Grief to Gratitude

Rebirthing Relationships by Sherrie Ann Cassel – Centering Grief Resources

By Sherrie Cassel

I’m not retirement age, but I’ve been away from work and people for eleven years. The last nearly three years of pandemic cautionary procedures, I’ve not been in large or small crowds. A new job and seminary can be a huge adjustment period. I’m used to pretty much my own schedule, which is to say, it’s not rigid or uniform. I’m used to a midday nap. I’m used to leisure time whenever I feel like taking it. Being hired at 60 is both amazing and I am so grateful; however, it is also an adjustment. I found myself falling asleep during my regular nap time at work. I left work and told my grandson and husband I was going to take a nap before dinner, and I slept for five hours. I don’t know if I’m getting sick or just exhausted from a new schedule. I’ve tested for COVID twice and I am vaccinated, twice and with the first booster, so I’m hoping I’m not an anomaly by being a breakthrough case.

I can’t really talk about my job other than to say, I love it, and the people are wonderfully loving and supportive with each other. New staff is treated with compassion and kind professionalism. I feel so blessed. I’m hoping I’m better by next week. I don’t want to miss a single day of training.

As you know, I just turned 60 in June. I had many epiphanies, boom, boom, one right after the other. The main thing is, I’ll never be young again this side of Heaven. I will one day be forced to really retire even though I will not want to. As long as I keep moving forward, I won’t settle into grief like I did in those first three and a half years. As long as I continue to create purpose in my life, I will keep on going, and the amazing thing is, as a chaplain, I can work until I drop. Listening to people in their darkest hours is not how I saw my life, especially as my life is winding down. But the God of my understanding has called me out of my grief and out of my idleness to help others.

Am I scared? Nervous? You betcha. I wouldn’t be effective if I didn’t healthfully model the ability to feel an emotion and especially when it’s an overwhelming emotion, that you can ride it out and be okay after reaching critical mass. Trust me, it took me years to learn that, and I will learn it and relearn it for the rest of my life. People are far more fragile than we wish we were. I thought I was strong and could handle anything. When I lost my son, I learned that I was not tough as nails. I found out I was really quite fragile. The loss of my son broke me. Six years and nearly seven months have passed since my son left this world and broke my heart. So, I know what it’s like to be broken, and… I know what it’s like to be healed.

I know, like Mother Teresa intimated, I was broken wide open, and the whole world fell in. I hold no illusions that everyone can be helped this side of Heaven, but anyone can be loved, even those some may think of as irredeemable. I’ve been reading a book about Job from the Hebrew Bible, from an entirely novel perspective. As I read, I found tremendous wisdom about suffering in our world. Some people get mad at the God who, in my theology, gets let off the hook. Humankind has miles, perhaps one-hundred generations to go before we love each other and don’t hurt each other because might will no longer be right. Well, maybe not this side of Heaven, and certainly not in my lifetime.

Again, things break us from time to time – but we also heal, in time – which makes the experience navigable. As you all know, we are at the mercy of random chance when tragedy strikes. No one deserves it, but it happens to the person of great wealth (Richard Cory) and it happens to those of the most humble means. Everything does not happen for a “reason” – things happen, and we are left to repurpose a life that has been seismically shifted.

When your worldview is blasted to smithereens, or your safety and security in this world have been violated, the world can seem unkind, and sometimes it is. Some people suffer their entire lives, and some for a shorter amount of time, but not unscathed. Just as people are fragile, however, sometimes we soar above the chaos and painful experiences. We create, or as I see it, we co-create a life of worth, value, and purpose.

So, no, I’m not ready to retire yet. I may never be. My heart still aches for the loss of my beautiful and tortured son, but the loss no longer immobilizes me into chronic mourning, the kind that will keep me down if I don’t keep going. A lot of time for a lot of rumination is not good for me. I have thirty-two years of memories with my son. The sound of seagulls makes me weep. The song from the Music Man, “Goodnight my Someone” slays me because I sang it to my son when he was an infant. Any song by Bread, even though he wasn’t born yet when Bread was a thing, and he would have hated their music. I smile sometimes when I think of him and other times I cry. It’s a crapshoot. If anything, I’m much more fragile than I was before, softer, less hardass. My heart hurts every time I see a person struggling, and I want to help, and if I can, I will.

Retirement? Not at 60. As long as I’m this side of Heaven, I will always try to accept the purpose for my life thus far, and I will keep moving forward, learning, living, and loving.

By Sherrie Cassel

I encourage everyone to find a medium that works for him or her. I’m not feeling all that grand, but not being able to shake this fever, or sleep, I find comfort in my coping mechanism as I pour words out onto a page. If you ever want to share the fruit of your creativity, please, message me and I would love to. We each express grief in various ways. I welcome yours.

As a veteran griever, I’ve read countless books on grief and even though I’m the griever, I’ve read books about how to help other grievers. David Kessler’s book on The Sixth Stage, When Bad Things Happen to Good People by the Rabbi Harold Kushner, and now Daryl Potter’s book which shows a different side of grief and about the people, well-intentioned, who don’t know how to comfort us, except by using what he calls the Standard Version, a theological ideology that assumes suffering is brought about by our behavior, what some people call “sin”. I don’t aim to proselytize on my page, but this book is just so accessible, even in its academic tone. If you’re not familiar with the story of Job, it is about supreme loss and confusion about why people suffer. Potter’s book has helped me to understand how people have arrived at the misconception that we bring suffering on ourselves. Not so. If you’re fortunate enough to have friends who love you, even in their ignorance of your grief, even if they espouse the Standard Version of why people suffer, I can rest assured that I did nothing to bring the loss of my son to my life. We can have our hearts shattered in any number of ways. Everybody grieves at some point. Find comfort where you can. Find comfort through the God of your understanding. Find comfort with friends who are willing to learn a new theology, or a new philosophy about why suffering occurs in our world. Potter’s book, because Potter knows a thing or two about grief and supreme life challenges, has touched me and empowered me to not be a victim. As they say, “Shit happens” — and we’re left with the fallout, but not without the gift of healing from wherever you gain personal strength. Even if you’re not a “Christian” — the book addresses the kind of grief that no one wants, but the kind of grief that makes us question the chaos in our world and yet, provides a level of comfort that I’ve not found elsewhere. Thank you, Daryl, for your gift of writing, the wisdom that has come from your self-examination, and for the clarity with which you help others, myself included, to remain hopeful and liberated. –SAC–

By Sherrie Cassel

Good morning, readers, fellow grievers, friends and family. This morning I wanted to share a little about my experience in self-examination through the grief process. I’ve had six years and seven months to navigate the process, even though with my son having been so dreadfully ill from years of addiction, I began the grief process long before he died. There were other losses I had not grieved until I became grief; I exuded it. When I focused on anything it was grief-related, but strangely, the grief was expansive, like a deep, dark, weathered wooden treasure chest. There was something at the bottom, but there were so many other jewels to examine before I reached the bottom, where I had no idea at the time, peace, joy, and transcendence were waiting for me.

Not everyone agrees that family of origin issues arise throughout the lifespan, some good behaviors are modeled and some dysfunctional and maladaptive; trust me, I know about the latter, and it’s taken me six decades to see the need for the former. Life is one giant lesson and in each phase of our lives, we adapt, we transform, and if we’re very fortunate, we transcend the things that have dragged us down and stunted our personal and spiritual development.

Tragedy strikes and we’re left with a time of grief and adjustment for however long it takes to reach a level of healing that affords us joy and peace. Everyone is different. I’ve learned so much from the brave souls at various grief sites, including two I manage. I’ve read the most humbling wisdom and watched these parents heal, grow, and thrive. I’m inspired by them daily.

I can’t speak to anyone else’s experiences. I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a social worker. If I have any expertise in anything, it is that I’m extremely well-read (facts and connections) and I have successfully grieved for six years and seven months. I’m an interfaith chaplain-in-training. In the beginning of my grief process, I was an emotional wreck. I mean, really, a wreck. I agonized and ruminated on my loss, on my son’s last thoughts, on why, why, why did God take my son? I had thought I had worked through my victim-thinking. I have been in and out of therapy for the past 40 years to work through my family of origin issues, and an external issue that has affected me for 53 years. I thought I had worked through all the whys in my life. There is an answer to every question, right?

For me, and only in retrospect, can I now see how the victim mentality was not beneficial to growing through the pain of my life-altering loss. I suppose we haven’t evolved far enough away from creating victims in our society to see the need to release the collective victim mentality. I am speaking only to my own experience. For my childhood, I was a victim of domestic violence (DV); as an adult who has spent the time in therapy and in intense self-examination, I am no longer a victim. I’m a thriver.

I thought I had worked through all the victim stuff before I lost my son, but it turns out, when our lives are destabilized, old coping mechanisms that are embedded deep in our brains from as early as in utero environmental conditions, and that have helped us respond to stressful moments, and helped us to survive arise. My brain, during the interminable why stage of my grief process, in my opinion, was intensified by the victim-thinking strategy I learned as a child.

Rationally speaking, six years and seven months, I know why my son died. I can even tell you why he started using. They are all reasonable explanations, even though they are often not comforting, except in the sense that there are answers, and sometimes a reasonable answer is enough to help you breathe through your loss. In the phase of the existential whys, there were no answers, and like the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, no matter what I asked, the answer just left me with more whys, and with no resolution, “vanity, vanity, [what’s the use?]”.

My son died because he became addicted to drugs. He used drugs because he was in a great deal of emotional and spiritual pain. He was in a great deal of emotional and spiritual pain because he’d had a very rough beginning, family of origin issues, historical trauma, a biological father who abandoned him at 11 months old and who never looked back, and a tempestuous last relationship that destroyed him the rest of the way. Old wounds that he never dealt with except through maladaptive self-soothing. Those things killed him, and it helps, and it hurts to know. I have answers. I may not like them all the time, but I have them.

I didn’t lose my son because God needed to teach me something, or because God needed a new angel, or because of any one single thing. My son died because of a combination of things, all with sad and reasonable explanations and consequences. I used to get really frustrated when well-meaning people, including the chaplain who came to Rikki’s room the night he died, tried to comfort me, because there is truly nothing that can be said. If someone had said to me the day after he died that life would be hell for a while and then I’d start to get better, I wonder if I would have heard her or him. I wonder.

I know the more I read on healing through grief, the more I engage in healthy (not dark rumination) self-examination, the more I participate in things that feed my soul, the more wonderful and emotionally sound people I surround myself with, the more I heal, change, and transcend, self-actualize, become a part of the Whole. If I remain a victim in my life, my grief will be at the mercy of my self-imposed victim-mentality. The whys under this type of framing are unmerciful and unrelenting, and they are also personally and spiritually growth-inhibiting.

I know this. I stagnated for three and a half years. I gained weight. I sat staring into space. I wailed daily, paced the floor, shaking my fist at God, or burdening people who loved me with needing them to come up with answers that might temporarily comfort me. Neither of those things helped. Only time and healing work would help.

I don’t know if there has been research done on those who are either unaware of their victim-thinking, or unwilling to relinquish it and how they fare with the grieving process in comparison with those who are more self-aware. Interesting. I know that once I turned the corner from victim to victor, the victor-mentality would carry me through to clarity about my son’s death, and this would bring me to a place of comfort and help me to find peace about my son’s death.

See, it’s hard to heal when your greatest grief is buried underneath all the ways we pretty up our experience, so others won’t have to deal with our grief, and maybe even so we don’t have to. Grief is ugly. Grief is painful. Grief sometimes feels hopeless, as if you’ll never feel good again. Remember all you’re worth and give your victor-self permission to come out and take you through the rest of your life.

There are stages of grief, thanks to Kübler-Ross. The model has worked well, but as we awaken to our own grief experiences and see grief is not linear, but a crazy entanglement and fight to the death for your life, true healing is ours. I know when I’m hungry, angry, lonely or tired (HALT), my first line of defense is the infernal, Why me? The strategy worked for me once upon a time; it doesn’t anymore.

Since I’m learning about myself through self-examination, from birth to present day, the grief process is more of a journey toward self and spiritual development. I sometimes relapse into the self-tormenting whys, but at least I can see myself heading down a road where grief is not manageable, and I can turn around and try to find a comfortable place to rest until the light doesn’t hurt my eyes anymore. There are days when the light dims and I need to be there from time to time, but we belong in the light, even in grief.

By Sherrie Cassel

How many times did you bring me seaweed from the ocean?

I recall a mountain of it when you brought pieces of it to me

like a bouquet of flowers stolen from the neighbor’s yard.

Sshh, it’s a secret.

Searching for sand crabs, urging you to not go any deeper

because I could not swim to save you if you were drowning.

I couldn’t. I tried to save you from drowning in your pain

and the drugs that assuaged it for a brief high, but never long enough.

You were a phenomenal swimmer.

but you couldn’t save yourself either.

You got caught up in the rip tide and it pulled you under

over and over again, until you were lost, without

a template for how to navigate the deadly current.

I watched you from the shore. You were so far away and I

just couldn’t get to you. I did not know how to navigate

loving a son so much it hurt, loving a son so much and

being powerless to swim out to save you.

I begged you not to go too deep. A Jewish psychiatrist

told me in her faith tradition, we choose our own trajectory,

and you chose yours; that hurt to hear, even though

you thought you were Poseidon.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

There’s a story in the New Testament of the Christian Bible which speaks about a person who owed the King a substantial amount of money. When he went before the King, the King had mercy on him and forgave him his debt. When this same debtor had the opportunity to forgive a person who owed him money, he refused. The King became very angry and threw him in the debtor’s prison. I’ve always loved the story. An inability or unwillingness to forgive is a harsh reality in many of our lives. The more wounded we are, the more difficult it is to forgive. I have had unforgiveable assaults in my life, and while I carry the scars and intermittent rage at the loss of a sense of security, I no longer rage at the world or people I love. I find healthy ways to self-soothe and decompress.

I don’t know if forgiveness is what I’ve achieved with people who have hurt me or who have hurt my son, including me, or if I’ve totally achieved self-forgiveness now that I have come to terms with all the ways I’ve fucked up in my life. Like the King in the story above, who am I to judge? I don’t mean this in a way that keeps me a victim; but I am so less than perfect that grace is what I’ve found for myself and for those who have hurt me and my son. Grace through the most hardcore self-examination, a phase in which I took a really long hard look at myself, working alongside therapists who helped me to untangle the mess I was.

Forgiveness, I heard in an adult enrichment class, is a process. The first time I heard this, I thought, “Wow. Yes!” But in the eight or nine years since then, my perspective has morphed from one of process to one of practice, from the inside out. One has to heal her own individual wounds before she can forgive those of others. In my opinion, understanding transforms into forgiveness and with that a journey toward radical compassion, and perhaps, forgiveness is the sum of self-examination.

I understand more than I did as recently as yesterday. We’re constantly learning about ourselves, the world, and our place in it. We also learn about why and how we choose friends and/or life partners. Relationship issues arise under the best of circumstances, spats, misunderstandings, hurt feelings. However, when you’re fraught with unfinished business, the kind that may have caused you trauma and stunted development, there is hypervigilance and hypersensitivity, to pretty much everything. Once we awaken to the pain of our traumatic or hurtful past, we can speak it out of our consciousness, at least enough to have a wonderful life, one in which we are not constantly overreacting or questioning what we see and/or know to be true, because we believe in the goodness in ourselves and in safe others. For those who are not safe, we can release them into their dysfunction; it’s not our responsibility to fix them. Fixing ourselves must be the priority. If our behavior is harmful to ourselves or others, something is amiss in the potential paradise that is ours.

I’m not suggesting that forgiveness, however you define it, as process or practice, is a requirement for a good life. Some people never forgive their perpetrators or those who have hurt them in other ways and live perfectly fine lives. For me, however, life is much richer now that I have an understanding of others’ wounds from which every reaction prompts an overreaction. Trust me; I know. I lived there for a very long time.

Radical understanding has led to radical compassion. Some of those who have hurt me and/or my son have been written off for my own protection. Some I love enough to help them find their healthy self and work at a more understanding and kind communicative relationship. My light must be used now for the betterment of my relationships with my fellow persons and society.

I’ve worked hard to be a happy person, not toxically positive, but truly happy, knowing, because I KNOW about loss and supreme grief, that random chance could hit me with another tragedy, or life can sometimes offer only challenges, or any number of things that might take the wind out of my sails. Life isn’t always smooth sailing; I know this now, and while no one likes to have to deal with tragedy, frustrations, or fresh wounds, they each occur periodically throughout our lives. Bumps in the road, mountains to climb, tragedies are just part of life. Once reality is truly on our radar, we can deal with those things without being shattered when they arise.

The truth of the matter is that those who have hurt me and my precious son, including myself, wish that we could have done better and had we known better, we would have. Had we better experiences, the kind that nurture and don’t hurt, we’d still have occasional dips to normalize, but our responses would be less reactive and more healthily deliberate. We’d still also have mountainous challenges to sort through, but we’d shed our victim mentality and take charge of our lives, our healing, and healing our relationships, even those relationships in which the person has passed. The Ninth Step of Alcoholics Anonymous is one that encourages making amends. I’m sure it’s mentioned in other sacred texts as well. In my opinion, I don’t believe one can begin to truly make amends until he or she is healed enough to see the need. I could be wrong.

I had to wake up. Life was passing me by. I was wounded. I’m scarred, and those scars are something I am always mindful of, but am I reacting to an old wound, or can I respond from a mind that lives rationally in the present moment? That’s an important question to answer for oneself.

I love the sunrise in the tranquil quiet before my husband and grandson awaken. I have my coffee. I spend time in contemplation, and I ask for the grace of the God of my understanding to get through a day in which I am consciously in the present moment, working to remain so in every event that occurs in my life.

Wholeness is hard-earned. Finding wholeness is a process. One step forward, sometimes two or three steps back. But if we keep moving forward, even when we fall back into old coping mechanisms, life can be glorious, despite the wounds. Trust me on this.

By Sherrie Cassel

In the blockbuster movie, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (T2), there is a scene in which the nuclear bomb is unleashed and the flames rush through time-space at a dizzyingly destructive pace. In another scene there is Sarah on a playground holding on to a chain link fence and only a disintegrating skeleton reveals the human form. I felt the flames of confusion unto the deepest angst burn through my country yesterday. I don’t want to play my feminist card, mostly because I don’t feel empowered after yesterday’s SCOTUS decision. I don’t want to discuss it, really. I have stated my position, and it is deeply personal and private, which I believe some things should be. I voice my opinion when I feel as if I’m being listened to. I am silent in “polite” company and/or those with rigid thinking. There is a cause for everyone to pour herself into. SCOTUS’ decision doesn’t affect me, really. Producing biological progeny is no longer a possibility for me. I am not gay, lesbian, or transgender – considering Clarence Thomas’ comments yesterday.

We each have a responsibility to be a benefit to our world through the media of our talents. While I’m confounded, confused, and conflicted by yesterday’s decision, it is not the cause about which I am most passionate. I pray for relief from the rabid polarization this decision will only intensify. In my way, to my God, I pray for peace and progress, but mostly, I appeal to those with influence to remember how complexly simple our species is. That’s it. Speak slowly to us, maybe this time we’ll get it. One person at a time.

I want to encourage each of you, especially those of you who struggle with self-esteem issues and those of you who are still healing from grief for whatever reason to find something that speaks to your soul, something you can share with the world that will make the world a better place, through visual, literary, or the performing arts, etc. I know sometimes life’s challenges can seem agonizingly long, and I will always call bullshit on the statement, “all things happen for a reason”. I don’t believe that for a second; however, when terrible tragedies occur, the grief process is a given, and through navigating the stages of grief and the many revolutions it takes, there will be lessons we can use to be a benefit to others.

Grief has softened the edges of my former defensive self. Tragedy has opened my eyes to the brevity of life. My son was only 32. I’m 60 now. Time has flown by as quickly as the flames in T2. I’ve been in school in some way, shape, or form since I was 24. Every year was a challenge, every semester uncertain. I was a single mother, receiving no child support from the biological father. I never knew if I would have to quit school because … life, including the cancer of poverty, and actual cancer. I knew I had purpose, but I hadn’t felt safe enough to allow myself the vulnerability to try and to fail in several permutations and in a handful of media, until finally, through all my life experiences, like beach glass, my purpose began to shine through all the years of abrasion.

Everyone has a gift. Everyone has purpose. Find your passion and pour yourself into it. I live in the desert with my husband and cat. The desert is a climate of extremes for this San Diego lady. My first winter at 14 degrees F. was a rude awakening. I wore flip flops in my first snow and almost broke my neck. I had to start over, away from anything I shared with my son, until the love and loss weren’t so overwhelming. Does that make sense? When love is big – so too is the pain when the relationship has a permanent ending.

When social challenges emerge, the poets, the minstrels, the visual artists come out of the woodwork and speak to our time in history. I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, and the protests through art were nothing short of amazing. Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Richie Havens were just a handful of great musicians who would not be silenced, not even by the “establishment”. They used their talents to be the mouthpiece for millions of Americans. If you’re a lyricist, create songs. If you’re a writer, write. If you’re a singer, sing, ad infinitum. There really is something for everyone. If we were taught from the beginning of life that we have purpose, I think we’d work hard to find that purpose in the gifts we’ve been given earlier in life instead of discovering it later in life when time is fleeting, and we have only a few years left in which to use our talents. Nike had an ad campaign whose tagline was, “Just do it.” There’s never a better time than the present. Better late than never.

We’ve all known people who despite their talents, gifts, incredible minds never get their dreams off the ground, and so just as assuredly as we all will, so too have their dreams died. Being filled with regret is a tragedy. In spite of everything, life truly is wonderful, a gift, a transformational event for which I am co-creator– from my theological perspective. In the six and a half years since I lost my son, my beautiful son, I’ve read about grief and grief recovery until I just can’t anymore. I’m grateful for the resources I found when I was in so much pain research was the only thing that lessened the intensity of that pain as I adjusted to the greatest loss of my life. In the many resources I researched, it was a majority opinion that losing a child was the worst pain ever. I even had my forensic psych professor tell me this when we talked about my loss. I admit, it has been intense. There were days I had no idea how I would make it through another day in deep grief. I know what it’s like to lose a parent. I know what it’s like to lose someone who was as close as a brother. I know what it’s like to lose friends. I’ve lost a dozen or so pets along the way. All of those losses hurt and proportionate to the intimacy of the relationship was the intensity of the mourning phase, including its duration. I lost my son, my only child, and the grief process was lengthy and intense. Maybe our hedonistic nature pulled me away from pain and set my feet toward the pleasure of joy. I just knew my grief would not be the end of me. I knew I had purpose. In retrospect, although I was not nurtured as a child to believe in myself, there is something in each of us that wants to flourish and share our gifts with the world. I believe it’s innate.

We are an adaptable species. I don’t know why some people develop resilience while others succumb to the impersonal wounds of random chance. I came from a hardcore challenging family of origin, and even though my theology has changed, I have been shaped by my mother’s hope in her savior and by the mysticism of the Catholic Church, although I’ve also been broken by them a few times in my life too. Hope: my mother gave me hope that things would one day be better. And they were too, right when I turned 18. Our personal hells are not meant to be eternal. Mine felt like it while I was enduring it, but relatively speaking, it’s been 42 years since I was being misshapen on the anvil of my father’s love. I’ve been free for 42 years, but a lesser amount of time, really, while I was fumbling toward a victory story, failure after failure, but with enough successes to keep me fighting.

I’ve traded in my gloves for a voice these days. If I can do nothing more than speak out and speak up for those who haven’t heard their own voices yet, then that is what I must do. Write to the issues. Write to our pain. Write to our liberation.

Whatever life has asked of me I have responded to. As my son would say, “I lost a son, yo’.” He was so funny. I did, though; I lost him and I went under for a long time. I have a CD by Belleruth Naparstek for those challenged by PTSD. In one of the visualizations, she takes you through a wasteland in which there are burned up cars, still smoldering, things that are barely recognizable from your former life, and then she has you look under pieces of burnt boxes and other detritus, to see if there are any rubies in the rubble. There were. There are.

Find your rubies after tragedy, after childhood traumas, after devastating social issues, after your world comes crashing down around you once, twice, a third time… I’ll be taking a class in seminary this fall on the Spiritual and Theological Dimensions of Suffering. I’m very excited. I’m a questioner, one who is never satisfied with the answers I find, and so research is never-ending for me. It’s more a curse than a blessing. Chronic dissatisfaction with available knowledge can be exhausting. My search for knowledge has only become more intense since my son died, like a coping mechanism; it keeps me from going under.

But … full circle … I’m watching my country go up in flames. I’m Sarah Connor holding on to the chain link fence screaming futilely into the vaporizing flames. That was someone’s nightmare. I want to be too busy creating the dream, and so, I keep learning and questioning what I’m learning, and allowing myself to be socially aware, beyond my world of grief. We are not one-dimensional. I am not solely the grief which I have worked six-and-a-half years to tame. I want my life to be a gift to a hurting world. My grief has gifted me with pearls of wisdom, the gift of self-examination, and the gift of transformation.

This post has no real import or urgency, other than to distance myself from the events over the last 24 hours. My mission is not to harm, but to heal. I come from a long line of curanderas (healers) … what’s your gift?

By Sherrie Cassel

I begin a new decade; the last one was the most difficult of my life. As those of you who follow this blog know, I lost my son and only child six and a half years ago. Those years were spent groveling before a god I wasn’t sure I believed in anymore. Those years were spent in the fetal position in excruciating pain. Those years were spent either numb or in the deepest grief. Those years were spent in a darkened room sleeping my days and nights away. They were some rough years. The second year was more difficult than the first. I believe I was still in shock the first year, intervals of sobbing uncontrollably or forcing myself to be numb so I could get through the day. By the third year I was exhausted from the grieving process; I wanted relief. I wanted a “normal” life, one in which grief was not my focal point. Every day before that epiphany had been spent trying not to go under, some days barely treading water, some days I wanted to drown; but then one day, I was ready to swim back to shore where the living were scurrying around, busy, living “normal” lives, lives in which grief did not reign supreme, living lives yearning to be vibrant, energetic, mostly pain-free, and purposeful.

I’ve achieved this, on most days. I still have days during which I’m overcome by the magnitude of my loss and of the gaping, still inconceivable hole, where my son should be. I’m no longer at the event horizon though. I dove into the black hole of grief, and to my great surprise and delight, there is another side, and it’s spectacular. Perhaps a death analogy is apropos here, because I was reborn through the grief process. I will never be the person I was before my son’s illness and death. I had to refashion myself in light of the greatest loss of my life. My brain helped me rationalize my loss and then my brain helped me to soften the loss so I could allow the metaphor of my heart to beat life into me again.

In the first two years I needed to purge – as often as the overwhelm occurred. I also read everything I could get my hands on about grief and healing. I tried therapy but found the ones to whom I was referred had only one semester of grief training. At the time, I didn’t know about licensed clinical social workers (LCSWs), nor did I know what chaplains do. Both work with grieving people all the time. This is one of the reasons I have chosen to enter the chaplaincy (at 60!).

Not everyone can sit in the dark with someone. Those of us who have worked the grief process and come through to the other side bruised, battered, but victorious are in the best position to be present for someone in her or his darkness. We learn. We heal. We know – for a time. We share what we know. We grow. We thrive. Healing is a process; it’s an act of self-love. Healing is within your grasp. Reach for it as soon as you can find the inner strength.

There is no universal formula for getting through grief. Grief is as unique as one’s fingerprint. Sometimes we relate more to one person’s experience than we do to another. Find what works for you. Listen to a voice that touches you, that speaks to you, and that ultimately heals you. If you believe in God or have a Higher Power, lean on it, speak to it, allow it to comfort and then to transform you.

I’ve been working the grief process for six and a half years, and if I’m being honest, I began the grief process while my son was still struggling in this life, dying before my eyes, and the pain intensified exponentially after he died. Those of us who may have been in a relationship that was challenging may have some guilt and some regret. Make your amends – even posthumously and let guilt and regret go. Oh sure, when you’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired (HALT), you may reach for them again; I have, and sometimes I still do, but then I gather my bearings and return to a balance of manageable grief and marveling at the wonders of life.

I think about those three and a half years when I was underwater, comfortable by that time of being submerged, not hearing any sound at all, stubbornly, but adaptively holding my breath, refusing to surface. Living was so difficult back then I just refused to do it. I ached in a way that led me to emotional paralysis. After my husband went back to work, I was alone to scream, to yowl, to double over out of breath from sobbing so forcefully. In retrospect, I was glad to have had that time. I’m not a public griever. I prefer to have meltdowns in the company of my husband, but mostly … alone. Doing so is my M.O.; it just works for me. Find what works for you. I have a friend who doesn’t like using the noun journey after grief because it’s not a journey she says. I respect that. I call it the grief experience, and I know that even those of us who share a common grief, experience grief differently.

None of us has a choice in the matter about when or whom we lose. I’ve learned to cling tightly enough to enjoy and repurpose my life, but never again so tightly that the God of my heart has to pry it from my bleeding fingers. I’m not a Buddhist, but I’ve learned its practice of non-attachment. The year my son died my family lost several others within a matter of months: a brother, a friend, my husband’s mother, a former student to suicide, and a close friend of the family. Some days are diamonds; some days are stone. Sometimes the hard times won’t leave me alone (Dick Feller) – and sometimes it’s a year or so more. We just never know. Even though I saw it coming, one cannot prepare oneself for the death of a child.

I could barely make it through the day in the early years of grief. I was exhausted from weeping, aching, weeping, and aching. I knew there was something more to life even after a life-altering tragedy. I knew because other veteran grievers who found their way to the other side of the black hole where transcendence lay, and they shared their process with me. I was angry at first when someone told me I’d get to a place where the intensity would lessen. I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t believe him. As long as the pain was intense, I was still connected to my son; but I got to a point where I knew I couldn’t carry it anymore and still have a productive and purposeful life.

 Are you there yet?

If you are and maintaining and thriving in your life, congratulations. If you’re not, keep working your process. Read everything you can get your hands on about grief. Write. Sing. Dance. Keep on weeping until your brain says, “It’s time to move forward.” Life really is wonderful despite our losses and despite the pain that will vein everything in it for the rest of our days and nights.

I didn’t cry at my birthday party, even though I missed my son on a milestone day. His dear childhood friend was there. Seeing him without my son was mind blowing. I didn’t cry. I celebrated a new decade. I crawled on my knees begging for relief until I could stand and walk toward a life that is healing and now I’m reaching for the sun.

Grief is a tangled mess, and again, one will heal in proportion to the wounds he or she has healed from already. Self-examination is among the greatest gifts that come from deep grief. If one needs a latent benefit, self-examination is one. The ability to heal yourself through self-examination is truly a gift from the Divine.

I stopped making resolutions for each new year ushered in; I seldom achieved my goal anyhow. But I will say this: I’m going to do my absolute best to make my 60s a good decade, and if and when catastrophe next strikes, I know at some point I will handle it, accept it, adapt to it, and then move on, in a time comparable to the loss.

P.S. I miss you, Rikki, oh so much.

By Sherrie Cassel

I’ve worked hard to get to the other side of the gargantuan mountain of grief to a place of victory and then to a return to a life in which grief is no longer the guiding force. Grief no longer compels me to spill my guts about the loss of my son at every turn. Not everything in life is a pathway to deep grief and, long-term and chronic pain; joy is also a destination.

I read something this morning and it gave me pause for thought. Each of us has the right to feel as if our pain is the worst experience ever. We know this perspective comes from a place of grief. We don’t always think clearly when we’re grieving. Our pain is substantial when we’re in grief, and no one’s should be taken lightly, not even by each other.

But the post I saw today alluded to an experience from a person who has suffered a very recent loss and could not place herself in a position in which she could very well likely assist another person through her pain. I get it. At first, I thought, “Well, why can’t this person move past the pain long enough to help another hurting person?” But then I remembered, I’m six and a half years into the grief process. I put myself in this person’s shoes and remembered how EVERYTHING was a trigger. The first note of a Bread song had me sobbing uncontrollably one morning, and my son didn’t even like Bread. My son wasn’t even born when Bread was a thing.

No rhyme. No reason. You might be having a wonderful day with friends, and a scent, a sight, a sentiment swells inside of you and you’re reduced to a weeping mess. If your friends are good at grief, they will handle your overwhelm of emotion. If they’re not good at sitting in the dark with you, you’ll learn this very quickly, and you’ll know not to lose it with them. Pick people who are safe, well-adjusted, and who achieve calmness even as you shatter all over again in front of them.

The healing process takes time, maybe even for the duration of one’s life. We’re all healing from something; some things are ancient; some are more recent.  Again, our healing is a process that runs the gamut several times over in our lifetime. I think of it as a labyrinth, beautifully landscaped shrubbery, 20 feet high throughout. On one end is the darkest part of grief, e.g., you’re all in, and you will be, for a time, if you don’t shut down. On the other end, is the entrance and the exit; it is one and the same. Beginning with that first step into the labyrinth, the pathway becomes darker and darker and soon, you’re feeling around in the dark. You get pricked by a thorn, and you learn to stay in the middle of the pathway. Some find their way out before grief becomes self-destructive. Everyone’s timetable is different, and again, dependent upon where you are in your healing from other things, is how efficiently you’ll be able to find the entrance into life and the light won’t hurt your eyes anymore.

You know you’re in deep grief when you haven’t been outside for months and the first time you step outside, you’re temporarily blinded by the sunlight. Yeah, it happens. Everyone grieves differently; however, I’m amazed by the growth I see through some of the dialogue on social media with people who started this grief experience around the same time I did. Most people by now have some idea of what posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD is, but not everyone is aware of posttraumatic growth or PTG. I’ve seen it time and time again in people who have endured horrifying experiences. Somehow, there is the spirit of the phoenix or the one who breathed life into every culture’s origin story. The resiliency of some people is off the chart. Having said that, for some, resiliency has come from a place of emotional health through working with a clinician. Some have found indomitable inner-strength and created lives that are joyful and stable.

I would argue, grief is traumatic. I read in the DSM-V that there are certain criteria for trauma, and grief is listed under Adjustment Disorder Related to Bereavement. When you’re in the labyrinth of grief, you don’t much care for clinical definitions. However, it still makes me angry when I see how grief has been reduced in the DSM-V. Grief creates a constant cycle of adjustment and the knowledge that every experience from the day our loved one died ‘til the day we each head off to that great big piece of perfection in the sky, we will feel our loved one’s absence. Perhaps that is why my eyes well up when I hear a silly Bread son, the first note, because I find this particular song to be beautiful, and beautiful moments together with my son have passed. I’ve accepted that my son died; the reality hits me every morning, afternoon and night. There is never a moment when I am unaware my son is gone. I’ve learned to navigate the overwhelm and reschedule meltdowns when they are inconvenient.

There will come a time when pain can be shelved and brought out for a mourning ritual, but we don’t have to carry it. There will come a time, hopefully in a shorter amount than my moment came, when pain becomes so heavy you have to decide if it’s something you want to carry for the rest of your days. I came to a place in my life when I knew I didn’t want to shoulder it any longer, and little by little I put it down.

I’ve been fortunate to have a most supportive network. I founded a grief site for parents who’ve lost a child or children to addiction. I founded this blog. I have a writer’s page and I share my insight, such as it is, about how it is possible to heal from grief. I suppose we will always be a little broken, but I was broken before my son died, and grief has given me the opportunity for the most profound self-examination, and like Leonard Cohen says in Anthem, it is the through the cracks that the light gets in either through the Light of the Divine that guides you, or through the keen acumen you have into your own brain. What collides with your grief intensifying it?

As usual, I have waxed tangential. What I really want to leave us with, myself included, is this: If you have been fortunate enough with a supportive, loving, and capable network of people throughout your process, as soon as you are able, give back. You’ll be in the best position to sit in someone else’s darkness with him or her. There will come a time when you find a voice that isn’t just wounded, but clear and wise, and compassion will be your guide because you know where they are even as you transcend your own chronic emotional pain.

Certainly, there was a time I thought my pain overrode anyone else’s because I had lost my only child, but then I began to see the pain people live with every day; it weighs them down, so they stay buried under the ashes of despair. This is what I see now, a world in need of radical compassion. Through the grief and healing processes we can share a bit of our lived experience with someone who is hurting. Grief is the effect of the greatest loss of my life; it veins everything sensory in my life, but it no longer is the only grief in the world. I can sit in the darkness with someone now.

The prospect of “being there” for someone when you’re still healing is pretty darn scary. However, practice will help you. You can bring your life experience to someone else’s pain without purging your own pain. By the time you’re at this stage, you’ll have normalized your need to purge, and so you’ll have the discipline to wait until it’s “your turn” to share with a safe, calm, well-adjusted person. Presence is vital when we want to be there for someone else’s crisis. Presence means you’re all in. I believe this takes time; it took me three and a half years, two Master’s programs until I found the one that feeds my soul, and an ocean of tears.

There’s something about awakening to the perception you’re drowning in your own tears that gives you the insight that, truly, this too shall pass. Just try to walk ahead of your pain once in a while. There’s clarity and there’s even charity ahead, and the more you go there, the more you’ll want to be there.