STAGES OF GRIEF HEALING Article Series

“HeartSpun Talk from the Crucible of Experience”©

From the life of Ken Matthies - Author, Poet, Real Life Storyteller

Welcome back to the ninth in a series of ten special articles of homespun real-life talk about your grieving process.

Today I’d like to talk to you about ‘Knowing The Truth In Your Own Heart’, and how this knowledge can positively affect perceptions about your own healing.

Over the course of the previous eight articles, I’ve been showing you there’s a progressive way to come to terms with these key elements of a healing path that can help you.

Take a moment to reflect back on their contents, or even go back and review them in their order, and you’ll see this clear intent always leading to a more positive and healing result.

One of the most important things I’ve pointed out is understanding and making the crucial transition from continuing to suffer the harsh effects of outright grief, into that of a gentler path of grieving which leads into, and encompasses your healing.

I had a purpose in doing so because this ever-progressive way of looking at the issues of my own early grief, and those issues which followed into my grieving period, has shown me what was working to help me continue to find healing for myself.

Often a trail that’s been broken open and proven effective for one person can come to serve as a lighted pathway to another.

This has been my personal hope and belief throughout this series, that the trail I had to break to find my own healing could also prove effective for you in ways which matter and make a difference in your life.

It’s because of this that I chose the title for this article, ‘Knowing The Truth In Your Own Heart’. I’ve discovered my own truth, and now it’s time to ask yourself if you’re discovering these truths - or at least your own versions of them - for yourself as well.

So how is it possible to recognize, let alone know this truth in your own heart?

First of all, since you’re still reading these articles, ask yourself if you’ve consciously taken and applied any of the steps which the previous eight articles have talked about.

The answers to knowing your own truth lie within them, just as they did for me.

Run a mental checklist on yourself and ask these crucial questions…

What connections have you formed to give yourself the safe harbor of an outlet to express your own grief, and at the same time open yourself to the grief of others like you, so you can begin to better understand your own feelings?

What actions have you taken, and what progress have you made to lessen the grip of the shadows of grief in your life? Have you admitted your need for help and begun to take counseling yet, or at least been able to better express your grief to the counselor you already had because of the things you’ve learned here?

If you’re one of those people whose previous personal boundaries of belief prevented you from believing in the power of prayer, has your belief system changed enough because of your tragedy to now allow you to try it for yourself? Have you discovered, and are you using, its healing power for yourself yet?

Have you gone back to the basics of what you believed in before your loss happened to you? Have you been able to recognize the fact these beliefs still exist inside you, and that you can begin to lean on them once again to reset the anchors in your life?

More importantly, are you listening to the voice of your heart yet, and experiencing its power to heal you?

Here’s a critical question to check your healing progress against, if ever there was one…

Have you been able to open yourself to - and find - the Light of your own personal love and memories yet to reconnect you with your loved one?

The answer is critical, because this is the tipping point between outright grief continuing in your life, or discovering a much gentler grieving path which allows your healing to begin and grow in a new way.

What about the voice of your loved one – are you hearing it yet, and feeling your vocal chords vibrate with the mingled joy and pain of being able to answer back in private soul-linked conversations? Are you allowing yourself to dare to begin to believe in these possibilities, regardless of outside influences to the contrary?

Speaking of possibilities, have you allowed yourself to take the next step of experiencing their presence yet – the touch of their spirit? This is a touch that wraps itself around your own spirit, and allows you to experience the peace of its intense closeness and reconnection to your loved one – are you feeling this yet?

If you’ve managed to believe in possibilities once again, are you finally able to again hear their words of joy in your heart and mind as you speak with them, and rebuild the bonds of love, light and soul connections between you? Are you beginning to feel the new dimensions of healing which this brings you?

The answers you’re able to give yourself to these questions, will begin to define your own progress to you – and if you’ve been applying them in your own unique way – to give you hope and a clearer understanding of your healing path.

To tell you the truth, I’ve only recently come to understand the full healing potential of these steps myself because of a watershed moment of clarity that took place in my counselor’s office. It was without doubt a moment that specifically confirmed these issues of ‘knowing the truth in my own heart’.

I was attempting to describe to him a profound sense of inner calm and peace I now have about my lost daughter, a sense that has softly and quietly invaded my life since I reestablished talking to her almost a year ago. I’d never spoken of it before with anyone, and asked if this could be considered a normal part of the healing process.

In answering my question, he first reviewed the three cycles of grief with me again, which are Avoidance (Walking the Edges), Confrontation (Entering the Depths), and Integration (Mending the Heart).

As he explained ‘Integration’ (Mending the Heart), and its healing step of a grieving person finally being able to reinvest energy back into relationships and pursuits of life, a new and deeper light of understanding flashed to awareness inside me.

This sense of inner calm and peace had come about because of all the steps I’d taken through my grief and grieving path since her loss – in truth, through the very same steps as outlined in these articles. I had reached the stage of Integration many long months ago without fully understanding how far along my healing path I had already come!

In the end result I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s been those steps, and the reconnections made to my daughter through them, which have made all the difference - not only in being able to overcome the grief of her loss but also in finding my personal healing from it.

It was because of this realization that I suddenly had another one as well. More than four long years after it began, I realized I had finally reached a point of being able to let go of my need for further counseling – although the connection to my counselor turned friend will always remain strong between us.

I’ve been irrevocably set free of the grip her death has had on me, and life itself once again beckons me to go ahead and live it!

In other words my life has reintegrated, and I am free because of it to pursue life again, to reinvest my energy back into living – just like my daughter has been telling me I should. Now I understand her words and her loving desire behind them to once again see me live my life in joy.

Although I recognize and fully accept that there will always be a measure of pain in my life at her physical loss, I see myself now as finally having moved beyond all of its crippling effects and into the realm of healing she has promised would come to me.

I’ve also realized how completely my daughter and I are still – and will forever be – bound in spirit by the love that continues its own life within us, and how I have reinvested a huge portion of energy back into our new relationship of the spirit. There’s a profound sense of freedom for me in that knowledge.

I now know the truth in my heart in a new and even better way than before because of all this, as will you when you allow and choose the gifts of healing that wait within your own heart to discover them.

Knowing the truth in your own heart is the end result of a process similar to the one described in these articles – an individual process which each of you reading these articles must experience in your own way to be able to find it within you.

The good news is that you can find it and know the truth of it if you choose to open your heart, mind and awareness to the possibilities which are just around the next corner of your grief, waiting for you to discover and use their positive power for your healing.

Trust yourself to discover them – and know that these discoveries can set you free of the grip of your grief. They’ve certainly proven themselves to me, and I can’t help but believe they could do equally well for you.

There’s a new song of joy sounding its notes in my heart these days. Can you hear the melody of it yet in your own?

(If you haven’t already purchased it and want to learn the full story behind the truth of these articles, be sure to visit my website and download a copy of my book entitled “How to Survive the Death of a Child - A Father's Story of Healing Light” available on Amazon Kindle at www.kenmatthies.com/ )

Author's Bio: 

For almost forty years of his life Ken Matthies has been a writer and chronicler of life expressed in poetic form, following the family tradition laid down by his grandfather before him.

Faced with the dramatically life altering experience of his helicopter pilot daughter’s sudden death in 2002 he has grown to also become a literary author of true events based on his own life. Though grief opened his literary doors it is the Light of Love and Memories supplying the fuel of inspiration to write through them.

As a second-chance dad given the opportunity to verbally share his life stories with his newly rediscovered daughter it was she who told him that she believed him to be a ‘worthy man’ after having heard them, and who encouraged him that they should be shared in written form beyond her own life – not yet knowing as she said it that she was soon to leave him behind. As a bereaved father and writer learning how to live life again in the Light of his own Love and Memories of his daughter, he writes those stories now as a testament to her belief and faith in their value.

His full length book entitled "How to Survive the Death of a Child - A Father's Story of Healing Light" was the first of these stories which he wrote in the Light of those Love and Memories.

He lives in the solitude and grandeur of a tiny southern Yukon village with his Tlingit native wife Skoehoeteen and the successor to their venerable old Tahltan bear dog Clancy Underfoot, who now happily awaits them at the Rainbow Bridge in Doggy Heaven. She’s a new female puppy named Hlinukts Seew which means ‘Sweet Rain’ in the Tlingit language, a wonderful phonetic variation in memory of Clancy’s name who was also called C.U. for short. It’s a good place to tell those stories from.

You can read more of Ken's writings and find his Amazon Kindle book at www.kenmatthies.com.