As you can probably tell, I am using a variety of sources for these prompts as we move through the days. The more question based titles are journal prompts, the ones that are simply words are actually a photo grief journal, but I just use that as writing stimulus. Today we have a prompt from a place that I haven’t used yet, but I couldn’t not use it today…

Psalm 46: 1-5 reads…

In a word… yes! 

When the music changes. When grief becomes part of your life. When there are shadows where once there was light, it changes you, irrevocably. Every single aspect of your life is touched, shaken up, brought into sharper focus. Everything is changed. 

And that includes faith. When someone we love dies, regardless of whether we believe or know that they will rise again in glory, our faith takes on a different quality. It becomes just a little bit darker, we’ve seen and known the shadows. It becomes a little more complicated, heavier, we’ve seen the cost and understand the weight of what it is sometimes to have faith. It becomes truer, less shiny, deeper. It’s more profound, robust, valuable. 

In short our faith changes when someone we love dies, not always for the better. But if we manage to keep our faith while grieving, then there also changes that comfort us and make our faith better. 

And the thing is, that’s what makes it faith rather than a simple fact that can be proved and known. Because it changes. It is buffeted and warped by the storms of life, but if it remains, even the tiniest fractured kernel of it, then that’s faith my friend. 

Lex xx 

We are living in interesting and uncertain times. I’m sure you must all feel the same way as I do currently. I have just packed up my study at college, unsure when exactly I will set foot in it again. We live in the limbo of not knowing what is to come. 

And I can’t help but see the similarities of this time globally and personal grief. Sometimes we want to self isolate, sometimes we have to. Grief causes us to distance ourselves socially. The future is uncertain, and we live with the anxiety of who we’ll see next and when. Our perspectives of who and what is important get shaken up and brought sharper into focus. And, above all, breathing is important. 

In grief, and especially currently, let’s all take a moment to breathe deeply. To remind ourselves that we are alive and just to take a breath is taking a step onward. And sometimes that is as much as we can expect of ourselves. 

Today, let’s breathe. 

Lex xx

A simple prompt for today, and a simple blog. A beautiful song that has brought me much comfort over the years. Take a moment to listen to it today, and allow the words and melodies to seep into your soul and touch the shadows of your grief.

I’ve talked a little bit this week about how grief goes in cycles. And I think, if something is cyclical then it lends itself to seasons. There are seasons to our grief, times when things are more acute; when the pain is more sharp. But then, there will be seasons where grief is smoother and the edges less jagged. 

Just as there are our own personal seasons to grief, there are seasons elsewhere in the world. The natural seasons outside help us to remember that things are ever moving, that fresh hope and life can come out of the most barren of situations. The church has seasons too, and as I have learnt more about the church’s year, I have fallen in love with the liturgical seasons and how they help us navigate the seasons of our own lives. 

It’s the reason that I am choosing to complete this particular writing project during lent, because that is a season of penitence and solemnity. Lent lends itself to dwelling a little deeper on the shadows of grief. Exploring those shadows and how the seasons of grief and how they make us feel. 

Symbols can do the same thing, helping us to remember an aspect of our grief. I have two tattoos that are symbols that draw me back to remembering. The first tattoo that I ever got, on my wrist; and the last one that I got, on my foot. One is the Chinese symbol for Mother, and the other is a Celtic mother and child knot. I like that not everyone will understand what they are and what they mean- but that they are symbols for me, reminding me of seasons I have been in, and may be in again. 

Lex xx

As I first read this prompt, I thought oooh so many to choose from… but now I come to write it, I can’t actually think of many.

I’ve already talked a little bit about people saying that something you’re experiencing in grief is “normal”. That’s a huge platitude, is very well-meaning, but ultimately useless, and can be hurtful. There isn’t anything normal, when the world itself has ceased to be what you recognise. 

I had someone once tell me that God works in mysterious ways, and if I’d been that kind I would have punched her in the face. I can’t think of a more useless platitude, and I don’t even know if that one is well-meaning. It is the ultimate in, I feel that I need to say something but also want you to stop talking and kind of want to wash my hands of what you’ve said. 

That said though, I genuinely do think that when someone offers you a platitude- while they may be useless and I don’t think I believe any of them- they remain well meaning. I think that is the main thing I try to remember when someone attempts to placate my grief- they are meaning well, but simply our of their depth and don’t know what to say. And we all know, that when humans don;t know what to say we get clumsy with our words. 

That’s why I get on my grief soapbox so often, because I want us to do death -and that includes the talking about it- better. So that we stop hurting each other, especially children and young people, with well-meaning platitudes. 

Lex xx 

A simple reply to this question is, I try to remember that I’m not.

I think there are many times, in the world, in your family even, when it feels likes the world continues turning and you are left standing still in your grief. You’re the only one feeling sad or angry. You’re the only one remembering them in that moment. That you are completely on your own in your grief. Now, while it is true that you will be the only one who knows exactly what you’re feeling -and anyone who tries to tell you that they know exactly what you’re feeling is doing your story a disservice- other people are grieving. Just maybe in their way, that looks different to yours. 

One of the things grief seeks to do is isolate you, making you perceive yourself to be lonelier that you actually may be in reality. And one of its tricks is to make you feel like you are the only one grieving, the only one experiencing what you are. 

It’s just not true, at any given time there will be people grieving all sorts of things all around you, and a real source of comfort might just be joining someone in their grief and sharing something of yours. 

When I feel like I’m the only one grieving and I am about to throw a pity party for one, I try to remember that I won’t be the only one grieving, and invite someone over to help blow up some balloons and hang the bunting. 

Lex xx

I had a bit of a pop at Kübler-Ross and her stages yesterday, but it seems today I get to expand on that thinking….

When I was writing my book, and researching the theories behind death and grieving, the “five stages” model of grief din;t sit well with me. It felt simplistic, it felt short sighted and it felt like it didn’t properly reflect the reality I was living. Which is why, while I was doing that work, I developed my own model of grief. 

So, in my theory, there isn’t stages. There is simply before a death and after a death. After the death of someone we love, grief becomes a part of our life and will stay there for the rest of our lives. Encircling that arrow of your life’s trajectory are grieving behaviours; these may include Kübler-Ross’ traditional stages, but may also include myriad other thoughts and feelings. These grieving behaviours are cyclical, inasmuch as sometimes they are very big and noticeable and sometimes they aren’t. But they are always there. 

Just as the sea always waves, sometimes they are rough and very apparent and sometimes you can barely notice them troubling the surface of the water. 

That is my theory about grief and its “stages”. 

So I am after the death, and at the moment some of my grieving behaviours are more noticeable- because I’m writing about them everyday. But calm seas will come again soon. 

Lex xx

I think the greatest thing thing that most people unlearn when they are suddenly thrust into a significant bereavement is the idea that they are grieving “Wrong”. 

Society, culture, our cruel world teaches us from a very early age what it looks like to grieve. That comes from lots of places. Partly it is a relic of Kübler-Ross'(very old) research on death and dying, and the institution of the five stages of grief. If society is given a model of how something might happen, society wants to then use that as a cookie cutter to force every single person through. And if there’s a right way to do something, then obviously there is a wrong way to do it. 

Partly it is from the church of the old days. Grieving as a Christian is a weird place to be, because there are many in the church who have some very weird theology around death and want you to believe their dodgy theology with them. There is this hangover of belief that, because as a Christian you believe in the afterlife you’re therefore  not supposed to be sad when someone we love dies. That, for a Christian, any kind of grief looks wrong. 

But these ideas are what is wrong. One of the reasons I wrote my book and have spent 13 years teaching and speaking on bereavement is to speak against this pervasive idea that people are doing grief wrong.

Let me say it again, for the people in the back, there is no wrong way to grieve. 

Just as, we’re finally, at a place where we’ve mostly stopped telling people the way they should love, we need to get to the point where we do the same with grief. People love differently. People have different relationships. If grief is the inverse, the memory of where love once was, then people will grief differently. 

It can be the longest and hardest thing to unlearn, and gets in the way of the actual hard work of grieving and healing. And I still have the voice in my head sometimes, telling me to stop talking, asking if I’m still not over it. But I am not grieving wrong, that is something I have unlearnt. There is no such thing as grieving wrong. 

Lex xx

If you were here now I’d have just texted or phoned you to tell you the grade I just received back. You would have visited my college and know what it is I’m training for. You’d be giving me tips, because, let’s face it, if you were here now you’d have probably done a masters by now. 

If you were here now you’d have had an opinion on my tattoos, my piercings and the funny colour my hair has just been, I’m sure. I don’t think you’d be cross, I think you’d just have an opinion. 

If you were here now, you’d be so jealous that everyone in the family has kittens- and you’d be visiting them a lot. 

If you were here now we’d be planning your 60th birthday in a few weeks, I don’t know what you’d want to do but I know it would be classy. 

If you were here now, you’d have met your grandsons, you’d know my wife and get to know your future grandbabies…And I think you’d really love them all. 

If you were here now, I’d be saying this to you, rather than a screen…

Lex xx