Depression is one of the five stages of grieving that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross outlined in her book Death and Dying. In this video I am beginning to look at depression itself. Please comment and share.
http://www.GrabYourFreeGift.com/cathyb
Feeling Depressed? Cathy Burns, MSW briefly discusses two contributory factors.
CLICK HERE to get your FREE eBook called Defeat Depression! Ways to Cope with Depression and Melancholic Tendencies.
The Reader’s Digest has a regular feature called “Laughter is the Best Medicine”. I agree. Humor allows us to deal with so many things in life. It uplifts our spirit. It brings new perspective to situations. It lightens the mood.
So, I bring you the humor of Jeanne Robertson. Enjoy!
I don’t know about you, but I was laughing so hard the tears were coming down my cheeks. I can so relate!
“When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow.” – from the book Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler:
This has been true over and over for me during the last two years in particular. Yesterday marks two years since my husband, John died. It’s been quite a journey. The Kübler-Ross Model provided me some of the information I needed to work through my own grief, specifically an understanding of the stages of grieving mentioned in the short article below. This website came out of my healing process. I am moving on and helping others now to grow from grief to joy.
“You may not be as familiar with Dr. Kübler-Ross by name, but you will recognize her legacy. From Wiki: Her extensive work with the dying led to the book On Death and Dying in 1969. In this work she proposed the now famous Five Stages of Grief as a pattern of adjustment. These five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Kübler-Ross encouraged the hospice care movement, believing that euthanasia prevents people from completing their ‘unfinished business’.
In 1977 she founded ‘Shanti Nilaya’ (Home of Peace). She intended it as a healing center for the dying and their families. She was also a co-founder of the American Holistic Medical Association.”
Article source: http://actsoffaithblog.com/inspirational-quotes-elisabeth-kubler-ross
Photo source: Ken Ross
Cathy’s comment: The photo shows two incredible women (Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Mother Teressa) both of whom made an incredible impact in this world by following their hearts. I can only hope to make a difference in the lives of others by also following my heart. Please comment and share about what this means to you.
Death has such a finality about it. When someone dies it is the end of so many things: the intimacy of personal relationship, birthdays and anniversaries, life’s travels together and enjoying the children and grandchildren together. It marks the end and yet, it is a new beginning for the ones left behind.
Somehow we go on even though it is hard. We spend time in tears and necessity. We spend time remembering and wishing they were still here to share this little thing or that. We move back and forth on the journey of grief. There comes the time when we are ready to move on with our lives, to move out into new ventures, new friends, new life.
This moving on is part of our journey from grief to joy. Life ebbs and flows back and forth. Grief does the same. Just when we think we are moving on, grief tickles us again in little ways. We shed some more tears and then go do something new. We may even feel guilty for daring to move on without them. I sure am doing a lot of talking in the “we” format, aren’t I? Yes, at times I remove myself a bit by talking from a bigger perspective. So, yes, grief still visits me from time to time even though I am moving on.
I’ve found that moving on means more than beginning to dream. It means actually taking action, doing something new, going out with someone you’ve just met, reading new books, etc. I have done just that. I first attended a Millionaire Mind Intensive (MMI) developed by T. Harv Eker in June 2010. I’ve gone to two more and attended two of his other seminars as well. They have been healing for me. (Click here for more info on MMI) Additionally, I trained as a Passion Test Facilitator with Janet Bray Attwood. (Click here for Janet’s products ) I even went onto Match.com for their free three day trial and enjoyed looking at the current possibilities available through that venue. I am ready to fully live again, to face new joys and sorrows, to experience all that life has for me.
Moving on can be scary as is true of attempting any unknown venture. Our futures are truly unknown to us. However, we do have the power of choice which is very powerful. Choose what you want in your future, choose what you want your future to be, who you want to have in it, where you want to live, what you want to do. Choose and then take steps to put it into action. This then is the journey from grief to joy and I choose joy! Anyone care to join me? There’s plenty of room.
Whenever I sit down to do what I call free writing, I don’t really know what to write. So I just start. What came out today is so important that I wanted to share it with you. I am in a coaching program which is supposed to help me get on track and move forward to a financially free future. I can’t believe how incredibly stuck I am. All the nuances are showing up which is good. Once I recognize them, I can change them or let go of them or change how I think/talk about challenges.
Here’s some of the scary things I am dealing with:
I’m depressed right now and depression really takes a dent out of your self-esteem. Still everybody deals with it at some point in their lives, especially when you throw grief into the mix. Mostly the grief doesn’t affect me these days but I’m still dealing with the effects of it as I continue to grow into joy.
One way to combat depression is to look at your self-esteem. If yours is low, how do you rebuild a healthy self-esteem? You start by looking at your life, by looking at what you are or aren’t accomplishing. You make a list of all the things you “should” be doing. Include the bare essentials, like brushing your teeth and hair daily, cooking and eating, doing the dishes, washing clothes, etc. Writing this list establishes all the things that you already think you “should” be doing whether or not you are.
When you let little things slide, your subconscious is aware of the disappointment you really hold. Although it seems small every time you let things slide, the level of disappointment in yourself accumulates. Soon it’s not so small anymore. It begins to present itself in lower self-esteem and leads to the idea that you are not good enough, etc. – a downhill slide into despair if there ever was one.
What are you choosing for your life? Are you choosing to slide into despair or are you choosing to look up and take the baby steps to improve your life? After all, you choose your life. You choose whether to get up or not, what you eat, how you dress, where you live and with whom. You choose how you feel by how well you live up to your own standards. How do you fight off the naysayers and keep going? How do you begin to dream again? How do you visualize what that baby dream is?
So many questions, yet questioning is where the healing begins and continues. You pose the questions for yourself and listen inside for your answers. Make your list of 100 things you “should” be doing every day and include all areas: home, family, career, spiritual, etc. Then choose one area only to really look at. Choose five items per day and hold yourself accountable to get those things done. Finally – CELEBRATE the fact you are alive to choose those five items and when you accomplish each item – CELEBRATE again. Congratulate yourself that you did it. Choose for yourself and create your new and gorgeous life. After all, you deserve it!
The following video is a book trailer that in itself describes the journey of growing from grief to joy. It’s well worth the read.
To purchase the book or Kindle ebook, go to: A Journey Well Taken: Life After Loss
T. Harv Eker & Cathy Burns at UIBC-LA
Today is Day Four of the 5th Ultimate Internet Boot Camp (UIBC) and it finds me in Los Angeles, California. I am here specifically to help others develop their own internet businesses. It has been fantastic for all 320 UIBC participants and for all those who are here to help. We have volunteered our time and expertise to help others and be helped in return. Additionally, we are building connections and an extended family who loves to help each other.
Getting involved with helping others is the very thing which can be most beneficial when you are dealing with grief. So, my suggestion to all of you who have lost someone they love is to find folks you can join with, building new connections, connections from the heart, connections that support both of you.
I’ll update this post and add new information in the next couple of days. I look forward to getting back to blogging on a regular basis, bringing you thoughts, ideas, suggestions, research, etc. that will make a difference in either your life or the lives of those you know who are dealing with grief.
Until then, have a blessed day.
Below is an article to which I can really relate. I believe that will be true for many of you as well. I’ve had a lot of thoughts coming up lately and am ready to begin writing about them once again. In the meantime, I hope this article helps. Click on the title below to read the entire article.
Mourning a husband who has not yet passed
As Hank disappears into dementia, I have to admit the unbearable: His death would be easier than this
By Lillian B. Rubin
I had a life, and now it’s gone. No, I’m not writing from the grave. I’m alive, and even reasonably well, but I seem to have lost my life — you know, the one I’ve been living for the last five or six decades.
Can anyone really prepare us for the future? Does it really make a difference if someone tells a young girl that one day she’ll find blood oozing from her body, or a young boy that he’ll wake up with his PJs mucky from a wet dream, or a pregnant woman that birthing her child will be an experience of breathtaking agony, or a middle-aged person that one day she’ll notice that her pubic hair has thinned to near baldness, or that we’ll all get old and, one way or another, lose our life, even while we’re still live.
I lost mine six months ago when I could no longer care for my husband’s advancing dementia and sent him into care. Well, maybe I really lost it a couple of years before that, but I didn’t know it then. He was here, sleeping in the same bed, eating at the same table, sitting at the same desk — a living, breathing presence, if not a fully present one. His mind wasn’t working so well, but the familiar body was fine, and his heart still tried to be what he had been. Until one day, he couldn’t and I couldn’t, and we both lost our lives — only he doesn’t know it.
It’s been over a month since I last posted a blog. The actual anniversary of John’s death came and went while I worked with many others to put on a Christmas party for the foster children and the families that care for them in our county. For the most part I forgot what the day signified and when I did remember, well, it seemed kinda surreal.
Then came preparations for my family Christmas. My daughter helped me rearrange the furniture and put up the tree. That’s when it really hit me. You see, my recliner went back into the position where I sat right next to John’s hospital bed when we had it in our living room. And, I could almost see him laying there. The sadness hit and I knew it was one more layer of healing to face and come through in preparation for the new year to come.
Family and friends so often don’t know how to deal with someone going through grief. They want to help, to alleviate the pain in anyway they can. It is understandable. We don’t like to see someone we love in pain. Grief, however, is not something that anyone else can alleviate. It is a process we all must come to terms with on our own.
I went out of town for a few days for work and was able to follow that up with visits to other family and friends. I was really looking forward to getting back home and finishing decorating for Christmas. While I was gone, my daughter rearranged my living room so my recliner and the Christmas tree were in completely different positions. She thought that it would keep me from being sad. In actuality, I was shocked. I felt robbed of the opportunity to deal with my grief in my own way and even anger that she would try to control my situation. At the same time, I understood why she did it. What a mixture of emotions. So, when she was out of town, I got some help and put everything back in place.
I sit here now in my recliner with the bright twinkling lights sparkling just above my laptop as the Christmas tree turns in the background. What a beautiful sight! I’ve come through the sadness and am ready to grow even more this coming year. That’s the way it is with grief. It comes and goes through cycles. The sadness is ever so necessary in order to remember and release. Remember and move on into the joy of the future.
Everyone who has read this blog has gone on some of the adventure of grief with me. Thank you for joining me on my journey. This blog will continue to grow into joy as I take new steps. I don’t really know exactly where it’s going to go. I want to continue to be sensitive so it can help others. I also want to establish an online income. (Check out Live A Winning Life) So, this will be a process. I invite you to look forward to your future with hope and joy and I dare you to take action on your dreams. Who knows what you can achieve if you will only take that first step? Go for it!
Have a blessed New Year! Namaste!
