Grief Turns Into Wisdom Part 1
 
It was Monday January 10, 2005 when I was looking at my schedule and was grateful that most my afternoon was free. We had planned a nice dinner at Red Lobster to honor the one year anniversary of my mother-in-law. Noon time means a break and returning phone calls. My first call on my machine was from an old friend I had not heard from in a few months. I picked up the phone and called her. I could hear the distress in her voice, but was not fully prepared for the news she needed to tell me. When she told me that her Ex-husband had killed himself, fire went through my feet and up my spine. I said the typical response most people say when they get the news. “WHAT” and I made her repeat the news.

Visions of him danced through my head of the times we were in the recording studio and, as his hands carefully embraced his guitar as he strummed each string to create his masterpiece. It was as if his life was passing before my eyes. I brought myself back and talked to my friend for a few moments making arrangements to meet for lunch and embrace one another in this time.I was dazed throughout the day, but wanted to keep myself balanced, after all, we were preparing for the one year anniversary of my mother-in-laws passing.

That night in bed, a wave of guilt began to hit me. I recall the last time I spoke to him telling him that I did not want to talk to him if he was drunk. The should haves and would haves began to enter my mind. Then suddenly, I fell into a deep sleep. The next day I was struck by how well I slept after receiving such news. I had told a few friends of the suicide and they would say, “are you okay?” I stopped for a moment and realized that after eight suicides in my life, and working with so many people who have lost loved ones to suicide that indeed I was fine. I began to realize that grief turns into wisdom.

Facing the pain of grief takes courage. It means expressing emotions and then coping with them. It means allowing ourselves to cry and be angry or sad and not bottling our feelings up. Grief requires a willingness to allow ourselves to feel our loss so that we can not only honor our loved one and that relationship, but can honor ourselves and our healing. Grief requires us to pay attention to our thoughts, our dreams, our feelings, our relationships and our spirituality.

I spent the next few days looking over the past years of my work with Survivors of Suicide I began to see many common threads. The first thing I noticed was that people tend to change their belief system and their willingness to have a new experience. It seems that once they are willing, then they can open their heart to having a new experience by deciding that they are ready to learn about the truth and begin to question old beliefs and receive an experience of new beliefs.

Crises and grief can test our beliefs. They make us demonstrate how far we’ve come since the last time our foundation was shaken. Of course, we would much rather not have to deal with this, but handled correctly, it can lift us to the next level of our growth, and though unpleasant and painful and our feelings of security are at least momentarily derailed, we find ourselves moving towards an unfamiliar place in our existence; Acceptance.

We learn that saying such things such as; “This isn’t supposed to be happening," or "I didn’t bargain for this; and “It isn’t fair." With time turns into, “I can handle this” or “I am becoming a stronger person” and, “I am not sure what I am supposed to learn, but I have become willing.”  Through all this we realize that we have a choice: we can resist by frantically trying to swim backwards, or we can flow with the current and see what our options are.

If you can trust that things do often happen for a reason, you’re in a position to see things from a different perspective, and look for whatever messages there might be for you. Whether we want to realize this or not, the common “cure” for grief is action. Part of the action we take is to move forward. Of course moving forward after you suffered a severe loss simply means that you have to accept the fact that life will never be the same and you begin to flow with the energy of life with that knowledge.

Having this knowledge is giving ourselves permission to grow, granting ourselves the courage to cry and not feeling a sense of shame or guilt for shedding tears, be it alone, or in front of others. It is the willingness to change our belief systems about ourselves and others. It is awakening to a new spiritual path and not being frightened to walk that higher ground and question our spiritual practices or beliefs.  It is facing the fact that we will never know the answers why, and eventually learning that those answers no longer become an essential part of life. 

More important, is not making death all about you through YOUR guilt and shame, but respecting the person that has passed on. It is letting go of the selfishness of “it’s all about me” and beginning selfness which is “what about me.”  Since wisdom comes from knowledge, it is only through this learning process that wisdom begins.

Grief Turns Into Wisdom Part 2

It was a healing article to write when in January I lost a friend to suicide. Never in my wildest dreams would I realize that within six weeks of this loss, I would lose another friend to suicide. On February 20th, 2005, I lost my dear friend Jo to this disease called suicide. That would put my total to nine losses to suicide in my lifetime.

 So what am I supposed to be learning? I read my own words about grief turning into wisdom, but this loss had me reeling into a grief that I thought no wisdom would be visible. My first reaction was shock and pain. How could this happen? I had talked to her the day she killed herself. We had talked for almost an hour. She sounded great. She stated she was using prayer and meditation to get her through some health issues and she was feeling a sense of hope in her life.

 Now I work in this field and suicide is my specialty. I help families, do keynote speaking and do workshops on prevention and postvention. I know the signs and symptoms, I am aware that sometimes when a person makes that decision that they feel at peace. I am aware that often times the person will make rounds of calls and in their own special way, say goodbye to their loved ones. How could this happen?  How could I have missed this?

I spent days feeling tormented by our last conversation. I went to the memorial and talked with the family. She left behind two daughters and three grandchildren. Her daughters were shocked, sad and angry. Her friends were shocked and sad. I was numb. How could I have missed the obvious? For a week, I could not think straight. My mind kept wondering, my heart kept breaking, and an underlining anger started to surface.

I know my friend was bipolar and understood that this disorder has a high suicide rate. I knew she was on way too many medications for it. She was on nineteen medications for the treatment of bipolar, a regiment that is considered a chemical lobotomy. I knew that she would probably take her own life as she had stated on occasions she hated living in a chemical prison and she would someday take her own life, but I figured she would do so when she was old and grey.

My anger began to increase. She is gone, and it has to be someone’s fault, perhaps her deranged psychiatrist that gave her so many medications and imprisoned my friend into a world of confusion and chemical derangement.  Perhaps it was her fault, why didn’t she get a new psychiatrist, or my mind would go to; maybe it’s my fault. What should I or could I have done after all I talked to her hours before she did this?

Then I recalled an article I read to the SOS group just the day before I got the news. I reread the article several times and the wisdom began to surround me once again.
I recall at the memorial I had stated that Jo died from a disease, the disease of suicide which is brought on by an emotion deficient immune system. The Minster afterwards thanks me for those words and stated he never looked at it that way and that it made sense. Though at the time I said it at her memorial when I spoke, I did not know if it would affect people the way it affected me. However, many people commented on the fact that they never looked at it as an emotional break down of the immune system, and I saw comfort and understanding.

Throughout the week, my mind raced like a car out of control. I kept rereading the article. The part where it stated; “we should not unduly second-guess when we lose a loved one to suicide: What might I have done? Where did I let this person down? If only
I had been there? What if ...?  Rarely would this have made a difference. Indeed, most of the time, we weren't there for the exact reason that the person who fell victim to this
disease did not want us to be there. He or she picked the moment, the spot, and the means precisely so that we wouldn't be there. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that suicide is a disease that picks its victim precisely in such a way so as to exclude others and their attentiveness.”

I began to realize that guilt plays a big role in grief. I spent days feeling tormented by my guilt. One day, sitting on my patio, I gave my guilt to the sky stating I no longer required this guilt. A few moments later, I felt a surge of grief and pain that engulfed me. The emotional pain was so strong that it almost took my breath away. Then I reached for the sky and took my guilt back. Suddenly, I felt guilty again, and the emotional pain was suppressed by the guilt.  Again I threw my guilt to the sky, and the pain of grief took over my body. I took the guilt back again, and I could function, it was as if the guilt served as an emotional extinguisher suffocating the flames of raging pain. 

I realized after all these years what purpose guilt served. It becomes a road block for us feeling our pain. Guilt is a huge obstacle that prevents us from feeling what is real. How can we feel what is real, when we are too busy feeling guilty? Guilt acts like an emotional tranquilizer the prevents us from feeling the sorrow and pain we really need to feel.

Wisdom once again began to encompass me. The “what ifs” did not serve me a purpose in this grieving process. Guilt acted like a strong obstacle preventing me from feeling the real pain I not only felt, but needed to feel in order to begin my healing in grief. There are no medications that can numb the guilt, no chemicals that can tame the fire inside. No quick fix, no stuffing it, just having permission to feel all the feelings that go with the loss of someone to suicide.

The wisdom was right there in front of my face if I wanted to gain knowledge and strength from this and began to feel strong again. I thanked my friend Jo for the wonderful lessons she had given me. Since Jo’s death, I have made many decisions about my life, my path and my goals. Many things are changing for me because I realized that once we step outside ourselves for a moment, that the wisdom is always there, it never left us, perhaps we are the ones that leave wisdom, and when we are ready, the wisdom will be revealed for us.
 
© Tyler Woods Ph.D 2005 Mindhance Wellness
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