Moments with Mary

What is it about us grievers who have a difficult time asking for help when we need it most?  There is nothing wrong with reaching out when we are in a period in our lives that we need the most help.  After all, the people who support us feel helpless about our situation and would do anything to assist us in our time of need.  But for some reason, perhaps our pride or our stubbornness or our sense of already feeling helpless, won’t allow us to say yes with all the offers of “is there anything I can do to help you?”  What doesn’t make sense is that if we ever needed help, grief is the time when we need it the most.  Yet, we still decline all those loving gifts being offered.   Turn that thinking around and put aside your pride and embrace humility.  Just say Yes!  Yes…you can grocery shop for me.  Yes…you can run this errand.  Yes…you can watch my kids or yes, could you watch my pet.  Yes…you can drop this off.  Yes...would...

During grief, there are times when what’s on your mind can’t connect entirely into your brain causing a gap in getting information out through your mouth.  Your entire being draws a blank.  This blank is caused by feelings of emptiness which in turn causes a pause in connecting your self to yourself.  It's like being out in space.  There is an internal mental and emotional disconnect because death makes no sense and so everything else doesn’t make sense either.  A sense of fear may creep in because you can’t concentrate.  What really is happening is you are feeling the disconnect from being with someone you love who is now gone and that energy between you and them is still trying to find its new space.   Be patient with yourself.  Don’t be so hard on you.  There will come a day when you will connect back into yourself and that day may take some time to get there.  Know that during the grief process, circuits will cross within your v...

While grieving, we listen to the comments and conversations of those around us and none of it seems to matter anymore.  We were once caught up in these exchanges, but now, they have little to no importance.  Those conversations have become inane banter.  We have to hold back from screaming out:  “My loved one is gone and you’re worried about some stupid issue or other unimportant thing. What...or should I say “who” really matters is gone and I can’t talk to or hug or hold them anymore!”  Doesn’t that matter more?!  Words become incessant chatter.  Background noise.  What is happening is that what others around us seem to be so caught up in isn’t important to us anymore.  They have moved on and the conversations that really matter have changed because our loved one is no longer here to join in on those conversations about daily life. On top of that, people around us no longer want to talk about our grief either.  We are silenced by the fa...

Why do we suffer?  This age-old question has plagued generations of people throughout time.  Theologians, philosophers, religious gurus, psychologists and theorists have tried to explain this experience inside human nature with all kinds of explanations of suffering that can occur inside our body, mind, and spirit.  Suffering can come in many forms from physical maladies, political repression, emotional torment, economic hardships, mental cruelty and so on.  Can we accept that part of our human condition is to understand that every one of us at one time or another will suffer?  In the grief journey, we will experience one of the most difficult sufferings in our lifetimes because life has  ended for someone we love deeply and dearly.  We can actually physically feel like our heart has been broken.  Still, our human nature will always question why do we ever have to suffer in the first place.  The answers to this ethereal question is written in...