chapter 10 your healing body

I never thought it would happen—that I’d laugh and be happy again, that I wouldn’t be sad all the time, that I’d heal from her death.

—Emma

I’ve hurt a lot, I’ve learned a lot, and I’m better, from both the hurt and the lessons I’ve learned.

—Matt

I’ll never get over losing her, but I am getting through it. I didn’t do it alone; no one can.

—Katie

Like Emma and so many grieving teens, it is hard to imagine ever healing from something that hurts so much. However, your body is designed to heal—even a broken heart, even a traumatized brain on fight, flight, freeze, faint alert. Your body and your brain are meant to find homeostasis, a natural state of balance in which both are in their healthiest states—even after the traumatic loss of a loved one.

Stress is the most significant biological factor that creates imbalance in our body and our emotions. We’ve learned what stress can do to our muscles, our brains, our breathing, and our heart rate. It can be hard to imagine ever getting back to home base when it seems to have moved. Like Katie said, you don’t get over grief, you get through it. And you don’t do it alone. With help and support and advice, and by practicing the healthy strategies in this book, you can find ways to cope with loss and get your life back in balance. Here are two activities to help you deal with day-to-day challenges even in the most stressful “storms.”

10.1 The Rule of Threes to Deal with Stress

For basic survival (especially during those first few days of grieving), every day:

Brush your teeth and hair, but not with the same brush! (You need to retain your sense of humor…)
Eat something every three hours. (Be sure it isn’t total junk food, like what you get from a vending machine or gas station.)
Breathe three deep breaths. (Any time you’re overwhelmed, anxious, confused, tired, angry, or happy, just take the time to take it all in with three deep breaths.)

For basic sanity (just to keep from losing control of your life), every day:

Pick just three things to get done at school. (Try to make it the three most important or the three that are due now.)

Pick just three things to get done at home or with your friends. (Yes, calling your best friend can be one of the three things.)

Pick just three things you are going to take off that list of all the stuff you have to do (or should do, or someone wants you to do).

For basic steadiness (to keep your life in balance), every day:

Start with three intentions. (These are not more things to do; rather, they are emotions and thoughts about how you wish your day would go.)
In the middle of the day, stop for three minutes. (That’s it! Just stop doing stuff and “be” for three minutes.)
End your day thinking of three good things, and be grateful for them—and whatever else you can think of. (See activity 7.2, three good things, for help with this one.)

Breaking your day and grief down into threes can make the work of healing a little simpler. Ending your days with something to look forward to or to be grateful for helps you sleep better, reduces stress, and starts the next day off better.

10.2 Roots Pose with the Winds of Grief

Practicing this yoga pose is a great way to start your day, improving your strength, your balance, and your sense of meaning. But first, go back and review and practice activity 6.4 (forward fold), and begin in mountain pose.

While in mountain pose, imagine that each foot has four strong roots growing out of it: one at the base of your big toe, one at the base of your pinky toe, one along the inner edge of your heel, and one along the outer edge of your heel.

Picture these roots moving into the ground, growing thicker and stronger as they move through the earth. Imagine them going deep into the core of the earth, wrapping around the core and holding on tight. Feel your strength and balance now that you have roots.

Imagine a small wind picks up in your life, a little stressor such as not doing well on a test or having an argument with your best friend. Feel your body move just a little to the left and to the right, back and forth as your strong roots help you maintain balance.

Now imagine your grief at the beginning, how it nearly knocked you over; lean farther to the left and then to the right, back and forth. By keeping your roots strongly planted, you can maintain your balance even when the winds and storms of grief blow.

Take three deep breaths and remember the experience of having strong roots to keep your balance no matter what winds of change occur.

Finding Hope and Meaning

Finding some sort of meaning to life after a death is key to healing, to living life without the person you love. Emma struggled to find any meaning in the loss of her young sister. She described her life and her family as “broken,” shattered even. She and her family were unsure of how or why to go on without their little Sophie.

It’s as though we weren’t whole anymore. There was a hole—a piece was missing from our lives, from our family. We were broken into a million pieces and were not sure how to get ourselves back together, or if we ever would.

Finding meaning in what has happened, in your family, in your life, and in your future is an important part of healing. You are different now that you have lost a loved one. The following activity beautifully illustrates the feeling of brokenness and how to put the pieces back together.

10.3 Beautiful in the Broken Places

Find a beautiful plate or bowl that you don’t mind breaking. (Or that your parents don’t mind you breaking!) Gently tap on the center of the piece with a small hammer or the back of a large metal spoon until there are about six broken pieces. You’ll also need ceramic glue, a small paintbrush, and some shiny gold paint.

As you look at the broken pieces, understand that this once beautiful dish is now broken; it has changed and is not the same as it was. This broken dish represents your life since your loved one died.

Begin to glue the pieces back together. Take a minute to hold the pieces together as you glue them and consider everything that has been required for you to heal, to come back together.

Once all the pieces are in place, you can see that the dish is jagged and rough and scarred; it has changed permanently, but it is whole again.

Now, using the paintbrush and gold paint, paint each broken line of the dish. As you look at the dish now, can you see that it is beautiful? Despite the brokenness, both you and the dish are beautiful in the broken places.

Finding beauty again, even in the broken places, is what healing your grief means. In order to find it, you have to have a little bit of hope. Hope is the feeling that everything will be okay; there’s a light somewhere in the darkness, a future is waiting—maybe not the one you thought, but the one you have, if you continue to have hope and believe that your life has meaning.

Wrap-Up

Getting life back in balance and finding meaning and hope in your life and your loss are the keys to healing your grieving heart and body. Finding what helps you cope, what relieves stress, and what calms your body and brain is how healing happens.

Your heart will always carry a bit of the hurt. Maybe there will always be a little hole there, but that doesn’t mean your hurt has to take over your life. And just because you heal yourself, it doesn’t mean that you somehow forget the person who died. Your loved one’s memory is not dependent on the amount of pain you feel. You honor that person when you live life fully. Bringing a state of balance and calmness back into your life not only soothes your grief, it helps you remember your loved one clearly and with a sense of peace, even in your grief and loss.