Shelley Klammer

Healing From the Loss of a Child

Supporting mothers travel through the loss of a baby is a heart-wrenchingly poignant, and the post-traumatic growth can be tremendous to witness too. I recently wrote an article on my Depth Therapy Blog that offers a five-step process for healing the loss of a baby. 

If you have lost an older child, this article might feel supportive for you as well. I have created a 5-step healing process that I call Dedicating, Naming, Soul Speaking, Loving and Redirecting. 

When a baby dies through a miscarriage, a post-natal death, or even if the death is expected as in the case of abortion, the first healing task is to face the reality that your baby is (in its specific incarnation) gone.

Many women try to avoid painful feelings of loss in various ways such as "being strong" and "keeping busy", etc. Yet, there is no way to avoid the inevitability of grief. You must allow yourself to fully experience and express your grief.

People often misunderstand the needs of the grieving. Ask for specific support from your loved ones during your grief process. Through a kind connection with others who care, be assured that the pain of your loss will lessen in time.

The emotions involved in letting go are painful but necessary to experience. By not doing so, you will remain stuck in the grief process and will be unable to resolve your loss. See the Six Stages of Grief. Anger, guilt, loneliness, anxiety, sadness and depression are among the feelings and experiences that are normal during the grieving process.

3 Rituals of Good-Bye

As you move into the acceptance stage in the Six Stages of Grief, you may want to create a ritual of good-bye for the baby you have lost through a miscarriage, abortion, or some other kind of death. This might include writing a letter or a poem, asking for ongoing connection and love between the spirit of your baby and yourself.

1. Create a Good-Bye Statement: After the loss of your baby, it is helpful to create a written or visual "good-bye statement." Create a statement that you can repeat often during your grieving process. If you have aborted, you might want to say, “I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank-you.” If you have miscarried or experienced an unexpected loss after birth, you might say, "Thank you dear one for being in my body or in my life."

2. Create a Tribute to your Loved One: It is helpful to create a tribute to the growth process that you and the baby went through together, however brief. You might, for example, feel inspired to commemorate a piece of artwork to the positive changes you have made since your loss.

3. Create an Intention: When you experience a loss, you can consecrate a healing intention that will enhance your life forever. Making a post-loss intention to be more present, kind, creative or loving, for example, will help you to heal and move on with your life in a much deeper way.

Five-Step Grief Healing Process

1. Dedicating: What would you like to dedicate the loss of your baby to? How might you live your life in a better way in honour of the memory of your baby? Would you be more grateful, more dignified, more courageous?

2. Naming: Do you want to give your baby's soul a name to honour his or her time in your body or in your life? If you chose a positive quality, for example, you could call your baby's soul, "Truth, Courage or Freedom." When you think about the soul "energy-tone" of your baby what does she or he symbolize for you? How do you wish you could have helped your baby to grow? Use your chosen name for your baby to connect with this positive quality in yourself.

3. Soul Speaking: Do you speak to your baby’s soul? Do you share your feelings with your baby now that she or he is gone? Consider keeping a journal where you communicate to your baby's soul on a regular basis. Thank your baby for the learning experiences you have shared.

4. Loving: Do you tell your baby that you love him or her and do you open your heart every time you think of your baby? Thank your lost baby for opening your heart every time he/she enters your mind.

The Final Grieving Task

The final task, after fully grieving the loss of your baby, is to affect an emotional withdrawal from the guilt of the abortion or the sadness of the miscarriage or the unfairness of the post-birth loss so that your emotional energy can be used in creating a productive life.

You must find your own ways of satisfying your social, emotional, spiritual and practical needs by developing new or changed activities and relationships. This is NOT dishonouring the lost or deceased and it doesn't mean that you love him or her any less. It simply recognizes that there are other people to be loved and cared for at this time.

5. Redirecting: What kind of mother did you want to be to your baby? What kind of person do you want to be post-loss? Did you want to be loyal, fierce, kind, or honest? Who or how will you love more deeply in this same way after your loss? How will you dedicate your life to loving this other person (or to a caring cause) in order to transform your loss into something deeply meaningful?

With love,

Shelley

A Self-Compassion Exercise

 

This powerful exercise from my Depth Therapy Blog can be done daily to increase self-compassion. 

 

Self-Compassion

 

”You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” – Buddha

 

It is common to want to get rid of our pain instead of turning toward it with self-compassion. How do we care for the younger, hurting parts of ourselves? How do we love what hurts - especially when our emotions feel so young, painful and inconvenient to our adult mind?

 

Below, I share an effective self-compassion meditation that is inspired by psychologist Dr. Kathy McGuire and was originated by Peter Campbell and Ed McMahon, founders of the Biospiritual Focusing movement:

 

"The parts or aspects of ourselves that most need our own caring inner attention are often parts that we have most wanted or needed to ignore, push down, turn away from - often feeling that leaving these parts behind is really the only way to survive. So, now, to turn toward and embrace these very aspects of the self? Very difficult - a life-long task."

 

~ Kathy McGuire

 

Self-Compassion Exercise

 

1. Take a moment to find a comfortable sitting position and close your eyes. Notice your breathing going in and out, and sense into the part of your body that is hurting the most. A sore or constricted part of your body might be loudly calling for your loving attention. Place your hand and breath there for one minute.

 

2. And now, imagine that you work in a hospital, and a baby or a child has been left on the hospital steps. The child is crying. Let yourself feel the impact of finding this abandoned child. In your imagination, pick up this infant or child, and convey to it, through your body and your heart, and your way of tenderly holding it, that it is safe, and that it is truly loved and wanted in this world.

 

3. Noticing what you do to convey your loving attention to this abandoned child, turn your attention toward the hurting place in your body. Convey this same loving attention, without words toward your body, for one minute.

 

4. To amplify your nurturing attention, bring to mind the times in your life when you felt loved and valued in a similar way. Look into your memory for particular places, people, animals or situations where you felt completely loved and completely wanted. Bask in the warmth of this loving memory for one to three minutes.

 

5. Choose one of these places, people, animals or situations to stand as such a symbol of this kind of love and safety. Use this memory as an anchor or a talisman to amplify your self-compassion. You can call this amplified kindness your "Inner Nurturer." Hold onto this sense of yourself as an "Inner Nurturer" for one to three minutes.

 

6. Now, look through your life and memories to see if you can find a part of yourself that is now, or was very much in need of your Inner Nurturer. It could be an Inner Child at a certain age or time of life. But it could also be a kind of image: like "a wounded animal" or "a butterfly with a crumpled wing." Be open to the intuitive image that your wounded self wants to give to you.

 

7. Go back to the pain or tension in your body. We could call this place in your body your "Inner Woundedness." Join the image that your wounded self gave you with the sore place in your body. This is where your unhealed hurt lives inside of you

 

8. Now, imagine turning your Inner Nurturer toward your Inner Woundedness for one to three minutes. Tenderly say, to your hurt, from your Inner Nurturer, "I am here with you now. I know you are hurting. You are not alone. I love you. You are safe with me." Hold nurturing attention to your "Inner Woundedness" for one to three minutes.

Come back into the room and open your eyes when you are ready.

 

Collage Landscapes!

 

This fun art demo is with artist Amanda Mauk from her Courageous Creativity Summit

I had so much fun sharing my Collage Landscapes practice with Amanda Mauk and you can now watch our time together on YouTube!

 

 

I shared my collage landscape journal with Amanda during our interview and I remarked on how the main theme of my journal seems to be about bicycles!

 

I think it is time to buy a bike and start riding soon, don't you! 

Healing Grief With Expressive Art and Writing

A few years ago, after receiving many requests, I finally wrote an expressive arts grief course which is now a module in my year long expressive art and writing course. Because I have walked along the road of loss in my own life many times, and I also worked with people at the end-of-life for ten years, I often felt too close to grief. Yet, once I decided to write the course, it flowed forth with ease and clarity.

I have travelled through the grief of losing loved ones many times, and each time the process has been so different. The loss of my mother deeply infected my heart chakra in a very painful way and the loss of my father opened up my third eye and crown chakra in a beautiful and inspiring way.

Yet, despite all my varied grief experiences, I know that there is a human map for processing grief. Recently, I reread my grief e-course, and I must say, I think it is a beautiful program for healing grief. It is simple enough to read, understand and implement while intensely grieving the loss of a loved one.

Since grief manifests in so many ways, I have written a human roadmap of healing tasks that you can attend to, in order to complete your various types of grief. In the course module, there is a beautiful new PDF for you to download. And, if you have not yet taken my year-long course, it brings me such joy to share this free excerpt from my grief course with you here.

Featured Module Excerpt:

The Dance of Emotions, Energy and Action

Before you begin the activities in this course, I want to share the creative way that I work with arising emotions. Spontaneous art and writing are such profound ways to work with the grief because they get your emotions moving, providing greater access to insights for healing.

Receive, Direct, Create

1. Receive Information: Emotions have a purpose, and they need to be fully felt. Emotions also carry important information about how to guide your life. Locate the place in your body where your emotion resides. Engage with your emotion by acknowledging it with gratitude and openness.

The information contained within an emotion will make itself known through your imagination in the form of pictures or sudden thoughts. You might even be able to see the link to how a limiting belief is causing your emotion. Note all emotional insights in your grief journal.

2. Direct the Energy: When an emotion is felt but not listened to, the energy builds internally and causes agitation. Acknowledge the emotion, and express it in your spontaneous art and writing. Even if you do not yet understand what life-forward movement the emotion is indicating, listen to emotional energy by doing one of the creative exercises in this course each day. Release your painful emotions through word-play and image-making.

3. Take Creative Action: Each negative emotion contains the seed of a healing antidote. A negative emotion always indicates that a higher heart-centered action is needed. When you bring all of your emotions into your heart, you can access ideas about the creative action you need to take to uplift you out of emotional pain.

 

 

Celebrating 300 Digital Collages!

Digital Collage for Emotional Processing

Over the past 2 years, I have created over 300 digital collages! I find digital collage to be so magical and quick. This emotionally expressive journey I have been on has helped me to process and transform my inhibitions, my mistaken beliefs, my loss and grief, and my regrets. And, it has helped me to progress into my confidence and my magnitude.

You can view a slide show of all 300 of my collages HERE.

Transformation Through Creative Expression

I recently had such a lovely chat with harpist/healer Patricia Daly from Ireland.

We talked about the healing power of creativity and we each shared our personal stories of healing and helping others through our own devoted creative practices.

I found it to be a very touching conversation about each of our journeys from self-diminishment to self-confidence.

Please join us for free HERE!

 

The Importance of Grieving

Staying at home, unable to engage in the normal distractions of life, can bring up the deepest unhealed wounds for emotional reconciliation. If you are feeling anxious due to COVID-19, you might also be feeling unfinished grief from the past that is intensifying the level of fear or panic that you currently feeling. 

Below, is an article I recently published on my Depth Therapy Blog that explains what I call the "Six Stages of Grief." The "Five Stages of Grief" was developed in the '50s by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Having grieved many losses in my life, and also supported many others through the grieving process, I have added the passage of "anxiety and panic" to the typical 5 stages of grief.

If you are currently feeling emotionally overwhelmed, I invite you to consider the list of grieving tasks below and contemplate how anxiety and panic serve to pierce the emotional numbness and denial that so many of us normally live within. Underneath anxiety and panic exist deeper emotional processes that you will need to pass through before you can feel the emotional well-being of acceptance and peace.

"We step forth into life with our dreams but we are pierced by life's reality as well."

 

~ Richard Moss

 

Throughout life, we all experience many different types and degrees of grief. In addition to death, all other losses need to be fully grieved in order to maintain consistent emotional well-being. Besides grieving a physical death, a child might need to grieve a divorce, a wife might need to fully grieve the loss of her spouse's health, a teenager might need to grieve the end of his relationship.

 

You might need to grieve your lost dreams. You might need to grieve because you have fundamental core value differences with someone you love. Or, you might have inner child aspects inside that need to grieve because love and safety were not provided in the past.

 

It is typical to vacillate through the various stages of grief. When you are processing a loss, you might cycle through panic and anger. Resisting your loss, you might try to control your circumstances or other people, and then fall into despair when you cannot. With time, you will exhaust yourself and likely need to withdraw into a deep depression (a place of deep-rest) until you find a natural place of acceptance for your loss.

 

 

THE SIX STAGES OF GRIEF

 

1. NUMBNESS AND DENIAL

To initially cope with loss it common to go in a state of shock and denial. Denial helps you to pace your feelings of grief but it also makes you feel numb, hard and frozen. As you proceed through the grieving process, all the feelings you have been denying about your loss will eventually need to surface.

 

2. ANXIETY AND PANIC *

When you feel anxiety, deeper feelings about your loss will be piercing through your denial. Anxiety and panic will chip away at your emotional numbness, hardness or frozenness to indicate that you need to go into the deeper stages of grief so that it can be resolved.

 

3. BARGAINING AND CONTROL

The normal reaction to feelings of helplessness and vulnerability is to try to regain control through a series of “If only” statements. This is an attempt to bargain. Guilt often accompanies bargaining. You might believe there was something you could have done differently to avoid your loss. You might become lost in a maze of “If only…” or “What if…” statements.

 

4. FRUSTRATION AND ANGER

Intense emotion deflected from your vulnerable core most often gets redirected and expressed as anger. After bargaining and your attempts to control do not work, you will likely get frustrated and you will have to face your loss at a deeper level.

 

You might resent a person for causing you pain or for leaving you. Your anger and frustration might be aimed at inanimate objects, complete strangers, friends or family. Anger, most especially, might be directed toward the person you have lost.

 

5. DEPRESSION AND DESPAIR

After bargaining and attempts to control, grief enters into a much deeper level. You might want to withdraw from life for a time to truly process what you have lost. You might feel intense heartbreak and sadness. You might wonder despairingly if there is any point in going on. When a loss fully settles into your being there will be a deep realization that your life will not continue on as it as before.

 

6. ACCEPTANCE AND PEACE

Eventually, you will learn to live with your loss. You must now live in a world where your loved one is missing. You might need to give up your hope that your emotional needs from the past will be met. Or you might need to accept that your cherished dreams for your future will not come to fruition.

 

In resisting this "new normal, it is common to wish to maintain life as it was before your loss and cycle through the prior stages of grief again and again. However, in time, dipping in and of acceptance, you will see that you cannot live your life in the past.

 

As you listen to and tend to your own needs, you will change, grow, and evolve. You can eventually choose to accept your losses, resolve and reconcile your past, and find ways to live fully in new fulfilling ways.

 

With love,

Shelley

 

*(I have added anxiety and panic to the"Five Stages of Grief" model.)

 

Intuitive Drawing for Higher Insight

About 20 years ago, I started drawing from my intuition as a way to access inspiration and insight and also to see the parts of myself that were suffering. 

When I draw from my deeper unconscious, inspiration often comes. Drawing intuitively always brings me solace. It not only gives my anxiety an outlet, but it tells me greater things about myself. 

My intuitive drawings often help me to see things in a higher way, and sometimes they make me laugh. 

Doodling your Feelings

"Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play."

~ Henri Matisse

Intuitive drawings can begin as simple doodles that will become more eloquent as you practice. You can use ballpoint pens, markers, gel pens or pastels. Draw for the surprise and joy of the process, without knowing in advance how each drawing will turn out.

If you would like to participate in a free 30-day intuitive drawing challenge you can do so HERE.

I have also created a set of 30 playful expressive arts prompts that provide some structure for your intuitive drawing and painting process.

 

Blossoming in Times of Adversity

I have noticed a very curious thing about myself. Whenever I watch too much bad news, I start to get a sore throat. When I choose instead to dance, to write in my journal, to sketch, to read uplifting books, my sore throat goes away.

The Challenges of Being Stuck at Home

What a strange and unsettling time in our human history. As an online therapist, I have the opportunity to talk to people around the world and I know this is a very challenging time financially, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually for many, especially those in strict in-home lockdown.

When we do not have the opportunity to get out of our homes, old unhealed emotional pain can come up, primal survival fears can be activated, and prior avoidance strategies in intimate relationships can ignite all kinds of in-home challenges.

And, while many are still joking that they are eating too much comfort food, drinking wine every night, and binge-watching Netflix, this transformative time in human history is actually offering us the time and space to deepen, strengthen and heal.

More Healthy Structure

I feel that the most urgent directive at this time is to find innovative ways to uplift our "vibration" higher than fear - not only to stay physically healthier but also to cope in such trying times with greater resilience. Fear is so discombobulating. Many people have been expressing to me this week that they are having trouble focusing.

In order to cope with the fear and chaos that is sweeping the planet, I think there is a great need for in-home structures, practices and routines that increase focus on physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. This could be new exercise routines,  in-depth spiritual and creative practices, and engaging in self-study or learning a new skill.

Levels of Consciousness

Dr. David Hawkins, author of "Power vs Force" found a way to measure human consciousness. He discovered that there is a critical point between weakness and strength - level 200 on his scale.

Every emotion that calibrates below level 200 makes the body go weak. Every emotion above 200, makes the body strong.  While some people resonate above 200 much of the time, currently, most of the world is resonating below 200.

I invite you to consider the Scale of Consciousness here and contemplate what uplifting practices and activities could support you to live more frequently above level 200.

 

Best Expressive Arts Books

Do you love to read about the expressive arts? I sure do. I welcome you to view the list HERE.

My all-time favourite book on the list is Life Paint and Passion by Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley.

"Life, Paint And Passion is a deeply involving approach to using the creative process as a tool for self-discovery. With vibrant and contagious enthusiasm, the authors liberate the reader's urge to create freely and spontaneously, as a painter or an artist in another medium, purely for the process of exploration, not for results."

I read this book over 20 years ago, and I went to a painting retreat with one of its authors. After I painted in this way, I was utterly betrothed to spontaneous creativity.

I felt immediate relief from the honesty of the process. I have healed so much fear and pain through spontaneous creativity.