Emotional Wellness

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Guest Blog on Shelest Publishing

Courtesy of Shelest Publishing

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The Stages of Healing After Divorce

Post-divorce healing develops in steps much like that of the development of a child. Initially, when faced with impending divorce, you are shocked and extremely upset. You cry with sounds akin to a baby’s wail and feel at a loss and out of control. You have temper tantrums, and you are unhappy most of your awake moments.

Following the baby stage, you start to crawl and take small steps. You feel you are moving in the right direction, but you often stumble and sometimes you fall. You may cry for brief periods—which is certainly an improvement over the initial stage—and you eventually pull yourself back up. While you continue to take wobbly steps, you have moments of clarity and peace as you reach toward the new and the bright. During this stage, after keeping your words to yourself, you begin to speak aloud which prompts an avalanche with anyone who will listen. You talk incessantly about your disappointment, your hurt, your fear.

Just as the toddler struggles with his movements and his emotions, so do you. Much like the terrible twos, you are hell on wheels. However, the third stage also presents exploratory opportunities, and you move into fulfilling moments of independence, happy glee, and a renewed interest in learning and growing. You eventually not only walk and talk, but you run and shout! With new hope. With excitement. With a feeling of adventure. With freedom.

Now that you are running, you can find all the joy in your life. You can watch a bird flit from tree bough to branch, and you can experience the joy in watching its movements. You can appreciate the color and beauty all around you. However, just like the preteen, you sometimes get yourself into a predicament and misjudge the potential prospect of a relationship. Luckily, you catch yourself, stopping the plunge of reckless desire, and resurface with a surge of thoughtful analysis. You see the potential harm, and you walk away from it. You are learning what is good for you and what is not.

The teenager continues to experience poor judgment at times as do you in this stage. Eventually, however, all your fragmented pieces become acclimated and integrated, and you walk with confidence and assurance that you will only seek what is good for you. You will renounce all else. Experiencing a sort of rebirth, you have grown—it has not been easy—and you have educated yourself along the way. You have become an adult in the world of relationships. You now move forward toward the middle as well as old-age years, at the brink of which you will embrace the beginning of the gradual development of wisdom, security, and serenity. –November 24,2020    

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The Write Way to Heal

With the beginning of the tragedy that happened in my family’s life, I decided I was not going to be one of those people who end up embittered and downtrodden. I would not let the events happening in my life take me down nor would I internalize my feelings, let them fester, and end up with some terrible disease. Instead, I was going to allow myself to grieve. To feel the pain. To cry and to enable the grief to work through me. I was also going to write.

The minute my husband walked out of our home after nearly 33 years of marriage, I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote for one solid hour. I wrote what I was feeling, whatever thought entered my thinking. The rejection. The hurt. The disappointment. I wrote the feeling labels—aren’t we taught that as children—to label our feelings and to explore them? I vented onto the paper. I felt somewhat better after that hour, better about me. But I was worried about him. He had been a medic in the Vietnam war and had never talked about his experiences there. He had never shared his feelings with me or with others. He internalized his distress, gradually became depressed, and found his escape: the wine bottle.

I knew my husband was on a trajectory that was beyond my control, so I fretted. I also grieved. The writing helped. We all cope in different ways and have our own methods of healing. For me, taking pen in hand was “the write way” to heal.

If life hands you an unexpected and unplanned event and you are confused, bewildered, in pain, and at a loss for words, start writing. It is a cathartic exercise, and it can bring you to awareness, to a better understanding. To acceptance. It can allow you to get your feelings out. Talking—and therapy—can do that also but sometimes we are not ready to share our secrets or feeling with others. Or we simply don’t have the words. Somehow, writing brings the words out. Don’t plan your writing, just go to it, be quiet, and let the words flow.

To survive tragedy, I believe we must work through all the anger, the pain, the gut-wrenching sadness, the sorrow, until we reach the point of acceptance, followed by forgiveness. Without forgiveness in our hearts, for others and for ourselves, we will be the ones who suffer.

Writing can provide the means for facing and exploring our emotions surrounding an event, managing the intensity of felt stress levels, and pulling us through a healthy emotional progression. We can tell our deepest, darkest secrets without shame, without fear. Venting and processing our thoughts and emotions on paper can enhance our self-awareness, change our outlook, improve our mental and physical well-being, and ultimately move us to the point where insight and understanding intersect with meaning and learning. It is at this juncture that emotional growth and healing take place. –November 11, 2020  

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Healing After Loss: Mourning Through Grief

You never know where the journey of life is going to take you. Picking up valuable information and roadmaps along the route, you whistle a pleasant tune as you walk the course, breathing in the colorful sights, feeling a sense of peace. All of a sudden, you find yourself tumbling down an unforeseen detour. Toppling with uncertainty, you attempt to regain your footing as you struggle to return to the known track—the one guided by the secure compass of familiarity. With the encounter of each barricade that blocks the way to the original route, you feel the gradual decline of hope and you slowly descend into the feeling of helplessness. And, if the new direction was caused by a loved one’s death, it may well move you to spirit-numbing powerlessness.

Losing a loved one, particularly a child experiencing the loss of a parent (especially when at a young, vulnerable age), can leave its mark on the impaled heart of the surviving youngster for many years to come. My father lost his mother when he was nine years old, and I believe that set the stage for his lifelong depression and eventual slide into alcoholism.

Other grievous upheavals can be caused by the loss of a spouse, a sibling, a close relative, a friend, or a child—our worst nightmare. If you have experienced any of these deaths, you know about the hole that burrows into your heart, the sadness that infiltrates and heightens the void, and the mind-body-spirit healing process as grief works through you.

The healing surrounding the pain of loss is difficult, and many of us never reach full and total recovery. Individual reactions differ, with some people choosing to ignore the pain while they place their attention elsewhere. Becoming incredibly industrious, they stay constantly engaged in tasks or activities and fill their life with busyness. They cannot sit still or simply be. Others, also eager to avoid heartache, engage in dysfunctional and self-destructive behavior.

In addition to sadness, a concomitant feeling is anger. How many times have you lashed out at your child or loved one when they narrowly risked stumbling into some form of danger? Your distress about the possibility of losing them manifests in angry tones and hurtful chastisement but hidden deep inside you is insufferable heartache associated with the fear of losing them.

I believe we need to allow ourselves to feel the pain of our sadness and anger and let those feelings flow outward. Hitting our pillow, chopping down a small tree, planting a garden and hacking away at the weeds and the ugly matter that threaten our gardening dream are all physical ways to vent. Crying, screaming, and verbalizing our painful feelings and reactions are other ways to emote.

A believer in grieving after loss, I am convinced tears aid in healing. When you’re torn, you must mourn. Tears release excess stress hormones such as cortisol. If not discharged, levels can become extreme, causing physical ailments and mental distress. Have you ever noticed the calm that enters your body after a good cry? That peaceful feeling is partially because of the hormonal release.

As important as mourning is to ultimate healing, finding your true self and accepting your new identity is paramount. The process of self-discovery enables you to release distress, sorrow, and guilt which tend to threaten your being after loss, placing you at risk for embitterment and denial. When I grieved, I took breaks and spent time soul-searching. I knew I had to get through the pain to get to the other side where I was convinced the blessings would flow. I also knew everything I had done and all events in my life led to the present moment. I was not patient, and I knew God had given me an opportunity to learn how to be patient.

I had a friend who became embittered after her husband left her. She was angry, hurt, and she could not accept her spouse’s rejection. Another friend lost her eleven-year-old daughter. She was mad at me because I still had three. Furious at God for not providing prevention, she faulted her husband who was driving the car when the accident took their child’s life. How easily one could slip into the world of embitterment. To be mad at God. To blame Him. To be mad at your spouse. To be mad at yourself. However, to survive tragedy, we need to work through all the anger and reach the point of forgiveness. If we don’t, we will be the ones who suffer. The lack of forgiveness does not hurt anyone else. It only hurts us.

Life is good. If we only knew the big picture. We do not know the ramifications of our acts or how one event pings on another and the dominoes fall. Or remain standing. Or lean against each other in support. We all have something, or at least many of us do.

Whether we are feeling a loss, a lack, or we are just hanging on to life-changes by a mere wisp of hope, we are all in this together. My wish is to see more unity among us, more love and genuine caring. True human connectedness. Being there for each other. Loving one another. Whether we believe it or not, we do need each other. –June 24, 2020

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Stress Management and Resilience

Our minds can and do play havoc with us. If you are experiencing negative thought patterns and feeling anxious and fearful, consider the triggers. What preceded the feeling of anxiety that washed over you? For many of us, it will be a segment of the six o’clock news, You Tube video, or social media post. For some, it may be a thought that comes to mind prior to the emotional shower. While it is important to acknowledge and accept our negative feelings, our mental health calls for breaks and interruptions in the potentially harmful spiral. Can you change your thinking? Can you redirect the shower head and replace your depressing thought with a happier one, repeating that reassuring statement until you believe it? Emotions accompany our internal words, and by altering the mental talk, we can flip the lever and adjust the flow of our emotive response, lowering the intensity of the downpour to a manageable trickle.

Positive thinking produces pleasant emotional states, contributing to the resilience one has in getting through and beyond life-changing events. Optimists maintain hope; they expect a better day ahead. Even in their darkest moments, the mental reminders they send to themselves are filled with uplifting belief and thoughts of moving forward. Affirmations are key in maintaining (or converting to) a positive mindset. A firm believer of assertions, I have used them throughout my life journey. If you experience anxiety, fear, or depression, affirmations can help transmute the negative, discouraging mental activity to encouraging messages of hope.

Brain research tells us that when you elicit the memory of a specific event, your brain reacts the same way as it did when the event first occurred. Therefore, remembering the incident brings back the emotional reaction that accompanied it. If a circumstance causes sadness, later memories of that occurrence will trigger melancholy. Likewise, recalling happy occasions will yield pleasant feelings. This same brain work can be applied to affirmations. If you say and believe an encouraging statement, your brain responds with an optimistic outlook, enabling you to adopt a smiling disposition and a more cheerful view of the world around you.

Meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, and yoga are helpful approaches for reducing anxious and fretful angst. Unbeknownst to many people, coffee and other caffeine drinks can heighten the nervous unease to intolerable levels and should be avoided. In contrast, drinking plenty of water during times of tension, fear, and worry can be highly beneficial.

Stress management activities are valuable as they incorporate relaxing behaviors to calm the nervous system while releasing the feeling of distress. In addition to meditation, muscle relaxation, and yoga, other stress reduction actions include taking a walk, spending time in nature, soaking in a warm bath, playing serene music, and writing your thoughts onto paper. Sitting in quietness while breathing slowly with focus on your breaths can help get you to a more tranquil state. Being present, practicing mindfulness, spending time in thoughtful prayer, concentrating on the five senses and bringing each into awareness to focus you further in the moment will help in grounding you and restoring your balance. Sometimes when attempting calming methods, however, our mental noise will not let go, suggesting a need for further attention.   

When an individual has a preoccupation with a disturbing remembrance and spends time actively avoiding the intrusive recollection, facing the irritation can have a greater impact and be far more meaningful and healing than the attempted escape. Does one ever completely dodge the provocation?

Whenever I feel a nagging discomfort that cries for attention, I try to consider the basis. I explore the disturbance and look for the guilty branch of the well-established stream—the one that started flowing when I was a child—carrying forth this new torment. Why am I bothered? I am astonished when I recall an event in my formative years that explains the underlying feeling recognized multiple years later in a similar situation. I consider the players in that childhood incident, the message relayed and received, the circumstances surrounding the individuals involved, and I undo any harm, intentional or otherwise. I may play it out to the point of forgiving them and allowing myself the restful feeling—without mindful babble—of being in a place of blameless acceptance with no regret or need for retaliation, no discomfort.  

Resilience is key in embracing emotional healing, overcoming loss, and moving beyond adversity. Did you know? Optimists live longer—they have a lower death rate—and maintain higher mental functions, including memory, into old age. To help your mental state, focus on what you can do—not on what you cannot do; on what you have—not on what you don’t have; on what is contained in the present moment—not on what is contained in past or future moments.

To read more about resilience, please copy and paste the URL below into your browser to view “Building your resilience,” an article from the American Psychological Association:

American Psychological Association. (2020, February 1). Building your resilience. https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience –June 18, 2020

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Re-Creating Yourself After Divorce

No one anticipates divorce when they exchange vows on their wedding day. They marry for better or for worse, and their future includes their betrothed for all the years they hope to live. When faced with divorce, then, the shock and disappointment are felt deep within the unwilling partner’s bones even as the rejection and loss scar their soul. With divorce, everything that was familiar is lost, to be replaced with the unfamiliar: living alone, the single life, new activities, new friends, an unforeseen and altered future, a new identity. It is impossible to believe at the outset that this unfamiliarity will one day also be familiar.

It takes courage to advance toward the unknown. Your self-doubt rises to the brink of your perception, allowing feelings of fearfulness and distrust to grow exponentially. You lack the confidence to forge ahead and lose your identity as spouse, significant other, better half.  It is impossible to consider those labels will no longer apply to you and to accept the knowledge of yourself as single, alone, unloved. Your identity, as you know it, is lost. After a period of grieving and heartfelt soul-searching, you will slowly press on, and you will re-create the new you in a world that tumbled repeatedly but rested in a land full of new prospects and future adventures.   

For you to re-define yourself, you will rely on your inner resolve and your commitment to heal, and you will seek your strengths and inner gifts and hold them to your breast.  When you are ready, you forge ahead, swiping at the obstructions in your way, forbidding any barrier to thwart you. You steadfastly hold on to your faith and beliefs, and as you replace fear with hope, you let optimism brighten your path.  With each obstacle you whack, you choose a weakness, or an uncertainty, or a fear, and you toss it into the newly formed underbrush. As you advance and trample over it, you feel a lightening, a lifting of some of the heaviness that has overtaken you until this moment. 

Pushing onward, you find each strength, each attribute, and each value that you have somehow lost before this trailblazing expedition. You acknowledge the significance of each, and you press it firmly to your being. Beginning to feel energized, you move in the positive direction of claiming your strengths, affirming your self-worth, and regaining your misplaced values.

It requires bravery, indeed, to hunt down your new self, your new identity. You exert the effort required so that you can be whole again, without pain, without fear, without regret.  When the process of self-discovery finally delivers the reinvented you, a feeling of empowerment directs and enables you to move forward, release your ex-spouse, and, with head held high, confidently enter the new life awaiting you. –May 26, 2020

(This article includes revised excerpts from Married to Merlot: A Memoir With a Message of Hope)

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Mental Health Awareness Month 2020

A year has passed since my first and only post on this page. A very busy twelve months, it was filled with first-year book marketing activities, ongoing website development, speaking engagements, social media postings, multiple European adventures, family reunions, and oh, yeah, there is that pandemic thing. And did I mention I helped my daughter move to Ireland?

Here we are again in the month of May, Mental Health Awareness Month, and we continue to see an escalation of symptoms of anxiety and depression among our youth and adult populations as well as a rise in suicide. And we were observing this trend well before the pandemic entered our country. I had wondered, even before the presence of COVID-19, if the feeling of isolation intensifying in the masses was resulting from the growing lack of tolerance, incivility, and separation we were witnessing. Now that a pandemic is floating among us, the risk of further disconnectedness and division is alarmingly critical.

Today, essential employees, including medical workers, are at greater peril for stress-related emotional issues because of the fear, worry, and fatigue they experience during the performance of their duties while in close encounter with the unseen enemy. In addition, many of them are self-quarantining away from their families and friends, with that seclusion furthering the probability of their developing affective challenges.

The awful trauma experienced by those front-liners tending to the severely ill coronavirus victims opens the door for post-traumatic stress. While I am relaxing in the quiet of my home, they are listening to sputtering, rattling breath sounds or the labor of uneven, coarse breathing as they move speedily to save the life of a patient during a respiratory emergency. The sufferer either has fluid in the air spaces of the lungs or mucus in the airways. And when it is their patient who is in distress, they cast their emotions aside so they can perform their life-saving actions without distraction.

The individuals fighting the hidden foe are continually shouldering heart-wrenching, internal guilt that nags at them when they are in the process of losing a  patient, and when they do, they lament having had to turn away the family and friends who only wanted to say their goodbyes. In lieu of family, the health provider adopts the role of the surrogate family member, holding the hand of the ailing one, talking quietly, making assurances, and waiting for the last haggard breath that ends the respiratory struggle.

Sad and apologetic, the medical worker completes their moral imperative as they approach and interact with the deceased’s grieving loved ones. The hand-holding has now turned virtual, and it is the family members who need the assurances as well as the promise of peaceful passing.

So much is being asked of our medical troopers. So little is asked of us. However, many of us share heartbreaking frustration with our physical separateness and the fact we are powerless to help and comfort during a time when our family member needs us the most. Since we are not able to see our loved ones during their last hours, we depend on the medical professional to provide those interactions and responsibilities normally filled by us. Adequately. Humanely. Compassionately.

Social isolation can contribute to poor emotional health, now more than ever. We are fortunate to have the capability to interact with family and friends, made possible through available technology with FaceTime, Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, and other applications. I do not know what we would do without our devices and computers. Their ability to provide opportunities to connect with loved ones revive our spirit and bring joy to our day.

Today’s world is different from what we have previously experienced. Not only do we use technology to provide needed social interaction, but through it we can also receive positive messages from the various posts we view. Facilitating a feeling of community, phrases such as “we are in this together,” “America strong,” “love not fear,” “together stronger,” and many others remind us we are not alone, and we can do this. Together. –May 21, 2020

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Mental Health Awareness Month

Yesterday was the last day of the month of May. I find it eerie that May has been designated Mental Health Awareness Month, and if you have read Married to Merlot, you know the reason.

Have you ever wondered when and why this designation began? Mental Health America was formerly known as The Association for Mental Health, and under that name it started observing Mental Health Month in 1949—all of seventy years ago. The purpose of Mental Health Awareness Month is to raise awareness, provide education, and offer strategies for both the prevention of mental health issues and the promotion of emotional wellness. Along with its purpose, it intends to bring awareness to suicide (which is sometimes associated with some mental illnesses) and reduce the stigma surrounding mental illnesses.

You may never know the depth of another person’s mental pain, nor do you know what may be hiding behind someone’s seemingly happy facade. Additionally, you may not know the secrets a family is hiding as they deal with the emotional struggles of one of their members. Stop the stigma–let’s talk about mental health, and let’s keep talking. If you are struggling and feeling unremitting emotional pain, please talk to someone. If you are on the other side and someone approaches you, please listen.

We are seeing increasing evidence of emotional difficulties in the current population. A rise in complaints of anxiety and depression are reported in our youth and young adults as well as in all adult groups, and these issues cross all professions and all socioeconomic levels. The suicide statistic is also on the rise. Not only do we see an increase in the suicide rate for our military, but we are also seeing the suicide statistic rise for our civilians. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention reports suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. According to the foundation, veterans account for approximately twenty percent of all suicides. The majority are civilians. Each year, 44,965 Americans die by suicide. The actual number is estimated to be higher due to under-reporting because of the stigma attached to suicide.

Suicide is a global issue and occurs throughout the lifespan. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year approximately one million people die from suicide, which represents a global mortality rate of sixteen people per one hundred thousand or one death every forty seconds. It is predicted that by 2020, the rate of death will increase to one every twenty seconds. Current global statistics indicate suicide is the second leading cause of death among persons fifteen to twenty-nine years old. These statistics are alarming and point to the need for a more comprehensive approach, one that involves all of us.

Multitudes of people go through tragic events that may seem insurmountable and may contribute to emotional discontent, post-traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety, but these are scary times. Not only are we battling within ourselves, but we are fighting among ourselves as well. We are seeing a lack of tolerance, we are meeting incivility, and we are experiencing a disconnectedness far beyond what we have ever seen to this point in our history. Could the lack of tolerance, the incivility, and the disconnectedness be contributing to the feeling of isolation? And could that be playing a part?

We are not alone. We started out as hunters and gatherers with a specific role and a common purpose for the good of all. We all are a part of the same species, and we share our humanness, our vulnerabilities, and our societal responsibilities. We are all connected, and it is time we show our support, offer our love, and be there for each other. We must all unite and bring love into our world. We must put less focus on hate and haters and let love expand. If we don’t, the mental health issues will skyrocket, and we will continue to see increasing numbers of suicide events as well as upsurges in school shootings, mass shootings, homicides, gang killings, and other acts of hate. Our society could see its undoing if we do not change our current path and make this world a truly better place for all of mankind. Let’s focus on love. –June 1, 2019

(This article includes excerpts from Married to Merlot: A Memoir With a Message of Hope)