HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
How to Have a Good Bad Day
Host: Dr. Gloria Horsley
With guest: Dr. Darcie Sims
September 8, 2005

G: Welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m your host, Gloria Horsley. Healing the Grieving Heart is the show that reminds you that there are no simple or quick solutions to dealing with the loss of a child. Each of your stories are unique and special as are your deceased children. Your response to the losses in your life are your own and your journey of recovery is on your own time. My guests and I are here every week to support you on the journey and to say that we have made it and so can you. We have looked into the face of disaster and gone on to just survive and even thrive and so will you. Trust those of us who have been in the depths of despair. It is possible to love, laugh, and have joy in your life. The heart will heal. It?s a matter of letting it happen. Healing the Grieving Heart is about nourishing the heart and removing the blocks that slow the miracle of renewal. You can open your heart, love, and be happy again. Please join us on this show by calling our toll-free number 1-866-369-3742 with questions or comments regarding the losses in your life. You can also email me about this show or archived shows at gchorsley@aol.com. Well, today, I am very honored to have as my special guest, Dr. Darcie D. Sims. Dr. Sims is a bereaved parent of Austin, a grief management specialist, a nationally certified thanatologist, a certified pastoral bereavement specialist, and a licensed psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. She is the author of Why are the Casseroles Always Tuna?, Footsteps through the Valley, Touchstones, and If I Could Just See Hope. She co-authored A Place for Me: A Healing Journey for Grieving Kids, Footsteps Through Grief, The Other Side of Grief, and Finding Your Way Through Grief. I first heard Darcie at the Compassionate Friends conference in Boston this summer, and again I heard her at the International Grief Gathering in Vancouver, Canada. She?s a fantastic person and has so much heart and after hearing her, I knew that I wanted her to come on my show so she could share all of her wit and wisdom and her wonderful persona with you. Well, Darcie, I want to welcome you to the show.
D: Well, thank you Gloria, it?s great to be here.
G: It?s wonderful to have you there from Seattle, Washington.
D: Right with bright blue sky and Mount Rainier is out today.
G: First of all, I?d like to start the show by having you tell us a little bit about Austin. I think you call him Big A. And your journey through the loss with him.
D: As I?m sitting here listening to you read my credentials, I?m always wondering, who is that person? Because that?s not the person I started out to be. I?m a mom and that?s my greatest and most proud title that I have. And 30 years ago, in fact, just a couple of days ago, September 1, Big A or Austin came into our life. He was our second child and just bright, bubbly, little blue-eyed blond kid who just took our hearts away. Added and completed our family. We had a 5-year-old daughter, Alicia, and Austin came into our lives as little baby brother, and our life was complete; and I had no inkling of what on earth was going to happen. Within a few months, a few things began to not be quite right. And you know a mother?s instinct just kind of sets you a little bit nervous but oh, you know, that?s not right. Oh, just you?re nervous. And lots of people said oh, you?re just nervous, Darcie. And I thought, ?I already have one kid. I?m not nervous.? Well, eventually, we found out that our son had a malignant brain tumor.
G: How old was he when you found that out?
D: He was about 7 months and things just didn?t go well. And remember 30 years ago, we didn?t have MRIs and they had one cat scan machine in the entire City of Denver. My husband is career military so we move around a lot and we always are finding ourselves in wonderful places to live but they?re not home. It was a strange city. Denver?s a nice city, but it was strange to us. So we searched and we finally found some help and got a diagnosis which was devastating because back then they literally looked at us and said, ?there?s nothing we can do. Why don?t you just leave your son here in the hospital and when he?s gone, we?ll call you.? And I said, ?Oh, you don?t know mothers very well. I think I?m going to take him home. Thank you so much. If I need you, I?ll call.? And they said, ?But you don?t know how to take care of him.? I said, ?You just told me you don?t either. So we?ll figure it out.? And we did. I think we felt a lot like Don Quixote. We simply went home and we did not have hospice care. We did the best we could. When we needed help, we would go back to the hospital. It was a very, very difficult year. We battled for a year. But in the end we were not successful with the battle, and our son died 29 years ago. And that started the path that I?m on now. Again, I had no intention of doing what I?m doing now, but life often hands you other things and so we eventually had to find our way through grief. That long ago, there was only one resource on the market. It?s called The Bereaved Parent by Harriet Schiff. I bought her book. I slept with it. I memorized it. I finally called her and said, ?I?m coming to live with you.? Harriet and I are good friends now, and she said, ?Oh, please don?t do that. But I?m really glad to know my book helped.? And I said, ?It?s the only thing that made any sense to me.?
G: It?s interesting because when I had her on the show, I got the book and re-read it. I realized that what I think I was so totally drawn to with the book was the fact that she said we?d get through.
D: Absolutely, and she was the only one who also then gave me some practical ideas, and the idea that I would get through but it wasn?t going to be easy. Because everyone, of course, said, ?Oh, honey, he was young. Look you have a beautiful 5-year-old daughter. Be grateful for what you?ve got and move on with your life.? And we were moving on. We were still breathing but I wasn?t sure I should still be breathing. And I wasn?t sure that I wanted to.
G: That feeling that you wish you could join them.
D: I remember going to bed at night and praying, ?Please don?t let me wake up in the morning.? And every morning I woke up and went, ?Oh, okay, I guess I have to do this day, too.? That changed eventually, but in the beginning it was so lonely and so isolating as well as difficult.
G: Well, you?ve become quite humorous now. I wanted to ask you, before Austin died ? do you want me to call him Big A or Austin?
D: Oh, Big A, that?s what we called him.
G: Before Big A died, did you call him that while he was ill?
D: We did because he wasn?t a very big child and, of course, now in retrospect we know why he didn?t grow. If you have a malignant brain tumor, it?s taking all your energy. And so he was just always a little kid. And Allie, our daughter, came up with that. She said, ?you know he?s pretty small, but he?s sure taking a big chunk of that time in our family.? And I said, ?Yes, he is.? So he became Big A.
G: Did you always have humor in your life before Big A?
D: Oh, I did. My dad was a wonderful jokester and had a wonderful sense of humor and I got that from him. And without it, we would not have survived. We would have absolutely fallen into the darkest, deepest hole and never gotten out. Because we discovered that even in the most difficult moments, and it might have been what we call sick humor or dark humor, but it was a breathing space. And when you?re laughing or chuckling, you actually take in more oxygen so you get a little more oxygen in your body. And for just a moment it was like the darkness would sweep away. It came back, of course, but there was a time right after he died when our humor did die, and there were no sounds of laughter in our house for quite a while.
G: I think at first, you?re getting ready for his funeral, and it?s kind of bizarre, but some things are very amusing. And I couldn?t even tell you what they are now but they?re very strange. You?re laughing and getting a good laugh.
D: Oh, absolutely, and then of course people would come up and because he didn?t live as long as lots of people who have their kid for 5, 6, 7, or even 20 or 30 years, Big A didn?t have a long life but the people who did come had little stories to share with us and some of the facial expressions he used to be able to get and some of the noises that little kids make were wonderful respites for us. They were like little islands when someone would share a good story and we would have a laugh for a moment. Or our daughter, Allie, would come up and say, ?Do you remember the time when he spit peas all over the kitchen?? And for a moment, we could leave our sorrow and laugh for a minute. The sorrow didn?t disappear. It came back but it was just like a little island of hope for a moment.
G: Well, I love your book you wrote on Why are Casseroles always Tuna? I wanted to talk about that food with you a little bit, about the meaning of food, and people bringing those casseroles. I remember I had so many things in my freezer, that I think it was five years before we ate them all.
D: I can?t serve tuna to this day without someone in our family saying, ?okay, who died?? It?s so related. I think for us it was tuna because one, we?re military and tuna is always available at the commissary, so I think people just quick made the tuna casserole and within hours after his death, I think we had 15 or 16 tuna casseroles on the counter in the kitchen. Some were with little peas, some were with crushed potato chips, some were mushroom soup. I kept thinking, this is so nice, but how about chocolate? I think I wanted an ?clair. But I think people bring food because we don?t know what else to do and it?s such a natural source of comfort that we quick make up something and take it over. And say, here, I don?t know what to do.
G: Lasagnas too. We had big lasagnas.
D: Oh, absolutely. Someday I want to write a book about the different foods the different regions of the country bring. Some people have said, ?Oh, we live in the ham part of the country,? and ?We live in the hot dish or the casserole part,? and we just happened to live in the tuna part at the time.
G: Well, it?s time for us to take a break now. You?re listening to Healing the Grieving Heart, and I?m Dr. Gloria Horsley, and our guest today is Darcie Sims, and our topic today is How to Have a Good Bad Day. Darcie is a bereaved parent of Big A, a grief management specialist, a licensed psychotherapist, and author of Why are the Casseroles Always Tuna?, Footsteps through the Valley, Touchstones, and If I Could Just See Hope. And she co-authored several other books. So if you?d like to join our show with comments for us, please call in at 1 866-369-3742. Stay tuned for more from Darcie and Gloria.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m Dr. Gloria Horsley and our topic today is How to Have a Good Bad Day, and our guest is Dr. Darcie Sims, bereaved parent of Austin, grief management specialist, author and licensed psychotherapist. Well, Darcie, I wanted to ask you, since we titled this How to Have a Good Bad Day, which I also think you titled your talk at the Compassionate Friends. I wondered how you came up with that and if you want to say something to us about how to have a good bad day.
D: I did want to talk about that. So many people would look at me when I was having a bad day and say, ?Now what?s the matter?? As if they had forgotten that my son had died or maybe they didn?t remember that or they didn?t want to address it. And I finally decided I have the right to have whatever my emotions are. I have that right. Please don?t ask me to be happy and cheerful and move on with my life all the time. So I finally decided maybe I ought to do a workshop on how to have a good bad day and get rid of the guilt of having a bad day. And the more I thought about it, the more I worked my way through it. I thought maybe it isn?t having a good bad day. Maybe it?s learning how to have a good bad moment and let those moments come, experience them, acknowledge them, work through them, and then let them go. So that I gradually worked my way out of an entire bad day and worked my way down to a bad hour. I?m down to a bad 5 minutes. I don?t think I?ll ever get less than that. I don?t think I want to. I do want to have my bad 5 minutes.
G: Well, I had just the opposite. I was working at a mental health center at the time. I was a clinical nurse specialist and I worked with a lot of psychiatrists, and they kept wanting me to cry.
D: Isn?t that true? Most people equate tears with sadness and, of course, if you?re grieving, you must be sad and you must cry. I will grant you, with grief we are sad but not everybody cries.
G: And not every moment do you want to do it. They wanted to call me in their office, interview me, and have me cry, and it was upsetting to them if I would not do that.
D: Absolutely, and some people are criers. That doesn?t mean they don?t have a healthy way of expressing their emotions, but some people naturally don?t cry. And then there are some like me, I?m a professional crier. I could be hired out. I?m what I call a weeper and a wailer and I cry when I?m happy, I cry when I?m sad, I cry when I?m upset, and I cry when I?m not upset. So you never know what I?m crying about.
G: That?s a great thing for women, too. You can do that but how about your husband?
D: Well, I happen to be married to a man who doesn?t cry on the outside. And that took me a long time to understand. I didn?t interview very well when I fell in love. I should have asked now, ?how do you cry,? but we don?t interview well, we just fall in love and follow our hearts. But it cost us a lot of energy in our marriage after our son died because I?m a very outward expressive person and he?s very inward. It isn?t, I think, just because he?s a man. That?s just his personality style, because there are many women who are also inward and there are men who are external in their emotions. But boy did it cost us some misunderstandings because, of course, I?m here sitting in the living room sobbing and he?s sitting there stoic, and I looked at him one day and said, ?You didn?t even love him, did you?? Oh, nasty. So we used our differences as I think a lot of people do. I don?t think we?re unique in this. We began to use our differences as weapons instead of cherishing how different we are and using our gifts to help each other, we started looking at each and my husband would say, ?Well, you cry about everything, who knows whether you loved him.? And I would say, ?But you don?t cry at all so I know you didn?t love him.? We weren?t even grieving at that point, we were just fighting.
G: And maybe taking out some of that frustration and anger at having Big A die on each other.
D: Absolutely. In fact, it came to a head. We decided that we would get a divorce and as I think a lot of families do. We got down to separating all our household goods and we were fighting so hard. I mean, I thought here are two people who can?t even figure out how to divide up the silverware. And it had nothing to do with the divorce. It was all about grief and all about hurt. But, of course, 30 years ago, no one was talking about this and no one would help us. So we were just struggling the best we could and we got down to the last possessions. We collect Navajo Indian rugs and we had gotten a beautiful antique one for a wedding present and I got out a pair of scissors because we were fighting. Well, it was my friend who gave it to me, it was my wedding, why should he ? all that stuff. I started to cut it. I cut two threads of this beautiful antique rug when the absurdity finally hit me and I started to laugh. And I said, boy, are we a mess. We can?t even decide how to divide up this beautiful art work and I?m going to destroy it so we could each have a piece of it. He started to laugh, too, and he said, ?yeah, we are a basket case.? Well, of course, we laughed and laughed and then the tears came, for me anyway. And we ended up sitting on the floor and I looked at him and I said, ?I don?t think I want to divorce you. I just don?t know who you are and I don?t know who I am.? And that was the first time ? that was probably 7 or 8 months after Big A had died ? that we actually sat and talked and we discovered we were strangers, not just to each other, but to ourselves. So we worked at it and we made a commitment. We said we?ll give ourselves one year and if we cannot put this thing together in one year, then we will divorce because two grown ups couldn?t do it. I didn?t want to have another loss because our son had died.
G: Yes, I think that?s true. Phil and I went through the same kind of thing. You don?t have the energy to do it, I mean, when you really get down to it, you don?t have the energy to split up.
D: Absolutely, and you don?t have the energy to stay together.
G: Exactly. You?re kind of two people moving around in the same space.
D: Without even connecting.
G: The kind of passing in the night.
D: It would make a wonderful story if we said we lived happily ever after and we have lived happily ever after but not without a whole lot of work.
G: But the one thing that as time goes on, this thing that you have in common is the loss of a child eventually. It is a huge commonality.
D: Absolutely. It has become, of course, a part of our history. And we are one of the few groups of people on this earth who remember our son, our daughter, our family and some of our friends. But of course as time has gone on, more people know us without our child than knew us with our child. So this is a common history and now it wraps us in a blanket of warmth and we have wonderful memories of those moments with our son. But we had to work to get those, too.
G: Well, talk to me a little about your rose-colored glasses.
D: I own a pair of rose-colored glasses and I?m a psychologist and I use them a lot in my office. I say, let?s see if we can change the way we look at your situation. And we?ll put them on, and the clients are going, ?oh, yeah, right.? So I?ll put them on first and they?ll say, ?well, if the therapist can, I can too.? And I?ll say, ?Tell me if you see it any differently.? So I thought, I?m going to try this with the death of my son. It was probably two years after Austin died and I was very tired of wallowing. I couldn?t move forward. I?d move to a certain place where I could function every day, but there was not much joy. And I thought he had a wonderful horrible life all in the same sentence. It was awful but it was his life, and there were wonderful moments in it. So I put them on one afternoon in my office and I?m looking around, of course, hoping no one would walk in and I thought, all right, look at the worst thing you can imagine. And I said, ?I don?t have to imagine it. I already know it.? And I said to myself, ?Tell me something good about it.? Well, you get to that immediately because I was looking at his death and it occurred to me, wait a minute, you?re letting that one moment, because it only takes a moment to die. It takes a long time to get to that, but it only takes that one moment to die because you?re letting that moment destroy all of the joy you had and I started to look at his life, not just his death. And that was a choice point in grief. I didn?t know it at the time, I know it now. And I decided I would remember first that our son lived, not that he died. He died. I?ll never forget that. But I was forgetting that he lived.
G: And this was what, two years?
D: This was about two years into it and I think you can do it earlier than that. But again, we had very few guideposts. Very few people were talking about this. We didn?t have the wonderful resources that are available today. Compassionate Friends was a fledgling organization that wasn?t even outside of Florida and Chicago at the time. So even they weren?t there to help. And now we have these great resources including this radio show where you and I can just sit and talk about this.
G: I love your idea of choice points because I know I had them and I remember a choice point where it was probably two weeks after my son had died and I suddenly one day decided that I would not get sick. I started running. I was so ashamed because I knew my neighbors were looking out the window thinking she doesn?t even care that her son died. I?m sure they weren?t but that?s what I thought. But that was a choice point and there are many that we come along the way to move us through the process. But I love your rose-colored glasses. Do you remember how the whole world was grey?
D: Oh, absolutely, there was no color at all.
G: The sky was grey.
D: Actually, I kind of liked it that way until I realized I like cloudy days. I was gloomy inside so why not have the weather. The sun annoyed me and so did flowers blooming. I just wanted to pluck their little heads off.
G: Oh, yeah. They?re way too bright.
D: And people laughing. I thought, ?what?s the matter with you?? Then I thought, ?no, no, Darcie, it?s what?s the matter with me.? Our son loved his way through his life and I could do no less as a legacy to him. And that?s when the joy came back. That?s when the humor came back, and it has never left us.
G: Wonderful. Well, it?s time for us to come up on break again. Please stay tuned for more from Healing the Grieving Heart. Our topic today is How to Have a Good Bad Day. My guest today is Dr. Darcie Sims, bereaved parent of Austin, Big A, grief management specialist, nationally certified thanatologist, certified pastoral bereavement specialist, licensed psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. And she is author of Why are the Casseroles Always Tuna?, Footsteps through the Valley, Touchstones, and If I Could Just See Hope. She co-authored A Place for Me: A Healing Journey for Grieving Kids, Footsteps Through Grief, The Other Side of Grief, and Finding Your Way Through Grief. And when we come back from break, I would like to ask Dr. Sims how we can get a hold of her books and also I have an email that I would like to read to you. So please stay tuned for more from my guest and if you would like to call in, our toll free number is 1-866-369-3742, and you can also email me at gchorsley@aol.com about this show that is archived on the Compassionate Friends website as well as VoiceAmerica. You can email me about past shows that are archived or today?s show. Thank you and stay tuned for more from Darcie and Gloria.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and my guest today is Darcie Sims, bereaved parent of Austin, grief management specialist, and licensed psychotherapist. Darcie is author of Why are the Casseroles Always Tuna?, Footsteps through the Valley, Touchstones, and If I Could Just See Hope. She co-authored A Place for Me: A Healing Journey for Grieving Kids, Footsteps Through Grief, The Other Side of Grief, and Finding Your Way Through Grief. Our topic today is How to Have a Good Bad Day. Well, Darcie, I asked you about how we can get your books and before we get into that, we?ve got a couple of phone calls that I want to take. The first one is Lisa from Missouri.
L: My name is Lisa. I?m not a bereaved parent, I?m a bereaved sibling. My brother, Mark, died eight months ago, and I wanted to ask Dr. Sims how do I get other people to let me grieve? They all seem to want to help me. They want to tell my family and I that we should be over it by now and we should be better and what I?m hearing is that I?m not supposed to be better and that?s normal, but I don?t know how to get everyone else to kind of let us have a bad day.
G: This is your sibling that died? So one of the things that we?ve talked about on past shows about the fact that siblings also are often the unacknowledged mourners and are having to take care of everybody and get everything together. Are you hearing a little of that, Darcie, what?s your thought on it?
D: Absolutely. A lot of times siblings are simply brushed aside or given the task of now you take care of your mom and dad. They?re having a hard time. Which says, you don?t have time for grief. You need to get over it, and they also tell siblings, and it doesn?t matter how old you are, whether you?re 5 or 50. Don?t give your mom and dad any more trouble, which means disappear, be silent. Lisa, your brother?s name was Mark? I really do believe we have the right to grieve and we each are going to grieve in a very different way. And one of the best things that you can do is ask your friends, and sometimes even other family members will impose this please don?t grieve on us, too. Ask them for the gift of tolerance and the gift of patience because grief takes a lot longer than anybody expects. I found when I asked people for that gift, I said, ?I know you want me to be better, but right now, what I need from you is just permission to be where I am, and if I?m angry today, I?m angry. And help me express that anger so I can move through it. If I?m sad today, I?m really sad today and help me express that so I can move through it.? Because most people, I think, love you very much. They want to see you happy and they just flat don?t know what to say.
G: It hurts them to see you hurt, too. The other thing Lisa might think about is going to a Compassionate Friends group. They have a sibling group so you can take your own time and hear other people talk about these issues also.
D: Absolutely and that group is not just for young siblings, they also have adult sibling groups and it?s a very special relationship to be a sister and a brother and I want you to cherish that and the first thing I want you to remember every morning when you wake up is that Mark is a wonderful, living part of your life. He?s not close to you where you can hug him anymore, but you don?t stop loving people just because they die.
G: Well, Lisa, thank you so much for calling in to the show and we appreciate you listening, and take care of yourself and give yourself all those gifts of tolerance and all the things you?re asking other people to, give them to yourself first.
L: Thank you so much.
G: Now we have a Nancy from Arkansas.
N: When Dr. Sims was talking about crying so much, I?m very, very similar to that. I cry all the time over everything it seems. I lost my mom and dad, brother, sister, and brother. Five people all in a row. I live in Arkansas and they?re all from Illinois and every year I?d leave Arkansas to go home and bury someone. Just recently I lost my first grandchild, and I don?t know the steps of grief and I?ve read Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, but it?s like I put it somewhere in the back of my mind that I don?t want to deal with it. And it?s absolutely overwhelming.
G: We just had a sibling on, and another disenfranchised group are grandparents. They sometimes don?t give themselves the right to grieve. They don?t feel like they have permission because their kids are suffering, but you need to give yourself that permission. We did a show a few weeks ago, it?s archived, on grandparents that you might want to listen to. But Darcie, do you have some thoughts?
D: I do, Nancy. Thank you for calling. You?ve had a tremendous number of losses and you must be almost afraid to go to Illinois now because every time you go, it?s because someone has died.
N: Right, there?s another one pending. A sister. It?s like I haven?t grieved.
D: You?re grieving every one of those people and we have to grieve them separately and then we grieve them as a whole. These are members of your family and you?re watching your family get smaller and smaller saying, ?wait a minute, this is just overwhelming? and it is. You have to grieve each loss separately and then we can grieve them collectively. And if you resist the grieving, and a lot of us do because we don?t know how to grieve. If we resist it, we?re interfering with the body?s natural repairing process. If you postpone it, you sometimes find yourself getting stuck in grief, and we can?t move through it. And I?m not saying get over it. I don?t think you ever get over a death of someone you love. I think you can get through it, and you get through it one footstep at a time. So when you find a thought coming to you, don?t push it away. Give yourself permission and time to sit down with a cup of coffee, a cup of tea. Go walk in the garden for a minute and say, ?you know, I?m just going to be here with these thoughts.? And if it?s a crying thought, have a good cry. If it?s a sad thought, let that sadness come over you and then as it washes through you, I want you to begin to say, ?Thanks for being a part of my life.? Not the sadness, but the person.
G: Nancy, I wanted to ask you also if you?re giving yourself the time and permission maybe to not grieve as strongly as you feel you should be. You seem to have some expectations. Maybe you can only tolerate so much. So like Darcie says, you need to let it come in when it will and don?t block it. You can only tolerate so much loss, so you may be gradually doing it. Maybe you should try some rose-colored glasses.
D: Or, go out in the garden. Arkansas has beautiful gardens. Go out in the garden and look at a beautiful flower and name it. Name that flower for one of the members in your family. And just treasure that. Say, ?I am so glad you were in my life. I?m sad you?re not here now but you still are.? I found one of the best things that helped me was when I stopped using the word ?lost? because they died but I didn?t lose them. It was a little tiny thing in my life, but boy did it help me because I kept thinking of all the things I had lost, and then I remembered, no. Look at the joy I still have because these people, these wonderful people, are still in my life. Not the way I wanted them. But they?re still here.
G: You were talking about the Kubler-Ross model, Nancy, and the last stage was acceptance. And now we?re looking at a whole new thing, it?s called continuing bonds. The continuing bonds is how we carry them over on in our life, how we honor them, how we remember them. And I was wondering, are you a person that likes to write?
N: Yes, I do.
G: So the journaling and that kind of thing can be very helpful.
N: I haven?t done it in a very, very long time. When different things come up as to particularly my youngest sister. When she died, she was just 39. The thought of her actually being lost and gone, when that thought comes to my mind, is so overwhelming that it?s almost physical. It?s almost to where I can?t even breathe. And I wrote a lot with her and I go back over the things that she and I corresponded about and I had sent her a book, The Language of Letting Go, by Melody Beattie, three weeks before she died, and she just treasured that book, and then when we finally got up to Chicago, that book was on her night stand. And I can barely go through that book or pick it up and yet I know there?s such a wealth of information in there and I think, maybe I haven?t begun to even grieve because I keep pushing it away.
G: Have you been to a Compassionate Friends group? Do you have one in your area?
N: No. I haven?t done anything.
G: Well, why don?t you look into that, because maybe you might want to do a sibling thing. They do grandparents. But it?s a wonderful place to go tell your story and to talk to people who are in similar circumstance. If you go to the Compassionate Friends website, you?ll find out where there are groups in your area. So please try that and give me an email and tell me how it goes.
N: I will. I will do that and thank you so much. I appreciate you listening to me.
G: Some wonderful call-ins and we appreciate the people that call in on the show because I think there are a lot of us that have the same feelings that are out there listening. Darcie, before we took those calls, I wanted to ask you how people would go about getting your books. You are quite the writer. My goodness.
D: Well, it was one of the ways I found to help myself. The books are available in book stores all across the country but the easiest way probably to find them is to come to a website that is www.griefstore.com, and it?s a great website that has a tremendous number of resources and all our books and videos and tapes and audios and lots of other things are there as well. It?s just a good site to bookmark and to come whenever you need a resource.
G: That?s great. I loved your book, as I said, Why are Casseroles Always Tuna? I know you?ve done some of these things with your daughter.
D: Several of those things are co-written with my daughter who is now a grownup and also works in the field. She works with grieving siblings. I think part of it was because she grew up as a grieving sibling, but it?s just her love of children and wanting to help, and understanding in the depth that very few of us can. She?s walked in those shoes and she wants to make sure that no child walks alone. Her name is Alicia Franklin.
G: She?s going to be on our show in a few weeks talking about kids and grief which will be a great thing to hear about. I wanted to ask you about holidays, but it looks like it?s going to be time for us to take a break now. When we come back, we?ll talk with Dr. Darcie Sims. You?re listening to Healing the Grieving Heart. Darcie is an author, psychotherapist, bereaved parent of Austin, and I also would like to ask you, Darcie, when we come back on the show if you think there is anything we?ve missed, and that you would like to have our audience hear about. So stay tuned for more comments and advice from our guest, Darcie Sims, and to hear about next week?s very special topic and guest. I?m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley.
D: I?d really like to go back for a moment and pick up the idea about choice points. I think we do have choices in our grieving process and a lot of people are doing a lot of reading now, and I?m very glad that there?s literature to read. But I want them to remember that what?s written in the literature is written in the literature. It may not live that way for you. Grief is so unique. So individual. That we end up having choices of what we will attend to, what we will take with us, what we will leave behind. If I could sum up everything in one sentence, grieve your way. It is unique. It is special. It is tailored just for you. If you?re a crier, cry. If you?re angry, be angry. If you?re sad, be sad. But don?t let it last any longer than it needs to. Keep looking for the memories that bring you joy. Even if those memories at first bring tears down your eyes, don?t discard them. Do what you need to do to find the healing spot to remember the love, not just the death.
G: And you will grieve your own way as you let it happen. You don?t have to force it. It will happen.
D: You can?t run away from grief. It is in your cells in your body. You can go to Hawaii and it?s laying on the beach with you. You can climb the highest mountain and it?s there. So acknowledge it. Become aware of it and then do something with it. Don?t just wait for time to pass. Time heals all is not true. Time does nothing but pass. It?s what you do with that time that makes the difference in your life.
G: And one of the great things you can do is find a support group of like-minded people. Compassionate Friends and there are a lot of communities that have other grieving support groups if you?re the person who likes support groups. Again, as Darcie said, you may not be a person who wants to go to a support group. That?s one nice thing about the shows being archived on the internet. Some people do the internet. But I think in some way you need to tell your story. If you don?t want to go to group, you need to write it. You need to do something to bring it out, the story about your loss and how you bring it into your life now and how you carry it and how you remember people.
D: Absolutely. We each have a story to tell and we?re only telling that story so we can hear it. It?s wonderful to go to a group if you like group settings. But write it. Talk it into a tape recorder. Talk to yourself in the shower or while you?re driving in the car or mowing the lawn. You can sing it. Tell the whole story.
G: And tell it over and over until it bores you. Until you remember the love part. Until the negative part you?re through with.
D: It will always be there. I?m not saying get rid of those bad memories but learn to balance them, because in the beginning all we can remember is what we?ve lost and it?s a choice for you to decide when you?re going to start to remember what you have, and I?ve got love. This little guy came into our lives and I?m so forever grateful that I knew him for a little while. It wasn?t long enough, but it was something.
G: Could you talk to us a little about the holidays? I know in your book on Why are Casseroles Always Tuna? you talk about Valentine?s and Christmas and Easter.
D: And of course everybody thinks it?s the big winter holidays that are going to get you, and they do get you, but we?re ready for those. It?s the little ones. Halloween was horrible the first year when I suddenly realized I wasn?t going to have another goblin to dress up. Easter is tough. Mother?s Day is tough. First day of school was tough. The first thing we have to do is just say, ?These are going to be hard days and I know that? so we?re not surprised, and to kind of prepare. What do you need to do to help you get yourself through a bad time? What do you do? You can?t avoid the day. It?s here. If you don?t want to give out trick-or-treat candy, don?t turn your light on on the porch. But don?t hide in the dark, either. Just say, ?no, this year I?m not going to do that.?
G: Or I may go to a movie.
D: Absolutely, go do something else. If everybody always comes to your house for Thanksgiving dinner and you can?t bear the thought of serving turkey to all the turkeys in your family, say, ?you know what, we?re going to McDonalds.? Or try something new. Don?t throw out everything, though. I think some people say, ?I just want to cancel the holidays, whatever they are.? That?s an additional loss because the holidays are a time when families come together and we have all of those memories or all of those hopes of what they were going to be. So we have to acknowledge if you play with it. The first year is awful. But the second year could be even worse unless we really start to work at it.
G: Right. And one of the things that Harriet Schiff said when she was on the show and I think she was talking about herself. I think she felt that she didn?t consider her living children enough. She said she didn?t cook for a year and all that kind of thing, and one of the things she said was, ?you?ve got to think of other people in the family, too, over time.? Maybe not the first year as much, but the second and third year, you may want to figure out how you?re going to celebrate these holidays for your other children.
D: I am so grateful for our daughter, Alicia, because at 5, she would say, ?excuse me, I need cereal. Excuse me, I?m here.? And then her big question, ?Do you have birthdays in heaven?? And she insisted that we have a birthday party on her brother?s birthday and, of course, that was the last thing I wanted to do. But she insisted. She said, ?But mom, he was born, wasn?t he? and we?re having a party!? And we did, and we still do. We have a cupcake with a candle and the first year we kind of closed the curtains so the neighbors didn?t see. I didn?t want to explain we were having a birthday for a dead kid. But it didn?t matter what the neighbors thought. She?s the one who pulled us into this and said, ?Wait. He?s still here. We have a seat for him at the table. He?s always a part of our lives in little tiny ways.? We have a special ornament for him. It?s the last one that goes on our tree every year and it?s a very special moment.
G: Do you have any other rituals that you recommend to people?
D: My very favorite one is one that we came up with a couple of years go in our family and I just was messing around with a little tiny gift box. It was a real pretty box. I didn?t really want to throw it away. I also didn?t want to pass it on to someone else and re-gift it. So I put it in the middle of the Thanksgiving table, and I put little strips of paper at everybody?s place. Of course, they said, ?what?s this?? I said, ?I want you to think of a gift that you?ve received because you knew Austin, Big A, or at that time my mom and dad had also died, grandma or grandpa. And not a toy or a present that they gave you, but a gift like grandpa?s stories, and Big A?s big smile, and the grandma who would always hem the prom dresses.? She would do anything for you, anytime day or night. She remembered she?d done it for you and it cost you, but she always was there. And we began to write these little things down, these gifts on pieces of paper and we put them in this little cardboard box, it?s a little gift box, and we called it our blessing box. And I didn?t know the significance of it until a couple of nights later during the holidays. I couldn?t sleep so I went downstairs and I saw that little box sitting on the dining room table. I sat down and just opened it up, and I read those blessings, and I thought, you?re right, how rich we are. How lucky we are that these people had been in and are still in our lives. They?re not the way we wanted them to be, but I finally figured out that I think people who are truly bereaved are those who never knew love at all, and I?m rich beyond any measure I could count. And we keep that little blessing box out. It?s at every holiday and we keep adding to it. And it has just been a wonderful source of tangible evidence that these people are in our lives and they loved us.
G: Thank you so much, Darcie, and thank you so much for being on the show. It?s time to close our show now, and again I want to thank Darcie Sims, author, psychotherapist, and bereaved parent. Well, Darcie, you?re an inspiration to all of those who couldn?t stand another tuna casserole. Anyways, thank you so much for being on the show, and thank you for all your love and all the things that you do for bereaved families and parents. And please tune in again next week to hear Michelle Linn-Gust, writer, speaker, and teacher. Our topic is Surviving the Death of a Suicide by a Sibling. This show is archived on www.Health.VoiceAmerica.com as well as www.thecompassionatefriends.org websites. This is Dr. Gloria Horsley. Please tune in again next week, Thursday at 9:00 Pacific for more of Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope, renewal and support. And remember, you need not walk alone.

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