GriefShare Support Group

<<<Sidenote First>>>...The night before the support group meeting Jen appeared in my dreams again.  We were back at high school age.  I sat down with her at a lunch table, but it felt like we hadn't 'officially' met yet.  Awkward stares and moments of silence.  I started to talk and then she was standing, staring, concerned.  It had a feeling like, "How dare you talk to me, you don't know me."  Well, maybe not that harsh, but definitely a guarded body language.  I began again, almost in a pleading fashion, but do not recall the exact words...or any words for that matter.  Not sure if I was asking for her to return, asking for forgiveness over 'yelling' at her and saying I was done with the spirit-hijinx, or trying to get out the elusive message that has bothered me for so long.

Additionally, I have started reading the book Radical Forgiveness.  It is a strange way of reframing the issue with the deceased (in my specific case).  Strange in that it is not forgiveness so much as viewing the hurt through a different set of assumptions.  I have just started, so I need to complete the book to fully work the process, but at a high level, we (our souls) all begin as energy, one with God, and connected.  We come to Earth in human form to experience the pain of being separated from God and the collective, and to learn a (pre-determined) set of lessons.  We sign up for the specific and individual experience.  We develop an (or possibly many) assumption from an early experience, likely our lesson that we signed up for, and usually an incorrect conclusion based on flawed assumptions that we developed.  Patterns of hurt continue to repeat in various ways until we work through the flawed assumption.  Other souls are tuned into our soul needs and even provide the hurts and situations we need to correct and learn our lesson.  So we are not actually looking to learn to forgive these souls, but rather to thank them for pushing us to find the solutions that we are here to learn and experience.  At least that is what I think that I have read so far.

So I need to figure out my hurt and the incorrect assumptions that have lead me to keep embracing them and encountering them and then I can see how Jen's accident contributed to the lesson that I need to learn.  Hopefully, later chapters help to identify the underlying bad assumption and hurt.  The ideas that I have bouncing around in my head include, "I matter/My needs matter/I am important enough (at least to the collective)", something around feeling Lost or Destabilized, and/or "I am allowed to be happy", or ???

It is an interesting way to reframe the situation(s), and has lightened my spirits, so I feel it is going in a positive path forward.

Now back to the regularly scheduled program...I went to my first support group meeting, GriefShare.  Upon introducing myself, I only mentioned Jen's death, as that is the one that I keep reliving.  Most others were sharing a multitude of tragedies, so I did feel blessed in a way that waves of death and grief are not my derailment scenario.  The format is one of a video lesson compiled by experts and peppered with first hand accounts of the grief journey, followed by a sharing of reactions and experiences to what we were just exposed to.  It has only been one meeting (of 12 or 13 weeks), but I think the format works and I am very much willing to continue down the path.  There were a few interesting nuggets in video that will warrant further exploration.

• The experience of being numb right after and not recalling much in the first days (even to the point of someone on the video wishing that they had videotaped the funeral).
• That grief is a consequence of Love - where more Love means more hurt upon death.

And while not necessarily called out in specifics, I wanted to dive into more of the notion of

• How to rebuild or recreate relationships and the feeling of connection lost when these important people in our lives are ripped away from us.

I missed the next meeting and got back on track for the third session.  This one went a little sideways...The volunteer leader was not there (out from a surgery) and the group was left to her second in command.  A combination of maybe not explaining myself well in my comments within the group (trying to share that each journey is unique) and this second in command liking to talk, I didn't feel like I was allowed to feel the way I do or the actions that I have taken need to change.  Seemed contrary to the video message and all of the experts' opinions.  This may be one of the downsides to volunteer led groups, someone with a therapy background and experience may be needed to fully realize the benefits of this type of group therapy.  Perhaps I am being too sensitive and need to hear these critiques...I just left feeling, not angry, but disrupted.

I'll give it a couple more weeks before pulling the rip cord and we will see.

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The Future Is Yours, The Past Is Mine…

So what do I know, someone less than 40, about the past? How could the life lessons experienced be worth writing? How could these lessons be meaningful without a longer life to analyze them? How come I am crying while writing this? How can I make suggestions without doing many them myself?

When you are really young, the future is before you, hopes and dreams and ‘what will be’s dominate. First suggestion, live in the moment. Do not ignore the future, make plans and goals and go get them, but be sure to look around and have fun on the way. Yes, this is another play on “Stop and smell the Roses”. Will it work, probably not. But the younger you are when you really realize it the better off you will be. Hard thing is, you almost have to let a portion of life whiz by to really understand the concept. You can be told, and try to listen, and follow the directions, but you don’t really get it that way. That is the frustrating part…even if you take the advice, you will not know what to do with the tool.

As you get older, you get to look back and say “What if…” Things that I did not do and recommend are my version of playing “What if…” Not regrets per se, but if I could go back and do it again, things that I would like to do. The rub here is that I do truly enjoy my life, my wife, my kids, and I almost feel guilty by saying that if I could do it again that I would do these things, as my life could be so remarkably different today (and would I really like it?). But still, if I could…

When you go to college, get involved! Go Greek, play a sport, be in the band, or student government, just get involved. Sure, you go to college to get an education. You are there to learn. But it is so much more, it is the transformation into an adult. The choices that you make in life stack and layer, and ultimately, are what define you as a person (make sure you like what you are becoming). College is the first time that you get to (or have to) make so many choices. It is this ‘beginning point’ that makes it so fascinating and easy to reminisce. So many people (and I would agree) will say that college days are the best days of life. Do not get me wrong, college is hard when you are college aged. Relationships form and break, papers have to be written, and they get long and hard the further you go into your degree, tests have to be taken, accountability is developed. College is also about the relationships that you build. College will be the first time to meet people so different from you, and people so similar but from different areas. Getting involved with at least one group, if not many, is an instant connection with a group of people. It will be a safety net, a support group, a study partner, access to friends to play with, to cry with, to live with. Beginning college is scary and exciting and full of energy, getting involved will help to ease these new highs and lows. Many of the connections that you make (or cultivate) in college will last for the rest of your life. They are strong connections because these are the people that were there when you grew into an adult. They had similar concerns and excitement and pain at the same time. They are the people that were there when you were beginning, and you for them. Cast the net wide, let it sink deep, and hold on for the ride of a lifetime.

As a sidenote to the beginning point reference: Maybe that is one of the reasons why we never can go back. If you went back to a beginning point with the knowledge and experience of how things can turn out later, it either becomes so easy that it becomes boring and trivial, hard to truly relate to those really going through it for the first time, or you are too good and over-dominate. It may also be one of the reasons that you have to go through college in your early twenties and not wait until your thirties, by the time you are in your thirties you have already gone through a different ‘beginning point’ in adulthood.

Last Saturday night I helped a friend out in his business by working one of his concessions carts at a mid-major college football game. Being around all that youth and potential just made me remember (and long for) those days. The people-watching was spectacular. The students, the families, the alumni…catching snippets conversations about victories, celebrations, friendships, and heartache and pain. Listening to Miranda Lambert on the drive home and trying to shut down what was going through my head, I tried to come up with a song title for the ramblings. ‘The Future Is Yours, The Past Is Mine’ summed it up well. You want to give a couple of these college students this set of secrets and tips and watch what happens. But ultimately, this is no longer my game to play in. I can watch from the sidelines and reminisce, but I cannot help. For even if the advice is sought after actively, the answers to questions would be forgotten, misused, or improperly used. This conclusion has been my lesson. Writing it down has helped to organize and analyze what has been bouncing in my head. The process has provided an end result vastly different than I expected, and that is exciting. What can you do with it…anything?

Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

If someone twenty years older were to send age-applicable life lessons to me, would it be cheating? Would I really be able to capitalize on the knowledge of experience? Or do I have to live my moments and learn from them on my own terms? Would be an interesting experiment, and of course I would want to try…

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