and will be ready soon!

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The Real Afterwards

/ Holly C Barker / 50 Comments

 

July of 2006 my husband was diagnosed with malignant melanoma skin cancer. Based on the oncologist’s discussions with us if he was going to live 6 more months, taking interferon cancer treatment would help him live another 18 months. The doctor was just giving a projection. My heart sank as she spoke her upbeat prediction with a hopeful smile.

As the weeks and months rolled on we went from test to surgery to test to surgery for three years. Every three months was another scan. The building up to the day of testing and the results following were either good or “we saw something and we are just going to watch it for another few months….” became our lives. He endured surgeries to remove moles that appeared to change, painful skin grafts and lymph node biopsies. He started the gruelling interferon treatments about two months after his diagnosis while I was still nursing his surgical sites. Jordon defied the odds. He was one of only five patients at Duke Cancer Center to make it through the twelve months of treatment. He was brave and wanted to finish the treatments for the sake of our son, Jackson. And he outlived the medical communities’ predictions.

During those days my life became dictated by life and death. I rode the waves of test results and doctor visits. That’s exactly what they became, waves of emotions. Unbelievable fear and sadness with intense amounts of love and compassion seeing the love of my life suffer like nothing I had ever experienced before. I took on some of his pain somehow. Somehow I would wake up with his symptoms. I would feel his nausea. There is an intuitive, empathic response we feel when we are close with our loved ones who are suffering.  It’s the prayer we make. “Give it to me, God…  Don’t let him suffer..” And God shares it with you to ease their suffering and you help relieve the one you love of their suffering.

From this empathic response ~ it began to happened.  My health and my mind began to bend and take on the enormous weight of what was before me. A year and a half later I buckled under that traumatic weight. I fell into severe depression, anxiety, and panic from the worry and the seeing and experiencing the trauma of the waves that continued to crash over me.  Just like the ocean. The waves never stopped. This experience turned into anticipatory grief, the trauma of what is to come. What could happen when you put a name to impeding death.

About two years into the waves of tests and scans and Jordon’s pain and suffering from the interferon- I fell apart. My doctor diagnosed me with a mood disorder instead of focusing on the disorder and chaos in my life. I don’t blame her. But now is the time to bring this to light. Anticipatory grief is a real process. It is a real, often misunderstood form of grief. It brought me to my knees and to the open door of a day hospital for psychiatric patients.

I felt out of place. I was stable but completely crushed and defeated by the fear in my heart and I had gotten to a point where I couldn’t stop crying and my emotional plate was full.  My sharing at group during those two weeks was about Jordon and the trauma of seeing him after surgery. Having to work a high level corporate job. Raising a 5 year old boy that couldn’t understand why daddy couldn’t play rough. Maintaining a home. Caring for a very sick husband. All the while keeping it together.

This is the basis of what drives me to help others understand grief in all its facets. Mine is different from yours or from hers or his. We need to re-define and re-adjust our approach to this human experience that we all will go through. The only way you escape grief at some point in your life is if you are the first to go. The time to share openly, honestly, and authentically is now.

Www.griefanonymous.com

Ask and Ye Shall Receive on Heaven’s Watch, Not Ours…

/ Holly C Barker / Leave a comment

Last week was my son’s last football game for the season. It was an emotional day for many, many reasons. One being my son had done so well during his first season of football ever. I was so proud of him for making the team and for playing a starting position his first season of the sport in his life. See, I pulled him from hockey after 7 years of him playing it to move him back home to the south. He was ready for the change because hockey represented a heavy void in his life because his father passed away from cancer last year. He couldn’t think of hockey without feeling a terrible pain of sadness for the loss of his father. So instinctively we both knew it was time for a change to something positive without the intense, sad, emotional ties to the past. Some people did not respect my decision and did not ask for my son’s feelings about this decision that we both made. It was painful for us to not feel that support that was needed; they did not choose to ask or to understand why we would change our direction.

Along with this closing game of the season came a clarity and realization of the final weaving together of this book of mine that I feel is so long over due. What I did not realize was that it was this week that was supposed to happen as it did with perfect timing. Here’s how the day played out on Heaven’s Watch:

The morning of the gameday was special. There was a special gameday breakfast and I was anticipating the day and feeling hopeful for many things that are starting to come to fruition in my life. I got a call from my grief coach who is also a writer and a widow. I made the commitment to finish the book, was very fired up about it, and I gave myself a lofty goal date of the next week to finish the book. When I got off the phone with her I went onto my blog. I was going to hit 50,000 views that day!!! Pretty significant milestone in my book, so I posted a prayer request on my Facebook page telling my friends what was happening and asking them to pray for help from above and for support from family and friends. Well, I am here to say I got it. And in a big, BIG way later that afternoon!!

I went to my son’s game and after I got settled into my chair I looked up and saw an amazing cloud formation. The clouds looked like they were forming a tunnel. I saw the Light coming through. But all I saw was the tunnel. I felt very strongly I was supposed to take a picture because I could not take my eyes off the tunnel. I quickly snapped the photo with my camera phone and turned it around to look at it. This was the image I saw (look at the Angel standing on the cloud at the bottom of the tunnel):
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I was Dumbfounded. Speechless. Shocked. And Amazed. My Angel was there in all his regal beauty. He was there the day I asked for him, requested help from him in a public domain- Facebook that morning. He was watching over my son’s last game of the season. He was showing me that Divine Timing is on Heaven’s Watch, not mine. And this day was the day for me to write the purpose of this book. To reach out to all of you to let you know we really are loved. We have an inclusive, all-encompassing, benevolent, loving God for us all. All for one, and one for all. He does answer our prayers. But we must also be open and believe when we do ask. And we must understand that answer will come to us. It might be what we want to hear and know and experience. It might not. Sometimes our prayers are answered in ways we don’t see in the apparent. But we must have faith to know we are always heard and cared about. We need to be receptive to our intuition that God gave us. Our intuition is the gateway, the doorway, and the window to our connection with him. Don’t second-guess yourself. What you see, feel, and hear, and understand is his communication with you.

So, Heaven also has a sense of humor and loves to lovingly respond back when their communications with us are accepted and shared. So… I saw you Angel. I know you are a Messenger from God. And thank you for choosing me that day to be your conduit. I will share YOU with the world today and share your message with as many people as I can. And when I told him that, he smiled back at me.
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Accepting Belief Systems that Are Different from Our Own

/ Holly C Barker / 1 Comment

I am putting my belief system out front for a reason.  Not to convert you or to make you think the way I do.  I am modeling my example for everyone to see how this aspect of GA should work for the greater good of all of us.  I do not want people to have to “check their faiths or non-faiths, or belief systems at the door” before entering a meeting.  After all, Tenet #1 is belief in a higher power or consciousness.  I want to be crystal clear on this subject and it is non-negotiable in order for GA to function as a support organization.  My beliefs are unique to me.  And I know what I believe could come under some scrutiny.  Any one of us could become subject to judgement. And that is not allowed with GA.  We want diversity and acceptance.  We want everyone to show their colors and not be afraid.  But we must not impose our belief systems on others.  Grief is a powerful pain and many use faith as a means to work through their pain, including myself.  Others will take a different path and that is okay.  I think this could easily become the biggest hurtle we have to jump with this organization and that is why I am facing it head on.  My fear.. Tenet #6 is Facing your fears. And so by posting this I am facing my fears of chapters of GA’s having issues with people not accepting each others belief systems.  So I am sharing my fear with you today in order to move past it and forward.  And also sharing my belief system too so that people who are worried that others won’t accept them can see that even the founder of GA is unique.

I have a Christian heritage.  And a minor in religion from college.  I also have Native American ancestry.  I have sough God my whole life.  But I don’t believe there is only one way that gets you up to see the Big Guy.  Below is a prayer I heard through meditation.  My heritage is Native Cherokee.  I incorporate my heritage into my faith so that make me unique.  I want to be respected for my beliefs.  I do not want to force my beliefs on others.  I want to share my grief through my understanding of faith.  Others will want to share their grief through other religions or no belief in religion.  All that Tenet #1 states is belief in the energy of LOVE and how we individually define that love.  Because after all:

The very essence of grief is loss; loss over something that was and is still loved.

One must have loved in order to feel loss. When we don’t feel loss, then there is no grief.  And we are here because of grief.  So we are all here for the same reason.  We have all lost what we love.  And the core of GA is loss of our loved ones.  Tenet #1’s higher power is LOVE in all its forms.

Please, lets let in  love in all its forms.  And celebrate!  Again~ let us become a model for the world at large that is facing dark times.

My Native American Prayer for GA:

The death of a loved one brings on the storm. It rises over the mountains and covers the lake with its shadow. We are very affected by this storm. The wind brings in resentment. The cold rain brings in judgment; trickling uncomfortably down our backs. The mud beneath our feet that soaks in brings in the guilt and anger. This unforgiving riverbank, in the middle of this storm in life is hard to handle, I know . The rain beats at your face, cutting with sharp drops. The wind blows a chill through your body. The clouds make life hard to see to the other side where the sunlight is breaking through.

The Great Spirit wants you to know that you are never alone. He is with you always holding your hand and loving you through the storm. Storms are a necessity in life. They bring in the water and purify the air. They wash away the old and bring forth the new. Know this process is here for you to learn and to grow and to love. You are an old soul to choose a life of loss and grief. You are ascending in this life cycle and learning life’s lessons from farther up the continuum. Take the pain and sorrow you feel and use it to develop compassion and understanding for others. Take the love in your heart and fill it with more souls so you don’t feel the void’s bite. Take the sting from your memory and let it be sent to Mother Earth for absorption, transmutation, and diffusion. Like I am in the sky, allow Mother Earth to ground you as you move forward in this new life of yours. Ground yourself with her energy and bring your life back through the life force in nature. Take walks. Breathe deeply. Think deeply. Look up into the Heavens and see us in the clouds, rainbows, and stars. We can speak to you more fully when you engage us there. Listen with an open heart and with faith that we will always be with you. Guiding you. Loving you. Amen.

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Online Dating from the Perspective of a Pier

/ Holly C Barker / 2 Comments

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I thought after some time on a dating site that I would put out there into the universe exactly how I feel about this experience thus far~ not just about dating but also about how difficult it is to start back and also the judgment that comes your way from those around you when you do. Life is very different in this regard compared to dating in your 20’s and being a widow makes it even more complicated. The rules change, everything about it is different. I’m adding my real life experience today to the blog because I want to share something important. Each person is different in their need for companionship, intimacy, and love and how important it is to them is only up to them, not you. The added complexity to this is the judgment from neighbors, friends, and family if they are not ready to see you with another person or if they are ready to see you move on and you are not. This is completely unfair, but so are many other things in life. Grief is complex and some people wait years to date and some people never date again. Others can’t stand the loneliness and void of companionship in their lives and they seek that out very soon. All of these answers are the right ones and none of them escape judgment. If it’s too soon~ the gossipy phone calls start amongst your connections, if it’s too long~ the brazen comments your way are “ you just need to move on and find a man.” None of this helps. And among those of you in this situation we all know we can’t win and please everyone. So just do what’s right for yourself and what works for you and your family. What needs to be given to us is acceptance and space to move at a pace that works individually for us. We will make mistakes. We will also do things right. Just allow us to figure it out for ourselves and stand with us. I can imagine this is difficult for you to do, especially if you are connected to our loved one that has passed away. What you would do in our circumstances should never enter your mind when considering someone else’s emotional, physical, and mental needs. Just love us. Support us. And be there. I promise you, you would want the same. It is the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Now, I write in analogy many times to express my experiences and beliefs. Here is my analogy of online dating. I have a sneaky suspicion that with many of you single people this will resonate. Many clichés exist and are overused, but there is truth behind many of them. The one that points directly to this experience is “There are many fish in the sea!” And from there I will begin.

Dating online had been a “less than centered” normal human interactive, aquatic experience. We all come to the pier freshly optimistic as to what swims below the surface. What will our catch for the day bring to our table tonight? What are we in the mood for? We stand hopeful casting our lines out with tasty bait. The bait symbolizes who we think we are as a person and we use that bait to bring in what we think we want and what will satisfy our hunger. The internal hunger we feel and the need for fresh air and fun drives us out to the pier. Most of us are all deep down good, honest souls (we believe) and we are deserving of that big, beautiful fish that is waiting in the seaweed and rocks of life below the surface of the water. Some folks out there are looking for the sunfish with all its sparkle and sleek outer fins. It jumps and preens and is beautiful. Some look for the sea bass with their richness in flavor. Others don’t really care and are just looking for a little action on the end of their hooks. All types are on the pier and all types are in the water so we must be cognizant of this fact of life.

Here’s the truth of it all. As the day wanes and sun begins to disappear into the horizon~ we grow weary of the casting and reeling in of the “not so perfect” fish we hadn’t envisioned at the start of the day. Our expectations of what we want and what is out there are clashing and we began to grow callus to the energy spent in the act of fishing and to the painful unhooking of those fish that don’t meet our expectations. We begin to see this experience as a vast sea and an endless draining source of possibility. The humanity of the act is lost~ we should all learn that no fish is perfect and neither is the person fishing. Some of us walk away dissatisfied, some of us see the beauty of the endeavor. The fish that are caught and thrown back swim to hide near quiet rocks to nurse their hooked wounds. A few today caught their prized dinner plates, others walk away with empty pails contemplating whether they want to invest in more bait. This is how it goes in life and with online dating.

My hopes to share this is to remind us all that we are all humans with feelings and histories and are all worthy of someone. It would be nice if collectively we don’t lose that sense of understanding of the human element to our endeavors on this pier and to be more respectful of one another in this sea of humanity.

Grief Survival 101- Walking the Tightrope of Internal and External Expectations

/ Holly C Barker / Leave a comment

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You have found your footing on this rope. It is what you have been given to stand on. The rope is harsh against your feet and it doesn’t feel good. But the rope is sturdy and it fits your feet. God planned it this way~ he wouldn’t give you a rope that was impossible to walk on. You are looking out ahead of you to see the big picture of your life. On each side of the rope lies a different view. Your job is to navigate this rope, to reach the other side. You’ve been given a balancing stick to help you balance your steps as you are moving forward. The stick is your guide, your conscience, you faith. When you lean too far right, the stick dips to the left helping you to balance as you move above the abyss below you. You are ready and you take your first step in this new life of yours.

The vast spaces to your left and your right are the expectations you put on yourself and of the expectations that others have of you. You are being watched. You are conscious of your new life and the other side’s expectations of you and how they see this situation you are in high up on this tightrope. Both, through this process of grief and loss, will pull at you and bring you off balance. Expectations, outside of simple, fundamental truths, are external and internal forces of energy that rely on a future value that doesn’t exist. How can you or anyone have an expectation of how to feel, how to act, how to grieve. When we focus on these influential spaces we pull our eyes, mind, and feet away to give energy to a space of expectation. This space will disrupt you and pull you left or right and away from your center, your true self. Too much focus on either side and you will fall. The tightrope is your gift from God. Your stick is the conscience mind he gave you to balance. Your feet keep you in the physical. Your eyes are the communicators and connectors to your body to help you focus on the big picture. Look up and out and you will find your truth. Look down and you will lose it.

As you are walking this tightrope, you will come across negative energies of expectation both from others and from yourself. Outward remarks from others will say things to you to make you second-guess your steps. Your ear will hear them and your body will intrinsically bend in that direction pulling you out of balance. You might second-guess your decisions, as you don’t have that living, breathing soul next to you anymore helping you navigate. Two trusting souls leaning on each other find a more steady balance and you are now without that other half. You must learn to steady yourself as you are on your own now and your decisions are yours. Be careful as you can pull yourself over from insecurity and doubt and loose your footing on the rope.

This is life. This is the test, this tightrope. The key to walking the tightrope is inner balance, courage, forward focus, and movement towards what you feel is good and right for you without the interference from outside energy. As you practice this centered focus you will gain strength and balance. You will become more assured of your space, your footsteps, and your mind. Your faith will grow and you will move with grace and sure-footedness on this tightrope. You will block out the negativity and the balance-altering pull of opinion and diversion. You will be able to see it for what it is. You will see the concern, the doubt, the good and bad intentions from others, and personal views that do not serve you. Above you is the Light shining down on you to guide the way. Follow this Light as it beams into your heart exposing the truth that you are good and deserving and whole. It will pull you forwards helping to balance you and settle you. It will soothe your feet so you don’t feel the harshness of the rope. We are not given the view of the end of the rope for the light shines too brightly and it is not ours to know. But when we do reach the end, we ourselves will become the light we have followed and join in the connection and the only pull we will feel is LOVE.

Happy Easter to All

/ Holly C Barker / 1 Comment

Good Morning to You,

Holidays are tough for those grieving the loss of a loved one.  My prayer goes out to you on this beautiful holy morning that whatever your faith and understanding of the Divine is that you feel that peace and love that comes from above.  The feeling of separation weighs heavy especially on holidays and we have to make a physical, mental, and emotional effort to lift our hearts up into the plane of divine connection.

I remember Easter mornings with fond memories and I am pushing through the pain of absence today and allowing in some gratitude for those times shared.

Hugs, Love, and Light to you.  Enjoy the beauty and art of pure gifted voice.

Holly

The Healing Block

/ Holly C Barker / 1 Comment

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Having good memories of past fun and happiness and love is healing. Having fun is important not just for the present, but also for the past and the future. When we focus on the fun of the day we create a healing tool that can be drawn upon during future days when life becomes difficult.

In Heaven this positive experience is stored as a healing block~ an event that is used in time to heal physical or emotional pain. When we stop having fun and the good events in our lives are not created, we run low on the stores of healing blocks that are used to build us up again. Just like saving money in the bank for a rainy day, making the effort to have some fun creates positive memories as an investment into your future that you can draw upon when times get tough. The more you create, the more positive energy you store, the more is there in the “bank” in your past for you to heal yourself in the future. We need positive memories to heal. And it requires the past, the future, and present effort. It takes effort on our parts to build these memories and they serve us in ways that will come back to us magnified one hundred fold in the future. It doesn’t mean you have to pay for an expensive vacation as it can mean a beautiful walk in a park with a loved one or a picnic or a special dinner out.

Yes, grief does play out a little differently but this same process applies. Sometimes through our grief journey, good memories are painful. It is counter-intuitive on many levels as the good memories equate to loss now, and the void now that those memories are not still being created with the person that is no longer in our life. This is where we have to take the painful but needed steps towards creating new memories and new and different events in our lives and start fresh. After Jordon died it was the things I enjoyed the most that I wanted to do the least. I didn’t quite understand the level of aversion to those things quite like I do now. Now I understand the process a little better. We don’t need to stop doing fun things in our lives, as those things will lead us to healing. I have decided to go back in time to the memory of my childhood and remember things I loved to do when I was young. For me, I used to love to create art.  I decided to start doing things that were really related to things I loved to do that did not have attachments to my relationship with Jordon. I am building an art studio in my basement for me to create art from my memories and feelings and visions I have had over the past year. I am going to create artistic form and mass using color and paint and objects and canvass from my visions. I am using this childhood love of mine as a means to heal. The pain and loss and good memories that were created with Jordon need to be out of my being, out of my mind, and onto canvass where I can look at it, see it, and understand it, and be at peace with it. Writing this journal is another way I am choosing to express and heal myself. The ideas are endless. Find your outlet and just go for it.

I am telling you this as a means to help you become unstuck. If you cannot drag yourself out of the pain and anguish you feel from the physical void of your lost loved one, try and take small steps towards doing something in your life that creates a new memory, even if is for a minute each day. If you are not creating something new, you will only live in your old life and that is the doorway to being locked in a room that does not serve you. Maybe this journal can be a key for you to unlock old passions, create new energy and focus, and allow in the flow of new pathways to follow.