Grief plays with our emotions. Cindy, one of our Widows Quest regular commenters, yesterday felt angry, felt depressed and I felt so sorry for her because I know that feeling. Anger rises when you feel out of control. I feel angry when I want to change what happened, when I think about what a great man he was and how death seems to take the good ones, when I don’t know how I will pay next months bills, when I want to feel happy and I just don’t…
So what do I do to cope with the anger

I allow myself to …read more

Warning…deep post but in a thinking not depressed sense
At the funeral today of the wonderful Lucy, I sat in the pew pondering what really is the point of life?
We are born, wishing our time away until we can be a grown up and do grown up things
We leave home and have to work to pay for basic needs
We then have families which need our time
We then start losing the people around us
We then stop working and look forward to retirement…and so often we die!
We seem to spend all our lives believing that enjoyment is just round the corner …read more

The more I listen to people, the more that times passes I wonder why we term the bereavement process – a grief cycle? Shouldn’t it be the grief rollercoaster?
There is no clear path to recovery, I jump all over the place…one day fine, the other depressed. I even feel sick at times just like a rollercoaster ride.
Maybe this is just me but from now on I think I will see my journey through grief as a rollercoaster….and remember a rollercoaster ride can be exhilarating and there are days when I am so proud of what I achieved that even that …read more

I received a heart wrenching email yesterday, from a reader who just couldn’t face the world. She finished the email saying that I couldn’t know how she felt…..
That is true, none of us can know how someone else is feeling. However, I believe that hope is much better than despair. Let me tell you a true story.
Her heart was breaking, her grief was overwhelming her. She couldn’t face life without him. She spent a week tidying her house, setting her finances straight, seeing her friends….then went and bought her tablets and her drink which was finally going to make her …read more

Grief causes all kind of emotional stress and all sorts of different emotions to flow through your body – anger, sadness, depression, crying, apathy, numbness, loneliness….
I asked yesterday to Let’s Support a Military Widow who is struggling with her emotions. A oouple of comments made me think

Feelings are what separates us from machine. Feelings make us human.
Feelings should be cherished and not feared….it is a sign that we are a living human being.
Feelings are negative only when we see them as negative. If we believe we are depressed then we are…if we see our depression as part of the grief …read more

When  we are depressed, when we are lonely this affects our emotions. If you catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror you can see you round shoulders, you may be slumping or looking down. Our body language will represent our feelings.
The opposite is true. So if we think about that then we can help our emotions by

Smiling
Standing up tall

Literally a smile can induce physiological changes in our body – including our heart rate etc
It may sound hard – one way I do that is recalling or talking about great memories of your loved one. This induces happier emotions. I …read more

Here we are at the start of a new week and as always we take a look at articles that will help us overcome our grief and depression.

Metaliphe presents Sad or Depressed? posted at Chandra Unplugged – No nonsense, Straight-up blogging from a Life Coach, saying, “Are you really depressed or are you just sad? If you’ve been told you’re depressed but just feel really sad, learn the difference between clinical depression and normal sadness.”

Charles H. Green presents How to Increase Trust by Getting Off Your “S” posted at Trusted Advisor Associates, saying, “Self-orientation can be the biggest obstacle …read more

Each Sunday I post articles that will help us through our grief process and help us find a happiness that we may not feel at the moment is possible. Here are this weeks articles

Matthew Spears presents The flame of blame posted at Loving Awareness, saying, “By assigning responsibility to anyone or anything for a given result, you are assigning blame. It is the need to look for a cause for an experience that is the major factor in blame. So if you want to let go of the blaming process, you must let go of a need to assign responsibility.”

hkalchemy …read more

After not feeling too well this week, I am definitely in the mood for articles that will help me get back on track with my life. So here is this weeks blog carnival on positive thinking

Dr. Neill Neill presents Facing a Possible Death in the Family: Surviving the Emotional Roller Coaster Ride and Making Room for Healing posted at Practical Psychology for Capable People, saying, “A year and a half ago I lost a son to cancer. About three weeks ago I lost another son, this time to heart failure following personal neglect while abusing drugs. I wrote this article …read more

Coping with grief is hard as we all know. Over the weekend I got a comment from Shine on Do you ever feel tired of fighting grief, so I wanted to try and reach out this fellow widow. Here are some thoughts from me but I would love your thoughts to help this blog reader as well as they say “I feel very depressed right now and overwelmed with taking care of my children with no help. I feel like I go through cycles of this mood. Does anyone else ?”

Understand that the feelings are natural and accept that the …read more