The end of another Decade

Image thanks to @AlastairJNZ

Every year I try and use my birthday as a marker point for “where I am at”. It’s a chance to review, and look back on how I’m doing, where I’m headed, and if I want to stay in that direction.

This year is a little different. Partly because I’m turning 30, and am old enough to see aging for the bitch it is, and young enough for decades to still mean a lot.

The other part is that this year has been really really hard.

I don’t mean, “oh yeah, work has been stressful and I hated my flatmates” hard.

I mean, “name an aspect of my life and there is a high probability that it has had to change substantially” hard.

I was sitting in training tonight with a phenomenal view over Auckland harbour. The light was pouring in from the west, and there was an enormous black cloud to the east, out over the harbour and covering the Coromandle and east Auckland.  There was some SERIOUSLY bad weather going on over there, the clouds blocked any kind of view, and it was clear the rain was torrential.

But from where I was sitting, and the way the light was hitting it, it was the most stunning sunset I have seen this year.

The clouds were lit up purple, the sea was a deep pearly grey black, and the yachts were lit up like fairies, flying across the water returning into safe berth. The sun was lighting the clouds over me from below, and they were breaking up and showing all different shades of pink and orange.

I sat there a bit stunned by the gorgeousness of it all, and stupidly overwhelmed with how well tonight’s sunset summarised my year.

Those big black metaphorical clouds, haven’t been long gone. I can still smell the rain in the air, and it’s going to take a while to clear up. But right now, having gotten past the storm, life is as beautiful as it has ever been. And sometimes that’s all you can ask.

This year in summary.

I have experienced Loss.

I have lost friends.

I have lost family.

I have lost a love.

I have lost a future that I held as certain as I have ever held any future.

I have lost the body I was proud of, the strength I was sure of, and the certainty of what my health will be in the future.

I have lost an element of hope and optimism, and I’m sorry to say my heart is harder than it was.

I have lost something deeply important to me, which I’m still not ready to admit or talk about.

I have Gained.

I have gained friends.

Oh my god. You guys are AMAZING. I have met the most vibrant, exciting, scintillating, fascinating, brilliant, kind and generous people this year. I have made more new friends this year than I did in the four years previous combined.

I have strengthened and rejuvenated old friendships.

I’m so so proud to say that the same girls that jumped up and down dancing like loons at my 21^st will all be there on Saturday for my 30^th. We have fewer things in common, but they are my sisters. They know my heart, and I love them so deeply.

I have gained a new space in my heart.

I became a godmother, my friends have had children and I have found a whole new space in my chest, all ready to adore these little people. Every time I see my godson and his sisters I’m surprised by the depth of how much I adore them, and I feel a great sense of honour that their parents allow me to be so much a part of their family. This participation means more than they can possibly know.

I have gained a career.

For the first time in my life I feel as though I have a career, not just a job. I have a sense of purpose, job satisfaction, I am making a very real difference, and I can see a career path that excites me deeply.

I have gained strength.

What feels like a cruel, bitter hardening of my heart right now will eventually soften, and these experiences have given me new skills, ways to cope, and resilience for the future.

I have gained pride.

I have overcome a lot this year and although I’ve had a huge amount of support when I called for it, I have essentially done it alone. No one else got me out of bed and into work. No one else kept me doing what I needed to do to keep my mind well through all that grief. I did it.
I fucking survived, and right now is the first time I’ve taken the time to feel proud of what I have made it through.

I have gained new skills.
I am learning new tricks, have passed a correspondence course, have started a new volunteer job and am learning an instrument.

Partly this is because some of my old hobbies have had to stop, with the Arthritis, but I’m genuinely excited about these new skills, and pleased to say in spite of all the turmoil, I’ve continued to grow and achieve.

I have gained independence.

I’ve always enjoyed and been good at being single, but the last year has been a real learning curve. For the first time I feel truly independent, less chained to what other people think, and confident enough to follow my own path.  I have maintained my sense of community, while realising that I can’t save anyone but myself, and to TRULY let that go was a challenge.  Living my own life, with integrity, is something I am feeling more confident in.

I feel like my world has literally been turned upside down.

It seemed like a bad thing when it was happening. But now, now I look at my life and it’s something I’m proud of. This plant may have its roots in shit, but it grew twice as fast and 10x as strong because of it.

I won’t ever wish for a smooth ride, because boring isn’t something I do well. But the ability to sail through a storm, and be able to use my support crew, and my own skills to get through it, that’s a hell of a gift.

To those of you reading this who have been there with me for the ride.

Thank you .

I can’t thank you enough.

Let me get you a drink and a hug on Saturday.

X

Scube

Image thanks to @PaulaAMelville

Character building isn’t just a cliché.

Kids aren’t resistant. They don’t miss stuff; they don’t always bounce back from loss and grief. Don’t be naive. Their experiences in childhood will shape them.
But negative experience building character isn’t just a cliché.

I’ve re-written the first bit of this paragraph about four times.
I don’t want to undermine the importance of the people who are a part of the loss I experienced in my youth. I also don’t want to use their stories in order to strengthen my own point of view. Their lives and deaths were their own, and should stay that way.
Let’s just say that before I was a teen we lost a lot of friends and family to accidents, cancer, and illness.
Not all of them were older. Some were younger than I was.
There was a hangover from this and it is not until I became an adult I realised my ideas of life, death and assumptions about what life will bring are not necessarily the norm.

Stuff that I do that some other people don’t.

Assume the worst if the land line rings after 9pm. – My family never calls each other at night because they know the palpitations it gives us.

Know the process when someone calls and says they are on the way to the hospital:
Call next of kin and tell them you will pick them up if applicable. (No-one freaked out should be driving)
Pack toiletries, pyjamas, bottled water, juice, muesli bars, and any meds that the person needs into a bag.
Grab coins and cash for parking
Stop at the petrol station and pick up some phone cards for recharging the patient/ family member’s cell.
Take a book, bottle of water and some sort of food for yourself.

Assume if someone gets sick enough to go to hospital that there is a risk of it being a really bad sign of things to come.

I know that if a doc says you have a 20% chance that is what it means. It doesn’t mean you are in the “miracle” category and the 20% thing doesn’t count for you.

That if a doctor says “hmm we need to take more tests”, it’s not a good thing.

That just because someone is young and cute doesn’t mean they are guaranteed passage through to adulthood without illness or injury.

That people don’t have to attend a funeral /tangi, and may not want to, and that is ALWAYS ok.

Needless to say, I assume that everyone else has had a wealth of experience with grief by the time they get to 30.

Someone was trying to tell me the other night what he thought “the appropriate” grieving period and process was for a particular situation. I had to explain to him that grief doesn’t come at your convenience, and there are no rules and regulations for what is “normal.”
A mother may never stop memorialising their lost child’s birthday. Or she may choose never to acknowledge it. It’s up to her. She is the only person in her position, just as the father of that child will also have his own process.
This difference in process is therein the issue.

I get really sick of people telling me I look surprisingly good or sound surprisingly calm when I call in on bereavement leave, or tell them about bad news. I get even sicker of people expecting me to hit a “get over it” time line by a certain point – always allocated by them.
It is worse when it is someone you love. I sincerely hope that when I am next bereaved my partner will let me grieve on my time, my way, with their support, and without being judged.
My ex didn’t even attend my much beloved grandfather’s funeral with me.
My grandfather didn’t notice.
I did, and that is what is important - those left behind.

I was going to leave it at that, but I’m going to get into some stuff to help cope while you are getting through the roughest patches if you are here from a Google search on grief, and don’t want to just hear me whinge.

Don’t ignore or bury your feelings. Screw what else is going on, do what YOU need to do.
If you feel like going kayaking for 6 solid hours, or beating the shit out of your friends in a sports game go for it (true story, and it was AWESOME).
If you feel like smiling and hugging and talking at the funeral, do it. There are no rules, as long as you also respect how other people feel.
Feeling alone and often angry or sullen is to be expected, just give clear boundaries, and find a way to get the space you need, without attacking or hurting those who may want to cling.
Communicate your feelings. Sometimes just saying “I’m angry ” will make you feel a bit better, even if it is a “bad” feeling. And chances are someone else will feel the same way.
Learn and understand the stages so you can recognise what you may be going through, and allow yourself to transition through the process.

With all of this stuff the biggest thing is, don’t try and do it alone.
If you are afraid of burdening friends, use 7 and call a different one each day.
If you are living with a partner, allocate a time to be negative but have a clear stop point and go for a walk or something nice after you have gotten out of that head space.
There is nothing wrong with paying a therapist so you can talk through things, without feeling like a burden. (nb feeling like a burden and being one are different, friends like to support!)

Grief is not a timeline from horrible to A-Ok. It is a rollercoaster.
My personal rollercoaster goes a bit like this... get plenty of good stuff done in the first two days, melt down, perk up, melt down, start having normal weeks where I don’t think about things then all of a sudden a smell, or something random (one time a Lego boat) sets me off back to an evening of sobbing uncontrollably unable to breath, feeling like my heart is breaking again.
Slowly but surely I start putting the missing person, or part of my life (in the case of my injuries) into a category of something like a treasure. Where I can control how I view them. I wait until I have the time to pull them out of the safe place I store them and hold them gently in my hands and admire them. I look at them from all angles, and take the time to acknowledge that I miss them, but I’m ok without them.
And you have to congratulate yourself when you reach that point, because you are awesome for getting there, no matter how short, or long a time it takes.

Grieving a child - A new resource for families experiencing loss.

Note: the base details of this write up were taken from the details of an interview with the Bay of Plenty Times.

I want to thank Liz, primarily for writing this incredible book, and also for allowing me to write this, I hope this will help market the book and allow the community to know about this new resource.
Please pass the word around. As activists in various different women’s interest
groups we are ideally set to pass the word around.

************************************************************************

It is not often that a book comes out, and I want to;
A) Get it NOW
B) Buy multiple copies for my friends.

Recently I got a wee note from a friend of mine who wanted to let people know that his sister has written a book.
*sigh*
The number of books I have read because I know the author, and then wished I had that couple of hours back...
This is different.

For a start it is a book written to help families cope with bereavement and the process of a stillbirth.
Liz Tamblyn has self-published 300 copies. She hopes the book will be a valuable tool for people working with children dealing with grief .

Secondly Liz is the author and it is written in first person perspective, but
not hers...
The book is called Baby Sam and is in the voice of Baby Sam’s big brother Jack, who was 4 when Sam was stillborn.
Liz wrote the story soon after Sam's death four years ago.
"A lot of it is Jack's words. I read it to him seven or eight times and he corrected the bits I got wrong."
There are not too many times in your life you remember minute to minute. The day you realise your child is gone is one of those moments.

Sam was six days overdue when a check-up discovered that he had died. Liz had felt him moving just the day before.
She knew about stillbirth through her cousin’s experience 14 years before her, and what she had seen in the media, but nothing can prepare you for this.
What Liz’s book does help with is the process after. Grief, the experience of mourning as a family unit and the ways of remembering a child lost.
“The book tells how the family celebrated Sam's life with a special dance at his funeral and by releasing red balloons. Jack and his younger sister Sally received presents from Sam and had a birthday cake with a train on it to mark his birthday.”

This really hit home for me; we celebrated my friend’s son’s 18th birthday a few years back though he died quite soon after his 4th. The first birthdays were filled with the weight of grief, raw and unhealed. In contrast his 18th Birthday was a picnic on the grass; we each laid flowers on his grave and had our own private moments with him before joining the group for what was definitely a celebration. A celebration of his life and his family’s since his loss.

No one grieves the same way, or uses the same coping mechanisms, and so any resource to help support a child through a healthy and natural process of loss is highly relevant.
The BOP times reported that this is the only book on baby loss from the sibling’s perspective, which Liz has kindly let me know is incorrect.
In her words...
“There is another book put out by Skylight NZ, SIDS Wellington and Sands Wellington called "What Happened to Baby" (Which I highly recommend!). It is generic and could be any baby, for any reason at any age or gestation. The text has been carefully designed to fit a wide range of bereavement situations, including miscarriage, stillbirth, cot death and accidental or natural deaths of an infant or toddler. Ours is the only TRUE and PERSONAL story I have found on the subject.”
Liz who is also mum to Harry and Sally, found writing the book was extremely healing and therapeutic.
"It's almost like his life has left a legacy of helping other people through their grief. It's like a new purpose in my life, which I would never have had. I'd rather have him if I had the choice but I have to find the good things."

Mrs Tamblyn is a committee member for Sands, a support group for “families grieving the loss of a baby no matter the gestation or age or reason for death. (Not just stillbirth and newborn death).”

The book was officially launched at a private function in Tauranga last week.

To buy Baby Sam, email babysam@tamblyn.co.nz or visit www.skylight.org.nz.