Every year, 22 to 30 percent of college students experience the death of a close friend or family member. These students are at greater risk than their peers of a host of academic, social, and developmental issues, including alcohol abuse and dropping out. Yet, nothing existed to support them.
You must understand that seeing is believing, but you must also know that believing is seeing.
- Denis Waitley
What we believe to be true has a major influence on what we feel as we cope with the death of our loved one. Thus the power to manage feelings lies in our awareness of beliefs we hold, whether they are limiting, and if we are willing to change them. For example, it is not uncommon for mourners to feel guilty because they believe they should have done something that they are sure would have prevented a loved one's death.
One of the ways I have described preaching and teaching following the loss of our son is that I am speaking with a new voice. I’m not sure I invented that phrase, I probably read it someplace. Speaking with a new voice means that I now see things I did not see before, and I am able to express those things from a totally new perspective. When I am talking to someone who is grieving a significant loss, I can usually hear them speaking in a voice to which they are unaccustomed.
The holidays are always hard for those who have lost loved ones. One such Christmas for us was in 2010. My wife's parents were with us for a few weeks. They were becoming feeble and we wanted to spend some precious time with them. That was the last Christmas my father in law celebrated, as he died the following August. My mother in law has lost much of her memory and is in a nursing home. In addition my mother was with us. She had lost her husband of 28 years. It was a special Christmas, and a hard one.
Source That which does not kill us makes us stronger.~ Friedrich Neitzsche
Over the years I have taught many bereaved people a critical concept: for every thought and emotion there is a physical representation of that thought or emotion in every cell in the body. This is a physiological fact of life. That is why anger increases heart rate and blood pressure. Or, ongoing stress compromises the immune system and mourners become ill. Making this concept part of your belief system will be a great motivator to implement your movement plan and manage emotion.
How do you cope with a death that is so sudden, so tragic, and would appear to some to be so preventable? The grief reaction felt by those that are left behind after a person dies from suicide are similar in some ways to any loss, but simultaneously unique in so many ways too. The anger and guilt that accompanies many situations of grief is often heightened further in suicide loss.
