6 Months of Grief Project: Day 63

Returning

This is Day 63 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

I have survived my first week at my new job. Getting trained for a new position is difficult at the best of times, but to do it when I am still so deep in grief is extremely challenging. In fact, there has been a lot of research about how grief effects the body:

Previous research has found that following the death of a spouse, people were likely to report more self-medication and worse overall health. Grief has also been found to aggravate physical pain, increase blood pressure and blood clots, and exacerbate appetite loss—possibly because it also caused people to find less pleasure in food. And in a previous study from Phillips, the flu vaccine was less effective in older people who had lost a loved one within the past year than those who had not. A 2012 study published in the journal Circulation found that a person’s risk of having a heart attack increased 21 times over in the day immediately following the death of a loved one and six times over in the following week... And, yes, “broken heart syndrome” is a real thing. Formally known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy, it happens when extreme emotional stress causes one of the heart’s chambers to balloon, triggering symptoms similar to those of a heart attack... In other words, putting all physical ailments aside, it’s difficult—though theoretically possible—to die of a broken heart. ~ Understanding How Grief Weakens the Body, The Atlantic (9/11/14)

I am proud of my survival. I am amazed at what I have lived through.

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I am very aware that this project can bring up a lot around yours or other's grief and loss, I will always follow every post with some online grief support resources that have helped me. Please feel free to let me know of online support that you have found healing in your grief, as well:

Art with Grief:

• Photographer [Sarah Treanor] Takes Moving Self-Portraits to Cope with Her Fiance's Death by Jillian Wong
• When the Fall Comes, a film about Grief by Adriana Marchione
• Self-Portraits: Expressing Emotion Through Art on What's Your Grief?
• The Hard Romance of Grief by Mark Liebenow
• The poetry of John O’Donohue

Resources for Widows:

• Widowed Village
• Camp Widow

• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• Modern Loss's excellent resource list
• Grief Bibliography on Grief Healing
• Understanding How Grief Weakens the Body

• Teresa “TL” Bruce's What to Say When Someone Dies
• They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain by Ann Finkbeiner on NPR
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

• Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief

• The Geography of Sorrow: Francis Weller on Navigating Our Loses, interviewed by Tim McKee in Sun Magazine

• How to Be a Friend in Deed by Bruce Feiler in the New York Times

• 12 Things to Know About the First Year of Grieving Someone You Can’t Live Without by Laurie Costanza in Elephant Magazine

And remember, I am sharing this project on a variety of platforms, including my Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook feeds, as well as my Pinterest page on Grief. I use the hashtag #6MonthsOfGrief, so it can easily be found on any platform. Please share this project with anyone you think might need it.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow.