God Squad: Grief takes time. Try adding music — and smiles
I receive many emails from people in grief. They ask me what they can do to help themselves get through their grief work. I try to be of help, but the main truth is a line from Samuel Beckett, “You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.”
Here is some of what I have learned about mourning the death of a loved one:
The greater the love the greater the grief, and the longer it takes to heal.
You do not heal in a straight line. You heal in peaks and valleys. So be patient with your grief.
Believing in Heaven helps immensely. If you believe that death is the end of both our bodies and our souls, it is much harder to find hope here.
Serving others is a good antidote to self-pity.
Spending as much time being grateful for their life as you do spending time mourning their death will balance your life.
Do not judge how others mourn.
And finally, there is a wonderful spiritual technique to help with grief work that was taught to me by Father Tom. I call it pretend dancing, although many of you may know it as the saying, “Fake it till you make it.”
Tommy and I were at a book signing for one of our books and there was a band playing, and the whole thing was, to my mind, way over the top. I was sulking at a table trying to figure out a way to escape when Tommy came over to me and pulled my arm to get me to go onto the dance floor and join him and some other friends. I resisted as hard as I could and told him with a pouting face, “I will NOT dance today.” He said, “Well, if you will not dance, then come with me and pretend to dance.”
So, reluctantly, I joined him and I pretended to dance until the band began to play an Aretha Franklin song I loved, and then suddenly my feet were moving on their own, and then my body and my arms, and I saw Tommy smiling at me and saying, “Pretend dancing almost always leads to real dancing.”
I have used this lesson on days when I do not want to pray and on days when I do not want to smile and on days when I do not want to laugh. On those days I force myself to try pretend dancing — pretend praying and pretend smiling and pretend laughing — and almost always the real thing pushes out the pretend thing.
So, when you are grieving, pretend to be better and then someday you will not be pretending anymore.
I receive many emails from people in grief. They ask me what they can do to help themselves get through their grief work. I try to be of help, but the main truth is a line from Samuel Beckett, “You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.”
Here is some of what I have learned about mourning the death of a loved one:
The greater the love the greater the grief, and the longer it takes to heal.
You do not heal in a straight line. You heal in peaks and valleys. So be patient with your grief.
Believing in Heaven helps immensely. If you believe that death is the end of both our bodies and our souls, it is much harder to find hope here.
Serving others is a good antidote to self-pity.
Spending as much time being grateful for their life as you do spending time mourning their death will balance your life.
Do not judge how others mourn.
And finally, there is a wonderful spiritual technique to help with grief work that was taught to me by Father Tom. I call it pretend dancing, although many of you may know it as the saying, “Fake it till you make it.”
Tommy and I were at a book signing for one of our books and there was a band playing, and the whole thing was, to my mind, way over the top. I was sulking at a table trying to figure out a way to escape when Tommy came over to me and pulled my arm to get me to go onto the dance floor and join him and some other friends. I resisted as hard as I could and told him with a pouting face, “I will NOT dance today.” He said, “Well, if you will not dance, then come with me and pretend to dance.”
So, reluctantly, I joined him and I pretended to dance until the band began to play an Aretha Franklin song I loved, and then suddenly my feet were moving on their own, and then my body and my arms, and I saw Tommy smiling at me and saying, “Pretend dancing almost always leads to real dancing.”
I have used this lesson on days when I do not want to pray and on days when I do not want to smile and on days when I do not want to laugh. On those days I force myself to try pretend dancing — pretend praying and pretend smiling and pretend laughing — and almost always the real thing pushes out the pretend thing.
So, when you are grieving, pretend to be better and then someday you will not be pretending anymore.
