Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Writing as Grief Therapy

Writing as Grief Therapy is always very tricky. There is a saying about this. "Don't speak ill of the dead."
This is sort of true. Because what I have found as an intuitive is that pretty universally everyone who dies is to a lesser or greater degree sort of "Restless" the first month or two when the first pass over because of their getting used to not being in their physical body anymore. And also, everyone they were ever close to is going through their grief process as well. So, I would be very careful in doing Grief Therapy writing the first few months after someone passes away. It is always debatable whether you are doing more good than harm for yourself and your loved one recently passed away. The best thing you can do for your loved one is to pray for angels to come and get your loved one and to hope your loved one will willingly go with those angels to a heaven realm. So, praying for this outcome is always the most useful thing you can do not only for your loved one but also for yourself. What you don't want is someone landlocked here and sort of confused and bothering you for a long time. This is not a good thing for yourself or your loved one usually.

But after 4 to 6 months usually your loved one has settled down wherever they are and then dealing with your personal grief  as Grief therapy writing might be a good thing for you to be able to move on in your life. But better yet if you have a family member, minister or psychologist or Shrink who specializes in Grief Therapy you might want to do that also because you will wind up more healthy in this way in the end as long as you have faith in and trust the person you are talking to. And as long as they have your best interests in mind and have all their marbles too.

The hardest deaths I have had to deal with so far was my biological father and mother. I sort of call these the deadly two kinds of deaths to try to get over. For example, when my father died when I was 37 it basically destroyed my life as I knew it and absolutely everything about my life changed and within 13 years I almost died too. So, it took me almost dying too for 7 months to get beyond it in any kind of useful healthy way. By the time my mother died in 2008 she had had senile dementia from about age 82 to 90 so her passing was a complete blessing for her and everyone else. So her passing was completely different than my father going when I was 37 when he was 69. I find it hard now that I am 63 and have to think things like, "Am I going to die at or around 69 like my Dad?" But this doesn't have to necessarily be that way because I'm happily married at 63 and still have a 15 year old daughter living with us and my 22 year old daughter, my God daughter who just got married this summer and my 37 year old son who is now married for a second time are all fairly happy in their lives. However, how many 15 year olds are actually happy that you know or have ever known including yourselves at that age. Being 15 you just have to find a way to survive somehow in the end.

So, if you want to write to get it all out and don't have anyone to throw up on verbally, then do it. But, you might either want to burn it then or delete it or save it for later depending upon your own psychological, spiritual or physical needs. Just remember don't do this unless you think it is useful to you. But in the end Grief therapy done properly saves lives including your own.

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