Grief | Am I Still A Sister? Grief through the Life Cycle – Allie Franklin

Am I Still A Sister? Grief through the Life Cycle – Allie Franklin

Submitted by Open to Hope Foundation on December 1, 2005 – 1:06 pm

HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
Am I Still A Sister? Grief through the Life Cycle
Host: Dr. Gloria Horsley
With guest: Allie Franklin
December 1, 2005

G: Hello. I?m Dr. Gloria Horsley. Welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart. We?ve got a really interesting topic today, Grief Through the Life Cycle. I often hear comments and complaints from people who have been told at one time or another to get over it. But as any person who has had a profound early loss knows, grief is not something you get over. It is something you learn to live with, part of the fabric of your life. It?s not terminal and you don?t get what some call closure. Our losses are a part of who we are and how we move through the world. They?re a part of what makes us human, what makes us empathetic, what makes us passionate, fortunate, and forgiving. Grief may impact our interest or lack of interest in a subject or even a life choice. We may pick as a mate one who reminds us of our lost loved one. Or we may pick a friend who acts out our anger for us. Ignoring the circumstances surrounding our upbringing does not alter the fact that loss changes us in profound and subtle ways and molds our character. It can impact our choice of partner, size of family, or even career path. My guest today, Allie Franklin, Austin?s sister, has taken a career path of grief counseling that started at age four when her only sibling died of a brain tumor. Please join us on our show today, Am I Still A Sister? Grief through the Life Cycle, by calling our toll free number 1-866-369-3742, with questions or comments regarding the losses in your life. Allie, welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart.
A: Thank you, Gloria.
G: It?s great to have you on the show today. Well, you?re a really busy woman and I want to talk to you about some of the things that you do. You?re manager of WICS WINGS, a Seattle-based children?s grief support center and a co-author of Footsteps Through Grief, The Other Side of Finding Grief, Finding Your Way Through Grief, The Dying and Bereaved Teenager, and Dear Parents. She is the featured children?s grief expert in the Paraclete Video, When a Loved One Dies: Walking Through Grief as a Teenager. Allie?s a former Captain in the Air Force and she was keynote speaker at both the 2001 World Gathering on Bereavement and the 2005 World Gathering on Bereavement, and I was very lucky to hear Allie this year at the World Gathering. She?s a wonderful, wonderful speaker, and a great person, and I?m very excited to have her on the show. Well, Allie, tell me a little something about what is WICS and WINGS.
A: Sure. WICS and WINGS. WICS is a program for widowed folks and WINGS is the part that serves the children and the teens because what we found out is that widowed people unfortunately come in all ages and have younger children and teenagers who are needing support and so I have the privilege of having designed a program that serves the kids and the teens who have had the death of any loved one or friend and then their parents come and get support at the same time.
G: That?s great. So you?re in Seattle.
A: Yes.
G: Do you have a web page or something that people can go to, well, people in the Seattle area, and then I know, do you have your books and things on there for people who are out of that area?
A: Well, the books are carried through a couple of different companies. Our website wouldn?t have the books on them. But for the support group, our website is www.widowedinformation.org and then there is a logo that is bird wings and you click on that and it takes you into WINGS.
G: So they can read about the teen part that you?ve designed.
A: Right. And the teen part is really neat because it?s a mentor program and it helps teens not only learn about their own grief but also learn how they can help younger children who are grieving and it becomes the legacy of their grief and of their coping.
G: Oh, what a great thing because I know one of the things I like to talk about on this show is you?re not ready to do it right away, but when you get through the shock and denial and those kinds of issues and you?re ready to move on a bit, one of the things that really helps you move on is service and mentoring to others, isn?t it?
A: Absolutely and our teens love it because sometimes they think they?ve got this all handled and then they?re working with the younger kids and doing an activity that might have been too young for them but as the helper. All of a sudden it touches on something that they hadn?t really dealt with yet. So we have a debrief time for the teens after they work with the younger kids and they just love that time because they say, ?Wow, that really surprised me.?
G: It?s amazing with loss how it sneaks up on you, isn?t it? A smell or a sound or a season or maybe having somebody graduate from high school or a wedding and years later.
A: Absolutely. Those milestone events can really come by surprise because if we?re looking at the clock and we?ve bought into this old adage that time heals all wounds. Well, time does nothing but pass. It?s the grief work that heals. So when you look at the calendar and say, ?Oh, well, it?s been so many years, I should be done by now,? we have our own internal time clocks. And then a graduation comes up and there?s a hole and we say, ?This person would have been here.? And all of a sudden it comes back and it?s as fresh and as new as if it happened yesterday. And the thing is the pain doesn?t last as long as if it was fresh and new but it sure is as sharp.
G: It?s kind of like touching a live wire for a minute. If you?ve ever been on a farm where they have those electric fences to keep the cows in, it?s kind of like touching one of those real quick.
A: Exactly and it really catches you by surprise and you say, ?Oh, no, it?s been this number of years. I shouldn?t be going through this.? And so we just have to let go of that internal time clock that says I should be doing it at this rate and kind of go with the pain of the moment and go with the flow.
G: I?m just newly on the board of The Compassionate Friends and we were getting ready for the National Conference which will be, by the way, in Dearborn, Michigan, in July, the weekend of July 16, and I hope our listeners will make an effort to come. It?s going to be a great conference. But I was there in Dearborn looking at the conference center and one of the things that the board members do is get together because we do dedicate our work to our children that have died or grandchildren or siblings, and we go around in a circle and people tell about their loss. Well, for me, it?s been 22 years and it surprised me because I think I was the most emotional one in the group and by far, it?s been longer for me. So it really surprised me that I became so emotional about it but in a way it was interesting because I was like, ?Wow, where did that come from?? and I had some of the other board members come up and say to me how great it was to hear that after 22 years you really don?t lose touch.
A: Absolutely, that we don?t have to say goodbye and close the book on our loved ones. They?re with us through our lifetime.
G: Yeah, because one of the big fears is that people will forget, right?
A: Absolutely, and maybe I?ll forget the sound of his voice or I?ll forget the way it felt to have him in my life and you don?t forget those things. In a moment of panic, you might think that you?ve forgotten, but if I ask you the color of your child?s eyes, you would know.
G: Um, hm. Green.
A: See? And my brother?s eyes were blue.
G: Exactly.
A: When my daughter was born, I looked into her eyes and they are his eyes. And all of a sudden, 25 years of coping is melted away and there were tears streaming down my face and I was thrilled to have my daughter and at that moment I felt very connected with my brother as well.
G: Could you talk about him a little bit and your life and you were four when Austin died?
A: Right. I started out as an only child and my parents announced this wonderful news that we were having another baby, which they didn?t consult me on so I wasn?t all that pleased. When he was born, he had a cleft lip which was no big deal but ended up probably being a sign to us that maybe something more would be wrong because by the time he was three months old, he wasn?t growing correctly. He was getting smaller instead of getting bigger.
G: And you were four at this time?
A: And I was four when he was born, but by then I had bought into this whole idea of being a big sister and somehow my mom had made it seem like a really neat thing so I was into that. That was my baby. When he started getting sick and having to go to the doctor, I wanted to know everything that was going on. Well, the words were too big for even my mom to say let alone me and eventually I ended up having to go live with an aunt and uncle because they were fighting my brother?s cancer and fighting for his life.
G: And he had a rare type of cancer, didn?t he, that they went all over to try to find out about?
A: He did and it really took about half of his life to figure out what was wrong and that was very traumatic for my family because they knew very clearly that something was wrong but kept having to almost prove themselves to the medical community about saying, ?No, we?re not doing this to him. This is something that?s inside of him that?s wrong.? And so for my family it was almost a relief when they found out what was wrong because by then everyone sort of had a sense that he was going to die because he just seemed to be getting worse and worse, and having a name for it gave us something to fight. But for me, it was kind of hard because I was four years old and mom was sending me off to a wonderful aunt and uncle, and what a gift they gave me to have me live with them for awhile. That?s an incredible gift that I understand now as an adult, but as a child, it was kind of like, well, first I was the only one, then he came in and he took my family and they sent me off. I was pretty upset with my brother and pretty angry and at one point I had gone up to his crib and I said, ?You know, you can either get better and act like a normal brother or you can just go back to where you came from.? It?s a really normal thing for a four-year-old to say but when he died months later in my memory for a long time it was the very next day he died. I thought that I had killed him because I had said, ?go back to where you came from? and then he did. It?s really hard.
G: How did you resolve that? Did it bother you as a teenager? Does it bother you now? How did you get resolution on that?
A: It bothered me until I was in fifth grade and my mom wanted me to join the choir in the church and I said, ?No, I?m not going to go in the church because I think the church will fall down on me.? And she said, ?What are you talking about?? At that moment, I shared with her that it was my fault that my baby brother had died and that everybody had been all upset for all these years and that it was really my fault and I didn?t think that God would appreciate me coming into his home and singing a song.
G: Don?t you find that with a lot of families that you work with, even adults, we want to believe it?s there or we think that we have some responsibility? I think it has something to do with thinking that you can control life.
A: Absolutely. When I work with kids, I call it magical thinking or magic wishes, and it?s the idea that kids have that the world revolves around us and so if I make a wish then of course it will come true. Well, so if I make a bad wish and then in some way it does come true, then all of a sudden there?s that incredible guilt. And even though I had a pretty good relationship with my parents talking about a lot of things, that was such a heavy and loaded topic, there was no way that I was going to share that for a really long time because I was afraid that my family would suddenly be very angry with me or upset with me but here they were very sad and upset that my bother had died when in fact in my mind it was my fault.
G: And with adults, I think it?s a little different take. For them it?s if they can figure out why their child died then it won?t happen again. You know if they can pick some responsibility. It?s more of a control issue.
A: We want to be in control and to control all of the risk factors. And if one of those risk factors is the thoughts that I have in my head, I?ll control those, too. And yet as human beings, we all get tired or fatigued or upset.
G: Well, it?s time for us to go to break, and I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley. Please stay tuned to hear more on our topic, Am I Still A Sister? Helping Bereaved Children, with Allie Franklin. If you?d like to join our show today, you can call our toll-free number 1-866-369-3742 with questions or comments regarding the losses in your life. Stay tuned.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and our topic today is Am I Still A Sister? Helping Bereaved Children. My guest is Allie Franklin, manager of WICS WINGS, a Seattle-based children?s grief support network. Allie is a bereaved sibling and author of Am I Still A Sister and co-author of Footsteps Through Grief, the Other Side of Finding Grief, and Finding Your Way Through Grief. Allie is LCSW, a social worker, and a former Captain in the Air Force. Please join our show today by calling 1-866-369-3742 with your questions or comments. This show is archived on www.compassionatefriends.com website and also you can access it through www.healingthegrievingheart.com, the same name as the show, and you can also email me there and you can look at the show archives.
Allie, I wanted to tell our listeners about this amazing book you wrote when you were what? You started writing it when you were seven?
A: Well, you know what?s neat, Gloria, is I didn?t know I was writing a book when I started. I was writing letters to my brother and I would mail them when I was as young as five years old and I put Easter seals on them because they looked like stamps and I put them in the mailbox and we had such a wonderful postman because he returned them to my mom and she never opened them. She just kept them in a box. After a while, I realized he wasn?t writing back so I quit mailing them but I kept writing to my brother and over time, it became kind of a journal. Around the time when I was eleven, my parents moved a lot. My dad was in the Air Force also, and I?d had a really bad day at school. I had gone to school, first day of school, people had asked the question of how many brothers and sisters do you have. I had gotten brave and said I had a brother but he died. By the time the day was over, the rumor had gone around that if you had a brother or sister you didn?t like much you could go see Allie and she?d help you take care of it. It was horrible. I went home and I told my mom I was divorcing the family and I was never going back to school and that was just it. My mom said, ?Well, maybe we can do something besides dropping out of school in the fifth grade,? and I said, ?Great, give me one of those books you read that help you.? We went looking and at the time, there wasn?t anything for children. There were a couple of textbooks about children but there wasn?t anything written to children.
G: Now what year would this be?
A: Maybe early ?80s. And so my mom finally said, ?Well, why don?t you write a book?? I think mostly because we had spent the whole day looking for something and it was frustrating and she wanted to give me an answer. I said, ?Well, you know, it?s funny you said that.? And I brought out these letters I had been writing to my brother and I stapled them together, and I said, ?Here?s my book.? My mom had tears streaming down her face and she said, ?You know, I have some letters from you, too.? My eyes got really wide because she wasn?t supposed to have any of those letters. And she pulled out the ones that were sealed with Easter seals that had never been opened and we read them together. Together we put it into a book.
G: Oh, amazing. And it?s a wonderful book and it?s called Am I Still a Sister??
A: Am I Still a Sister? because that was my question.
G: It?s the most charming book. Very fresh, very sweet. Let?s tell our listeners how to get it. Is this the one you order through Bishop Lane in Louisville, Kentucky?
A: You can get it on the www.griefstore.com where it?s carried through Centering Corporation.
G: You can google Centering Corporation, too, to get into it?
A: Yes.
G: It?s a wonderful book. I would highly suggest it for any adult or child. It is so simple. It is so sweet and charming. It?s wonderful. And then I have the other book right here, The Other Side of Grief, which is kind of a workbook that you did with your mom. It?s a really wonderful book. That?s for everyone, isn?t it? Children and adults.
A: Sure. That?s for anyone particularly when people are beginning to get through that first year and the idea is that that?s about the time when friends and loved ones have decided that you?ve had enough and they begin to start talking about wanting to use the word ?closure? or wanting to talk about, ?aren?t you ready to move on?? And at a year, that?s a really hard time for folks because the permanence of death is beginning to really set in and kind of the last thing they?re ready to do is to put this on a shelf and be done with it. And so the book is a workbook which is kind of a journaling piece that kind of talks about how you can create rituals to remember your loved one and how, instead of saying goodbye to them, you begin to work their memory and their legacy into your every day life.
G: Well, let?s talk about some of these memory symbols now. We?re talking about grief through the life cycle. With the memory symbols, what are some of the things ? Austin died how many years ago?
A: Twenty-nine years ago.
G: Twenty-nine years ago. So what are some of the memory symbols that you have? Tell our audience what they are and how you?ve taken your grief through.
A: Sure. Well, I have a teddy bear of his?and it?s a music box bear that we used to play for him and I wanted to put it in his casket when he was buried but my mom was so wonderful, she said: ?You know, when that goes in the ground, it?s not coming back.? And so we put in a pink elephant instead, and I got to keep the music bear, and I keep that in a safe place. And you know what?s been really neat, Gloria, is that now I have a daughter who?s been born since the time that my brother was alive, of course, I didn?t have a child when I was four. And I can bring that out and I can show her his pictures and I can introduce her to the uncle that she won?t meet.
G: Right, those wonderful pictures and stories.
A: And I can show her the teddy bear and she can hug it and she can say, ?I wish I had met you,? and what a neat thing because as an adult who was a grieving child, one of the challenges is to figure out how do you introduce new people in your life to the loved one who is still a part of your life?
G: And so keeping that link going is an important thing. You talk in the book about a pain link? Do you see adults carrying their pain from their childhood loss and what would you suggest to them?
A: I do. What begins to happen is a layering of losses and sometimes it doesn?t even come up. An adult may not even realize what?s going on until another loss happens in their lives and then all of a sudden it takes them back in time. It?s like being on a time capsule and they go right back to that original loss during childhood. What happens is it all kind of comes back together because even though we cope with it, it still is a piece of you and so an important thing for adults to do is to go ahead and recognize that that?s what?s going on. Sometimes we beat ourselves up and say, ?Am I going crazy?? And so to say, ?Okay, I know what this is,? and acknowledge the pain and then begin to find ways to work the legacy of the first loss into our lives and to use some of the strength that we gathered in coping with the death of the first loved one to deal with the next loss.
G: Yes, there are some unresolved grief issues. If you?re feeling really fresh and strong pain connected with the death of someone years ago, maybe six or seven years ago, related to a new death, you really need to come and take a look, maybe tell your stories some more, maybe even get some professional help in looking at your story. I wanted to read you an email we?ve got from Wendy from Detroit, Michigan. She said:
I saw that you were going to have a show on grief through the life cycle. My brother died when I was eleven. I now have two little boys and I am super paranoid about having children die. I really think that it probably doesn?t even cross other people?s mind. Do you have this problem and what would you suggest?
A: That?s a wonderful question, Wendy, and I do have this problem because my brother died as an infant and so I would wake my child up just to make sure she was still breathing during the first year of her life. And what happens is, as children we have this belief that somehow everything is going to be okay, and when someone dies during our childhood, we lose that innocence, that sense that bad things don?t happen to our family.
G: That you?re not invincible.
A: Exactly. And you know as children we look at our parents as these incredible super heroes who can protect us from everything and when a sibling dies, we see that they are human and that they couldn?t stop this from happening and that neither could we. And so when you go on into adulthood, you carry that. It?s almost a mistrust a little bit and say if something could happen to my brother or sister, maybe something could happen to my child. Could this happen to us?
G: It becomes a realistic thing, doesn?t it, where with most children, they haven?t gone to that level yet. They?ve had maybe grandparents die but that was kind of in the order of things. They were old.
A: Exactly. And then as adults who were grieving children, we feel a responsibility to try to take care of every contingency, every possible thing that can happen, and so everyone else has a car seat and they put the kid in it. You?re the one going and making sure you?ve taken their class and have the person put the car seat in and, by the way, maybe I shouldn?t be the one to strap it into the car because I?m not sure I can do it exactly right. And so taking the extra steps. And it?s really important for those of us who are in that situation of wanting to overprotect to step back and to say, ?I can?t control every single variable. I can?t control everything.? But what I can do is if I hold on too tight, if I smother my kids, I might send them away from me. They might want to put distance between me and them because they don?t understand what?s going on with me. And so what you have to do is decide what variables you can be in charge of, what things you can take care of, and then begin to over time little by little let go of the other stuff. Let go of the extra stuff because we can?t create children who are wrapped in bubble wrap because eventually, they?ll break out of that bubble wrap and they?ll say, ?I don?t need protecting.? And they might do some kind of not very smart thing.
G: And I think that one of the things Wendy has to realize is it?s really not about her child, it?s about her. The thoughts are in her mind so she can do something about them.
A: It helps once the child passes the age that the sibling was when they died.
G: Ah, good point, why don?t we talk about that a little bit when we come back from break. We?re coming up on break. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and please stay tuned to hear more on our topic, Am I Still A Sister? Helping Bereaved People Through the Life Cycle, with Allie Franklin, manager of WICS WINGS, Seattle-based children?s grief support group. Please join our show today by calling toll free number 1-866-369-3742. You can email me at gchorsley@aol.com or from my web page Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley. Please stay tuned.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and our topic today is Am I Still A Sister? Helping People Through the Life Cycle. My guest is Allie Franklin and Allie is a bereaved sibling and an author of Am I Still a Sister?, co-author of Footsteps Through Grief, The Other Side of Grief, Finding Your Way through Grief, The Dying and Bereaved Teenager. Allie is also an LCSW. Allie, I wanted to read you another email that I got. I should say, ?Hi, Allie, welcome back.? I wanted to read you ? it?s sort of an email, but it?s from my daughter, Heidi. Heidi was not able to call in because she?s teaching a class at Columbia right now, but she said,
Hi, Allie. I would like to have called in. You and I have a lot in common. We both have mothers who are involved with writing and teaching about grief and loss and we both have had our only brothers die. I, too, have followed a career path impacted by Scott?s death and have gone into psychology specializing in sibling loss. Another thing we have in common is that we both have only one child, and I wanted to ask Allie if she thinks that it?s related to her brother?s death. I?ve thought about it for myself and I?m not sure.
A: That?s a great question. In our family, that actually came up in a huge way and I didn?t realize it was about my brother?s death right at first. We had one child and everybody was okay with that, but I married the son of someone who had died in childhood. My husband?s father died when he was nine, and my husband was saying, ?Well, I think we should just have one. One is fine. Everything?s good.? And I was saying, ?Well, I want to have more than one.? And when we really sat down and talked about it, he grew up in a family with a mom who had these children and no husband to help her raise them, and he wanted to, if he left me as a young widow, make sure that I had only one child to take care of and I wouldn?t be overloaded. And I wanted to stack the deck. I wanted more than one child because what if something happened to our child?
G: Yeah, that sounds like something I would have thought, but as Heidi said, it?s interesting that you both just have one. What did you decide then?
A: What we ended up deciding was that what worked best with our family as far as the time and the resources and the things that we had, is that we really would do very well with one child to spend our energy and our resources on, and that having another child just in case wasn?t a good enough reason to have a child. To have a child just in case one of them died, to make sure there would be one left wasn?t a good enough reason to stretch our resources beyond what our means could handle. And so we decided to have one child.
G: Do you think, what comes up for me a little bit thinking about this, is having siblings die, I know Heidi and I think you have a great passion for your work, and is part of it wanting to have the time to give to your child but also to be able to give to the world?
A: I think so because it?s such a passion for me to do this work and to get the word out about grieving siblings and about not just children but children as they grow up and making sure that people have the information to cope and to realize that they?re not alone and yet, you?re right, I don?t want to rob my child of the time and the resources that she deserves as a young person growing up. I feel like she?s sharing me enough with all of the kids that I work with and I didn?t know how we could handle having her share them with a sibling, too.
G: Could you talk a little bit about ? I was a therapist before my son was killed. But I know some people have thoughts about, ?Well, you shouldn?t go into this. You shouldn?t specialize in this because it?s too close.? I know your mother went into the field and you?ve gone into the field since Austin?s death. Do you have any thoughts about that? Well, I can give you my own thought after you give me yours.
A: Sure. One thing, just because it brings a little bit up and I want to touch base on it is that I really don?t know what I was going to be before my brother died because I was four, and so that really touches base into childhood bereavement where adults have had a career and they were going on a path and then something catastrophic happened and they have to re-evaluate. Children were trying to figure out who they were in the first place and so I don?t know that I wouldn?t have become a therapist anyway. I probably wouldn?t have become a grief counselor. But then the other piece is that I think it?s really important for a therapist to have done their own grief work. That when I?m working with families, I?m working with their issues and I?m far enough down the path and I?ve done enough work that I?m able to be there in their place where they are to help them on their issues and it doesn?t have to be about unresolved grief issues that I have. But the other piece is, I really believe that families connect a little bit better with someone who?s been on the path. That it?s one thing to read about it and to study about it in books and to do research, and it?s another thing to have been there questioning your sanity and going to the refrigerator and not remembering why you were going there. It?s another thing to have been on the path and so I think in a way that actually makes it easier to connect with a therapist who?s been there.
G: Well, when you look at a therapist who has had the experience you?ve had and they?re sitting up and talking and living a life and it?s inspirational, I believe, just that they?re there.
A: Absolutely, because it says, ?Wow, you?re still breathing. Maybe I can be, too.?
G: And as you just said, it gives hope, right?
A: Absolutely.
G: Hope is a wonderful thing and particularly in this field. One of the things that I?m very interested in and I?ve heard your mom and you talk about it is the idea that I didn?t get a chance to say good-bye years later. Could you talk a little bit about that?
A: Sure, a lot of people get stuck in the moment, in the very last moment of their loved one?s death, and they say, ?I didn?t get a chance to say good-bye and that?s my sticking point in my grief.? Because my brother had a long-term illness, we did get a chance to say good-bye. We knew that he was dying. We didn?t know what day he would be dying but we knew that it was coming and our family could have had that moment standing around in a circle and saying good-bye. But what we said instead was, ?I love you.? And I think when you don?t get that chance to say good-bye whether it?s been a car accident or a traumatic thing or even an illness that happened so quickly and it caught you by surprise, if you didn?t have that opportunity, then you don?t know that you probably would have said I love you instead of good-bye. And so what I want folks who are in that place of saying, ?I didn?t get to say good-bye,? to hear and to take with him is that we said, ?I love you.? And I know that in the time of the lifetime of your loved one, you said ?I love you? to them, and that that?s the peace that carries on because when we get caught in that last moment of their life, then we cheat ourselves out of all the other moments of their life. Our lives are made up of so many moments, not just the last one.
G: Yes, if you are feeling that you didn?t get a chance to say ?good-bye,? you may want to create a ritual around that and say good-bye to them. One of the things I suggest to people is that if they really need to say that good-bye, they could write a letter and have other people write letters and poems. You can do it on a special event if you want to or on any day and then you burn the letters and make a mulch out of them and then plant a rose tree and say good-bye.
A: Wonderful. Or if you have young children at home, you can send a balloon. When you take the moment to say good-bye, take the moment to say ?I love you,? too. You have a peace that?s really good for particularly when you?re talking through the lifetime because we know that it?s not good-bye. These memories and these feelings, they catch us by surprise. We were talking about that early on in the show. It?s finding the legacy of your loved one. Finding the things that they taught you. Finding the wonderful things that they put into your life, whether that?s teaching you how to cook or just their sense of humor or something like that. Finding that peace in your life and when you cook something special, you remember. You say, ?I?m doing this in honor of my child or in honor of my brother or sister.? When my husband and I got married, we didn?t want our wedding to be all about all the people who had died in our lives and yet we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge them and so, the men had white roses on their boutonni?res and my brother?s music bear was sitting up in the front pew. No bid deal. Nobody saw it except us and the preacher at the front, but it was just the way to acknowledge them and include them in our lives.
G: And to create a ritual for that.
A: Exactly. So that they were there and we weren?t saying good-bye. We were saying, ?You would be here at our wedding, so why shouldn?t you be there at our wedding today.? And yet, the wedding still needed to be about us exchanging vows and it didn?t need to be overpowered by the death of our loved ones. It was just a way to have them also be guests.
G; And what about anger that you feel? I don?t see anger as a strong connect for adults who?ve had loss early one, maintaining anger, say your parents for sending you away or the anger at different people who said the wrong thing to you or that we carry on for years.
A: Sure. One of the things about anger is it?s a very strong and powerful emotion, and sometimes we?re more comfortable being stuck in anger than feeling helpless or even feeling guilty and so we get to anger because it feels powerful. If I can be angry with you then maybe I don?t have to look at some of the other things. And so it?s really important to take that anger out and to work through it, because when we stuff anger down, it grows. It?s kind of like a cancer. It doesn?t go away if you ignore it. It begins to grow and it gets bigger. And the thing about anger is that if we don?t listen to anger, then it will find other ways to be heard. Unfortunately, there are a lot of events that a person could point to where people didn?t feel like they were hurt or they didn?t express their grief of what was going on and so they found kind of a violent flashy way to be heard and that?s the extreme of what happens if we don?t listen to anger. But if we give anger a voice, if we take the time to say, ?You know, I am really angry about this and I need to punch a pillow or I need to go out and throw some garage sale china up against the wall so I can get the anger out.? Or if there?s someone that you have the anger towards. Taking the time to sit down and write a letter and really spell out the things that you?re feeling angry about can be very helpful. You don?t even need to send it. It?s just the writing of it that?s important.
G: Well, we?re coming up on break again and welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart. This is going to be our last break and I wanted to ask Allie Franklin if there’s anything else she would like to talk about that we?ve missed during the show today. Please stay tuned. You can email me through my website at Dr. Gloria Horsley, www.healingthegrievingheart.org.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and my guest today is Allie Franklin, manager of WICS WINGS, Seattle-based grief center, and Allie is a bereaved sibling and author of Am I Still a Sister?, co-author of Footsteps Through Grief, The Other Side of Grief, Finding Your Way through Grief, and The Dying and Bereaved Teenager and Dear Parents. Allie is also an LCSW and a former captain in the Air Force. What haven?t you done, Allie? You?re great for a young lady. Let?s take a call from Jeff from Louisville. Jeff, are you there? Welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart. Thanks for calling in. Did you have a question for Allie or myself?
J: Thank you. I have a question for Allie. I married a woman whose sister died when she was twelve and you guys talked a little bit earlier about some of the over protectiveness. This is really getting troublesome in our lives. Allie do you have any advice for me so that I can understand what she?s going through a little bit better?
A: How old was the sibling when the sibling died? Do you know?
J: The sibling was ten.
A: And you said you have kids? How old are the kids?
J: I have three kids, 10, 8, and 6.
A: Okay. Part of what happens with a bereaved sibling is that there?s this feeling that they can?t trust the world. We talked about that earlier a little bit on the show, and that the world instead of being this safe place where everything works out okay, it can be still kind of like a dangerous place, and what your wife may be doing is trying to prevent one of your children from dying at the same age that her sibling died.
G: Yeah, exactly, that ten-year-old age. And plus ten year olds are kind of moving out a little bit, too.
A: Well, and the problem for kids is the tighter you hold them, the more they want to break away and show their own independence. And so that may actually be making your wife feel a little more panicked because the control thing isn?t working any more. And that sounds like it may be time to sit down and have a talk about we can?t control everything and maybe we need to get a little extra help on this.
G: And also telling your wife that she?s a great mom, she?s doing a great job, and giving her support in that because she?s probably feeling pretty shaky right now.
A: Sure, and letting her know that you?re with her and that you understand where she?s coming from. You can?t say I understand you, but that it is scary being a parent.
G: And you also might consider, as Allie said, professional help or a support group.
A: Or she can talk with other parents who are going through something similar or other grown-up siblings who are going through this. Unfortunately, a lot of grown-up siblings experience the sense of wanting to be in control of the whole world and prevent something from happening.
G: And you might also have her tune in to some of the shows. We?ve done some shows on adult siblings and had siblings on the show that might be helpful for her to hear.
J: Okay, so sounds like what I need to do is at least get her to try to listen to some of your shows, and have the talk, you?re a great mom and I support you and I?m just having a hard time understanding where she?s at.
G: She?s very lucky to have a guy like you that she?s married to that is sensitive, sees it, can hear, and I?m sure you would be a great support to her.
A: Absolutely. It wouldn?t be a bad idea to have a family meeting, too, and say, ?It?s because mom and dad love you so much that they?re trying to keep you safe,? to maybe help the kids understand a little bit that it?s not that mom is being mean to them or trying to keep them from doing fun stuff, it?s that she?s trying to keep them safe.
G: Yeah, one of the things that I think, too, is that we can put grief in this great big hole everything goes into, everything is responsible for this grief thing, well some of it?s probably some normal family issues going on here, too.
J: Thank you.
G: Yeah, very interesting how I see with adults, particularly where there?s been an automobile accident, it?s so generic, they don?t want their kids to drive. They don?t want them to take driver?s ed.
A: It generalizes out into all the possible things that could happen that have something to do with the car.
G: Right. Exactly. Or I?m sure with swimming, if someone was killed in that kind of an accident, or whatever kind of thing went on. I know my cousin?s child had Hodgkinson?s disease and a tumor, cancer early, and she is constantly looking for bumps on her kids and that kind of thing.
A: Absolutely, and there really is something to be said about passing the milestone of the age when the person died because it?s almost like you?re afraid that history will repeat itself, and so when you pass over the age, it doesn?t mean that it completely melts away but it just goes into a safer place. It?s like, okay, we passed over that.
G: You were really concerned when your little girl was four. Do you remember that?
A: Well, my brother died in his first year of life.
G: Oh, I?m sorry. You were four.
A: Right. Her first year of life was just a very scary time for me.
G: So you were really there.
A: Really watching over. We probably went to the pediatrician twice as often as anybody else because my brother died of a disease where he didn?t grow enough and my daughter was a low birth weight. So when she wasn?t growing as much as I thought she should, then we were over at the doctor going, ?Are you sure it?s not a brain tumor? Is everything okay? You?re sure, 100% sure, that she?s fine?? Luckily, I was able to explain to the pediatrician what was going on and instead of rolling his eyes at me, which would have made it worst.
G: Well, that?s a great idea. If you do have younger kids, you might want to talk to your pediatrician about your sibling?s death years ago.
A: Right. Because if we feel that someone?s not listening to us, then we feel that we have to talk more and more and more about it or louder and the fuse gets bigger not smaller. So if someone can listen and acknowledge, then the fears can begin to dissipate.
G: And maybe sometimes taking a look at why do I feel nervous about something? How could this be back and related?
A: Sure. Is this because I?m really worried about my kids or is this because I?m thinking about my sibling dying and that I don?t trust the world?
G: So if you could give one piece of advice to someone who say is under ten regarding the death of his sibling, what would it be?
A: What I would say to someone under ten is take the time to do your own grieving. Lots of people ask little kids, ?How are your parents doing? How?s everybody else doing?? Make sure that you know you have permission to do your grief but then the other thing that?s really important is you don?t have to become your sibling. You don?t have to do all the things that they used to do or take on their goals. You are yourself and you?ll always remember your sibling. They?ll always be a part of you, but a really important thing is to go on and do what you want to do. Find your interest and if you can work in something about your sibling in that, then great.
G: What about advice to somebody over ten?
A: What I would say for someone over ten is to remember and to just understand that this is part of your life now. It is forever woven in the fabric of who you are. It will change the way you look at things and so when you?re in a moment when you?re saying, ?How come I look at this so differently than everyone else?? step back and remember that you?ve had a life-changing event in your childhood and so it doesn?t have to be a bad life-change event. It doesn?t mean that your life is now going to take a turn for the worst, but it does mean that it?s going to change the way you look at things.
G: And maybe you might even be more empathetic and more understanding in life than a lot of your friends.
A: And a lot of teens tell me that they feel more mature, they feel that they?re not in touch with their friends who have real frivolous concerns like a broken nail or not having the right clothes or something. And they say, ?Gosh, I don?t know if I really fit in,? and yet they?re the people who everyone comes and talks to. They end up being the peer counselors in school because what it means is that you can listen to someone else.
G: And you?re not afraid. You?re not avoiding the negatives in life. You?ve been there and you?ve made it. Allie, what about adults? What would you say to them through the life cycle who had a sibling die when they were younger or had a profound loss at a younger age? What would you say to them now?
A: A couple of things. One is go ahead and acknowledge that when milestones happen, this is going to come up. That way, at least you won?t be caught by surprise and maybe you can plan a ritual for it like at our wedding with the flowers, or just knowing that the birth of a new child could be something your sibling would be there for or this person would be there for and so taking a moment to acknowledge them, it allows you the opportunity to do the grief work that you still need to do and the other piece is that it?s okay to introduce the concept of your loved one to new people in your life but we need to be careful not to make them the focus.
G: Well, Allie, I want to thank you so much for being on the show today. It?s time for us to close. It?s been a fantastic show and I know that you have helped so many people and continue through your work. I would suggest that people go to your website. Do you want to give us that again, quickly?
A: www.widowedinformation.org or www.griefstore.com.
G: Okay and I suggest that you get Allie?s books. She?s a fantastic person and thank you so much for being on the show. It?s time to close. Next week we?re going to have Colonel Fred Troutman on. He will share with us how he learned to cope with life following the death of his seventeen-year-old son, Jonathan. Jonathan?s death spurred Fred on to conduct bereavement research on fathers and now he?ll share that with us next week. This show is archived on www.healingthegrievingheart.com as well as www.compassionatefriends.com websites. This is Dr. Gloria Horsley. Please stay tuned again next Thursday at 9:00 Pacific Standard Time, 12:00 Eastern, for more of Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope, renewal and support. Remember, others have been there before you and made it and so can you. You need not walk alone. Thanks for listening. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and keep those emails coming in.