Re-posted from July 3, 2010, as I recover from hackers… 

I was shopping today, and found these pictures to put up on my wall, I wanted to share the poems with you. As I have been physically struggling with a total knee replacement, mechanically it is awesome & works well, but it swells beyond belief when I actually use it…So I have been frustrated, so much to do…so little energy…these will help me remember it’s all good…eventually!  Anyone who has been to grief beach knows I love inspirational quotes…(smile)

Live…every moment.
Laugh…every day.
Love…beyond words.

Dream…your destiny awaits.
Wish…your life is in your hands.
Believe…your future is unwritten.

For my friends new to the grief journey these words are hard to live by, but remember you are living for and with your loved ones in your heart. Your loved ones are not gone or forgotten, live each day as if it were on purpose, and take your loved ones into the future with you.

♥ ♥ ♥ ʚϊɞ ♥ ♥ ♥

On days when I am tired, and wondering if the struggle is truly worth it for me, or if I am strong enough to do this, God sends me a letter. I truly believe Angels come in many forms, and that I have met a few in my lifetime, this friend is one of those Angels who come into your life to help to open the doors.

I share this with you -

Subject:  wow!!!!!!

Dear Sandy,

I finally have had some moments of peace and quiet so I could focus on your book…..and your book is WONDERFUL!!

What a gift you have given to so many who are completely confused, stressed and worried about how to comfort a friend who is grieving.  You have helped the families who have to hear the words, and those who try to find the right words.  Your writing reflects your experience and there is no doubt you do know exactly what you’re writing about….thus your recommendations will be taken seriously and will be helpful.  I can only imagine how tough it was to rewrite the book, and I hope it has brought you many good things.  It was courageous and (I imagine)
exhausting, but very informative for many.

Today I sent your books to some Make-A-Wish people who hopefully will use it for their volunteer training sessions.

I also sent you a check for the books you sent….and thank you for the charitable discount!  That was very kind and generous of you.

I hope your life is fun, interesting and fulfilling….heaven knows you deserve it!

All the best to you and your family,

Terry

(I am blessed with many Terry s in my life! – Isn’t that interesting?)

©SandyBrosam.com 2011

Signs of loved ones – Are you seeing them?

People tell me they can’t see signs from their loved ones gone before them or from God…

I think when we are so lost and searching so hard, in the depth of our pain, it is easy to overlook the signs. They are all around us. They come from our connection with all that is. For me the signs can come as a silly song my mother used to play on the record player, that just popped into my head as I was getting dressed one day, I was stressed out and cranky about going to work. The song kept playing and playing in my mind until I finally realized it was my mother saying hello, and to remember to laugh. When I said OK mom, I get it, I need to lighten up! Then the song faded away as I remembered fun times with my mother, and had the feeling that she was happy and at peace on the other side.

I also have a “prayer” plant that I was given at Brandon’s funeral. This plant has lived even when I have neglected it, and thrives. It blooms on the anniversary of his birth and death, and on times when I need some loving encouragement on tough days. It is his way of showing me that our love will never die. I can feel his love radiate off the leaves when tending to it, and can focus on it when I need to move past a block in my writing. This last Thanksgiving was a hard one for me, I was at the edge of tears all day. My husband works graveyards so he was sleeping, and I was quietly working on the computer. My children were in Dallas and Italy, and friends we had shared dinner with on other years had other arrangements. So it was truly an empty nest. When I finally asked out loud why am I so sad today?? The message came thru loud and clear, because I miss All my children, the ones on earth and the ones on the other side. I felt disconnected with all of them, my living children are 26 & 31 so we have had many Thanksgivings without them as a empty nest…so I just did not know why it was so hard this year. I just felt so alone in the quiet. I was standing looking out the window, and turned Brandon’s plant to rotate it, and to my surprise, the side towards the window was in bloom with more flowers than it ever has, they were new, and had just opened. It was like he was right here with me giving me a big hug! I was able to go on with my day with a smile instead of tears, was it a sign? Absolutely!

Sometimes when I am outside I will feel a swirl of wind on a windless day and feel a very peaceful loving moment, are these signs? Absolutely!

In my reaching out to others in grief, it can get tough for me, as I have to open my heart to help others heal. I have learned not to take on others pain, but I do feel it as if it is mine when working with someone. The grief is overwhelming to me at times, and I will ask God/Spirit if this is truly the journey I must take, as it is so hard at times…

The answer comes sometimes instantly! I will get a phone call, or a message on facebook, or an email from someone telling me that I had helped them on their journey. I write from my heart when posting on facebook, and sometimes when responding to one person, it is someone posting behind them that my words help.  So the signs are always here, we just have to be open enough to see them!

Below is my original post on Signs from August 17,2010 I am re-posting as I rebuild this website after being hacked.

Recently, I got this message, on a day that was hard for me – as I was writing my convention notes and going back down that part of the journey I don’t like – I received this response to an invite. People tell me they can’t see the signs from their loved ones gone on, or from God… Kinda hard to miss this one. I don’t know why I want to share it with you, maybe it’s more to convince myself all this “stuff” today is really worth it. Somewhere in the middle of talking to advertising people in Dallas, my ebook issues, website stuff… here comes this message.

OK GOD I got it!

Private message on Facebook, a new friend responding to my invite to be friends…..wow………

Hi Sandy,

Thank you so much for reaching out in friendship and support. I’m sorry for the reason we are meeting, but thank you new friend. I have read many articles, books, etc. on what to say to the people who manage to always say the wrong things trying to make me feel better. One of my new dear friends had written a letter to her friends & family when her son died in a horrendous car crash 3 years ago. She has shared the letter with me and lovingly gave me permission to use it for my own friends and family when I was in the very beginning stages of my grief. It helped me a lot, just as I know your book is helping many others who have to deal with the well-meaning things people say.

I am honored to consider you a friend now in this unfortunate exclusive club we have been thrown into.

Love & hugs,
Mickey

*   *   *   *   *

I saw an interesting post by someone, who didn’t know I was in “the club” he was commenting on how anything to do with bereaved parents went like “wildfire” across Facebook…if he only knew how much pain there is… I get overwhelmed with the sadness I see at times, so many new to grief, so many asking all the questions I asked so long ago, so much anger…

I do what I can, and private message a lot of friends I see who are crying so loudly for help. I will be speaking at the Bereaved Parents convention in AR in July, and I have rewrote what I want to say many times…hoping to say what is needed to help someone on their journey…

The book I wrote for the support group around the grieving, now I will be talking to the grieving about how I move forward in my daily life, and how I taught my children about death, and of course, how to recover from the comments…

And I am honored to be your friend, and yes I wish it was not for this reason! Hugs!

Sandy

*   *   *   *   *

Sandy- Unfortunately, unless you are in “the club” you can’t ever know this kind of pain and devastation. People like you are so necessary to hopefully educate the ones who have been fortunate enough to not join us.

I am actually at the beginning of this terrible journey myself. My daughter Marti joined the angels on November 3, 2009. She was 47 and died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. Luckily for me, about two weeks after she died, in a moment of complete desperation and panic I went searching on the internet for some place to help me. At that moment I didn’t want to live any longer and had no idea how I was going to get through it. Marti was my only child and I’ve been divorced since she was a baby so I was completely alone and lost. I was led to this amazing grief site called Otrib. It was 5:00 a.m. and I had no idea what I was doing there. I just posted and wrote my heart out until the panic subsided. I went back a few hours later and there were these wonderful people who had answered my cry for help. I am always completely in awe of the ability of people to reach out and help one another. From that day I made a lot of wonderful friends which then led me to Facebook and more wonderful friends. We all seem to gain our own strength from helping each other. These people are now my “new family”. I’m closer to them than a lot of my friends that I’ve known for years. I have to end 3 friendships so far because of people just not knowing what to do or say with me. One friend after only a month told me I was feeling sorry for myself and that she thought I was smarter than that. Another friend suggested that maybe being so involved with all these grief things was keeping me stuck in the grief.

Your books are so needed. For me, I’ve been lucky enough to know how to search out and find what I need to help myself. I take heart with the others who have walked this path before me when they tell me it will get easier. In fact it has gotten a little easier. I still haven’t had what I would call good days yet, though some days are not as bad as others. So for now those are my good days I suppose. I still haven’t been able to feel joy about anything. It seems like I’m looking at the world with a filter over my eyes. Nothing is bright and sharp any more. I long for the day when the joy will return. I know I am forever changed. I know I will never stop missing my daughter but I do not we will be together again someday. The pain will never go away, but I will learn to manage it and live with it.

Good luck with your speech at the convention. Don’t worry about what you will say. when you get up there, I’m sure the angels will guide you to say what needs to be heard.

Thank you for being who you are, my friend.

Love & hugs,
Mickey

I don’t even know what to respond back with, I’ll do that when I am done wiping tears away.

Sandy

Signs from our loved ones can be as quiet as a whisper on the wind, or they can be as loud as a song in your head, but they are always from the love in your heart! When you stop searching for them, they will be right in front of you!

©SandyBrosam.com 2011

I am somewhat new to facebook (first posted 1/19/2011), and I am amazed at the impact is has on peoples lives! WOW! I used to think about people who were in their late 80′s and 90′s as true pioneers, as they lived before the automobile, let alone the computer. Now I think lives will be defined before the Internet and facebook!

What a social awakening! We can reach across the world and touch lives. we can share joy , laughter, and sadness instantly with a few keystrokes. We can keep in touch with our cell phones. What I see that I think is so profoundly awesome, is the way the grieving people can connect with someone who knows what they are going thru. Someone who can relate to all of it, because they, too are walking that journey. 30 years ago when my son died in a car accident, there was no one where I lived who had lost a small child in a car wreck. Compassionate Friends was just getting going, and I was way too pissed off to hear about how God had a plan…God, had let me down…

What a different world it is now! There are so many places to find support, so many sharing their hearts and their love with each other. In a world where the news likes to bring out all the bad and evil in this world, there are many compassionate people still here on this earth, helping others simply because they can. It is to them I dedicate these facebook stories. There are so many, my page is a busy one, that I miss a lot, but I try and catch up as best I can, and have pulled my favorites to post here for those not on facebook, or too busy, and missed them. So here’s to the facebook hero’s, helping to heal hearts one breath at a time!

One of my first posts after joining facebook:

Sandy Brosam ~ I work in a hospital, and as I was talking to a new mom, a mere child herself…as she was holding that precious babe in her arm, she looked up in fear and amazement and asked me “what is the hardest thing about being a mother?” I looked at her and smiled gently and said “Not being one” winked and walked out of the room.

Now that took years of healing to be able to say that and walk away without crying, and clearly she had no clue as to what I meant, but it meant a lot to me. To all the newly bereaved moms and dads out there, I send you hugs! Push the pain away and draw on the love, it will get you through the day, one breath at a time!

Diana ~ If you hear me laugh one moment in time, do you think… Oh great! She seems fine. The smiles you see, don’t reach my eyes… Nor do you hear my silent anguished cries. My heart is breaking, can’t you see? Without my sweet child here with me. My heart and soul have taken a big hit. Yet some loved ones tell me “get over it….” Each new day is an emotional strain I pray none of them experience this pain. Only another parent that is grieving too can understand what I am going thru. My precious child has died, that is true, Why must I hide this pain from you?

Trena ~ I had someone yesterday, that told me that I used to be a good person. People admired me and looked up to me, but that I have changed. I have changed, I will never be the person is use to be. I see people and say Hi how are you. I don’t chit chat anymore. Does this make me a bad person? Life is not the same and never will be. I wish that I had my life back, but that is impossible. I don’t want pity from people, just try to understand that I am trying to just survive.

Angelina ~ The pain is always there. I just sometimes put on a happy face. My heart aches everyday as I know yours does. Cried when I read the (above) posting. You are receiving a hug from me right now.

Lisa ~ Nobody does “Get It” …. I think especially your own family. At least in my case. This country does not recognize profound grief and so we become the outsiders.

Gail ~ Yeah, I know the feeling. I’ve even been told I need to seek “professional help” Well, let them lose a child – of any age and we’ll see how they handle it. I thank God every day for facebook because we can share the load and not feel “crazy” for doing it.

Terri ~ When you find “normal” let me know. Xoxoxxo

I wrote the blog above, when just starting out on facebook… now I have had so much going on in facebook, I built a regular page for the longer conversations that I want to share, that I moved to griefbeach.com

©SandyBrosam.com 2011

(we all have one)

I was cleaning my refrigerator, which gave me quiet time to reflect on how it is so similar to putting things deep inside to save for later with my grief. Some things I keep to the front, and access them routinely, but some things get shoved way back and simply start to rot in neglect. Some things I simply keep because I don’t want to lose them even though I have not used them in a very long time. Then there are the “gifts” I didn’t necessarily want and don’t know what to do with them!

A few years ago, when helping my mother clean out her pantry after a mouse infestation (nasty little buggers),  I looked deep in her fridge…uh ohhhh…It was ugly! In her defense, she had a brain aneurysm that we didn’t know about until later that caused extreme pain when her head was down…so anything that got pushed back in the bottom pretty much stayed there, as my dad had macular degeneration so he could not see stuff in the bottom well. I was in amazement they didn’t get sick from eating something that was waaaayyyyy too old!

So before I let the refrigerator take over, I have to tell you about “Grama’s Fridge”  and the journey to clean it out. I had taken my teen age son with me to visit the folks as they live about 70 miles away and we don’t get up there often enough to visit. Our mission was to get rid of all the mouse mess in her large pantry (she grew up in the depression, so she kept a large supply of food on hand) and spend time visiting.

Grama sat in a chair in the kitchen, watching us as we cleaned to make sure we didn’t throw out anything she might need later… she had many boxes of pasta, rice, cake mixes all with chewed holes… herbal teas (the mice needed some tea with their cake I guess) and lots of mess. I was looking for something cold to drink in the fridge, and looked on the bottom shelf, it was ugly… my mission was now to clean out that fuzzy stuff down there after the pantry…that is where my son got lessons in biology… he was too curious… why is it when you say “don’t open that” it becomes an incentive for a teen to do just that?

He took it as a challenge…you don’t want me to open it? I can see at least 3 colors thru the side of the plastic; I gotta see what it is? My response is no…with rainbow colors comes a smell that will stick in your nose for days…it will gag you and cause you to perhaps even vomit! Rainbow colors on food with fuzz are evil… back away and let me throw it in the garbage can… my mother is laughing so hard she has tears coming down her face… we had already found jars of mayo and relishes and jellies that were outdated by years, the oldest being 7 years out… each time one hit the garbage can my mother was like “HEY I might need that”… and we had found some nasty slimy unknown stuff that went out in the container only to hear, not my good Tupperware! I told mom, you haven’t used it for years except to grow whatever was in there, it won’t wash out, it is a part of the plastic now…so when we came to this light blue Tupperware container, my son could not resist, he had already seen green slime, purple fuzzies, orange globs, but not all three in one dish… he asked my mother what she thought it was, she said pork chop. I asked when she cooked that chop, she said a while back I can’t remember… I said must have been a very long while… my son says well then it can’t be that bad and popped the lid… science lesson… gas is created as things change form… he was so overcome he is gagging… and his eyes are rolling into the back of his head, I run over and put the lid back on, and open the 2 closest doors as we are all under the rainbow cloud… when we can breathe again we all start laughing so hard I about pee my pants! Holy Cow! It was way worse than I imagined! I got to tell my son, “I told you not to open it” and thru his tears of laughter he had to admit mama was right… not often a teen thinks mom knows best…

Now back to the message about stuffing your grief like you stuff your refrigerator…

I have been on this grief journey for over 30 years now, so I have way too much experience stuffing things (emotions) away to deal with later. Just like I put stuff in the fridge to take care of later. I cook a lot of roasts and casseroles so I have extra to put in the freezer for travel meals for my husband. He travels and takes them with him to the hotels to warm up. But some nights I am too tired to divide it all up and just stick it in the fridge. If it gets pushed to the back, sometimes I forget about it until it is nasty. (not like my mother’s stuff) and sometimes I get food gifts that are too
spicy or different that I save, but never quite get enough nerve to open them and try them… how does this relate to grief?

If you think of grief as food for thought in the grief refrigerator, it is easy to see the similarities. Grief comes to you in many forms and at any time. If you are not ready to deal with what grief is bringing you, you put it in the fridge for later. There is room on the shelves and in the door, space for just about everything you want to put in there. But the really hard stuff to deal with get put on the bottom shelf and shoved back behind other things thought to be more important to be dealt with at a late time. It is that stuff that rots in your soul, only to fester and eat away at you until you deal with it.

When I was writing my Book Becoming Bigger Than Our Pain, I talked about how I thought I needed to feel the pain of my grief to be “loyal” to my son. I held that pain for so long, it was on the top shelf of that refrigerator, I used it daily, kept it within reach at all times. It was a part of me, and I felt if I lost it; then I would have nothing. Looking back I can see how toxic that was for me, but at that time it was what was in the fridge.  I kept other things in there, I had my goodwill casseroles, some were quite tasty and nourished me with love, but some came with bitter words and harsh comments, they got pushed to the back. I kept my “what could have been” in the door for easy reach, so as I watched other children grow while missing mine. I could grab a quick slug of regrets. I had a full gallon of guilt juice in the door; I needed at least a full glass daily. My eggs were my protection, as long as I kept my heart nestled snugly in the carton I was safe, but when they fell out or cracked, my heart and soul were vulnerable to others. I didn’t like that; it was not safe to let my eggs out! If they rolled on the floor, as eggs roll in uneven manner, my emotions would roll, I wanted to open my heart to others, but it was much safer to just keep it in the carton. When my heart was cracked open I seemed to pull in more pain than I let out. I had anger jam also in the door, it was for special occasions when my pain threshold was too high and I just had to blow off some toast. It was right next to my fear mustard. When grief demanded I grow, I needed the mustard to dip the meat of pain in so I would not repeat that meal.

Gradually I learned to transform my items in my fridge. The quick spill wipe up was only temporary. The entire fridge at once was overwhelming. So I started cleaning and throwing out one thing at a time and replacing it with a new fresh ingredient in my new life. This took years of learning about my grief, and my journey in this life. Sometimes when I did not listen to the voices in my heart and soul I would drop things on the floor and they would splash their way back into the fridge, and I would have to start over at cleaning them again, but with more wisdom and the strength to grow.

Advice from the Grief Refrigerator:

Keep me cool – getting hot and bothered spoils everything.

Keep the top shelf for the important things to use daily. If you have pain stored up there, transform it to love. Visualize removing the old cracked glass pitcher of pain out with your left hand, replacing it with a sparkling crystal pitcher of love with your right hand. The pain pitcher is hot and does not belong here. The love pitcher is cool and refreshing and is always full for you to use daily.

Keep the center shelf full of goodwill casseroles. Replace these often. Remove the bittersweet ones to the trash. There is no room for the clutter of harshness, bitter words, and mean spirited goods.

Keep the bottom shelf clean. Do not stuff the hard to chew foods here. If something migrates here deal with it in a timely manner. Do not allow it to grow and rot your soul.

Keep some room in the door for new directions. Remove the anger jam replacing it with joy jelly. It is hard to find for the grief refrigerator, but well worth the time spent searching.

Throw out the fear mustard, it has become outdated, and replace with enlightenment catch-up. Step back into life by dipping the meat of the problem into this special sauce to see things clearly.

Spill the jug of regrets all over the floor, wiping it up with towels of happy memories, and thankfulness of what was.

Remove the guilt juice, there is no place in this fridge for that. It serves no purpose, only spoils and rots; pour it out onto the ground to be dispelled into the earth and reborn as hope.

Free the eggs. Crack them and scramble them to allow your heart to be free again. Now you are open to love and to be loved without the fear of breaking.

Clean me daily to avoid emotional buildup!

©SandyBrosam.com 2011