Tag: coping

We have all been abandoned in our lives. Whether it was through our parents’ divorce, death of a parent, or a previous spouse leaving us, as human beings we are all familiar with the feeling. Sometimes we don’t know where to go or what to do. We feel the earth has been pulled out from under us and we are dangling in space without an anchor.

The sadness and fear can be so overwhelming that we are at risk of falling into a depression. Some say that it is our perceptions of a situation that create the feeling of abandonment. If a parent dies in a car wreck they did not crash intentionally, it was an accident, but the emotions immediately interprets the incident as abandonment.

How well does your child cope with adversity, cope in difficult situations and learn from disappointments? In other words, how resilient is she? We often think our job is to protect our children from tough situations, but in fact, our protection is only protecting us. We don’t want to deal with their anger, sadness, and fear our kids may feel. In many cases, we were not allowed these feelings as children so we don’t know how to manage our children’s feelings. It’s easier if they don’t have them.

Ungrieved losses take a toll on our hearts and deaden us to life. We think we can avoid the pain of loss if we keep busy or close our hearts. However, the losses accumulate, and we shut down from life, from one another, from ourselves.

Suppressing our grief affects our relationships and compromises our aliveness; it can show up in symptoms such as chronic physical ailments, overworking, addiction, social isolation, compulsive behavior, and depression. We cannot effectively respond to life’s challenges. This is a big price to pay for not tending to our unresolved grief.

When we get hit by loss and heartache, life turns upside down. The routine "normal" we’re used to disappears. Nothing is the quite the same.

We lay down at night and our minds spin. Sleep flees from us. When slumber finally comes, we wake frequently.

In times of grief and heartache, we might have dreams about those we’ve loved and lost. We naturally wonder what these nighttime, internal dramas mean.

I have lived most of my life with a chronic autoimmune disease. I was a teenager when diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. My normal childhood was shattered with a sudden inability to walk or raise my arms to brush my hair and doctors used haunting words like "chronic" and "deterioration" that scared me. At the young age of 14, I knew my life would never be the same.

It came to me after a short time of living with this crippling disease that I have a relationship with this illness, just like I have relationships with everything else in my life. However, this relationship was perhaps my most intimate relationship because we share the same body. I figured out that I better become friends to the best of my ability with my disease and limitations because we probably have a long life together.

Renewal has never been portrayed to me quite as vividly as during my first flying experience aboard a 747 jet. The delayed flight, due to rain, plunged my spirits. Finally, the engines roared to life and I felt myself raised up, until we lifted from earth. Outside the windows, the clouds swallowing me were gray and angry, painting my emotions desolate.

Then, a remarkable thing happened. Suddenly, we burst free of the dark clouds, into glorious sunshine and a sky so blue and clear I could see to infinity. Joy! I’ve never before or since experienced such a mystical example of rising above darkness.