Posts Tagged With: Lent

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

I don’t know how I feel about this prompt. One of my bugbears is the word normal, and the way that people might tell you that it is normal to feel a certain way, or to react to a death in a particular way. I understand what they may be aiming at, but I struggle with the word normal. 

Because the truth is, nothing is normal. Not anymore. Not once grief enters your life. Not once there is shadow where there was once light, grief where there was once love. Normal, as you knew it, as you had got used to it, is no more. 

But then again, all that I am doing and have been doing these last 13 years- especially so in writing the book- has been to try and normalise the not normal. To talk about the things that we’ve been told by society we shouldn’t talk about. To push the boundaries of the shadows and invite people into them with me, while walking with people in theirs. 

And talking about it all like it’s normal. Because it is. And it isn’t. And it is… this is the bittersweet complexity of grief. 

Lex xx

I am a proud Harry Potter nerd, and so when asked what quote has been particularly meaningful or comforting I think my answer has to be his, said to Harry by his Godfather Sirius Black…

The Harry Potter series is so rich in the theme of grief, especially the grief of children, and indeed the chapter after (*Spoiler alert*) Sirius himself has died is often one I use as an example for people of what it is like to be a child grieving. 

A scripture that I have found comforting, is simply John 11:35- the shortest verse in the bible- Jesus wept. Knowing that at the death if his friend Lazarus that Jesus grieves and weeps with his sisters, is so meaningful. It is comforting, in one’s grief, to know that we have a saviour who knows what it is to grieve. 

Lex xx

Yesterday some friends at college were talking about the worst things that they’d ever said to their mums. I shared with them the worst (read weirdest) thing my mum ever said to me. It was a random memory that suddenly bubbled up in that moment, one that is a little infamous in our family. It is a memory that always make me smile. 

There is a cupboard under the stairs in my parents’ house. It used to be my toy cupboard, before Harry Potter made them cool, because I probably would have tried to sleep in there if I knew… 

But it used to get really untidy, and my mum would regularly have to help me tidy up the cupboard. One day, she was in the depths of the cupboard sorting something out and a vase, i stress this point a vase- I was about 8 and not known for my extensive vase collection, fell off a shelf and hit her on the head. 

From the depths of the cupboard she shouted “Alexandra Elizabeth Bradley, I loathe you!” My brother and I, who were on the outside of the cupboard, just looked at each other and then my mum came out, with the vase, laughing. And then we all joined in. It would have definitely been the worst thing my mum ever said to me… if she was serious… but she wasn’t. So it was in fact one of the weirder things she ever said to me, and my most middle class telling off by far. 

Lex xx

Like i wish I hadn’t started this writing project. There’s a reason that I haven’t significantly written about this whole thing for 10 years after completing the book, because it’s tough. I know that in these prompts I have hardly gone very deep (yet), but even then it’s just always at the surface. I feel like I’ve got no skin on, and everything feels just that little bit too sensitive. 

And I knew it would, but that’s how it feels…today. 

Today, I feel like a bruise. Holding myself a bit too gingerly because I don’t want anyone to press on anything.

And do you know what? Tomorrow I probably won’t feel like this. I’ll probably like this writing project again and see the joy and the point. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up and it will be a better day. 

Tomorrow, I will feel…something else. Because that is the truth and reality of grief, that some days you wake up and just know that it isn’t going to be great day, but then in a day you may feel something completely different. And that is the reality 13 and a half years in, which is horrendous in so many ways, but comforting in so many others.  

Today, that’s how I feel. 

Lex xx

A simple prompt for today. There are libraries of words written in poetry and prose about grief. And that is huge comfort when you yourself are grieving, that you can stumble across some of these words, quite unexpectedly, and it is like a hand reaching out of the text and telling you “Me too.” 

There are many words I could share today, but one that has brought me comfort, I think especially now, a little ways down the road…as the shadows grow longer… is an untitled poem, attributed simply to “Laura” 

There is a grief that ages the face and hardens the heart Yet softens the spirit…

 A grief that casts shadows on the eyes Yet broadens the mind…

A grief that keeps the pain and has no words But increases the understanding…

 There is a grief that breaks the heart and wounds the soul,
That lasts and lasts and can shatter in a minute,But will inspire for a lifetime.

Lex xx