Get Your Dream Life

Thank you everyone for your comments and emails in response to my last blog post about my Nan and how I have have healed my own grief.

I have been truly amazed at how fast I have been able to do this.

I have shed so many tears for her over the last 10 years and every time she was ill, I would cry my heart out because I was convinced I would never see her again.

Now she has finally passed away, the grief was just as strong and painful.

Aside from endless hours of crying, which is hugely important,  there have been three thing that have helped me in this process:

1) My journal – where I written down all my feelings as they have come up, no matter what they were and how painful or challenging they were. I have covered every aspect I can possibly think of my relationship with my Nan and let everything pour onto the pages.

I have allowed myself to experience every single one of those emotions in my body, until they subsided of their own accord and I could move onto the next one.

2) The Book “How to Cope With Grief and Loss” by Dr Maurice Turmel PhD, who is  practising psychologist and therapist, with over 25 years experience of healing people deal with bereavement.

As I worked my way through the book, I was able to deal with all the different emotions that arose, from the sadness to the questions of Why?, to the sense of isolation and anger.

The chapters on dealing with the anger I was feeling, not only at my Nan for passing away and leaving me, but also the anger and self blame I felt against myself, for not being able to do more to help her or to prevent her death.

This is a really outstanding book and I would highly recommend it.

You can get your copy of How to Cope with Grief and Loss by clicking here.

3) My audio relaxation recording- “Relaxation for the Bereaved – Heal the Grief” - I created this a few years ago to help a friend through the sad loss of a personal friend. I decided I would start using my own resources and I am very glad that I did.

It is a deep relaxation, that helped me release all the different emotions I was feeling from the places in my body where I had stored them.

My favourite part is definitely where I could reconnect with my Nan by the healing waters of a special place. Her message to me was so wonderful and I felt such a sense of love and peace.

I had the best nights sleep since the day she died.

You can get your copy of “Relaxation for the Bereaved- Heal the Grief” by clicking here.

These resources helped me through my grief over losing my Nan. I hope they can help you as well through the pain of your loss and your sadness.

With abundant blessings.

Amanda Goldston

As many of you know, I lost my beloved Nan just before Christmas.

Thank you for your messages of support and comfort.

Her funeral was on New Year’s Eve, 31st December, 2009. This was the same day that my Grandad, her husband, had died 14 years ago and was the day of the Triple FULL MOON, which was all about endings and new beginnings.

In the end I chose not to go to her funeral, partly because of concerns over the snow, ice and ungritted roads and partly because I really did not think I would be able to control myself emotionally and not end up in as a total gibbering wreck in the corner.

This was especially compounded by the fact that the after-funeral gathering was to be held at her house, where I had spent most of my childhood and all the happy family Christmas holidays of years gone by.

I really dislike funerals. I know they serve the purpose of a final good-bye to the person’s physical body, but do they really have to be so sad?

I remember years ago, I went with my Nan to see her brother, who had just died and was laid out in the Chapel of Rest at the Funeral Director’s Building. I thought at the time how “plastic” and “artificial” he looked and vowed then, I would never do that again!

For ages afterwards, whenever I thought of him, that image in the Chapel of Rest came to mind. That was not him, that was not the quirky, fun-loving, ex-soldier that I remembered.

My Nan had been my rock all my life. I had spent most of many childhood with her and she was the person who had always provided a stabilising influence in my life.

I felt I needed to remember her in my own private way and to deal with my grief over her passing in my own way, which is what I have been doing.

I realised I was bottling up my feelings and I was not dealing with them, I was pushing the feelings back down and finding something more “constructive” to do rather than crying.

A friend kindly sent me a book about healing grief and one of the first things it said was about allowing all of those emotions to be fully expressed in my body and being- so, in other words, let myself cry until I could cry no more.

I got my journal out and started to write. I wanted to know what was I really feeling and what was underneath this sadness.

As I started to write, all sorts of things started to come up.

There were wonderful childhood memories of playing in  the hay fields, my Nan pushing me on the swing in the park, of days on the beach in the summer, of Nan making cakes in the kitchen and me and my cousin fighting over who was going to scrape out the remnants of cake mixture from the bowl, of Christmas Day lunches for 14, of Nan welcoming my friends and boyfriends into her home, of tea and biscuits or home-made cake in the kitchen and floods of other memories.

There were other things that then started to float to the surface of times when I had not treated her very well, or when I had been rude or ungracious or ungrateful or had taken her for granted or treated her less than kindly.

Interestingly, I don’t recall that she ever criticised or judged me or even reprimanded me for bad behaviour. Her unconditional love never seemed to change.

Underneath the sorrow for her loss was then my own feelings of guilt, of self-blame, of recrimination and feeling like a very bad person for the the way I had sometimes treated her and some of the things I had done.

One of the interesting chapters I had read in my friend’s book was that “it takes two to tango,” meaning that my Nan had been a willing party in our whole relationship. For her own reasons, she had also allowed the relationship to develop and unfold as it did. This included all the good times and the not do good times.

Once I was able to come to that realisation, the whole room was filled with a deep sense of love and peace. My Nan was with me as we were working through this process together. I could feel her presence, I could hear her words and I could feel this immense love coming from her.

I don’t know what her reasons or motivations were for putting up with me. However we both played a part in the dance of life that we had chosen before we incarnated in this lifetime.

As I continued to write, I realised that I was very angry with my Nan for leaving me and passing on. How dare she leave? She has left a huge whole that no-one else could possibly fill?

As the anger passed through me, I realised I was also angry at myself.

Perhaps I could have done more for her when she lived with us from 1996 – 2001, perhaps I could have helped her more and got her moving after she fell over on Christmas Day 2000, perhaps I could have made her feel more welcome? Perhaps? Perhaps? Perhaps?

We were starting to get into a really uncomfortable place now and the call of a cup of coffee or a dog walk or something other than this painful exploration process, was calling very strongly to me!

It is a very good job that this journal is for my eyes only!

I finally came to a point where the tears had eased, the intense feelings and emotions seemed to have subsided and nothing more was coming out of my pen. I felt totally drained and totally exhausted.

The final words I worte in my journal were, “I am sorry for all the things I have done, please forgive me , I love you so much and I am so grateful that you have been a part of my life.”  The answer that I heard back was “All is well, I love you!”

I then found myself reaching for  a meditation that I created several years ago, called “Relaxation for the Bereaved- Heal the Grief.”

As the relaxation moved through the energy centres, I could feel all the remnants of anger, resentment, bitterness, frustration and unspoken words gently leaving me.

Writing is one thing for releasing, feeling them dissolve is quite another.

Although my Nan had been with me through the whole writing process, it was lovely to meet her again and see her in the beautiful healing surroundings of a special place and feel surrounded by love and peace.

No doubt, there will still be tears when I think of my Nan, however I feel that I have been able to release the intensity of the negative emotions. My healing journey has moved on quite considerably.

I feel that I have made my peace with her, that everythign that needed to be said has been said and that I can remember her from a place of joy and laughter – and of course, the world’s most yummiest chocolate cake ever!

Thank you, Nan for everything you have contributed to my life.  I love you and I am so grateful to you.

Rest in Peace.

Amanda