Spirit Coaching

03/30/2021

Grief counseling, spiritual coaching and End of Life Doula services.
For more information, check out this website: www.spirit-coaching.net
or email us at [email protected].

09/25/2019

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08/27/2019

Am I Grieving Wrong?

Here’s a silly question: “How do I grieve?” Is it really that silly? Don’t you just cry a lot, miss our loved one a lot and then someday be ok again? Generally. From the outside looking in at grief, that’s basically how it looks. But once it becomes a reality for you, and you must delve into all the messiness and mystery of it, you can become lost and wonder: “What am I doing here?” or “How do I get out of this?” “Am I crying too much?” “Am I not crying enough?” “Am I going crazy?”

There were many times I would walk away from a counseling session or grief group and feel newly depressed or sad and I didn’t really know why, at first. Soon I realized I felt like I didn’t get how to grieve. Other people would say just how I felt about the loss of their child and I would sit there and nod my head. Everyone else seemed to get it, but I didn’t know what to say. This frustration lead to me thinking that I was letting my daughter, McKaila down. I wasn’t honoring her with words of wisdom that everyone else seemed to get. So I felt they were grieving better than me. I really did feel like I was going crazy! “How did these people get ahold of the secret grief book that had all the calming ideas and words of wisdom that I couldn’t grasp?!” I felt like a failure to my daughter, again. I was failing at grieving.

Nobody teaches you. We get all of our grief information from family and friends from the time we were very young. Were they experts on grief? Did the things they told you about death make any sense to you? “She’s in a better place now.” “Heaven needed another angel.” “You’ll feel better in a year or two.” Intellectually, these words might have helped, but my heart wasn’t getting it. My heart and my head never connected during my grief to help me move forward in a positive way.

I learned I wasn’t failing at grief. I just didn’t know how to do it because I’d never grieved over a child before. My close friends and family had never lost a child, so how would they know what to tell me.

People were talking to my head and not my heart. And that is hard for people to do because they just want you to be “better”. Therefore, I was left with myself - trying to make sense of my daughter’s death and wondering how in the world am I supposed to go on without her. “I can’t do this! I’ll fail!” (Again!)

I tried many different things that I was taught in my counseling: Journaling helped a little. Planting a garden, helped a bit. I started a foundation and helping others was also good. I read books, I scrapbooked, I got outside in nature, I meditated and prayed. But what I think helped me the most, was when I was done being mad at God, I was able to just see me and I could see what I finally needed to be taken care of. I - took care of my heart!

Failure was no longer an option for me. I wanted my daughter to be proud of me and happy that I was going to be ok. Nothing happened overnight, but as I continued to journal, plant, read, walk - and everything else, with a different perspective, I could see what I needed to take care of me.

07/29/2019

How did I trust God again.

Urrggghhh!!!! Have you ever trusted someone so much who then disappointed you in the worst way possible that forgiveness was completely out of the question? That’s what God did to me! I truly thought of Him as my friend. That’s what I was taught and that’s what I believed. Throughout my life, I felt close to God - like a close friend. He would never let something so terrible happen to me - or my daughter. And then I felt like none of that mattered to Him when my daughter died. You see - I thought of it as if He had taken her away from me or He let her die - even made her die. Since you’re reading this, I’m guessing you might have felt something similar. More than once I have been asked, “How did you find your way back to God?” or “How do I trust God again?” Here is how that happened.

Losing your faith can stagnate your grief journey. The hurt and confusion can pull you in so many directions, you don’t know where to turn. Until you decide what you want, you can’t move forward. Part of your faith is trusting that God knows how you feel. Perhaps the reverence you’ve had for your God is holding you back from being real about your feelings and what’s just happened. For me, I became so angry, I let my anger flow! Why not! I wasn’t worried anymore if God was mad at me for yelling at him. I was angry as hell at Him!

When something bad happens, the need to blame somebody is human. I was a little mad at the doctors - but it’s not my nature to yell at people who tried to help. I could yell at my husband, but that wouldn’t do any good. I yelled in my pillow and that helped a little, but I needed to focus - shoot my anger at one point so it would explode. I chose God. For years I shook my fist in the air to the heavens, yelled and screamed at Him. Demanded things from Him, because I felt He owed me something.

And don’t we tend to blame God when things don’t go our way in life? He’s not listening to our prayers! Why didn’t God fix this? He’s letting bad things happen to good people - again! But the truth is - God is always good, even if my circumstances don’t turn out how I hoped they would or expected they would. I remembered who God is. As my brother once told me, “God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He never changes. We are the ones who change.” That resonated with me. Press into who He is, not just what He can do for me. My sadness didn’t disappear, but I felt at peace. “You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, whose thoughts are fixed on you!” Isaiah 26:3. Even after McKaila died, I still saw love around me. This was huge! Life kept going. And after all my years of anger and threats, I realized that all I was doing was hanging on to my anger and wasting time. God didn’t show me His anger with me. He showed me His patience. That’s when I saw for myself that He really doesn’t change. It is me.

“The Lord will work out his plans for my life - for your faithful love, O Lord, endures forever. Don’t abandon me, for you made me. Psalm 138: 8

There are no time tables with grief. God knows this. He is patient with us. If you see this in your life, patience can lead you to trust Him again. Be patient with yourself as you move through the clouds of grief. When you see hints of love and light in your life, you can also see that even though something really bad happened to you and your loved one, love can’t be broken. Not between you and your loved one. Not between you and God.

07/17/2019

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07/10/2019

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05/18/2019

Welcome to my new blog!!

Positive Grief by Sandra Steffes | May 18, 2019 | Uncategorized | 0 comments Positively Blogging About Grief Is it possible to talk positively about grief?  At first thought, you would probably say, no way! I would have, too – 12 years ago when my daughter passed away from cancer.  But my journe...

09/03/2018

http://spirit-coaching.net/blog-2-grief-lingers/

Blog #2 – Grief Lingers by Sandra Steffes | Sep 2, 2018 | Uncategorized | 0 comments Blog #2 Grief Lingers Thanks so much to all of you who let me know you enjoyed my first blog! I know it wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was my first and I got it done! So now I’ll get into a little bit more abou...

08/05/2018

Don't let anyone tell you when you should be done grieving. Today another part of my daughter's life left me today. I bought this piano as one of my dreams that she would take lessons and love this instrument. I donated it to her elementary school today. She loved that school. But as the piano pulled away, my heart ached so bad for her. I felt her loss all over again! I sobbed! 12 years later, it's still there - just hidden by life. I'll be OK.

08/01/2018

Enjoy reading my first blog! It won't take long. 😉
http://spirit-coaching.net/article2/

Introduction Blog by admin | Apr 23, 2016 | Uncategorized | 0 comments Blog #1-July 2018 Introduction Welcome to my first blog. Wooo hooo! I have been trying to figure where to start with all this blogging idea and what I want to blog about – I have so much to say – that it was holding me up. I....