Hello Friends and New friends-subscribers!
I’m here to offer empathy and inspiration, to bear witness to grief, pain, and to share my experiences of love persevering.
Life has grown around my grief, but in the calm, sudden waves can consume me. Grief was relegated, and so now, it tends to break free.
What happens when grief for one person is smothered by the need to care for another? Containing grief through surgery, healing, chemo-, radiotherapy and administering probate. It’s like an intermittent howl, muted. You know it’s lurking, powerless, unsure of when it jumps you.
And yet, in the most unlikely place - ‘Wandavision’ the Marvel TV series, something clicked for me.
I’ve created Nexus because we often don’t know where to go and must research, investigate, and search for resources.
Please go to the SEPARATE Discussion thread. CLICK HERE to share one observation/insight to help others, and please answer a question from someone else. The discussion thread is open this weekend.
Here are some insights, resources and reflections on Grief.
By Carer Mentor, which includes links to books and websites.
Articles related to Grief on the Substack Platform
Thank you
and Brenda HartmanA compassionate discussion about being a Death Doula: ‘Guided By Joy: A Conversation with Alua Arthur’. On being a death doula, empathy v. compassion, toxic self-reliance, boundaries, celebrating celebrations, and so much more!
Publication: BeyondA poignant essay. ‘What I Learned in My First Year as a Widow. Gratitude is how you get through grief.’
Publication: Wri/ter Interrupted.Navigating feelings after a recent bereavement. ‘Don't let guilt steal your grief.’
Publication: Living in 3D: Divorce, Dementia and DestinyThe impact of dementia and long term illness. The grief we feel before they’ve gone. ‘The Long Goodbye. Navigating my parents' dementia, and my brain's attempt to let it consume me.’
Publication: GenXandwich‘Dementia is a thief that steals from us all’.
Publication: Living in 3D: Divorce, Dementia and DestinyThe paradox of blessing-burden and grief-joy. There are so many quotes I wanted to share from this! ‘Exploring the blessings/burdens of this season. Catastrophising with my cup half full.’
Publication: Sandwich Season.Kristina’s vulnerably raw memoir that shares what happens after her husband’s diagnosed with breast cancer. ‘How it Began’
Publication: After He Said Cancer.The beautiful writing of Bess and Jakes journey. Quote: ‘Every bonus hour has become the golden hour. We haven’t been around as long as Newgrange, but it feels like, just by getting to this solstice, we’re a monument to something. Maybe a monument to how much love can do. We’re beautiful in this light.’ ‘How the light gets in: a solstice at the border of life and death. The fire in each of us, on the shortest day of the year’
Publication: Everything is an Emergency.Navigating grief in life. ‘Intentionally Building Resilience One Day at a Time’
Publication: The Future WidowBearing witness to the decline and feeling the crescendo of grief. ‘When Death is Slow to Come.’ Finding Gratitude in the Midst of Pain Jeff Scott
Opening our hearts and minds to everyone. Grief is an individual experience but for some they are suffocated or marginalised. ‘Feeling suffocated? A social justice approach to grief and loss means that we must attend to the many ways that the marginalized are cast aside.’
Publication: The Grieving Place. Stories of Love and LossA beautiful poem ‘Death came’
Publication: ContemplationsQuote: ‘I had the sense of a circle being brought to completion, of a contract having been honoured.’ A parting gift. Being with my mother at the end.
Publications: Gateway Elderwomen.This is Disenfranchised Grief. YouTube video The lost tribe of childless women
TEDxHull June 2 2017.Quote: ‘Be that as it may, there remains a constant sadness in me that I don’t think will ever go away. My life is unequivocally changed - and it wasn’t a change I wanted or planned for. I miss him more than I could have imagined.’ ‘Three Years a Widow. It doesn’t Seem Possible.’
Publication: Ageing Well.Quote: As a fellow writer said when writing about her husband’s death, “our love is breathing still.” Even though my husband of 60 years is physically gone, constants remain in life - maybe, our love is breathing still - just differently.’ ‘Walk in the Woods’
Publication: Ageing WellReferenced by Janice. I Buried Him. Our love is breathing still.
Publication: Constant CommonerReframing our relationship with grief. ‘It is clear to me now that I was fearful of grief because I had no framework to make sense of the experience of death, and I had no models for how to cope effectively with overwhelming emotion’ An Invitation to Grieve Fearlessly. Grief can be frightening, but there is nothing to fear’. By
Publication: Dr. Amber_Writes’.Learning how we can be like a good friend to our-grieving-selves. Meet Your Grief With Self-Compassion How I've used self-compassion while grieving, and how you can too.
Publication: Dr. Amber_Writes’‘Women are designed to Howl if we're not howling are we even healing?’ By
Publication: Parents Who Think.Quote: ‘These days in my mind, grief looks like a circle of people—all different ages and sizes of Amanda—sitting around, each passing a parcel from person to person. It seems now that when grief had brought someone closure, they passed it on to the next Amanda who was ready.’ ‘The Alchemization of Grief A New Orleans cab driver helps me grieve my daughter’
Publication: The Editing Spectrum‘A keening ceremony Finding the doorway into a shared experience of grief and love’
Publication: Grief Balm‘Somehow the loss keeps happening An exploration of time, felt as a pulse, rather than a period’
Publication: Grief BalmQuote: “AHHH, I BUILT A HOME FOR MY GRIEF TO LIVE IN. “7 Years of Grief” is the home of my acute ache.’ ‘DOES SADNESS BELONG ON THE PAGE FOREVER?’
Publication: Leann Burch WritingQuote: ‘We don’t return, we don’t pretend, and we don’t just move on. We cannot return to our previous grief free days because we aren’t the same anymore, how could we be after such loss?’ ‘Give Grief a Seat’. Making space for our pain. By
Laurita Gorman | MSW SEPPublication: Wildly Unraveled.
‘Quote’ ‘There was nothing I could do to stop the vortex of chaos, and nothing for me to hold onto and take refuge. The only thing I was able to do – in Alan Watts’s words – “to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”'Be Present and Dance with Grief. On moving forward when everything falls apart'. ByBonnie Tai. Publication: 'Let's Just Be'
Resources:
Kokoro: Japanese Wisdom for a Life Well Lived by
- shares her experience and some resources
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Carer Mentor by Victoria is free to read. If you have the means and would like to support the publication, I welcome monthly (£6) and annual (£50) subscriptions. Thank you for your ongoing support.