Here is a list of things that have helped me through the past year:

1.  Puffs Plus tissues (seriously prevent nasal chaffing)

2. Gardening - tending to, caring for something, getting outside, being distracted but also having a space to think if you want it

3. Pets - also get you outside, distract you, comfort you, snuggle you when you’re more sad than you’ve every imagined

4. Melatonin - helps me sleep.  I take one little melatonin and half an hour later I can sleep.  After my mom’s passing, before I started taking this, I wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours and would usually wind up bawling as memories and thoughts of my mother and life with her flooded my brain.  This started again following the first anniversary of her death.

5. Counseling!!! I don’t have this anymore, as I’ve relocated to France with my husband and don’t yet have health care here.  But I was in counseling leading up to my mother’s death and for eight months afterward.  Just having a safe space to be sad, without causing anyone else to bear a burden, is an amazing help.  Not to mention profound psychological insight and advice about self-care . . . If you can’t afford a private provider there are many grief support groups and even free counseling often offered by hospitals and hospice 

6. Websites - www.theatreofthemind.com — it can be a little cheesy and new-agey but since I don’t have therapy anymore, and things have been rough since the anniversary of my mother’s death, this website has helpful podcasts that address grief and depression.  Truly they helped pull me out of one of the deepest depressions I’ve ever experienced.  

7.  Books.  Two books have been really helpful: Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman addresses the specific grief of a daughter who’s lost her mother.  It was really really helpful, particularly in the first 6 months of my grief.  The author has collected a good deal of stories and accounts of other women who have lost their mothers and so helps you to feel included in a community, eases your feeling of isolation in grief and assures you that what you’re going through isn’t completely unique (though of course, everyone’s grief is their own in some way).  It doesn’t however provide steps for recovery, so to help me with this - particularly after the first year - I turned to the book Grieving Mindfully by grief counselor Sameet M. Kumar.  This book relies on the practice of mindful meditation to calm anxiety and depression, helping you to live in the moment and cope in a healthy way.  I honestly haven’t yet implemented a meditation practice, but even just reading about it, the way that Kumar explains grief processes, has been very helpful.  Particularly as he acknowledges that a part of grief is understanding who you are now - mourning not only the loss of your loved one, but the version of you that had that loved one - that grief is a process of identity change, not just loss.  This was the first time I felt that that was really recognized by anyone, as I’m still struggling to know who I am now, post-mama.  After a year, I still don’t know.

8.  Exercise - I started jogging after my mom died and that felt like the greatest release/relief of anything.  I felt like I was out-running the manacles of sorrow, could feel them breaking with each lap.  Getting outside, getting moving - these are very important things to do whether you are actively grieving (so sad you feel like you’ve been punched in the stomach) or more passively (that acute sorrow is packed away somewhere beneath the surface).  It helps your body feel alive, helps you feel a part of the world again, not to mention all the physiological benefits.  Yoga, is also helpful- calming anxiety, helping you be within yourself, finding a space that is perhaps not as inhabited by the grief.

9. Nature - for me being in nature is the most calming, comforting space.

10. Cleaning - it’s important that you continue to take care of yourself and your space even in the most painful throws of grief.  Cleaning is also something you can do to keep busy, not to distract yourself from the grief, just to prevent you from being swallowed by it.  You’ve got to continue to take care of yourself, even when things are at their hardest.  Now honestly, I think I spent two weeks on the couch after my mother’s funeral (when all the visitors are gone and all the hubbub dies down) and I spent a good 4 days on the couch a few weeks ago around the anniversary of her death.  Each time I got myself going again by cleaning, taking care of things around the house, of myself.  Really, you’ll feel better, more in ownership of yourself again.  

if you have any other suggestions for coping - please let me know!

Tagged: marya on Wednesday, February 4, 2009 ·