Through my connection and knowing Karla, her strength and heart in moving through her own tragedy of loss, which she shared with me in my book "We Are Their Heaven' reveals her endless compassion that brings a perspective to grief that touches each of us in ways that leads us to awakening and hope. -Allison DuBois - Medium and Author Karla's insight and efforts to integrate her understanding of grief into tools for emergency service workers at a time when everyone needs extraordinary help and understanding has proven to be invaluable. -Jim Sparr - Past President of the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Karla has a deep and visceral understanding of grief beyond any scholarly description. Her wisdom and ability to teach others about coping with grief is a gift to the world as we all struggle with loss in our lives. -Paulette C. Compton, RN, MSN, MC - Program Director Maricopa Nursing-Banner Boswell Mesa CC With a compassionate and empathic tone Karla Kay unveils how grief comes to us in ways we could never imagine. Presented in common language, Karla brings to the surface a fresh understanding to grief and a New Paradigm in the world of Loss. Grief - The Universal Emotion of Loss explores the journey we take through grief and the self discovery that lies hidden within us. From Karla's own tragedy of the sudden death of her husband and daughter she was thrust into the depths of her own nightmare; and when the expert advice, prescriptions and therapy fell short she began to examine the feelings, thoughts and emotions of her own grief process. From her new awareness, Karla was inspired to share her vision for moving through the world of grief. For those in the depths of grief, those who have not faced their grief, and for those reaching out to loved ones or friends going through it, Grief - The Universal Emotion of Loss brings the hope and understanding that life after grief truly exists.

Grief

The Universal Emotion Of LossBy Karla Kay

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2012 Karla Kay Whelchel / John Schultz
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-4218-8

Contents

Grief Transcends Everything....................................3Grief is Unexpected............................................5A Natural Human Condition......................................7Grief Is A Place Not A Time....................................8Between Two Worlds.............................................10The Quicksand of Loss..........................................15Suffering in Silence...........................................16Comfort in Isolation...........................................18The Prison of If Only..........................................20The Freedom of Surrender.......................................22Bedrock........................................................27The First Step.................................................28The Upside of Resistance.......................................29Asking for Help................................................31Doing One Thing................................................32Risking Life...................................................33The Old Paradigm...............................................39The New Paradigm...............................................43The Seven Clusters of Grief....................................44The Eleven Layers of Grief.....................................50The Difference Between Feeling and Emotion.....................63Surrounded by Memories.........................................65Holding on to our Emotions.....................................67Consciously Releasing Our Emotions.............................69The Anguish of the World.......................................77The Torment of Our Actions.....................................78Our Secret World of Grief......................................79Healing Our Thoughts...........................................81The Perfect Time and Place.....................................83A New Day......................................................87A New You......................................................89A New World....................................................91

Chapter One

Grief Transcends Everything

There are no words to meaningfully describe the emptiness and pain that takes us over in the first grasp from the fist of grief. The clinched knots in our stomach, the screaming tears in our heart that no one else can hear, the bottomless, sinking feeling and the endless thought that this must be a bad dream; these are all true experiences of the emotional vacuum of grief. Even in a life not yet touched by grief, we often find ourselves feeling separated or distant in many ways, yet grief transcends all the common ideas and definitions we believed before about wanting to be left alone or withdrawing from others.

The most extreme passage into grief comes with the ultimate loss of a loved one – death. And because death is permanent, we have no way to negotiate, reverse or undo what has happened. We feel abandoned in the void of emotional isolation and separateness. We wander without direction in The Valley of Despair; this is where there is no hope, no sense of purpose, no will to take another breath, no reason to live, and no light. In this endless moment nothing reflects the existence of even our own life force. This is not a bad place. This is not a wrong place. Even when we wish we were anywhere else, what we're left with is the painful truth that right now this is where we are and this is all there is.

Being in the Now (not replaying yesterday and not imagining tomorrow) is allowing yourself to stop and get in touch with your emotions in the present moment. In grief the Now is not always a place of spirituality or inspiration. Sometimes the Now is the last place we want to be and it feels like that's all there is. We find ourselves trapped in a box of recycled endless thoughts that will not stop the torture of the 'what-if's'. Why then, do so many of us do everything we can to avoid our thoughts, deny our emotions and shut down? We keep busy, reach for something to stop the pain, self-medicate, over-eat, drink excessively, stare at the television for hours or get lost on the computer; any outside distraction is better than feeling. We overwork, obsessively clean, take harmful risks and disconnect ourselves from the world. We do whatever we can to find some way to escape from the agony and pain that we can't explain to anyone – even ourselves, all with the intent to be as numb as we can be.

Grief is Unexpected

The force of grief is an emotional state of being that we involuntarily gravitate to. It is in this unpredictable emotional churning that our human frailty surfaces in a way we can not ignore. The differences in our states of being and our moods all relate to how our physical being resonates both physiologically and experientially. These different sensations of our moods all have particular vibrations or wave lengths that run through our bodies and our nervous system. For example, good moods, happiness and being in love have high vibrational wavelengths where as bad moods, anger or depression have low vibrations. Our instinctual human response is to armor ourselves, to go to a lower vibration and close ourselves off. When our entire being is exposed to terror, our life force experiences 'overwhelm'. It is in this process that we shut down in the sudden realization that life as we knew it has forever changed.

The ocean is a wonderful metaphor for the experience of grief. It is the expanse of the water, the sound of the surf crashing down and the stillness of the beach. Life is like the surf moving at its own will – endless waves finding their way onto the shore and the mix of sand and stones moving out from underneath our feet. We never know what the waves are going to do, how powerful they will be, if they'll knock us down or lift us up. Just as in life there are peaceful days and stormy days. There are days we cherish and want to remember and there are the days we want to forget forever.

For some people grief is like a rip current, unexpected, devastating and more forceful than we can imagine. Unlike violent, crashing waves, a rip current goes unnoticed until we are in the force of it. What happens when we find ourselves in a rip current is we thrash around, get disoriented, lose ourselves and end up at the bottom of the ocean – or we relax our body, allow ourselves to feel the force of the current, be aware of our circumstance, hold our breath and eventually float to the surface and exhale to take in a new breath of life.

Although we experience small rip currents in our every day life, a more expressive way to explain the devastation caused by sudden loss or the impact of tragedy is more accurately imagined as a tsunami. A tsunami is a response from the isolated event horizon of an earthquake. In this metaphor the earthquake could be a kidnapping, a car accident, a suicide, a homicide or a bombing. The tsunami is the shocking news of a death notification, or terminal diagnosis that powerfully engulfs our whole being. This is not a cognitive decision one makes when realizing we are spiraling into a shadowy unthinkable place never known before. It is as if everything is closing in and there is a terrible anxiety and smothering agony squeezing out what life we have left within us.

A Natural Human Condition

Grief is also...