Intentionality

What strategies can I adopt to help me through the grieving process?

Here are a few things that I've tried, along with their results.

1. Ignoring the situation

Result: Emotional combustion

2. Thinking really really hard

Result: Not a lot

3.  Feeling sorry for self

Result: Downward spiral into alienation

Maybe these are states we need to experience to a certain extent in the grieving process so we can get to a point where we realise they don't work. However, I wish I'd listened to friends a long time ago who suggested I might want to engage with my grief in a tangible and intentional way.

Now I've started to do that, here are some things that have helped and continue to help in my life:

• Bereavement counselling - Finding a good counsellor is so important
• Writing - For me this has brought back memories that I thought were gone forever
• Talking to friends who knew mum - Asking for stories about her is like rediscovering her
• Looking at photos and watching videos of mum - I'm lucky to have these things
• Watching a really sad movie - Get those emotions stirring!

These all sound like really obvious things to do, I'm aware of that, but sometimes it's difficult to actually sit down and 'do' as life inevitably takes over and sweeps us along. I won't be swept anymore.

My biggest learning: Be intentional

The End

This video from the MND Association pretty much demonstrates what happened to my mum between 2008 and 2010. Although the process of degeneration is brutally quickened, the emotions and reactions it elicits are the same. I find it difficult to watch and I hate the undignified portrayal of this woman but for me, watching such things are exactly what I need to help me through the grieving process. It's reality.



At this present time I can only really remember mum in the end state and I hope that one day when I think of her, my first thought will be of her in a normal mum state. Until then, I will continue to think of her as I naturally do in the hope that once I've confronted those images head on I'll be able to move past them to happier memories.