Voices For Life

Grief is probably the one thing that we will probably be faced with more than anything else in our lifetime. From the time we are old enough to be aware of our surroundings, there is the possibility that we will face grief in some form. When something tragic happens, we are going to grieve over the loss.

The toddler who doesn’t get her way and cries, the man at age 90 who grieves at the loss of being able to live alone in his own home, the couple who were finally able to have a child together only to lose him at two days old to death, the woman who learned her husband was having an affair … grief can strike at anytime in many situations in life.

Grief is a natural and necessary emotion. Grieving helps us to heal over hurts and painful life experiences. Our hearts and souls need to grieve to help us get past the pain, to move on, and to be able to live again. But when we live in a state of grief and don’t get past the grieving, our mental health and even physical health can be threatened. The stress caused by continued grieving can cause our bodies to become too tired causing our health could suffer.

There are many ways to manage the grief we feel. Some are good ways and some are not so good.

Attempting to drown the grief in drinking isn’t a fix or a cure. When the alcohol wears off, the grief is still there. Taking illegal drugs won’t make the pain go away. Drugs and alcohol might make you feel better for a brief period of time, but the grief is still there. Unfortunately these are the two things that too many reach for, and they too often can’t figure out why they still hurt so much when their ‘cure’ wears off.

The best way to help deal with grieving is to talk with a close friend or loved one, someone who understands what you are going through and listens to you, perhaps even someone who is also grieving the same loss you might be dealing with. Talking with another person is healing because it helps you to say how you feel, dealing with the how you feel deep inside. Having someone to share with is a blessing and it helps so much in being able to deal with not only life’s tragedies, but the happy times as well.

Another way to help get heal from grief is to write your feelings in a journal. Writing is a great way to express feelings that often are hidden inside, feelings that we somethings cannot share with another person, even a close friend of family member. When journaling, it’s best to just be honest with your feelings and journal how you are really feeling. Write what you feel and write often!

If you are worried that someone might see the personal things you write, you can always destroy the material after it’s written. Or if you are using a shared computer and a word processing program, you can hide your writing in a folder with a name that doesn’t make it obvious what’s inside of the folder.

The main idea is that you want to be able to ‘voice’ your feelings of grief. Keeping how you feel locked away inside doesn’t help in the healing process, but rather hinders it. Getting over terrible hurts in life won’t happen overnight and it shouldn’t happen overnight. We grieve because we have lost something or someone that means so very much to us, or because we have been hurt by someone we love very much, or both. The last thing we want to do is forget the love we feel or left, or forget that part of our life. But we do want to move on past the pain, the feelings of loss, the feelings of grief.

In time, depending on what the situation is that you are grieving over, the grief will subside. Just remember that you control your emotions and how you feel, and that grieving is normal and natural and needed. But it shouldn’t control you, you control it.

Earn Cash for Writing

Forgiving ourselves isn’t always an easy thing to do. We have regrets, feelings of guilt, wishing or thinking we should have done this or that differently. Sometimes we think that if we had acted differently or made another choice, that somehow situations might have turned out better. Sometimes that’s true, but nothing can change the past. We have to learn to forgive ourselves for things we can’t change or undo, whether it’s for intentional actions or otherwise.

One of the hardest things to forgive ourselves for is the feelings of guilt over what might have been or could have been. Often we think that if we had done so and so differently, that perhaps the outcome would be different. And while often it’s possible there could have been another outcome, more often than not the outcome would have been the same. But even if it wouldn’t have been the same, we can’t change the past. So why do we beat ourselves up over things that can’t be undone? Why do we allow ourselves to experience such guilt over things? And most of all, how do we forgive ourselves for what our minds perceive as unforgivable?

The first step to forgiving ourselves is to realize that whatever we did or didn’t do can’t be changed. It doesn’t matter if the thing we are having guilty feelings over is something we actually did or something we think we could have done differently. Hanging onto feelings of guilt won’t change the past. Holding onto guilt over something will not undo the past or things that happened. It’s time to let it go, to move on, and to live again.

Some people find it difficult to leave the past in the past. They need something physical to get rid of or throw away, and memories simply are not physical. One idea is to make the thoughts and memories physical, giving something tangible to throw away, and in a way this shows that ’something’ was gotten rid of. But how do we make thoughts and memories tangible?

Get a small box, such as a shoe box. Make sure it has a top or can be closed and sealed. For every bad thought, for every feeling of guilt or feeling or what you feel you cannot be forgiven for, write it down on a piece of paper. Put the paper in the box. Once you are finished, close and seal the box. All the guilty feelings you carried in your heart are now in the box, out of your heart, no longer able to burden you down with feelings of being unforgivable.

What you now do with the box is up to you. You can choose to hold onto those feelings, leaving the option to reopen the box and letting the guilt out and back into your heart. Or you can choose to throw out the box, throwing away all of the guilt that you carried. Some people actually bury the box, laying to rest the past and all the hurts. Some throw it out with the trash, tossing out all of the bad. And some keep the box, reopening it and allowing all the guilt to come back inside of them to live again.

We don’t have to live with guilt. We can control our own thoughts and actions. We choose to do this or that. But we cannot control the choices that others make or the things they do. We can choose to live with guilt, never forgiving ourselves, or we can choose to move on, admitting that we are just human and that sometimes humans do fail and do mess up.

Forgiving yourself, letting go of the guilt, it won’t change the past. But it can change your future.

Earn Cash for Writing

Toxic relationships are a fact of life for many people, men and women alive, both young and older. Often family and friends can see the effects in the relationship but the one living in it cannot or will not. Some want someone to ‘love’ them so badly they think most any type of attention is love and fail to see that they are in a toxic relationship, one that may not necessarily be abusive, but one that is dragging them down and is not healthy.

One of the first steps to healing is to admit there is a problem. There is always a chance and hope that the spouse will change, but the reality is that change is unlikely for someone who only knows how to hurt another person. It can be said that some spouses do not realize what they are doing, and they can be helped. It can also be said that some know exactly what they are doing, leaving getting out of the relationship as the only healthy solution.

A spouse that loves you is not going to spend their time tearing you down, making you look foolish, talking down to you, or saying hurtful and derogatory things. Rather the one that loves you will want to be near you, they uplift you and encourage you, and they never seek to hurt you or make you sad.

Signs that you might be in a bad relationship:

1. You and your spouse spend the evening with another couple. Your spouse goes out of his way to make jokes most of the evening, using you as the main target in all of them. When back home, he says he is sorry, yet this isn’t the first time he has done this.

2. You make it a point to have dinner ready and waiting when your husband comes home from work. He never misses an opportunity to tell you what’s ‘wrong’ with the meal. When the two of you visit his mother’s home and there’s a meal served, he always tells her what a delicious meal she served.

3. You work hard to provide for your family. Sometimes that means working overtime and not being able to spend as much time as you would like to with your spouse. Your wife constantly nags you that you work too much. In front of mutual friends, she makes comments to them about how you don’t ‘really’ love her, criticizing how you dress, going on about how you love your job more than her, making it a point to make you look bad every chance she gets.

4. You’ve gained some weight and are working on losing it. Rather than be supportive and encourage you, your spouse tells you how fat you look and makes wise cracks in public about your appearance. She tells you that she won’t make love to you until you lose weight, in front of mutual friends.

5. Your spouse makes it a regular habit to check your cell phone to see who you have called and who has called you. He checks your email, opens your mail before you are allowed to see it, goes through your purse when you are sleeping.

6. Your spouse makes it a point to bring up things that will make you cry, knowing that saying certain things will hurt you.

7. You work at saving money and planning for a vacation with your wife. You’ve had the time off planned for six months in advance and she has known the dates for the vacation all along. Two days before you are to be off to take the long planned trip, she announces she is going to the beach with friends during the vacation time. You’re not invited.

8. You sit down to talk with your spouse about how you feel about certain things, being open and honest, pouring out your very soul and heart to them. Your spouse laughs at you at almost every comment you make, demeans you, and blames you for their bad behavior. Instead of listening to you, the spouse makes a joke of your feelings.

Perhaps the most hurtful thing about a toxic relationship is the fact that this is the person that is supposed to love you and care for you, but instead they seek to hurt you and cause you emotional distress and pain.

A person in a toxic relationship might have a difficult time letting go of it. Sometimes they feel as that there is no one else for them, thinking that they aren’t good enough for someone that will truly love them and care for them. Often a person caught in a bad relationship stays because even though it is a terrible relationship, their spouse has convinced them that no one else could possibly want them.

This cycle of thinking has to be broken. There is hope and there is healing. In order to obtain the happiness that is waiting, the person living in this type of relationship must make the decision to get out of it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope.

A healthy relationship can be obtained once the person in the bad relationship recognizes the need for a better life and gets out of the abusive relationship. The first step in healing is removing yourself from the relationship.

A loving relationship allows no room for toxic behavior. In a healthy relationship, a spouse listens to the other. The spouse doesn’t seek to hurt you, to make fun of you, to use you as the joke of the party. The spouse in a healthy relationship wants to be with you, doesn’t check up on you all the time, doesn’t use any excuse to make you look bad, doesn’t seek to embarrass you in front of family and friends, doesn’t try to control you.

A healthy relationship finds a couple who are happy with each other and understand each other, who know the other isn’t perfect but accepts and loves the person as they are. They don’t seek to change each other, they stand with each other through anything and everything, and the only tears they want to cause the other are tears are happiness.

Earn Cash for Writing

So you’ve been done wrong, talked ugly about, gossiped about, ran down, hurt, trashed, etc. Not once, but many times, and by the same person. What do you do? What does God say to do? We’re told to forgive, and we do. We’re told to forgive 70 x 7, and we do. We’re told to love those that hate us, and we do. So what’s the problem?

Somewhere along the way, we forgot to forget all those times that the person hurt and used us, and did mean things to us, and behind our backs. Does this mean we have not forgiven, or does it mean we have simply not forgotten in order not to be hurt again?

The bible says many times to forgive, and how many times we are to forgive. But some people have the mistaken concept that to forgive is also to forget, and that is not biblical, nor is it true. To forgive is not to hold the person accountable for that wrong anymore, but forgiveness does not mean that we have forgotten what they have done.

The bible says when someone slaps the one cheek, to turn and offer them the other cheek also. I believe that we are to do that because God tells us to do that. But what is one to do when they have run out of cheeks, so to speak, after so many times of this? Are we above being human, in that after so much of this, we tire of it? Or do we continue to let someone use and hurt us?

I believe God gave us brains and minds to think with, and to use. Our brain tells us that we would be fools or idiots to continue to offer up a cheek to be slapped, after so many times of being slapped in the face.

How many of us, being human as we are, would continue to offer up that cheek? We are commanded by God to forgive. But I have a hard time believing that God would want us to forget our pasts, because our pasts are what make us who we are and how we relate to our present.

To err is human, but to forgive is devine………how many times have we heard that saying? All sin and come short of the glory of God. None are above sinning, and none are so perfect and good that they can do no wrong. But some cannot admit they are wrong, and cannot say they are sorry. How does one forgive someone like this?

I say that we forgive them as we forgive anyone…..but again I say that to forgive is not the same thing as forget. When we forgive someone, we are not saying we have forgotten what they have done or said. We are saying we forgive them. Most of us will probably admit that we will forget when we are too senile to remember anymore.

God gave us memories for a reason. If God intended for us to forget all that done to us wrong, why would God have made us with minds that remember? There is no separation in the mind for the good memories and the bad. They all go to one mind, in one place, and not separate categories. We cannot simply delete the bad or unpleasant memories. They become part of us and who we are.

If you are beating yourself up over the lack of forgetting a wrong or wrongs done to you, stop. If you are one of those that think if we do not forget, we have not really forgiven, pull out your bible and read it. God made us the way we are for a reason, and experiences, some of them bad, are what make us a better witness for Christ. We cannot witness what we do not know.

Earn Cash for Writing