Beware of Strangers

To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive-- to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and thus an intensity of consciousness that before we did not know was possible.

Rollo May

Throughout human history, there has been a tendency to fear the unknown. On a macro level, this fear has fueled oppression such as religious intolerance where, for example, during the Dark Ages, countless women were drowned or burned at the state as "witches." Fear of the unknown has incited wars between tribes, hatred between countries, and violence between groups. 

But fear is not merely a societal sarcoma that may manifest in subjugation and massacre; rather, evolutionarily speaking, it is a the most primal and visceral- and necessary- of human emotions. Fear keeps us safe from predators and protects us from endangering our lives. 

If there is a knock on the door, I ask, "Who is it?" in an attempt to familiarize myself so that I feel secure, to ameliorate my fears and keep myself safe from potential harm. The focus of some neophobias is on people, while others fear new experiences, places, or even driving a different path to work. But fear can also hinder social creatures like humans. Fearing people can incite stereotyping and prejudice. The fear of traveling to new places can stunt ethnological appreciation and wisdom. Even driving the same path to the workplace everyday can be inhibitive: What more interesting landmarks might you notice by taking a different path? So, what do we miss by our fears and subsequent evasions of the unfamililar?  

Grief was, at one time, an unfamiliar stranger. My primal response to him was terror and crippling fear. He controlled my thoughts, and I saw the world through his eyes, not my own. Panicked, I could not look this intruder in the eyes. I was paralyzed. I was certain that if my gaze met his, the abyss would, as Nietzsche said, stare back at me and overtake me. Like an ominous stranger at my door, I did not want to invite grief inside my home. I wanted to leave him out in the cold darkness of night where he belonged. 

What I didn't realize then was that this stranger was a part of me now, inexplicably linked by experience. By leaving him outside in the darkness, he became the monster in my dark closet that would haunt me when my mind was still. And unwittingly, I made a decision in 1995 to surrender to that which I most feared. Part of that psychological relinquishment required that I accept grief out of the darkness and into my home.  We sat down together and sipped tea. We walked together. We sat on the back swing and watched the sunset.  I came to know and understand this part of me that felt so foreign, and I began to slowly see the value in the unfamiliar that he brought into my life.  He became more predictable and I feared him less. His roar softened and he did not need to yell for my attention any longer. We gazed into one another's eyes and I survived the facing. 

I can honestly say that now grief, mostly, is my friend and an accepted, not feared, part of me. Now, I trust him to lead me into those places where, as May said, I can truly experience the pain, believing that beauty will soon follow, and knowing that I will experience the intensity of consciousness that far transcends the merely ordinary.

From Helplessness to Hope

MISS Foundation Families Speak Out About Their Very Personal Losses

The Unjust Politicking of Stillbirth by Feminist Groups: 

A Response to Unreasonability

Remembering the Dead: Thoughts from Kierkegaard

"In relationship to one dead you have criterion whereby you can test yourself... it is one's duty to love [those] we do not see...we cannot be set aside because death separates them from us, for duty is eternal."

Søren Kierkegaard

I spent today reading Kierkegaard's "Works of Love". Specifically, a piece called 'the work of love in remembering one dead' whereby he asserts that actively remembering our dead is an act of duty that epitomizes the most unselfish, freest, and most faithful love. Perhaps, it brought me so easily to tears because it is that time of year when my heart, like brittle blown glass, is more fragile than robust. Or, perhaps, it resonated because his words offered marrow to my own philosophy and dutiful practice.

Kierkegaard asserts that the work of love in remembering one who is dead is a work of the most unselfish love. It is unrequited, for the dead can never reciprocate:

"O, if one were accustomed to truly love unselfishly, one would certainly remember the dead differently from the way one usually does after the first period, frequently rather than brief, in which one loves the dead inordinately enough with cries and clamour."

And the work of love in remembering the dead is a work of the freest love. There is no coercion nor compulsion to continue loving the dead. It is an act of authenticity and freewill, not an act of demand or obligation. To remember one dead is intentional and quite different than simply not forgetting soon after the death. It withstands the test of time:

"With respect to one dead... nothing is coercive at all. On the other hand, the loving memory of one dead has to protect itself against...new impressions to expel the memory, and it has to protect itself against time...Time has a dangerous power; in time is is so easy to make a beginning again and thereby to forget...In the meantime, the multiplicity of life's demands beckons to one, the living beckon to one and say: come to us, we will take care of you. One who is dead, however, cannot beckon."

Finally, the work of love in remembering the dead is a work of the most faithful love. It requires unwavering and enduring devotion, for neither affection, nor love, nor strength, nor kindness can be returned from one who is dead. Our dead do nothing to hold on to us; still, in remembering our dead, we love disinterestedly, freely, and faithfully. We hold a place in our lives for their psychological presence. This work of love in remembering the dead is faithful because our dead cannot compel steadfastness of our covenant to remember- the one we made at the moment of death when we vow emphatically, "I will never forget.". Rather, our dead remain passive and unchanged, unable to hold us accountable for fulfilling our promise to remember:

"Little by little, as the dead crumbles away, the memory crumbles away between the fingers and one does not know what becomes of it...if love still abides, it is most faithful."

As I finished reading this piece, tears filled my eyes. I felt vindicated in some small way, as if the world who had so long misunderstood my seemingly strange, unceasing allegiance to my dead child was woefully misguided in its assumptions. The love I hold for her in my heart and the space I allow for her in my life is an act of unselfishness, freewill, and faithfulness. This sounds much more palatable than psychopathologizing the bereaved who choose to remember their dead. And in so doing, I have been better able to learn, grow, endure, and mostly to love all those around me:

"If you love one dead, then remember him lovingly, and learn from him, precisely as one who is dead; learn the kindness of thought, the definiteness in expression, the strength in unchangeableness, the pride in life which you would not be able to learn as well from any human being, even the most highly gifted...Remember one dead and learn in just this way to love the living disinterestedly, freely, faithfully... Remember one who is dead, and in addition to the blessing which is inseparable from this work of love, you will also have the best guidance to understanding life; that it is one's duty to love the men we do not see, but also those we do see."

Sagan: Chaos and Order

You must have chaos within you 

in order to give birth 

to a dancing star.

Frederich Nietzsche

The universe, filled with nebulae, black holes, and the mysteries of time and space, was begotten from atomic chaos. Billions of years ago, all space, matter, and energy in our known universe was contained in a "volume less than one-trillionth the size of a needle point" or about the size of a single atom (deGrasse Tyson, 2004). This preplanetary pandemonium would impregnate our mother in this massive cosmos - Earth's solar system. Out of this frenetic and violent chaos, would come life, order, and beauty. These are key principles of physics and astrophysics: supernovas that outshine entire galaxies are born from massive stellar explosions, their remnants capable of forming ominous black holes or neutron stars and pulsars that are up to eight times larger than our sun; and the untempered chaos of a seemingly libertine universe gives rise to the magnificence of the cosmos.

On July 27, 1994, my own universe imploded when my baby died. I've found myself present with sadness and absent words this July, as I have been during the past 14 voyages of the Earth about its star between June and August. My grief feels like the fledgling cosmos. Chaotic, disordered, confused, violently out of control. Still, I take comfort in reflecting on the genesis of our macrocosm. 

Grief, like our universe, is often indescribable; it is elusive, creviced, and wordless. There exist within it many great mysteries, places unexplored and unknowable given the ephemerality of time. One pithy moment of grief gives rise to a new precipice, like a pulsar in my own universe of loss. I'm sitting quietly with this idea, and I'm reminded of Nietzsche's notion that order will come of the chaos, meaning of the confusion, and that I can, indeed, have my dancing star amidst it all.  Caret initio et fine.

RIP Carl...

November 9, 1934   to   December 20, 1996

From the Gallows of Grief to Gratitude

There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.

Mendel of Kotzk

This quote reminds me of what I've learned during my grief journey. 

I've learned that in brokenness, there can be wholeness. In the darkness, there can be light. In egoism, there can be selflessness. In despair, there can be hope. In ungratefulness, there must, eventually, be gratitude. 

This isn't just psychobabble; for many, it is their survivalist reality. It is the only way that so many bereaved have moved beyond mere suspension.  Those who allow themselves to experience gratitude are often able to transcend their former place in the world. They not only become whole again, but they have reached a threshold of completeness they would never have known would it have not been for their confinement to the gallows.

These are individuals who, despite incapacitating trauma and turmoil, manage to find gratitude for the goodness in their lives. This is not a magical moment of epiphany for many of them. Rather, it evolves over time and with intense cognitive effort.  I believe that finding gratitude- even crumbs or morsels at first- requires emotional maturation, practice, and mindfulness. 

It requires us  to first focus on the self- to take personal responsibility for our own suffering. To acknowledge it. To tell and retell our story. To know ourselves well. It requires us to acknowledge that there is healing in our suffering. It requires that we silence our minds, respect our body's response to the grief, and be gentle with ourselves. It commands patience, intentionality, and commitment to the insufferable pain that radiates from the tips of our hair to the tips of our toes...the agony that causes every cell in our bodies to ache. It requires that we reach out for help from others, sometimes strangers, and that we accept the outreached hand with grace.

Then, when we are ready, we must move beyond the self. We must see the suffering of others. We must acknowledge the other's pain sans the fear of losing or diminishing our own suffering. We must be able to sit compassionately with another, abandoning for a moment our own grief's narcissistic exigence. We must  widen our circle of compassion for all beings suffering. We must see the world through others' eyes.  

We must recognize the acts of kindness, courage, and sacrifice that others have offered along our journey, and extend that droplet of hope to another. It requires that we honor even ill-fated attempts to comfort, and that we reconsider exchanging alienation, anger, and resentment for tolerance, empathy, and acceptance. We must seek gratitude daily, even for the 'small' things in life, like a dandelion dancing on the warm breeze, shadows playing in the park, or a fiery sun setting against a mountainous silhouette- or perhaps, a simple kind word of support from a friend...

Like threads in a garment, grief runs in and out of our daily lives from the instant of Death, one moment often indistinguishable from the next for many days and months. There is a time for this. There is a time to wallow in the mud, a time to pause for the entangling. The garment is unravelling and grief has patterned your life, against your will, in an unfamiliar mosaic.  Yet, gratitude can truly help us to heal from our suffering when the time is right to reconvene our lives. 

And when that time comes, consider your complaints and revisit your expectations. Take the time to fill your heart with gratitude. You can be grateful for what you have without taking away from that which you have lost. 

So, tell someone who has helped you how grateful you are for their presence in your life. Hug someone you love and tell them three things you admire about them. Write a letter or send a card to someone who is making a difference in your community. Leave an anonymous gift for a teacher, doctor, or other "carer". Reach out to another person in mourning.  Let gratitude hang in the shadows, parallel to your grief. It is not magic, but it is transformative. 

When we allow the experience of gratitude, the heart may still be broken but the heart is also most full, most whole, and most complete. Mendel of Kotzk also said, "Where is God to be found? In the place where He is given entry".  Where is gratitude to be found? It can be found in the very place where you have also given it entry. Grief and gratitude can coexist.

I dedicate this posting to our wonderful MISS Foundation moderators, volunteers, and facilitators.  For your commitment to helping others, I am so incredibly grateful.

Traumatic Awakenings

To be alone is one of the greatest evils for a person.

William James

I've always appreciated James' idea of loneliness as a threat to the human being.  We don't give it much thought through the societal bedlam and over-scheduled lives.  Many of us are constantly surrounded by both people and stimuli- auditory, visual, olfactory.  Yet, is it possible to be lonely even when you are with others?  Is it possible to be woefully alone while surrounded by friends? I say, indeed, it is. In fact, I believe this state of existential loneliness happens often in societies where disingenuous, superficial relationships flourish in commonplace. We rarely pause long enough to build the types of authentic and circumspect relationships necessary to avert loneliness- Martin Buber's idea of the "I-Thou" relationship. More importantly, many rarely journey inward to build the most important relationship of all- the relationship with the self.  Loneliness is a way of life in 21st Century Western culture, and the cost may be far too high.

James Lynch, PhD, professor of psychiatry and author of the book, The Broken Heart, asserts that loneliness is one of the leading causes of premature death in society.  The idea that chemical perturbations- the evolution of cellular regulation- incites emotional responses such as love, anger, fear, and loneliness set the stage for modern medicine.  Lynch disagrees with the Cartesian model that the language of emotion is separate from the body. Instead, he posits, the somatic reaction to stress, or loneliness, or grief is the body's way of communicating its suffering.   He asserts that some physical illnesses- cellular dysphoria- occur as a direct result of our bodies' failure to connect with others - and frankly, our true selves: "Because we do tell people to hide their suffering, their vulnerability and loneliness, and so they also hide their beauty...when you wall off your capacity to feel pain, you also diminish your capacity to feel pleasure."

Lynch extrapolates the result: narcissism.  Narcissism, he counters, means no self, no authentic self. These are people who are most likely to suffer heart disease, high blood pressure, and other chronic illnesses according to Lynch.  They cannot feel, really feel, their feelings at all. They do not know themselves, and they have no boundaries between themselves and the world. Narcissists get stuck in their suffering because they are wholly incapable of seeking out meaning; the eventual result being deriving joy even amidst pain. These types of individuals- very lonely individuals- are the least likely to awaken after a trauma- the least likely to recognize that fulfillment and pathos coexist throughout the human experience. Lynch says he has the scientific evidence to back his postulations.  

And I would further ask: How can we be in a real relationship with another if we are not in real relationship, first, with ourselves?  The longest journey is the journey inward. It may begin in loneliness, but it will most certainly end in knowing the self better than ever.  And the reward for this may be the gain of genuine, sustaining relationships and connectedness that enable us to truly be with others- and ourselves- during our short time on this earth.

"Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold."

W.B. Yeats

(Art entitled "Loneliness" by Santosh Gupta)

The Risk of Love

The most secure prisons are those we construct for ourselves.

Gordon Livingston, M.D.

How does one live in a world where children die? 

Living in 21st Century, relatively affluent American society we are unaccustomed to the idea that children die. Yet, there was a time, not long ago- and still true in many parts of the world, when many, many children died. Two dead children in a family of four was not the exception just 100 years ago, or more commonly five dead children in a family of ten.  But our worldview- our very expectations upon which we construct our futures- patently rejects the idea that our families can be swiftly shredded at Death's whim. Due to medical advances, sanitation improvements, and other accoutrements of modern life, most have become wholly unfamiliar with early death, both during infancy and childhood as well as early adulthood, in Western society.

In fact, many believe they can beat Death at His game. Many nonprofit organizations exist to eradicate Death. They are single-cause focused. They want to cure, prevent, heal, and prolong. All worthy causes, indeed. But Death is a formidable enemy who will not secede. We may cure cancer one day, or heal brain injuries, or prevent suicide or car crashes or stillbirth or SIDS...but Death will, for us all, come one day. We can only hope that He comes for the parents first, and then that He comes for parents at the end of their lives, and not prematurely.  We can only hope that for the rest of the world's children, too. Sadly, in a world of inequity and suffering, this is unlikely.  

That is why the MISS Foundation exists. Because since the beginning of man's time on this planet, children have died. And until man takes his final step on this earth, children will continue to die.   We can be imprisoned and paralyzed by fear, anxiety, grief, despair, and sadness. Our children's lives are certainly worthy of such psychological woes.  I think of the purgatorial state of the mother in the film "What Dreams May Come."  Her prison- one of her choosing- was painful for me to watch... it represented a familiar place to which I'd once condemned myself.  In a sense, perhaps, punishment to an austere life is the only justice a mother can give her dead child.

Perhaps not. 

Perhaps, instead, our penalty for outliving our children is the task of seeking connection in the midst of an imperfect world, reinventing ourselves in the midst of our child's ghost, rebirthing in the midst of suffering, or finding a way to love despite the pain. Love, Livingstone says, is the ultimate risk. When we cannot change the parts we wish were different, the unfairness and cruelty of life, we've only one  choice.  To live or die.  Yet, to surrender our existence would be to abandon all that is beautiful about our children who died. Indeed, he says, living after a traumatic death is both an act of will and an act of surrender. He speaks from very personal experience.

Livingstone is a bereaved parent twice. His eldest son completed at suicide, and his youngest, only 13, died of leukemia. How does one exist in a world where children die? I think, perhaps, through that for which we are willing to risk everything- love.

Trauma proliferation: God help us

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other... Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day... for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.

G. David Roberts, Shantaram

I'm presenting a paper this weekend (published by Omega Journal of Death & Dying) at a social stress conference, and I am listening to paper after paper of research on stressful life situations. And you know, there isn't anything that approaches the trauma of child death. Well, actually there is one... Depressed Affect and Historical Loss among Northern American Indigenous Adolescents.  This paper moved me, and I was intrigued by the idea of collective trauma in the context of child death across cultures and time.

Loss, of course, comes with his often-companion- trauma. Like Jung's collective unconscious, historical trauma is intergenerational, unconscious, and unrecognized.  According to Professor Maria Braveheart, historical trauma is the "cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the life span and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma".  

This concept is a similar sociological construct as that suffered collectively by African Americans who were enslaved and their offspring, Jewish people as a result of the Holocaust, and Japanese Americans who were sequestered in California camps at the beginning of World War II.  It's the criminal result of colonized and coerced oppression versus voluntary immigration (ie, Italians and Irish).

American Indian families suffered immense losses at their core. Braveheart cited government-mandated boarding schools, wherein children were forcibly removed from their family homes, as a major factor in the historical trauma. Here she says, "gender roles and family relationships were impaired at the boarding schools, where the focus was on the European tradition of male-female relationships and not the Indian tradition of holding women and children sacred".  (I do so prefer this model...)

These boarding schools exacerbated the traumatic effects of familial separation by stripping the dignity and identities of the children, forbidding their language, sanctioning their ritual and religion. Grandchildren of the boarding schools suffer for the pains of the past through complex pathways; they suffer as a consequence of their own parents' suffering and subjugation.

Health ailments such as type II diabetes were common among American Indians, perhaps because of the dramatic changes in their natural diet; but perhaps also, at least in part, due to the extreme physiological stress.  Psychopathology of chronic stress and even incidental trauma is well documented in empiric studies and include shame, guilt, depression, anxiety, loss of control, low self-esteem, emotional numbing, anger, suicidal ideation, and somatic illnesse-mirrors grief in many ways.

That's on a massive, macro scale. How about individual families?  It makes me wonder about child death in families, and the intergenerational effects of trauma that we pass on to our children. It also incites curiosity about those children who were wounded by the distant past. For example, my mother's mother, was a Sicilian immigrant born just after the turn of the 20th Century. It was a time when many children died before their first birthday. In fact, some families withheld naming their children until post-1st-birthday to ensure they would live.  My grandmother had her first baby around 1931.  Her name was Josephine (1). Josephine died of pneumonia at two years of age.  Her next baby was born in 1933.  Her name was also Josephine (2). She died at around three months of age. My grandmother, fraught with the superstitions of a demon-filled world, believed that evil spirits took the baby because she forgot to pray. Her third baby was born in 1934. She named that baby Mary, believing that the name Josephine might be cursed.  Her fourth baby, born in 1936, she renamed, again, Josephine (3), the namesake of her dead sisters. This would be my mother.  My grandmother was a cold, detached woman. I never heard her express love- she rarely smiled- she was not warm or nurturing. In fact, by today's standards, she was physically and mentally abusive. I cannot help but wonder if her behaviors were manifestations and effects of those losses. And what about the effects on my own mother? How have those effects translated, mutated, and contributed to the nature of my own relationship with Josephine (3)?

Len Pearlin says that stress proliferation- or higher on the continuum, I'd posit, trauma proliferation- can occur three ways. One, through secondary means, or multiple issues that arise concomitant to a traumatic event. Two, it can occur through succession of stressors, such as serial events, interrelated domino effects of a traumatic incident.  And finally, there is well-documented empiric evidence to support the idea of the diffusion of traumatic stressors within a system, such as the family, a type of vicarious trauma contagion.  What is missing from this theory is intergenerationality of traumatic events, the series of historic events wherein an event triggers a response which triggers an event which triggers a response, and so on. What is missing is an examination of how trauma affects both the psychological and the neurocognitive state of a mother, let's say, and how those sometimes neurocidal changes impinge on the prefrontal cortices, limbic systems, and reptilian or paleomammalian regions (MacLean's triune brain theory) of her children's developing brains. It is something that, certainly, warrants further study.

Barefoot walkabout

Today was glorious.  I woke up to perfect Sedona weather, the sun raying, birds singing, and Brewer Trail beckoning. Ingrid and I started up the trail with another friend.

Brewer Trail leads to a special place I call big rock, one of the best panoramics in town, and is about two miles straight toward the big sky.  We met a Native American man at the top of big rock, and a few brave meditative types. I wondered how many relationships healed there, and how many ideas were born there, how much reverie and introspect were discovered on this big, red rock. I wondered how many feet of different lands once stood there, and how many ancient, indigenous voices had spoken there. It's a holy place, that big rock.  The journey to big rock was filled with friendly discussions with Ingrid about life, and men, and work, and aspirations, and grief, and hope, and disappointments.

The journey back down big rock would be very different than the journey toward big rock. While I was on standing big rock, overlooking the herculean geological majesty of Sedona, I experienced a moment of perspicuity.  I decided I would walk all the way down the mountain barefoot on the rocky trail, my feet touching the ground.  

I climbed down big rock barefooted, and I felt different immediately. The direct contact from my skin to the sharp edges of the rocks and earth sent stinging sensations to my brain. Tiny rocks that had just gone unnoticed under my feet now pierced my soles, and I found myself navigating the trail with greater mindfulness of every step. I found myself in the moment, truly in each moment, not deviating from planning the next step. I had to avoid stepping on yet more cactus needles or, worse, into a hungry ant hill. "Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, OUCHHHH!"

For nearly two miles, I walked, and walked, and walked, feet to the burning earth, feeling every sensation. It was a ritualistic exercise in mindfulness and focus, my barefoot walkabout from Sedona's big rock.

It could have been just an impulsive oddity in which I'd chosen to engage. I could have missed the lesson of this walkabout. But I learned something from my trek down the mountain. I learned that I am stronger and more tenacious than I thought, and I that I can tolerate discomfort in exchange for the promise of learning. It affirmed that mindfulness is an important part of walking through life- awareness of surroundings and respect for the moment. I learned that I can navigate pain but not avoid it. I can adjust for rocks in the trail, and I can adjust for the barriers in life but that they are there, unavoidably, and I will face them. 

This impulsive ritual felt good- even through the pain- and I was glad to have taken something profound away from my hike. So I plan to continue the barefoot walkabout when I want to practice mindfulness. The soles of my feet will surely callus over time, but not before being sore and blistered during the process. I cannot reach the lesson without first having accepted the pain. Ah, such is life.

Getting Through the Human Experience

To be alone is one of the greatest evils.

William James

Psychopharmaceuticals are plentiful here in the United States as a way to help individuals cope with  psychic angst.  Pharmaceuticals are marketed as a means to help anyone who is bereft with depression, PTSD, personality disorders, anxiety, PMS, menopause, postpartum-related depression, mood disorders, dysthymic conditions, and even grief.  

A high number of bereaved parents, in my experience mostly mothers, are also prescribed anti-depressants. For some, these pharmaceutical remedies can bring equilibrium to a person who is fraught with debilitating mental illnesses.  Yet, are we pathologizing normal, albeit painful, human experiences of suffering?

Indeed for others, according to Dr. Elio Frattaroli and psychiatrists critical of the overuse of prescriptions, SSRIs are being used as a shortcut to healing, the McDonald's treatment plan of the 21st Century- the comfortable numbing of a society.  We are afraid to feel suffering.  We are uncertain of our own strengths to cope with loss. We do not know how much we can- and should- rely on one another to help us through the human experience.

Interestingly, while SSRIs can help some selective patients with legitimate mental disorders, there are also long-lasting effects of SSRI use. Researchers at the University of Ottawa have discovered a correlation between stillbirth and other negative birth outcomes and SSRIs.   While other studies have demonstrated inefficacy of some SSRIs, even in the case of the severely depressed wherein SSRIs were no more efficacious than a placebo. In some cases, it's worse than we realize. SSRIs were identified to increase violent thoughts toward self or others, including suicidal thoughts. The FDA has warned of these dangers at least twice; yet so many people remain enslaved in a cycle of medication and remedication.

I am not an expert in the use of psychopharmaceuticals for the severely depressed.  

I do, however, know that there are voluminous studies on the benefits of human connectedness, social support, and compassionate others.  Being connected with and supported by others helps women have healthier babies with higher Apgar scores. It helps women cope with the stress and angst of breast cancer. It reduces the effects of postpartum depression.  It helps the homeless and mentally ill.  It even helps accelerate recovery from a myocardial infarction (heart attack).

We are a society of aloneness, a society afraid of really experiencing our own emotions and the feelings of others. Many are emotionally bankrupt, while others are depleted of the most basic of human empathy. We are rushed, hurried, and harried. We do not have time for pause, or reflection, or grief- we have not scheduled suffering into our calendars. Our lives are consumed and constricted by things that are not real- Hollywood gossip, Blackberries and Palm Pilots, parties, Prada shoes, and consumerism. We are so diverted from what really matters that we hardly recognize that which is real- even real relationships. So few of us really have time for authentic relationships- the types of friendships in which we can entrust our pain and suffering. And it takes a tremendous amount of psychic energy to maintain the fraudulence of empty lives.  Is it any wonder so many in Western society face the types of existential crises that cry out for meaning and purpose and connection?

There is no substitute for human relationships. In the absence of meaningful connections to others, we will not survive as a species nor as individuals. We need one another to help us through suffering. We need guidance through the human experience. The answers do not lie in a bottle or in a pill or in distractions or in diversions. Our salvation from suffering, what will save us from the darkness, is the hope, love, empathy, and compassion we offer and receive from one another. It is the only way through the human experience.

Have you come to that Red Sea place in your life 

where there is no way out but through?

Merritt Malloy

Secrets and the Place for Exceptional Memories

Grief colors my world. It is the lens through which I view most everything. I was cleaning out my drawer this morning and came across a note written by a then-seven-year-old boy in love with his mother. The note read:

This is to you mom.

I love you more than life itself.

You are the best mom ever

and when I say ever
I mean ever
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Josh had written me this note, folded in into a tiny pocket that contained a photograph of us together that he'd found in an old album. Most every mother I know would save such a tender memento. Many would have a special place in their homes for such exceptional things for their children's children, so that in two decades they can narrate each treasure, reconstruct and reminisce a childhood past.

Most mothers do not know what I know. They do not know the secret.

So, I took the sweet note and put it into a large storage box, my place for exceptional memories, that holds my children's cherished nuggets. And while exploring amongst the many things in my place of memories, I realized that I saved more than the average mother. I even saved the word "love" scrawled on a tiny corner of a paper napkin, with a red, quasi-heart shape drawn by Josh at age three with a backward "L" and an "E" that resembled his age at the time. I saved every tooth. Every photograph. Every expression of love and every piece of art. I stockpile and hoard memories like a bereaved mother.

I do not save only for their future. I save also for the what ifs; that one in twenty-thousandth chance that I will lose one of my other children to death. It seems unfair to live in constant awareness of life's fragility. I wish I did not know the secret. I wish I'd never been shown. Yet, I do know. I am aware, and I cannot feign ignorance.

I know that you do not forgive yourself easily when a child dies.

I know that no alcohol, no pill, no distractions, and no book can cure the pain.

I know that children can and do die, and that Death is a cruel and unforgiving victor.

I know that there are no guarantees, and that control is an illusion.

I know that good, competent mothers sometimes lose their children, while unloving, neglectful "mothers" sometimes get to keep theirs.

I know that one day, one year, ten years, twenty years, and fifty years is never enough time with your child.

I know that there is no accepted trade, nothing you can barter, to renegotiate your child back to life, not even offering yourself instead.

I know the secret that life goes on, but not really.

So day-by-day, I seek to live in the moment. I feel compelled to save, cherish, hold, adore, and express, wanting no regrets that accompany not saying that which needed saying and not having enough memories. After all, what's a grieving mother to do with such a burdening secret, such a recondite reality? That is, allow it to help me love more profoundly and surrender to the awareness that each moment, every breath, may be the last.

The Firing

Caught between night and day

sun and moon

oceans and sky

caught between check in and departure

letters and language

conviction and contrition

In the liminal space of nothingness

is where grief lives

Until I give it language

welcome it into my space of somethingness

Form it, like soft, pallid clay,

between my fingers

and then fire it in a kiln

hot enough to turn flesh into ashes

and oxides strong enough

to shatter it when dropped

I hold it tightly

mix powdered paints with my tears

and I give it color

I do it in my time
And in my way
You do it in your time
And in your way

This is grief

~J. Cacciatore



A powerful piece of art...

Life before death is a sombre series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study.

The work by German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recorded interviews with the subjects in their final days, reveals much about dying - and living.

Losses, Life's Many Losses

Now that we are parting

rain has returned

I want to be nothing

only the fragrance of some scattered

rose and pass like smoke

now that we are parting

the music will fall and settle

in the pages of your books

and wait to be opened

now that we are parting

my eyes follow invisible

birds across the ceiling

hands become wind

and earth turns faster

than a night ago

I leave a white cloud

in your hands

now that we are parting

I will dress in rain and

watch the warmth behind

some distant window slowly

take on your name

-Lidija Šimkutė

I found an old stack of letters a few months ago from my first love. There were about 60 letters from him- the envelopes had browned, dried like flowers left in the sun. The creases were perforations now, and thinning paper is hard to fold for the hundredth time.

It was 1984. And he loved me so. I, in return, loved him beyond my wildest imagining. We were to spend our lives together. Through a series of tragic interferences and events, he returned to his homeland, across creeks, dams, rivers, and oceans, and into another time zone. He may as well have left earth's atmosphere for an unsophisticated 18 year old girl in love. Still, I waited. My heart overflowed with hurt as I replayed his promise to return, spoken hurriedly as he boarded the flight that would carry him out of my life and into the dictatorial grip of culture and tradition.

It would be more than two years before I would see him again. To say that my heart was broken would be an understatement. He was married, and the sliding door that would be mine was decided, not by me and not by him. 

This was my very first experience with loss and resultant grief. It was grief from which I would never fully recover. Though I would go on with my life, choosing new relationships along the path, no one could replace this man with whom I'd fallen hopelessly in love years- even decades- earlier. The effects of this relationship's ending would endure far beyond the weeks, months, and years to follow. The effects would shadow me throughout my adult life.

And so this is loss. It takes many forms. Sure, losing a relationship is vastly different from losing a child to death. Yet, there still is a very real grief process that accompanies all losses. People are not replaceable with another. This is why it is important to mourn the uniqueness of the person and the relationship that is changed or lost. Within me, there will always be an 18 year old girl who lost the most precious thing in the world to her. And I will always miss him, and what we could have had together.

And within me, there will always be the mother who lost her most precious child- the fourth one- the irreplaceable, unique little girl who I will always miss, and what we should have had together.  The shadows of my grief stick like paste; and though I tried to hide from them, they only changed form with the casting of light. And so this is loss.

Indeed, the window on my horizon has taken on many names of those parted. Josephine and John, Joseph, Elisabeth, Cheyenne. And I am dressed in rain.

(Wo)Man's Search for Meaning: The Existential Crisis

"Science may have found a cure for most evils; 

but it has found no remedy 

for the worst of them all - 

the apathy of human beings."

Helen Keller 

I presented on traumatic loss at a community forum today.   We began to discuss the ways that the MISS Foundation helps families cope after the death of a child.  As I inevitably do, I reflected on the work of Viktor Frankl.  

It's difficult to discuss resiliency and meaning making in absentia Frankl.  His book Man's Search for Meaning has been a constant companion throughout my own grief experience, and I have both a home copy and office copy.  The pages are weary from too much handling, and the edges are tinged with age; still, this worn out book continues to teach me so much about transcending loss and seeing others' pain.

Frankl says that there exists three principal ways in which mankind can find meaning in life: by what we give to the world in terms of our creations;  by what we take from the world in terms of meaningful encounters with others; and finally from suffering. That is, the ways in which we confront a fate that we cannot change. 

Frankl's experiences during the Nazi regime helped provide the foundation for an innovative intervention in psychotherapy called logotherapy.  Logotherapy, like Adlerian psychology, asks the patient to, when ready, view their life in different ways, requiring personal responsibility for understanding and making meaning of loss. Frankl encourages sufferers to become seekers- seekers toward the will for meaning.

According to Frankl, existential distress is inevitable as part of the human condition. It is not neurosis or mental illness; rather it is an indication of our humanity and our desire to seek meaning. He believed that we each have free will to decide: What will I do? Will I suffer in isolation or will I invite connection to and compassion from others? Will I remain silent or will I use my voice to change the world? Will I be a seeker of truth or will I accept what is told to me? Will I use my grief to discover meaning or will I acquiesce to apathy? Will I succumb to the pain or will I decide seek the purposeful life?  Will this tragedy destroy me or will it help me to transcend my place in the world?

Those are, indeed, existential questions that warrant our seeking...

People Green

The current political current has turned green: Attention has turned toward Mother Earth, taking care of the planet- it's what I've always thought of as walking gently on our planet.

I've been a gentle walker since I can remember. When I was in the 6th grade, I went house-to-house garnering signatures for a Save the Whales campaign. I wrote letters to the-then-President Jimmy Carter about the need to recycle waste.  I refused to eat animals or kill bugs (see the below ladybug blog).  Back then, it wasn't vogue, and they didn't call it being green. They had other, less prepossessing, names for people who held those values.  

Today, many more people and institutions have gone green. We're realizing the impact that human beings have on our environment, from factory farming to the massively unethical corporatization of food to the decimation of the rain forests. Even churches have jumped on board the green wagon.  This is such an important time in history for people-- time to connect with our Mother Earth-- time to take care of this beautiful planet our children's children will inherit from us. Time to walk gently on this planet. It's long overdue.

In a society of consumerism and selfish indulgences, I was thinking how, as our Green IQ rises in society, we can translate that over to being people green. Being earth-friendly is necessary: But how do we walk gently with others? How do we see ourselves in the world in relationship with others.  Our People IQ suffers a lot in the West. 

I see this particularly with the bereaved. One mother who lost her son to suicide began telling people he died in a car crash. Why? Because others flooded her with painful remarks, assigning guilt to her as a mother and excusing his death because it was perceived as self-inflicted. I see this when a young baby dies and someone responds recklessly with, "At least you're young. You can have another", as if children are interchangeable and replaceable. I even see it in day-to-day relationships when one person's feelings or opinions are rejected by another, rather than respected.

What brought our society around to an increased sensitivity to the environment is an awareness about the earth and it's vulnerability.  Awareness triggers mindfulness. When we are mindful we are in the moment. Really in the moment. Aware of ourselves, our surroundings, our actions and inactions, and mostly our effects on our surroundings. Other human beings are a part of those surroundings. Are human beings not also worthy of this mindfulness? Should we not also be mindful how what we say and do- how we treat others- affects them?

Mindful living with one another may help improve our relationships, even those transitory in nature. Even the way we interact with the grocery clerk or a fellow driver can have a lasting effect- it's Physics 101- every action has an effect. Will the effect I have on both the earth and those with whom I share it be one worthy of pride or of shame?  Imagine if, in every interaction we considered this...what would the world look like?

Really, it begins with paying attention. How are you in this world? Once you recognize yourself in this world, see yourself for who you are, actions can then follow. It's the power of presence, and it benefits both nature and humanity. While for me, it can be a challenge to really live this mantra each day, I try to stay in the moment and value every interaction, both with nature and with human beings. It's something for which I try to remain mindful, each and every day. 

Turn your attention toward Mother Earth and walk gently on her. She is worthy. 

And also, turn your attention toward your fellow humans and walk gently with them. They, too, are worthy.

Be gentle and not cruel.

Embrace humility more than arrogance.

Thank others more than you accept thanks.

Feel compassion more than apathy.

See what others ignore.

Hold others close more than you push them aside.

Learn more than you teach.

Be present more than absent.

Give more than you take.

-Joanne Cacciatore

So, mindfulness will not conflict with any beliefs or traditions — religious or for that matter scientific — nor is it trying to sell you anything, especially not a new belief system or ideology. It is simply a practical way to be more in touch with the fullness of your being through a systematic process of self-observation, self-inquiry, and mindful action. There is nothing cold, analytical, or unfeeling about it. The overall tenor of mindfulness is gentle, appreciative, and nurturing. Another way to think of it would be “heartfulness.”

— Wherever You Go, There You Are

Mother's Day Redefined

May 11th is Mother's Day. Few people spend this day contemplating the women- the mothers- who will suffer on this day. It is a day, instead, for celebration and gratitude.

There are times in our lives, however, when we must redefine our understanding of previously held beliefs. For many, Mother's Day is such a time.

My mother died at a young age, suddenly and unexpectedly. The woman who gave me life and who would help me to discover both who I was and who I wasn't is gone from this world. I cannot offer her my gratitude this year by taking her out for brunch, showing off her grandchildren. This requires me to see myself as a daughter- and her as a mother- in a much different way than I did for 35 years. I will remember my mother and my daughter. 

Yet, the event that would really challenge the essential meaning of motherhood for me would be the death of my daughter. I experienced motherhood in an entirely different way; and since her death, have sought ways in which I can remain her mother. It is not the way I wanted to be her mom, yet, still it is mothering indeed.  I've had to supplant the normal ways in which I would have filled that role, mainly through service to others. I will remember my motherhood and daughterhood.

For some reason, it's easier for others to understand that on Mother's Day I will think of my own dead mother and miss her, honoring that relationship and mourning all that I've lost. Yet, on Mother's Day I also miss my own child, the MISSing piece of our family, and I mourn all that I've lost, while remaining incredibly grateful for all that I have.  

I've redefined motherhood to include the absence of their presence. 

This Mother's Day, I will think of them both and recognize, in my heart, that I am still both a daughter to my mother and a mother to my daughter. And, I choose to remember- to re-member- my precious girl. I will turn toward our love and the grief and bring them as a whole into my heart. 

Death, simply, is not bigger than that.

The Bionic Woman of Grief

I'm often asked how long it takes before the grief subsides or recovery takes place. The inquisitors are often newly bereaved parents or those who deeply care for them, wishing things to be as they were before the child died.

This came up today on the MISS Foundation forums- our online support groups. Often, in the midst of intense suffering, it is impossible to imagine that this pain will ever end, that life can ever be normal, that the tears will run dry. Some say it is time that heals. Time allows necessary space, a retreat, from that despair of early grief. But I, as usual, see it differently.

My experience, including the most recent emotional upheaval of the past few weeks, has taught me that, for me- and remember that everyone is different, the pain has not weakened. My grief has not been assuaged. I am still grieving deeply, like I was nearly 14 years ago, for my beloved little girl.  

But, I believe that I have become stronger. 

That is Chey's gift to me. She has strengthened me as a woman, mother, friend, and human being. Slowly at first, but over time, my grief muscles, started to build. Like a new work out routine, my muscles hurt at first, burned with pain, objecting to the new weight I had to carry. But over time, I became stronger and stronger, eventually withstanding weight (obstacles, challenges, and other grief) in my life that she helped prepare me to carry. I prefer that way. I become stronger rather than to merely have the grief become weaker. In this algorithm, there is actually gain, not loss. 

I would, of course, give back all my superhuman strength to have her back. But I am more whole and more happy today than I would have been without her in my life.

No, it does not always hurt like this. 

It is not how much time has passed, though, that counts. It's what you do with that time.