Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

One of the greatest books I read during the tumultuous addiction years with my son was by Daphne Rose Kingma, 10 Things to do When Your World is Falling Apart. I thought the book was great while my son was alive, even though he was dreadfully ill from years of alcoholism and heroin use, and he was in tremendous emotional pain. All those things made this momma’s life a complete wreck, trying to save both my son and me. Daphne’s advice was logical, practical, and because it made so much sense, I began to see more clearly how much control, albeit not a lot for some time, I really did have over my reactions and emotions. I read the book after my son died, in my deepest grief, and Daphne’s advice still rang true. I just needed to clear my mind of despair over the loss of my son. I needed to be forward thinking. I needed to find a way to normalize my pain. I needed to breathe. I needed to sit with the chaos of my crisis and feel every emotion that came up for me. I needed to travel the path of my fractured life until I saw that I had the tools to pave a smoother road. I had the power to recreate myself because I will never be the same, as a consequence of having my son in my life, and of having him leave my life. I know you all know what I mean.

Six years and 5 months post- the death of my brilliant and beautiful son, I have found a kind of energizing fulfillment in my life. I don’t know how much more emphatically I can state this, but life does not end for us after our loved ones have passed. Our lives end for us when we pass. In the interim between the heartbreak and the healing there is work to do, to make you and our world better.

I’m not saying there will be a time when your heart no longer aches for your loved one; that is unrealistic; it is irrational. Sometimes 24 hours can seem unmercifully long; other times, 24 hours just isn’t enough time to get to everything. How does that happen? I love the 12-Steppers H.A.L.T. acronym and what each letter stands for: hungry, angry, lonely, tired. These conditions, hunger, anger, loneliness, and being tired (emotionally or physically exhausted) are conditions under which we should not be making important decisions beyond what to make for dinner to satisfy at least one of the conditions that will make it possible to make a good decision, like eating, getting some sleep, calling a friend, finding a healthy way to work through our anger, and … make good decisions about how we can and must work through the grief process so that we can recreate a person who can still live a wonderful, fulfilling, and purposeful life.

For those who have been following this blog since its inception, you all know I have been brutally honest about the effects of grief on my headspace and in my heart space. For those who may have just happened upon my page, welcome. I have people tell me how strong I am, and maybe that’s true, but I can still recall the woman who ached to the point that personal hygiene was just too exhausting. My husband took over all the household chores and business-y tasks. There were days when I simply would not get out of bed. I closed all the curtains and forced myself to sleep the slumber of self-numbing. I ached to the depths of my soul. I was an absolute hot mess. Losing someone you love shakes you to your very core. The rest of our lives we will spend adjusting to the loss in every life experience where our loved one is no longer able to share in them. If not stronger, I am certainly wiser and far less fearful. The worst thing imaginable has happened in my life, what do I have to fear now? I’m more accepting that death is a part of life. I have accepted the fact that my son is gone from this world, and I’ve had to adjust to how I will be in relationship with his Spirit. I’ve had to let go of the hurtful past we shared. I’ve had to mine the good memories and all the ways he was amazing. And I’ve worked alongside the Creator to heal myself.

I’m not alone on this awful/wonderful journey. I’ve watched other parents and others who grieve other losses stretch and grow and change and soar into amazing lives in the faces of their tremendous losses. I’m doing so. I’m married to the man of my dreams; he’s my best friend, and had it not been for him and for my younger brother, I don’t know how I would have gotten through those first three years. I tried two master’s programs before I found my niche, my calling, the salve that would take me the rest of the way toward being fully healed from the greatest loss of my life.

Being healed doesn’t mean you don’t still ache, sob, or remember that your loved one is not coming back to you in this lifetime. Being healed means you add the emotions that are born through the experience, even, and maybe especially, through the dark nights of the Soul, put them in your emotional resource tool box to take out when we need a good cry day, or when we need to be present for someone else and our life experience might be a salve for them, providing even a moment of relief from grief, or at the very least, some understanding because you know; you know.

Last thing I’d like to speak about today is this: find purpose for your life. Find something that satisfies your Soul. I survived, worked my ass off, and loved every single second of my first year of seminary. The knowledge satisfies a spiritual need that I’ve had for 59 years. The work this first year has been substantial and extremely challenging. I’ve met some people with whom I connect spiritually. I don’t have to pretend that I’m not in love with the God of my understanding with fear of offending or pissing off someone. I am being fulfilled in all sorts of ways. I’m stretching, growing, and changing. I don’t call myself strong, at least not any stronger than anyone else, but I have found that some are more resilient than others; some heal more quickly. I was not one of them. It took me a while to grow beyond my pain. It took me a while to learn to navigate my grief in a way that allowed me to love myself through it. If that makes sense.

I highly recommend Daphne Rose Kingma’s book, 10 Things to do When Your World is Falling Apart. If you’re in a good space, read it so that when that inevitable day hits you like a ton of bricks, you’ll have resources to get you through it. If you’re currently in crisis, and you can, take a minute and read a page a day. There are so many wonderful resources. Read everything you can get your hands on about the grief process, about stretching and growing and transcending your pain. See, we’re not meant to live in perpetual pain. In this life we will suffer, and we will know pain. Feel it. Emotions are the gift of being alive. Don’t be afraid to live your life. Don’t be afraid to recreate yourself. I don’t know if it hurts a pupa to transform itself utterly; but I know that becoming the butterfly in my own life has been a journey of trauma, abuse, great loss, deep despair, and amazing moments of beauty where I see the God of my understanding in every living organism. Who knew that I wouldn’t ache for the rest of my life after losing the person who will always be the most important and influential person in my life? Six years and five months have passed in what seems like an eternity and on good days, it seems like it flew by in the blink of an eye. How does that happen? Take care of yourselves during this time of supreme mourning. If you’re soaring, good for you. You worked hard for it.

By Sherrie Cassel

In the grief walk, I have seen others and I have seen it in myself, the sheer gumption to heal, in spite of all the shit that has happened in our lives, both sad and joyful, both emotionally healthy and some still struggling from trauma, we are strong spirited; we had no other choice. We’re each coming from some place. I’ve watched and been inspired by the people with whom I have traveled over the past six years and nearly 4 months. My heroes were reborn through the most painful loss imaginable, the loss of a child, for some, their only child. I don’t want to compare battle wounds; I just want to say, grief hurts deep inside our souls — even if you don’t believe in the soul – there is something deep inside us where the pain is felt so viscerally there are no words in any language to adequately describe it; it just hurts.

But even in the deepest, darkest pit of despair, just when we think we won’t ever feel good again, not even joyful, just good,  as in not bad, a nice breeze will refresh you on a blistering desert afternoon, and you’ll let go for just a minute, but it’s long enough to catch your breath, and sometimes that’s all you need to turn a dismal day of rumination into spring or into hope for a day when the pain is more than just tolerable, but a day in which the pain is not your focus for the next 24 hours. The time in between meltdowns will begin to increase, and the bad days will be fewer. Trust me on this.

Pain has accompanied me for many years, before and after my precious son died. But along with the pain there has been incredible wisdom and there has been compassion born of pain; it’s been transformative. I had to make the decision to move forward with my life, with a new dimension to myself, the dimension where grief is not in control of my emotions. I worked the new dimension like a muscle; it’s strengthening through the years. The journey is not one an individual can anticipate or prepare for, even if your loved one was terminal, and death was imminent. You just don’t know how you’re going to react or respond to the death when the finality of the loss hits you.

I remember saying in the early days of grief that I would never let my son go; I would never accept his death. I remember the hopelessness and despair of the early grief years. I remember how hard EVERYTHING was. If there is a way to become agoraphobic in your spirit, I found it. I was in so much pain that, like a rabbit caught in a coyote’s jaw, I went numb so I could survive the pain. I was numb, inactive, and had a flat affect for the first two years, a true stone face.

Doing grief is arduous work. I’ve watched my peers who have also lost children go through the early process of navigating gut-wrenching pain while maintaining a marriage, a family, a job, school, moving, ad infinitum. I’ve also watched them grow into some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known. I’ve learned so much from them and my healing can be largely attributed to the wisdom of the group members I speak with everyday on various grief sites.

Healing is possible – but as I’ve said here many, many times before, you must go through the grit before you can get to the grace. No amount of avoidance will give you a free pass to escape the grief process. I know; I tried. Normalcy, with adjustments, will return in time. Some of us keep so busy that we rarely tap into our hardcore grief anymore. I know there are times when I get a whiff of Rikki’s favorite meal and I feel an ache so deep inside me it feels infinite, but then I refocus my thoughts on something else; I pray. I go for a walk. I calm myself through the pain and I feel it – intently – and then I let it go and move toward a task that takes me out of grief and puts me back in the present moment…the only moment we really have.

The recipe for a good life my first therapist gave me after my son died was:

1. Have something to do.
2. Have something/someone to love
3. Have something to look forward to

Of course, there are many more ingredients to a good and/or happy life. I strongly recommend therapy, even if you’re not in grief. Some of my dearest and most inspiring friends are therapists. I almost went that route, but after the loss of my son, and after the absolute transcendence over pain, I want to work with people in grief – as a chaplain. I wanted to dig deeper than the psyche. I want to help people to heal their souls. When you find something that heals you, you want to share it with the world. I know my son didn’t die so I could have a transformative experience; my son died, and I’m left with the detritus from an implosion to transform into a life of purpose and a life of beauty. You can too.

I know I will see my son one day. I’m certain of that on most days, but of course, the mom who has a gaping hole where my son should be allows doubt to creep in and I’m tossed about by too many theologies and superstitions. My son is not here, and I finally accept this. So, what do you do with the rest of your life after your loved one has died? Finding purpose for the rest of our lives is not only doable, it’s essential. We’re not meant to be in perpetual pain; we have got to find a way or ways to go on and live full, productive, and purposeful lives. Whatever happened to us, whatever losses we’ve had in our lives, we still must go on, and best-case scenario, our lives become beacons of hope to others.

I won’t bring religion onto this page other than to say, in the recent past, my heart has changed, and if you get the “call” – you follow. Being a chaplain to those in grief is my purpose, and as difficult and challenging as it is to be back in school when you’re 59 years and 9 months old, I am following the call. You can do this; you really can. Read everything you can get your hands on from credible sources, common experiences, hope, spiritual books. Immerse yourself in language, beautiful, healing language. You will heal yourself by changing your narrative to one of hope and one in which you find yourself as your own healer.

Life is never fair; I don’t think it’s supposed to be. I don’t think humans are equipped for smooth sailing for long periods of time. Somehow, we always find a way to complicate our lives. I like using the geology term punctuated equilibrium, i.e., we go long periods of time with life as status quo, and then BAM, life happens and we’re in a tailspin with no end in sight, and there goes our equilibrium, until we achieve status quo again, and the cycle repeats until we are freed from these bodies. Who needs a hardcore challenge every day? Not I (not anymore). I also don’t think we’re equipped to live constantly in stress. Homeostasis/balance is where we want to be as often as we can get there, and it’s doable. Life comes to us in fits and starts and in those permutations of all our lived experiences; we stretch and reach for those moments of balance, and again, it’s cyclical and some days really suck, but we’ve got this. We’ll make it. We will.

By Sherrie Cassel

From February 8, 2016

There were three of us there tonight — three women who have something terrible in common. We all lost sons — when they were very young. Angelica lost Oscar when he was only 7. Irene lost Louie when he was 13. And, I lost my 32 year old son two weeks, three days, and three hours ago. It’s not a club. It’s a terrible thing to have in common. We all raised our boys together. All three boys got to be seven together. Two of them got to be 13 together, and one of them got to be 32.

It’s a strange phenomenon — . Everyone has been so kind to me. Everyone struggles to find the right words to say, but everyone’s heart is pure, kind, and full of love for me, and I am just as tongue tied as they are in my attempt to express my gratitude to all of you.

I spent the afternoon with Irene and Angelica — and it was like I could rest there, lean in to them, find my grounding. We went to Louie’s grave and said hello and then sat on a bench and talked and cried. Irene and I hadn’t seen each other for 18 years. Angelica and I hadn’t spent time together for many years. We shared mole and a beer together. I felt affirmed in my grief, in my desire to carry on in spite of the overwhelming pain that comes in waves.

Socorro — had not experienced the same loss, but she was the sunshine at the center of our experience tonight. She is always delightful and very happy. She made us laugh, as did her husband, Jose; Angelica’s husband, Lionel; and, Irene’s husband, Big John. There’s something magical that happens in a Mexican kitchen, the aroma of chiles being roasted, eyes watering from the heat of the chile. The cumin, the chocolate, the laughter, the love.

We shared hugs and tears, and in a language that I have hugely neglected, we told stories about love, about loss, about cross-cultural events in our world.

Tomorrow we are meeting to drink tequila and continue our stories before John and Irene head back to Tejas. They drove all the way out to be here for my Rikki’s Celebration of Life. I am humbled by the kindness shown by all of you, and by people from whom I have been distanced for too many years.

I ache, but I still have purpose and I must go on to honor my son by doing great things with my life, in my lifetime…how ever long that might be. I am climbing out of that despair and trying to reach the top of the mountain where the Light is.

Irene, Angelica, and I — have aged, our hearts are at different stages of grief. I can look to them for total comfort and total understanding. I cannot begin to adequately express the affinity that I felt with them. Stages of grief: the maiden, the mother, and the crone. I take my lead from them. I do not know how to grieve. I’ve never lost a son before. They are my teachers, and if they can smile again, so too will I be able.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Tomorrow is the six-year anniversary of my son’s death. I choose to mourn today. I’ve been listening to music and sharing my heart on my Facebook page, and I woke my husband (sick with COVID – fully vaccinated) and told him that my heart hurts today. Through the tears I’m revving up to get through tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll be all cried out by tomorrow and I’ll be able to celebrate his life – and not focus on the chaos, frenzy, anger, love, and fear that accompany the life of an addict. I will go to Joshua Tree National Park, climb up on a boulder, and reach up to the sky and try to touch him the way he touched me. But today, I will allow the tears to be gentle reminders of my tremendous loss.

In the earlier years of grief, I would ruminate on all the moments leading up to the last kiss I was ever able to place on his forehead, and I would either buck up and not feel anything on the angelversary, or I would sob until I couldn’t breathe. One year I bought cigars for my family, and we all took a couple of puffs in his honor; he loved his cigars, and then I went to bed while it was still light outside, and I cried myself to sleep.

Angelversaries are simply hard. I’m an optimist. I’m Pollyanna in too many ways, and in ways that sometimes drive my realist husband to the brink of madness (litote). But pain can reach deep inside even the most nauseatingly and chronically chipper person. I know. Glitter and sparkle, awe and wonder, laughter and joy, love from others, love for others, self-love, aren’t those the goals of humanity? But for suffering, life might just be perfect even in its imperfections. Life experiences can change our gait from a frenetic one to a waltz in the blink of an eye. Who knows on what day those dances will take place? When we are aware of our emotions we know they are navigable. I feel the heartstrings being plucked with increasing intensity, and then I breathe. Grief is a curious experience; it hurts, like a motherfucker (I’m sorry, but no other word will do). I remember when I was deep in hand-wringing mourning, my eyes were puffy until I was no longer recognizable as Sherrie, the perpetual Pollyanna. I didn’t know it was possible to hurt that badly and still live and breathe. I hyperventilated many times. I went to the hospital thinking I was having a heart attack on two angelversaries. The few days leading up to the angelversary can bring on panic attacks as the day and time approach. My son died at 5:55 p.m. on Friday, January 22^nd. I will cover my clocks and I will stay off the computer and my phone tomorrow as this time approaches.

What will I do? I wish I could tell you that I will proceed with my plans, but I feel the thickening of the air and I’m feeling more serious than I like. My gait is slowing, and I may be running out of steam, the steam fueled by optimism; it’s waning. Angelversaries are like that.

Rikki loved tacos, turkey tacos. They were always a celebratory meal, when we had our many parties with our amazing friends over the years. I raised Rikki to celebrate life. I raised him to have wonder and to be in awe over this amazing world, which he did until the moment he died. I kissed him and covered him with a warm blanket, and he said, “I don’t know what I did to deserve this; it feels so good.” And then he closed his eyes and he died. He loved life. We loved it together, in spite of some really tough years.

Freud wrote copious notes, books, over his lifetime. Upon his own languishing life, he wrote his observations about what was going on in his mind as he lay dying. I’m doing the same thing. I may not be dying in a mortal way yet, but I am dying today in a human way. It’s the metamorphosis I go through every year since my son’s death. I will writhe in my heart today, the anniversary of the day before he died; there was so much to be thankful for that day. There was so much hope.

I’ve learned to be hopeful in life, more realistic, but hopeful. I’ve learned that hope is manufactured in a heart with the desire to heal from all wounds, past and present. Life is just so remarkably short, in the blink of an eye, on a day none of us knows, random chance is no respecter of persons. My goal and my recommendation are to live your life to its absolute fullest, every day. I’m going to take this day to mourn, but tomorrow…I hope…my steam will be replenished with the optimism of a brand-new day.

If you have a current or upcoming angelversary, I recommend drafting up an itinerary. I have one for tomorrow. I wrote it out yesterday, and I’m going to do my level best to check off every item on it. See, no matter how much pain we carry, the world doesn’t wait for us to be through with our painful experiences. Mourning is absolutely essential in the grieving process, however; it will lessen, and you will heal.

Healing is not an impossible task. Trust me on this.

Rikki loved the soundtrack to Guardians of the Galaxy. I’m listening to it now through tears and smiles; it’s so hopeful.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

“Life is just a lesson

Time is a perception

Love will cure depression

This is my confession

You are my obsession

You are my obsession

You are my obsession[…]

“You are My Obsession” ~Trevor Something~ (sic)

What can be worse than the occasional time of retrospection? Rumination. After my son died, I collected every mistake I ever made with him and ruminated about what a horrible person I was to not be a perfect person in his life. Even insignificant things like making him nuke his own Hot Pockets when he was ten…or something as damaging as things said in the heat of a dysfunctional moment when addiction is the center of your world and there is no escape, save for death or recovery. I thought about things I should have said, those damnable “should haves.” I thought about crimes of commission and crimes of omission. Not actual crimes, but metaphorical ones, true fuck ups, whatever the causation or … reason. I hemorrhaged over my sins until I had no strength left .

I felt every tear my son ever shed, and I ached in my heart for any of the pain I ever caused him, and I took on his pain from everyone who had ever hurt him. I took on the weight of his world as well as my darkened world, and I was a total wreck for the first three and a half years of the grieving process. I’d do well, and then like a person addicted to a substance, I’d relapse into deep and complicated grief, and I wouldn’t be able to function for a few days, a week, a month…

I’ve read a countless number of books on grief. I’ve grieved for six years next week. If I have any expertise in life about anything, it is about grieving the loss of a child. One of the things I can say about the curse of rumination, is that the act extends your deep, visceral pain, far longer than it needs to. Certainly, we made mistakes with our loved ones, but in my heart of hearts, I know how much my son loved me and I him, and our love for each other was always hopeful that the other one was happy.

I see this in retrospect. If you had a turbulent relationship with your loved one, the deep mourning period can last longer than is necessary. Crying, withdrawing, and even raging, are all a part of the grief journey, and it is a journey. You will change and grow and transcend your pain. I think sometimes when I go to that place of rumination it’s a way for me to prove to myself that I haven’t forgotten the loss, even though I’ve moved on with my life. If I can just hold on to a piece of my son, even if it’s a painful piece, I haven’t really moved on. How could I? How could I ever move on? But I am doing just that; I’m moving on. Whenever I find myself ruminating on something painful about the disease and the death, I allow myself to feel it, deeply. I may even shed a tear or clutch my chest for a moment, but then the moment passes, and I find a more beautiful thought to replace the dark thought, and I resume my life.

Choosing to move forward with our lives is not forgetting about our loved ones. Neither do we have to hold on to the painful pieces of their lives to hold on to them. Even the most painful of experiences can yield bright, orange poppies, or deep red roses, or sunbursts of enlightenment in our consciousness. I know a thing or two about pain and loss. My greatest treasure was my son. He’s gone now and I’m left with a world full of wonder and the compulsion to find my purpose or purposes. How many lifetimes do we live during our years here?

If being in chronic pain is the only way to hold on to my son’s memory, then as Etta said long ago, “I’d rather be blind” to those memories. My son was an amazing person in brains and communication skills. He was funny. Oh my God, how he made me laugh. He was kind, loving, and loyal to a fault. These are the things I want to ruminate on. The good stuff. In the beginning of my grief journey, the pain kept my relationship with my son alive, but at every turn I was aching deep in my soul. To be honest, the good memories, in the beginning, weighed me down too. Everything was bittersweet; everything is still bittersweet. The difference now is I acknowledge the bitterness and then I reach like a child on the monkey bars testing my reach — for the swing that will take me to freedom.

Ruminating about any regrettable words, neglect of the relationship from time to time, or any thought that lengthens your mourning period, is counterproductive. Regret is inevitable. Long-term rumination about our imperfections accomplishes nothing but guilt, and guilt is a killer, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

We must look for different analogies, those that elicit warmth, comfort, and healing. I could choose to reconstruct over and over again in my mind the addiction years with my son, the physical sickness, the emotional hellfire during the maelstrom of his disease, and I did for a while, during the “Why?” phase of my grief process. Asking the unanswerable is a characteristic of holding on to pain through rumination.

There are some things from which to move away, we must loosen our grip on the idea that letting go is forgetting about our loved one or forgetting the monumental hole they left in our lives; it’s not. Loosening our grip on the painful memories, including the day we said goodbye, is the first sign you are healing. Healing is the goal after a loss. Letting go is the beginning of liberation from the things that hurt us.

I had a friend who is also a therapist ask me during the eye of my son’s storm why I ruminated on the possibility that I was going to lose him, and I didn’t have an answer. I was just one more terrified parent of an addicted child. Six years later I have an answer for my friend, F.K., I don’t need to ruminate. We grieve throughout our lives for different losses, some are grieved for a brief time, some only momentarily, and sometimes, we grieve for so long we lose our way to joyful living.

There are so many wonderful texts out there from different cultures and different religions, and I have my own personal favorites, in new wineskins. This verse in the Judeo-Christian Bible comforts me when I’m about to go down that dark tunnel of rumination.

Philippians 4:8

Modern English Version

Finally, brothers[and sisters], whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue, and if there is any praise, [ruminate] on these things.

And so, I do.

Next Saturday will be six years my Rikki has been gone. I went through hell and back until I was able to normalize my pain and return to emotional homeostasis over those past six years. Learning to live in the world without my son in a way that makes my heart soar when I think of him took work. Forcing a flower out of a failure is the best we can do when faced with our imperfections. Maya Angelou reminds us that “When we know better, we do better.” Yeah, do that. Live your life forward. Deal with your pain so you can let it go and it will no longer command you.

Cut yourself some slack. None of us is born with all the knowledge that will make life easily navigable or the secret that will assure that relationships will always be rosy, or how to manage when someone we love more than life itself dies and we are left with the knowledge we will never see them again. We fumble every step of the way and depending on where you come in on life’s inevitable dirge, you stay in the decrescendo or you reach the pinnacle note, a crescendo you can ride all the way to the other side of pain.

Whatsoever…and so it goes.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

This blog was originally developed to share my secrets for how to navigate grief, how to tame it, how to make it work for you, and how to work joy back into your life. I’ve mostly done that; I hope. I’ve been tangential and discussed things that have nothing to do with grief, my deepest apologies. I still have shit to work through, and I’m so grateful that I have tamed grief enough to get to a place where I can focus on the present moment – away from my distant, hellish childhood, all the way into a future ripe with possibilities.

There really are no secrets to rediscovering joy. When you work your grief process, and again, it is the hardest work you will ever do, reclaiming your life, soaring beyond your grief, into a life of purpose are your gifts through the gruel. My son, heart of my heart, will be gone six years on January 22^nd at 5:55 p.m. He was my only child in a single parent home. We had a tempestuous relationship, but we adored each other, and before he died, we were able to work through a lot. Regrets? Of course. I’d be lying if I said I had none (and I’ve actually heard some say they actually have no regrets). None of us does everything perfectly, some by design and some through ignorance, and we are our own worst critics, for sure.

Lessening our regrets’ grip on us is a step toward healing and through healing, rediscovering joy. I truly believe our ability to heal is correlative with our own emotional health and with it, the possibility for a well-developed resiliency. If you’ve got years of emotional shit to deal with from before you lost your loved one, you’ll find that it resurfaces further complicating a grief process already wrought with complexities.

I’ve worked through much of my dysfunctional behavior – not without vestiges of occasional high-risk behavior, mostly the creation of stress, when a deep breath will solve the whole mess. However, my son died when I was fifty-three, and by this time in my life I’d had the good fortune to heal from my childhood. My purpose is not to rehash it; I’m tired of my own story. My purpose is to tell you that even at 53, when my son died, I was still working through issues of some duration, and so when he died, I had some serious shit to deal with already and then, grief entered the picture.

If you’re having a difficult time, I mean, a crippling time with grief, call a therapist. Find out why the pain has lasted for so long and with such intensity, the kind that makes it impossible to experience joy. My mourning period lasted too long retrospectively. I sat on the couch for three years, staring out into space, adjusting to my monumental loss. I know many of you have done the very same thing, I hope for not as long as I did. In hindsight I believe I experienced complicated grief as I allowed myself to be entombed by it for too long. At some point, it took every ounce of strength I had, to move forward with my life.

I’m a lover of language so a neologism must be really good for me to respect it, however, here’s one I found to be an adequate description of self-direction: choiceful. My husband, a retired English/Theatre teacher, of course, hates it. But I find it to be accurate. We may not have had choices as children, or certainly, we had no power over keeping our loved one from dying, but those of us who’ve survived, what liberation, to be free from the chains of our aberrant childhood, our painful experiences, and have choices.

The grief process is an absolute must; you can’t run or hide from it. When you lose a loved one, there is a very painful adjustment period. You are in pain. You are in the fetal position, numb, and inconsolable. I read in a book early in my grief, immediately following my son’s death, that grief and mourning are two different animals. Mourning is the period during which we are entombed in our grief. We need to grieve our loss; death is final in this world. How could we not mourn? One day, for those of you who feel as if you’re working hard to see beyond your grief, you realize there is more to life than mourning. We are the only ones who can set ourselves free from constant pain, which is intense during the mourning phase. Trust me, I have no expertise in the discipline of psychology (only a Bachelor of Science degree) as a seminary student. So, I can speak only from the point of view of a person who has survived the mourning phase. I must admit, it was tough. I never ran out of tears as I cried every single day for a year, then anger, then numbness, the absolute detonation of my entire world view, my ego, and my heart and soul. Some of you may have different analogies than mine, but I know that losing someone is life-altering, transformative, both healthily and unhealthily. I made the choice for the former.

I lived enshrouded in darkness for three years. I didn’t laugh. Sometimes I had to shut down and not feel; laughing is doable, after a spell. I awakened at the 3.5-year mark. Everyone’s timetable is different. In retrospect, I now think my mourning phase lasted longer than was necessary, and had I been emotionally healthy, the time would have been shorter. I genuinely believe this. I can tell you only about my journey. I welcome you sharing your own experience.

Trust me, as you do the work to heal, one day, it will be like spring for you. There will be grief, certainly; losing our loved one is a monumental experience. But one day, you’ll notice the world is in color again, bright, beautiful colors. You’ll be able to remember your loved one with mostly beautiful memories, and the pang in your heart won’t double you over anymore. Healing is tough work. Physician, heal thyself.* I believe we, both secular and other faith traditions, are the only ones who can heal ourselves. Self-talk is important. What do you tell yourself in moments of pain? Do you say, “I miss him/her so much and it hurts, and I must feel this pain, and then I must let it go.” In the first three years after I lost my son, I cried at the drop of a hat. Opening a jar of pickles had me sobbing because my giant son was the mighty warrior with pickle jar opening prowess. I can laugh about it now, how he came to my rescue when his physical strength became mightier than mine.

What makes you weep? One day, will you able to function in the amazing life that awaits you? Are you ready to allow the pain of your loss to transform you into an emotionally stretched new you? How can you do that? I read everything I could get my hands on about the grieving process; this works for those who intellectualize emotional issues. I don’t believe there is anything wrong with this method; if it works for you (for a time) then it is right for you. However, intellectualizing to the point of not allowing the floodgates of grief to burst, I don’t believe is helpful. I know, I did it for a while too, and then I sobbed until I couldn’t cry anymore; I was just exhausted.

This site is about rediscovering joy.I’m more focused now. My emotions are not all over the place. I don’t cry every day anymore. I reach for and create joyful moments at every opportunity. I have days when the longing still hurts; I breathe, meditate, or pray through it and then allow the healing to wash over me as I reclaim my life. Mourning can last so long, sometimes too long, e.g., my three-year sentence. I certainly took my time with it. Perhaps it was the right amount of time – for me. How long is too long to mourn? I suppose too long is when your behavior is no longer good for you, i.e., emotional health, physical health, i.e., neglecting your hygiene and/or personal needs, or your most important relationships are affected negatively. Sometimes we distance ourselves from those who love us and want to help us find our way back into the world again, a completely different world without your loved one.

When I’m feeling the loss intensely, I put on some music that either gets me dancing or allows me to weep for my loss. My personal experience compels me to share the transformative power of pain. How do we use it to that end? I strongly encourage you to read David Kessler’s book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. After the shock wears off in all its manifestations, we begin to heal. How am I doing it? I educated myself about grief, both academic journals, and by reading those who had personal experience with my specific loss. I sought grief therapy (unsuccessfully – I recommend seeing a LCSW; they deal with grief all the time). I reconnected with the God of my understanding in a way that has led me all the way to seminary in its interfaith chaplaincy program. I started a Facebook page for those who share a common loss with me. I found purpose in my pain. I don’t believe all things happen for a reason; I call bullshit on that asinine presumption. I believe things/shit happens and we are left to pick up the pieces of our shattered selves after the loss of a loved one with whom we were intensely involved, a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child, etc. Further, Kessler is right about the rainbow after the storm, as are the many authors I’ve read surrounding the topic of grief. Knowledge can heal too. Read as much as you can about grief. The internet is a great resource for those in mourning, long- or short-term.

Discover your passions and your life purpose. Choose a new career. Go back and finish that degree you started before your heart was broken. Norman Cousins said, “Laughter is the best medicine.” Hang out with those who make you laugh; trust me, it helps, especially on those days when you feel the foreboding darkness getting ready to envelop you in mourning again. Certainly, shed those tears, and then reach for that brass ring of joy.

Ecclesiastes 3:4-14 4

There is a time to cry and a time to laugh. There is a time to be sad and a time to dance.

I’ve had my dancing shoes on for 2.5 years. I sing a new song and I’ve moved beyond the dirge. Trust me when I tell you, you’ve got this. You really do.

* Luke 4:23

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

And so here we find ourselves; it’s Christmas Eve – again. As a veteran griever, my son will have been gone 6 years on January 22, 2022 @ 5:55 p.m., I’ve learned to navigate the bittersweetness that is now part of me, a part I carry with me every day into every moment for the rest of my life. I have a grandson, the son of my beautiful son; they have the same birthday. Chance? Yes, of course. I cried the first two years after my son passed, both sets of holidays. I’d wrap presents and I’d cry. I’d see our grandson’s delight and I’d get misty-eyed. I still get misty-eyed when I hear “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash. There are some songs I haven’t been able to listen to since he died. The lights, the sparkle, the joy on little kids’ faces and all the community events that bring us closer together are so magical, for lack of a better word. Even if the reason for your season isn’t the Christian Christmas story for you, the world is glittered in silver and gold, and we can be enchanted by the festive dress of our globe across cultures.

I’m effusive. I’m a Pollyannish realist. Some call me a cynic with ruby slippers. I’ve always neurotically shunned sadness. During some of the most dismal eras of my life, I have found the strength to celebrate various events … life. I especially don’t like to be sad in the company of others (childhood conditioning). But holidays make us wistful for the time when our loved ones were still alive, gracing us with their humanity. When that doesn’t happen … we ache in our hearts as if he or she just passed away, or transitioned, or … died all over again.

Religion, theologies, philosophies, and childhood experiences, i.e., healthy attachment, good physical health, and a well-developed sense of emotional resilience, are components we juggle along with our grief. Grief is a piercing note in the soundtrack of our lives now — for perpetuity. I don’t believe, at least it has not been my experience, that the acute, deep, visceral grief lasts forever, even if you’re two heartbeats away from an ER visit because your broken heart feels like a heart attack. I know a thing or two about panic attacks since my son’s death – but it’s been an awfully long time since I had a meltdown. I do feel when they are coming on, but I can control the intensity and even shelve it now for a more opportune time.

In the beginning, I gave into my overwhelming emotions; I didn’t know I had the power (see, there’s those ruby slippers again) to normalize my grief and heal on my own terms. The night Rikki died I clung to a God I grew up with, one who could make miracles happen for the righteous. I knew I didn’t qualify, but I prayed and prayed and prayed and my son still died. Even after he took his last breath, I said to this grossly misinterpreted God, “Please, you raised Lazarus from the dead; please raise my son from the company of the dead. PLEASE.” Well, we all know how that turned out. No miracle for me.

My perception of God is broader, more transcendent, way the hell different than the God I grew up with, and this God is healing, loving, non-judgmental, inclusive, compassionate, and present in a way that I had not experienced until only very recently. I’m grateful for all the people who gave me the gift of their presence during a very dark time for me and for my family. We all lost Rikki. But going through grief there has been a renewed spiritual connection to God that has gotten me through some of my grief. Also, exhaustive research on grief, a grief site I belong to, friends, family, and the blood-letting work I’ve done to heal have helped me tremendously. I strongly urge you to find a safe friend or family member to be there for you if you’re impending meltdown is scary. Don’t go it alone unless you know you can.

I hung my son’s ornament on the tree; it has his beautiful face on it. I got a tightness in my chest which was my way of halting the feeling so I could get through decorating the tree. I put on Christmas carols and my husband did most of the work. My semester ended and I was exhausted. Grief also makes us tired too, exhausted, really, especially in the acute phase. I don’t know how I got through the first two Christmases without my son; it’s a blur.

My world changed the second my son died, and I’ve worked my ass off to heal and to find a purpose for my life since I’m not being called “Momma” anymore. Grandma’s got a nice ring to it and I love being a grandmother. My grandson and I are very close.

I love mosaic art. The artist takes broken pieces of ceramic, mirrors, stones, and creates a work of art. I know this is probably a tired ol’ analogy, but I think of those who are grieving hardcore this holiday season, and what they are going to do with their broken pieces this holiday season … in the face of others’ joy. I have a friend whose husband just recently passed away, only weeks ago. They are a love story that spans many years and are an example of what that kind of love can accomplish. The wife has done nothing but encourage others since his death, absolutely joyful. Inspiring.

How do we manage through the dark nights of the soul when they fall on significant holidays? Once you do, you can create meaning from your pain and begin developing your purpose, because life is meant to be celebrated through the closed curtains, which is living through the pain. I try to not be too effervescent during the holidays because I don’t want to be insensitive to those who are hurting; I know your heart. But my mourning has been turned to dancing; I’m blessed in that respect.

I can’t tell you to be of good cheer or that things will get better soon or that you’ll hurt less tomorrow, because bottom line is not everyone has a reason for the season, and I’m not just talking about the Christian Christmas story either.  Some days are celebrations and some really blow. It’s a crapshoot which one we get in our Christmas stockings.

I like that the end of the year gives us the opportunity to make certain we lived it to the hilt, and that the year was not wasted, so, not fraught with regret. The night before the new year is a time for introspection and/or drunkenness. (Hey, we’ve all been there a time or two.) What goals do we have for the coming year? What milestones do we hope to achieve? Can we ever find the energy, the courage, the desire to celebrate life again? I know we can.

Each of you who is in the middle of a heart pang of some duration this holiday season, I wish you comfort. To those who have the energy: I wish you joy. Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. Oh, tidings of comfort of joy.

By Sherrie Cassel

Christmastime is here again. Next month, on the 22^nd of January at 5:55 p.m., my son will have been gone for 6 years. I don’t know how it is possible that 6 years have passed; it feels like just yesterday I said goodbye to him. Or see you later, alligator. We find ways to comfort ourselves, some through arduous work and some through self-destruction. The former is lifelong; the latter is tragic although it doesn’t have to be lifelong.

I just finished my first semester of seminary, and I am, quite frankly, wiped out! Seminary is the greatest experience, next to motherhood, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Finding purpose through my grief process has been the most unexpected gift in a really shitty and painful situation. We finally put up our tree yesterday. My husband has developed a nice kidney stone. My back is aching from being hunched over after writing five papers and poring through research that was enriching, but my back is not happy with me and so, both my husband and I are in pain, and our grandson is no longer enchanted with presents and trees…or lights, alas. And so, it goes (Vonnegut).

My husband is a gem of a man. He put up the tree because he knows how much I love Christmas, even since my son died, and he knows how tired I am. I have worked through so much of my dysfunction that I am now at a place in my life where I am genuinely happy. Who knew? This post isn’t a pick-me-up, you can make it through the holidays post. This post is about how you can be so exhausted from living your life to its fullest and still miss the hell out of your loved one. I miss my only child. And I undoubtedly will weep a bit, just as I do every holiday, but I get through it.

The holidays early on were very difficult. I remember one Christmas only three years ago, and I was wrapping Christmas gifts and I just lost it. Again, my husband is a gem of a man; he knows what to do for me because he doesn’t guess; he asks.

I want to share a few things I do to get through the holidays when my son’s absence widens in diameter and in depth.

1. I cry.
2. I get out in nature.
3. I call a friend.
4. I plan a party.
5. I read about whatever the hell is wrong with me and try to figure out how to manage it.
6. I cry.
7. I laugh.
8. I pray.
9. I write.
10. I ask my husband to hold me.
11. I read The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart: An Emotional and Spiritual Handbook by Daphne Rose Kingma
12. Help someone else through the season.
13. I hungrily pour through the books of Ecclesiastes and Job and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, comforted by the discussion reminding me “there is a time to weep and a time to laugh,” and that hell can be an incubation period too.
14. Ad infinitum, as a progression…sometimes I even dance…to a song that heralds my son’s liberation from the sadnesses that we all experience.

I used to take a couple of puffs of my son’s favorite cigar, early in the process, and it made me feel so close to my son I could feel his Presence. Again, we find ways to comfort ourselves. This no longer comforts me; it’s difficult to say what will. It’s also a crap shoot whether I need comfort or not. Some days are chaos in my heart and some days my headspace is clear and calm. I know you all understand, even if you’re not in acute grief.

I have my son’s ornament and I will put it on the tree today. My back still smarts, and I feel a Scrooge-moment coming on because holidays take work, through grief, through loneliness, through depression, and through company when you’re an introvert. This year is ending and another one without my son begins, and as much as the ghost of my son holds part of me captive forever and ever now, life is ephemeral … six years … 59 years … a lifetime.

I’ve used my process wisely, even on days when I thought I had no control; I really did. Each year I’ve donned my Santa hat and participated in Christmas, even when it hurt. I made my first Thanksgiving dinner this year … almost six years later. We enjoyed ourselves and I shed a tear or two while I was cooking, but life goes on, and exhaustion can be a good barometer of a life well-lived. I’ll always reach for that as a goal. But, yeah, I’m feeling it too. I’m right at the precipice between joy and a temporary slump. Only very temporary; I don’t have time for a nose dive.

Maybe I just need another cup of coffee, one with peppermint extract, and a Starbuck’s peppermint brownie to keep me in the Spirit, and a rocking Christmas song.

Yeah, that’s what I need.

Bah humbug, she says — with a grateful heart.

Dedicated to Paula Bateman – Thank you.

Always looking for great resources

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

For Simone Biles

I am in awe of young Simone Biles. Not just because she is a champion for mental health, but because her athleticism is magnificent. Watching her command the air in The Biles’ Triple is without a doubt, one of the wonders of the world. As Simone has shared about the rigor of her training, the stress she was under to perform optimally for America, and with her own blend of mental health issues, still she is heralded as the greatest gymnast of all time. Her success can be a monumental inspiration to those of us who find that grief is most often an uphill battle. When I talk about working your process, I never mean to suggest it is an easy process. Much like Miss Biles, the amount of work it takes to get to the other side of grief, is substantial, and very often grueling.

The longstanding Kubler-Ross model of grieving certainly scratches the surface of the initial grief experience with denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance as our dance partners for as long as it takes for us to get to the graceful twirl of acceptance, where, as David Kessler, in his book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage says, we begin to find purpose and meaning in life again. I haven’t achieved the Simone Biles’ Triple in my own grief process, but I am in love with life again, and even though I have lost the flesh of my flesh, my only child, I am grateful for my life.

I tried to leap through the air before I learned that it would be necessary to be a hot mess for a long time. The first year I sobbed convulsively every single day. Everything hurt. The emotional pain felt so physical I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the emergency room, where I was told that I needed to find a way to deal with my grief. Well, no shit. But the fact remained, I didn’t know how.

Healthy death rituals might not have been modeled for us as children. In my Mexican American family, for example, there was a clear division between adult themes and what was meted out to the children as reasonable burdens for us to carry. Some parents don’t want to burden their children with things like disease, social ills, factual history, and the very profound and inevitable grief that follows the loss of someone or something holy in your life.

I had thought I wouldn’t be able to maintain this site once I began my seminary journey, but like a hardworking gymnast, I wrestled with grief until I was no longer its captive and have made the choice to continue blogging as time allows. I don’t know that grief has an end point. My eyes still get misty when I hear I Will Never Be the Same by Melissa Etheridge. I don’t have meltdowns anymore, but I do have brief flashes of pain from time to time, but they’re manageable now.

Dr. Eugen Kogon, in his The Theory and Practice of Hell, attempts to normalize the horrors of Nazi Germany. I shuddered as I read through the book, and I have not been able to finish it because reading about those horrors proved to be too much for me. I know when I’ve had enough now, and I can control what I allow into my head and heart spaces.

So, how do you normalize pain? As I’ve said many times since that earth-shattering day nearly six years ago, I couldn’t even manage personal hygiene after my son died. My husband took over all my responsibilities while I adjusted, through hell fire, to the loss of my amazing and beautifully tortured son.

Grief. I would write a book about it, but there are so many good ones out there. Educating myself about grief, and tears, lots and lots of tears, are why I was able to find myself and a life purpose. During the grief process … in spite of the pain … we are given the opportunity to be absolutely selfish in our quest for self-preservation and self-examination. I had 32 years of love, devotion, and dysfunction with my son. I remember in early psych classes, the image of Freud’s model of the mind as the iceberg submerged in water, with just its tip exposed. I thought it was an apropos image back then, but I had no idea how deep my iceberg went until after my son died. I’ve been in and out of therapy for over 30 years. I know when I need an emotional tune-up and I check into services for a while. Learning to take care of myself is a gift from the grief process. Grief isn’t just about the loss itself. In my opinion, the grief journey lasts as deep as your iceberg is. Does that make sense?

If emotional scarcity was prevalent in our lives before our loss, every single thing in life will be perceived through the lens of that scarcity. If we haven’t dealt with our own shit prior to the loss, navigating grief in an emotionally healthy way is impossible. Trust me. I know.  I thought I’d had enough therapy to have crystal clarity about everything in G_d’s green earth. If you want to make the gods laugh, right? My grief process was a harrowing experience because ghosts demand attention until you lay them, consciously, to rest.

I’ve had a strong, pathologically so, work ethic. I’m driven and have perseverance in the same way Miss Biles does in the way she practices her skill/physical artistry. Those who find their way through the grief process, those who find themselves, and those who recreate themselves through their grief processes win the gold: a life full of meaning and purpose.

I’m nearly six years into the grieving process. I’ve sobbed until I hyperventilated. I isolated myself. I did all the things people do when they grieve; it’s a process. My son died from complications of substance use disorder. I started the grieving process before he died, and I’ve carried it with me since his death. I come from many permutations of religious practices; religiously, I’m a mutt, but in the Hebrew Bible there is a story about Jacob wrestling with an angel and he won’t let go until the angel blesses him. We wrestle with grief until we tame it, until it no longer commands us. No, we don’t walk away unscathed; Jacob had a limp for the rest of his life.

I dance with grief now; but I’m the one who leads, and my limp is getting increasingly less noticeable.