Yesterday I posted about how to start moving forward through grief by giving ourselves some targets. It was great to see that is helped Leslie  - a major contributor to this community, but I thought I would now add how I make sure that the words don’t stay on a piece of paper - how I “try” and put them into action each day.

1. I put my goals on post it notes and spread them around the house -  the bathroom mirror, the fridge door etc. This means that the dreams are constantly in my eye line and that they help me to stay positive.
2. I put my legacy as my screensaver on my PC.
3. I have put my goals into my diary….I have spread them throughout the year.
4. Near to the goals I have put photo’s up which show me happy, laughing. I have deliberately chosen photos which are just me….to remind me of the feeling of being happy.
5. I have asked my best friend to email me regularly to ask me how I am doing against the goals. I think the fact that I have shared them means that they are more real.

Bereavement is hard, and we have to find ways of replacing the depression with happy thoughts…this is how I do it….do any of you do anything similar?

Sharing is an important part of the grief process - sharing our feelings, our fears, our thoughts and therefore each Sunday I post articles sent to me which will help us through our bereavement through positive thinking techniques. Here are this weeks articles

Krisdyn presents How to Help the Grieving posted at A Beautiful Life.

Nina presents Ten Powerful Inspirational Quotes and Reflections About Success posted at Metaphysical Teachers, saying, “Sayings and quotes about success can have a powerful effect on you. If you take the time to think about the deeper meaning behind the words, you’ll realize how easily you can apply these sayings into your own life to achieve the success you desire.”

Paula Kawal presents Angels Speak posted at Journey Inward Productions, saying, “The Angels are giving me more and more information. They say that the world is in desperate need of healing and the call of every human being currently on the planet revolves around this in some way or form.”

Erin Pavlina presents Law of Attraction and the Role of Action posted at Erin Pavlina’s Blog, saying, “Recently someone asked me if you have to take action once you set an intention using the Law of Attraction (LOA) or if you can just set the intention and go on about your merry way.”

Celes presents Get Motivated in 10 Surefire Ways posted at EmbraceLiving.Net, saying, “Do you feel like you are lacking motivation in life now? Being in a slump can be quite a frustrating experience - I know because I’ve been there before too. Here’s 10 surefire ways to increase your motivation.”

Scientific Living presents How to Tell Your Own Future posted at Scientific Living, saying, “How to scientifically tell what is going to happen in your future, why, and how to alter it.”

Catherine VanWetter presents To the Heart of the Matter - Inner Peace Tip: Choosing Faith over Fear posted at To The Heart of the Matter, saying, “At times I think about what faith is too much and discover that is a way to get hung up in the details of faith rather than trusting the divine unfolding. How to enter your day with intention.”

Broderick Allen presents Overwhelmed? posted at Broderick Allen - Personal Growth and Enjoying Life’s Journey.

Stephen Martile presents The Unconscious Mind Power Series 2 posted at FreedomEducation.ca by Stephen Martile, saying, “The purpose of this video is to show you how beliefs are formed and where they come from. This is an important step so that you can understand how to reprogram your unconscious mind and create new beliefs.”

Ken Siew presents CHANGE You Believe In Weekly Series #2 - Belief posted at Think Big & Think Money - Guide to Success & Wealth, saying, “Think bigger than you are. If you want to succeed in life, you have to change your old stinking beliefs first! Believe this - YOU have huge potential.”

Donald Latumahina presents Proven Principles for Managing Your Energy posted at Life Optimizer.

Andrew Heath presents On Starting Before We’re Ready posted at Andrew Heath

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of positive thinking using our
carnival submission form.

Grieving is so hard to explain, that I wonder why as human beings we even try to explain? Maybe it is just me but somehow I want to try and explain the feeling and in reality there are no words that fully describe bereavement, mainly because it changes so fluidly.

It just made me think how for all the words we have in the world, we cannot explain

It just made me think how for all the words in the world why try, as it won’t help someone understand unless they have suffered the same grief?

It just made me think that we would hurt so much less if we just didn’t think!

Coping with loss is difficult and we all struggle at times, that is why I would love more people to become involved with our monthly online meeting. To come out of the grief tunnel we need to learn how to live by ourselves, how to cope with the loneliness, how to find happiness again. So how do we learn? Well I believe there are two ways

1. Reading and sharing with others. If you like, learning the theory of grief and how to cope with bereavement.
2. The ‘doing‘. We need to join life again, we need to break out of our grieving shells and start to put the theory into practice.

For me as long as you are doing one of these then you are progressing and you are on the way. The second part - the joining life again - is tough for me. I am becoming more and more of a loner and find it harder to got out…but we must. It is through friendship and love.…that we will heal our hearts.

Last Friday we held our monthly widows support group on the internet and I have to say it was wonderful. On Friday I was not down but feeling a little numb, grief does that every now and again to you, but when I heard the voices of other widows suddenly I felt warmth, I felt energised, I suppose I felt …well, not alone!

So what did I take from the hour we spent talking about our grief, our fears and our hopes for the future?

• The difficult balance we all face between holding on to memories and letting go of the past.
• The importance of family and friends.
• How grief can be hard on us physically but even harder on our subconscious.
• How plans can help you focus on the future

Our conversation gave me much to think about, and I will post more about it during the week. My hope is that we can grow the widows quest support group and help others to get through their bereavement.

Words are powerful and can effect the way we feel - I am a long believer that it is not really what others say to us that affects our mood but what we say to ourselves! Here are 1O words or phrases that we need to stay clear during our bereavement

1. If only….
2. I can’t…
3. But….
4. Why him/her?
5. There is no point…
6. I will never get over this….
7. I can’t cope..
8. Maybe if I had….
9. I wish I had said/did..

and of course 10) I will never love again…..

The more that we repeat these words, the more we will believe them…they are all natural to say, they stem from the pain of grief however we need to find a way of changing I can’t to I can, from I will not to I will….to start the process of recovering from our loss.

Would you add any words to this list?

Grief is draining and we need to feed our souls with positive messages and thinking that will help us through our bereavement. Each Sunday I collect articles to help us find a path to happiness.

Srinivas Rao presents 5 Simple tips for Starting the Personal Development Journey posted at The Skool of Life.

Warren presents Strengths and Weaknesses posted at GenerallyThinking.com, saying, “People have weaknesses. I have weaknesses, you have weaknesses, even James Bond had one weakness (women). Here’s what to do about it.”

Lucky Balaraman presents When I Called God with a Complaint posted at Calm and Cool.

ChristianPF presents Purpose + Passion = Performance posted at Money in the Bible | Christian Personal Finance Blog, saying, “The keys to success in life are passion and purpose. When you have both, the impossible becomes possible…”

Bruno Vigneault presents The benefits of giving from the heart. posted at How To Make A Miracle Happen.

Nesher presents Main Causes of Depression posted at Clinical Depression: Symptoms and Treatment.

Erin Pavlina presents The Relationship Between Happiness and Beliefs posted at Erin Pavlina’s Blog, saying, “Do your beliefs make you happy? Do you currently have beliefs that are leading to a happy life? Do you wake up every morning happy and grateful for the life you have?”

Brain Blogger presents What is Free Will? posted at Brain Blogger, saying, “This post continues my discussion of free will and determinism in neuroscience. I believe addressing free will and determinism allows us to understand the underlying theories and implications of neuroscience and social science research as well as the practical application of that research.”

Nina presents Discover How to Live Your Life with Passion and Purpose posted at Metaphysical Teachers, saying, “Living your life with intense purpose renews your passion for life and enables you to be the best you can be. It strengthens your self-confidence and, best of all, brings self-fulfillment. Find your purpose today, and give it all you’ve got!”

Chris_SS presents When People Say “How’s It Going?”, “What’s Up?” or “What’s New?” posted at How to have more social success.

Michael Miles presents Feeling good and the Law of Attraction posted at Effortless Wealth and Abundance.

John Anyasor presents On the Act of Giving Up posted at Living the HiLife2B (in college), saying, “When faced with the opportunity to give up, pass it by before your dreams pass you by.”

Aparna presents Sleeping for long hours is not good for health posted at Beauty and Personality Grooming.

Paula Kawal presents Contracting or Expanding Your Mode of Focus posted at Journey Inward Productions, saying, “Yesterday nature sent some chaos into our lives in the form of our first good wind storm of the year. As we watched it howl we wondered if trees were coming down, whether or not the power would stay on and what effect all of these possibilities might have on the evenings commitments.”

Mina Irfan presents Why Hitting Rock Bottom is the Best Thing That Happened to Me posted at The Universe Guru, saying, “I understand that times are tough out there – and it’s difficult to appreciate all this when you might be right in the middle of great despair. Just know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel – and one day soon you will be looking back – knowing that you made it. And that you always had it in you. Better start now.”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of positive thinking using our carnival submission form.

The comments to Don’t Forget the Good Times really touched my heart. Anniversaries are tough and I thought I would share how I cope…as I said in my comment to the blog post

“Pain makes me realise my heart is still alive, it is still feeling….pain means that the love is still alive.”

So often during bereavement you can feel numb, you can feel, well actually not feel anything. It was my Nana who taught me something about heartache. She said “Heartache takes away the numbness. Heartache means that your heart is alive and still capable of loving. Heartache means that your love has not died with their death. Heartache should be embraced over the years as it is a positive sign that your love endures, and your heart is learning to love again”

At the time I thought this was daft! But now I think I believe in this idea. Now as the pain increases I smile as I don’t feel the hurt, I try and feel the love. I am not sure if this will help - but always remember we are all here for you.

I am excited by our planned phone call on Friday night - 6pm New York time and of course if any other widows and widowers want to join us and talk about how they are coping with grief, about the blog posts which help most with your bereavement or just for support and friendship - then the details are on our Widows Wiki.

Why am I excited?

Because I know you all understand grief, I know that we have shared hopes, shared pains, that we are sharing each others journey through that dark tunnel of pain to that day when we wake up and feel happiness again.

It does make you think about the power of sharing. Yet when you suffer death, you seem to not want to share….for me I think it was a reaction to sharing my love and then that being lost. You don’t want to share because you don’t feel people will understand….well not Friday, we will all understand and that is why I cannot wait to hear the voices of the Widows Quest Community.

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Sometimes I feel that I have developed a split personality since my bereavement. Why? Because one moment I feel so much love and such happiness that I have felt the most incredible love and then the next moment I am angry…angry to have lost that one special person in my life.

From love to anger and back again in 60 seconds.

In one sense I love it as after the death I thought I would never be able to feel again, that my whole emotional being had shut down so that I never had to hurt again….therefore the anger and the love, show me that underneath that protective layer I can still ..

I think in learning to cope it is not about getting rid of the emotions, it is about taking out the peaks and troughs of the emotion, it is about taking the emotions from an extreme like anger to a more liveable ’sad’

Death maybe the end in one sense, but death is only the start of finding more and more about yourself