MOURNING

The absence

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Absence is a suffering, a penance and it is bitter.

We can neither shout nor scream it, only suffer it, suffocate it and share it only with our solitude; let it scream in our interior and live it silently by letting our tears be trapped in our eyes and try to accept it and to get used to it. The absence desolates the heart. It is a pain for the soul. Absence is a cry in the night!

- Radhia Gabteni -

The loss

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Certainly life is only a loss,

loss of those we have loved, of those we have crossed,

loss of happy moments, of a youth, of a mature age, of a strength that we believe unshakeable.

But I know that at the end of all these days, all these months, all these years, the essential remains: a few words, a few glances, a few gestures that keep our hearts awake forever.

- Christian Signol - "Even the trees remember"

Resilience and Grief

[...] Mourning, like resilience, is a way, a set of ways, of overcoming a great trial, one of the greatest that we encounter and will encounter again and again in the course of our lives: the death of a loved one or the separation, its loss. Resilience, in order to be constituted, implies the confrontation with a traumatic ordeal heavier than the one usually encountered on the path of life; in childhood, for example, the death of a parent, divorce, separation for other causes, illness, especially mental, of parents, psychosocial misery with lack of care; others will be linked to the social conditions of the group: famine, war, natural disasters, endemic diseases [...]

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From the outset, resilience and mourning have points in common. They are expressed in a journey, a course assignable in the time of a duration; they are the more or less visible manifestations of an inner work [...]. Both, provoked by the loss, articulate, from the personal and family history of similar experiences lived before, sometimes in the previous generations, the resultant of the effects of the risk factors and the protective elements with the current potentialities of the person who encounters it, lives it, reacts to it and tries to cope with it. Both will lead, in the more or less long term, to more or less mixed results in mourning, although in normal, usual situations, the beneficial effects largely outweigh the negative consequences, provided that the relationship that existed before the loss was of sufficiently good quality. It is in the nature of the notion of resilience that the beneficial effects are largely apparent, which does not prevent us from asking the question of whether they are not accompanied by less beneficial and less obvious consequences. [Both are situated in a history with its dynamic development, partly conditioned by the antecedents but always open to the hazards of existence which are not always negative. Resilience and mourning will benefit from any affective relational support that the persons concerned are likely to be able to benefit from.

Before concluding prematurely that resilience can be considered as a particular form and a singular outcome of grief, we must try to deepen the comparison between these two orders of reality. The path of mourning always begins with a shock and it is in this sense that it can be considered as the prototype of trauma. This shock is more or less violent, more or less apparent, more or less delayed. Its apparent violence does not allow us to prejudge the depth and duration of its effects and, conversely, its delay and the modesty of its apparent manifestations do not allow us to draw any pretext in favor of its benignity. The first and main complication of mourning is its apparent non-existence, its inapparence, its absence of manifestations. The shock affects the person in all its dimensions, even if it is often more evident in the emotional domain and/or in the physical state of health.

[..] Resilience, in its first sense, resisting adversity, appears in the politics of the extreme (vital danger) as the only way out. The child came out of the burning house alive and even if he is only superficially burned, what psychological traces will the event he has just escaped leave on him? One immediately senses the multiplicity of factors that intervene in the moment, but also in his previous relational life history and in the consequences on his psychological, material and relational life of the event in question, without prejudging the dynamic articulation of these different elements according to time and the personal evolution of the person concerned. Resilience, the obligatory policy of the extreme, necessarily leaves the shock and its effects aside: hence the impression of invulnerability of the resilient child. But the shock was real, it exists; what about its hidden effects? [...]

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The path of mourning soon leads him to the next stage, which is the depressive state, a frank, lasting depressive state, of variable duration, possibly even prolonged over years. [..] Depression in children takes on masks that are not sufficiently well known, even by professionals, and it is therefore often underestimated both in its frequency and in its depth. [...] The child does not live his suffering like the adult; it is necessarily influenced by the presence and the solicitude of the latter. The child suffers morally, emotionally in his own way; he can cry, he cries as when he is physically hurt. In his sorrows, the younger he is, the less strong and prolonged his crying is. He suffers but his attention, his childish interests will soon be solicited elsewhere. Without realizing it, he leaves his grief aside and returns to it later.

The manifestations of masked depression in childhood are now better known; they usually appear gradually over time. First of all, the character changes: the usually calm child becomes restless, the restless child becomes calm, and soon he becomes moody without any notable circumstantial reasons for these changes. His behavior also changes under the influence, in particular, of lack of attention and outbursts of anger; he has a much greater tendency to put himself at risk, more or less seriously; this is true of all the bereaved, whatever their age, but it is even more evident in children and adolescents (the latter being already, because of adolescence, in a period of greater risk). One more degree and we will see the return of enuresis and oncopresis, even in older children, which can only reinforce the feeling of shame that the child feels anyway when he or she has a particularity that is not recognized by his or her peers as positive (being in mourning, no longer having parents, etc.).

The ultimate point of the child's depression, whatever the causes, is found in the occurrence of an authentic organic disease, which, in a child, always makes him look for emotional difficulties in his life and relationships. [...]

Resilience is a statement of success, in spite of great hardships, a statement made at a given moment, but it is not a certificate of no suffering and/or good health.

It is well known that the depressive state of bereavement [...] has the same clinical features as any other reactive depressive state related to situations other than bereavement. [...]

The comparison between resilience and bereavement at the level of depression reveals the following elements: the bereaved, depressed person, can show efficiency, let us say resilience, if it is a question of coming to the aid of someone important to him or her on condition that the effort does not last too long; the bereaved have no resistance over time, therefore little perseverance. [...]

The termination of mourning, a term much preferable to that of end - the latter never being assured - derives from what it was, from the experience of shock, of depression, of the work of mourning that took place in its time, under the cover of these externalized manifestations. The term here again is the image of everything that happened before. The more complicated a mourning is, the more its unfinished part, not taken into account, not lived, remains important and heavy and will resurface at the next trial or at the next mourning. [...]

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Behind the identified manifestations of mourning, the "work of mourning" takes place; it is largely unconscious, outside of the will and consciousness, with the help of psychic functioning processes of which one is hardly a master, which in no way prejudges their efficiency. And resilience is also the result of a secret "alchemy" in the depths of the being, most of the time sheltered from the indiscreet eyes of the conscience. We can only recall that, at first sight, the work of the one, the mourning, takes place in pain whereas that of the other seems, subject to inventory, to escape it, or at least to remain relatively sheltered from it. One of the foundations, perhaps even THE foundation of mourning and of the work of mourning is precisely this pain (mourning comes from the Latin word "dolore" = to suffer) which must be felt, recognized, lived, expressed, mourned, shared. We are far from the mark with resilience; the pain that usually accompanies it as a trace of the trauma, it hides it, it pushes it to the periphery, it masks it, it deflects it, it transforms it, it can go so far as to deny its very existence. If resilience should later turn out to be a form of mourning for the serious trauma received, it appears, despite its advantages and brilliance, as a work of denial, not particularly of the existence of the trauma in question but denial of its psychological significance, denial of its suffering. The more one suffers, the more one risks suffering, the more one is afraid of being swallowed up in this suffering, the more urgent and imperative it is to leave it aside in order to manage the delicate situation efficiently and urgently. Unless the resilient person finds a way to live with his or her suffering in a different way, it remains a deferred weight weighing on the future, which can prove to be crushing in time.

Regression is the second essential element of the work of mourning; with pain, it constitutes the crucible where the other indispensable movements of this work can take place. [...] This regression usually, very pronounced, fast and deep in the mourning allows, by recapitulating, by retracing in broad lines, the paths of the development of the psychic reorganizations. It also gives place, during the very first times, to the narcissistic identification with the object. The bereaved person has such a need to rejoin the loved one who has just died that he or she seriously considers joining him or her.

[..] Resilience is also a message towards even hidden partners. Also, it seems to me that certain works of resilience are rather scenarios intended to be shown, the undeniable narcissistic benefit being the recognition of others. [...]

In pain and regression, the work of mourning is an inner confrontation with the reality of loss, death, grief, suffering, drama, trauma. The first attitude is normally and always of refusal - "no!" - which already takes note that what is refused has already happened. A very long, very painful, painful, exhausting, and very incomplete road will have to be traversed as if in spite of oneself in order to first recognize and then, little by little, begin to accept this ordeal which will always seem to us, in a way, unacceptable. It is indeed a whole work where forces are spent and exhausted. But it is not only about the material reality of the loss, about its facts, this work of integration also concerns the inner, subjective, psychic, affective reality, trying not to refuse the discomfort in which the trauma has put us for a time whose duration is uncertain. And this moral state of mourning - and there are many who have experienced it - is one of the most miserable that we go through in our lives. Faced with this death, this loss, we are totally helpless at the level of objective reality: we have not been able to prevent it; now, we will not be able to reverse the course of time and make the absent person return. We are in deep suffering, life has lost its taste, its meaning, its interest, the world seems empty. And we feel so weak; our usual functioning is deficient and we do not know how long this ordeal will last. We don't even know if we really want it to change, fearing that this change could lead us to oblivion.

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Here again, resilience seems to be at odds with this approach. It will
not really deny the misfortune that has occurred, but it will try to limit its meaning, its scope, its gravity. But above all, at the level of the subjective reaction, she will go into the opposite dimension. It will not recognize its weakness, nor its outcome, nor its suffering. She will act as if - and sometimes go so far as to proclaim it - all these painful feelings were cumbersome and useless, unimportant, even non-existent. She strives to deny the subjective significance of the effects of the loss: "see, nothing bad happened to me; on the contrary, I'm doing better than before!" This part of grief work relies on exercising a sense of reality, trying to face reality as it is, even if it is so contrary to our desires. Resilience proclaims, on the contrary, that it will change reality, at least in its subjective dimensions. [...] The more I look at it in the backlight of grief, the more I find it difficult to see resilience as a sustainable solution. It costs too much; it is too defensive, it is not natural. The longer it seems to go on, the more energy it burns, the more exhausting it is. When it manages to maintain itself, it is at the expense of other sectors of the personality. We know of mourners who are brilliantly successful in their business but who remain and seem to have to remain emotionally raw or ice blocks who can no longer form satisfying emotional relationships. Of course, some resilient people will manage to disprove this impression.

Two other processes take place simultaneously with the recognition of objective and subjective reality: the internalization of the relationship and the development of feelings of guilt. The first is partly linked to the movement of regression, of massive disinvestment from the usual world, of the need to withdraw into oneself, into one's interiority, in order to find there the inner presence of the loved one who has disappeared from the external world but who, by this very fact, increases in the opposite proportion: lost on the outside, let him or her be even more present on the inside! This recollection is the necessary condition for the recollection, but also the consequence in return of the recollection, which is one of the essential dynamic moments of mourning. S. Freud had well noted that each memory and each hope, attached to the disappeared one had to return to the conscience, to be over-invested (let us say: to be the object of a particular and renewed interest ("Mourning and melancholy" 1915-1917) before being struck by the decree of reality: "it is no more". This backward movement, of recollection, perhaps also linked to feelings of guilt, makes the bereaved person unavailable to the future, sometimes even to the present, which he neglects and neglects himself. It is not a freeze frame, it is a flashback. The bereaved are in no condition to make plans.

[...] Visiting children in mourning leads us to believe that this movement of recollection is much more discreet in them (Hanus M. and Sourkes B.M., 1997). They may retain memories, eventually go in search of some, wanting to verify details, but more often than not, bereavement in children leads to an erasure of memories, or rather to forgetting. [But even when the child is correctly accompanied, when he finds in his environment authentic possibilities to live his mourning with his family, the child's recollection needs to be supported by the relatives and concrete elements: evoke with the child precise memories where he was present, photos, films, videos and other current multimedia supports.

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[...] If children recognize the material reality of death early on, and all the more easily because their entourage will have helped them to participate in the funeral, a part of them refuses to believe in it; they still live with the "imaginary parent" whose return they await. [...] We can account for the complexity of resilience in part by an element that is also fundamental in bereavement, which is the nature of the pre-existing relationship between the child and the parent he or she has lost. Each bereavement, each mourning process is different. Each time the outcomes of the mourning process are different because each relationship - the one that unites the bereaved with their lost loved one - is singular. The more ambivalent the relationship, the more difficult, even complicated, the mourning is; whatever the particularities of each relationship, it is always so (Parkes C.M., 1999; Hanus M., 1976, 1994).

Resilience, when the relationship was deficient or painful, tries to limit its memories and effects, to deny its importance, and that of the marks, of the scars that it may have left in the heart; when it was affectionate and rich, resilience, in its tributes, wants to maintain it, but, in my opinion, in the way it was at the time of the drama: "I will prove to you that I love you as much as before, that I will never love anyone as much as you, you are and remain my reason for living and see how it helps me! " Eventual criticism of the absent, resilience can also prove to be the permanence of homage. But such fidelity must have its reasons in the nature of the links, in that of the pre-existing relationship; that is to say that certain elements of the child's relationship with his parents before he lost them or was separated from them predispose the child to resilience, which would also be a form of mourning or an avatar of it.

The movement of internalization does not only serve recollection, it also favors a more discreet but nevertheless constant process during mourning: the reinforcement of the identifications of the bereaved with the lost person. The result of this unconscious operation is variable in its quantity - and therefore more or less apparent - and in its quality, the identifications with the positive aspects of the lost person being usually more important than those with the negative aspects. The reinforcement of these identifications ensures a form of permanence of the lost person who continues his or her existence through the person who carries these identifications. It is also a way, certainly rather ignored or underestimated, but important, of transmission between generations.

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[...] Let us now come to the feelings of guilt [...]. No one, to my knowledge, denies their universality in mourning, since they are the consequence of the irrefutable ambivalence of all our affective relationships. Conscious and unconscious, justified, to our appreciation or to that of others, or unjustified, they are present and active during the work of mourning of which they constitute a very important part, even if some would like to give them only a minor importance. They are linked to pain, one of the meanings of which seems to be found in self-expiation, to regression, to the difficulty of taking into account the reality of the loss and certainly to the nature of the identifications, the negative ones being a possible way of discharging unbearable feelings of guilt. I have argued elsewhere (Hanus M., 1996) and tried to support the hypothesis that excessive feelings of guilt were a hidden result of the residue of narcissistic feelings of omnipotence, undermined by the current loss that has come to disprove them. From this point of view, mourning means recognizing one's ambivalence, one's extent, but above all one's limits by accepting that we are not the whole of the other whose disappearance is not the result of our works. - Even if it would be very guilty - put the result of the natural course of things or of certain dimensions of the person we love but which do not concern us directly. It is in this sense that guilt has something ontological (meaning of life) in our humanity (hence the concepts of original faults, original sin, etc). [...]

There is in resilience a notion of strength, of brilliance resulting from The unconscious guilt is indeed a strength; it is the measure of the power that we lend ourselves when we are in a state of shock. [...] Unconscious guilt is indeed a strength; it is the measure of the power we lend ourselves when we consider ourselves responsible for the death of a loved one. When we reproach ourselves for not having been able to prevent him from dying, we lend ourselves a demiurgic force which would make us master of life and death; we regress to magical thinking where desires alone and thoughts alone are enough to kill.

[...] One of the greatest sufferings of mourning is that it is imposed on us and reduces us to powerlessness. Mourning and grief work, insofar as they are the reaction to death, an active work, even if it is largely involuntary, unconscious, can be considered works of resilience when their outcome is remarkable, that the bereaved person has progressed through his or her grief, has grown, has become richer, spiritually and emotionally. [...] The work of mourning is a reactionary activity, but it seems to escape our will and our consciousness to a large extent; it is done within us, without our awareness, almost in spite of us, like a wound heals without asking our opinion. Our body is active without our knowledge, so is our unconscious psychic life. In mourning, we are active both unwillingly and without being able to oppose it. On the verge of mourning, we no longer know what we want and we are, therefore, unable to act. We would like to suffer less, but we don't want anyone to touch our suffering because it is a sign of our attachment and affection for the person who has just died. Our only desire is that he or she should be resurrected, but this we cannot do. Mourning is also to note and accept in spite of ourselves, this powerlessness which tells us that we will also be powerless to oppose, in time, our own death.

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[...] Do we ever become like we were before? Doesn't grief, like any wound, leave a scar? Mourning comes to an end when we regain strength and interest in the world and in external life with the feeling that we can once again become active partners. Crushed, radically passivated by the death of the loved one, mourning gradually restores us in our activity. Without doubt, we can say that resilience challenges passivity, that it rejects it and opposes it. It aims to show that the capacity for activity is not diminished, on the contrary, that there is no such thing as powerlessness. Once again, everything happens as if nothing serious had happened or, if something serious did happen, this seriousness may have been erased by resilience, which blurs the effects of the major trauma, which is then trivialized. Passivity, particularly that of mourning, is imposed on us, and for the resilient person, it is the equivalent of death, physical death or psychological death, the return to nothingness, that is to say, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the unrepresentable. The only alternative is then: to enter into resilience or to disappear? [...]

Thus, resilience and mourning have a mixed relationship. Sometimes they seem to be going in the same direction, sometimes they diverge, even giving the feeling of being opposed. [...]

The notion of narcissistic mourning may also shed light on the nature of resilience. The narcissistic dimension is capital and has been and remains at the center of S. Freud's conceptions concerning mourning; and it is also in reference to it that he will give, in 1926, his interpretation of the meaning of pain in mourning. The notion of narcissistic mourning goes far beyond this aspect. Essentially, it consists in considering mourning not as a temporary and momentary reaction, even if it lasts for some time, following a significant loss, but as a process inherent to the psyche ("the aptitude for mourning") which develops in early childhood [...].

If we consider resilience as an affirmed ability to overcome trauma in order to strengthen oneself, it will appear as the success of the ability to mourn and an optimal version of narcissistic mourning; for resilience is indeed a narcissistic affair. [The narcissistic capacity for resilience is the process whose effects are still only potential, a variety of the ability to mourn and of narcissistic mourning; the achievements of resilience result from the encounter of this potentiality with a particular great trial at a determined moment of the life history and development of such a person.

From the French book by Michel Hanus - "La résilience à quel prix? Surviving and rebounding" (ISBN 2-224-02729-X)

Bereavements

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Grieving is a difficult stage of life, but essential on our path.

Each of us experiences different types of grief, such as the passage to adulthood, where we must give up the carefree nature of childhood.

The departure from the family nest to fly with our own wings is also a mourning, as well as the loss of a job, a separation, the loss of a friendship, a love or the mourning of our parents and those we love.

All our lives we experience grief because life is made up of it.

Some things have to die and change form so that we can grow, live something better and follow our path accepting these losses with courage, but also with gratitude.

Let us be grateful, because nothing new can happen if the old does not die. Each mourning carries the seed of a new life.

Everything that leaves our lives makes room for something better: a better job, a deeper friendship or a greater love.

Nothing is lost. Everything is transformed.

Even in the pain of immense grief, let us remember that life is making a treasure for us.

Let us give it time to refine and welcome the rebirth that will come later with an open heart, for Life goes on.

- Diane Gagnon -

The work of mourning

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Whether it is the last breath after a long illness, or a fatal accident or suicide, whatever the context, death always comes violently, it is difficult to anticipate. Then comes a process of healing the loss of the loved one. Dressing, healing... it's like a wound.

Mourning is a process that will allow the restoration of the link with the missing person, in a work of memory. But a psychological scar will remain forever, even if the pain fades, a pain that will become tolerable and then acceptable, which will allow to resume the course of the existence without betraying the memory of the missing person.

Death is an amputation of a part of oneself, which causes unspeakable psychological pain. It is the loss of a "symbolic object" (in the language of psychology)... A person who has had a leg amputated must mourn the loss of his leg, the loss of who he was with that leg, of what he did with it. They will walk again, but differently. Thus, after the mourning, will continue the history of her family, with a suffering as tolerable as possible.

To make sense of what one feels. If it is normal to suffer, the bereaved person also suffers from the social and family gaze... and feels a certain marginalization. It is therefore important to reiterate that the mourning process is long, without being able to date the stages exactly. In fact, mourning will last a lifetime, during which we will deal with the absence of the other.

- Excerpt from a conference given by Dr. Cynthia Mauro (Doctor of Psychology) on 23 February 2011 -

[...] "It is very difficult to console: we can't repair anything, change

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anything that makes us suffer.
We know that our words can only bring a temporary comfort, or even no comfort, or even more suffering, sometimes; because they are clumsy, impotent, because they come at the wrong time.

But we cannot be content with that, with saying that there is nothing to say, to relieve the suffering of a mother who has lost her child. So I will confide in you, humbly, what I would try to do if I were struck by the same terrible pain as you. When we are engulfed by suffering, submerged by the swirls of everything it carries with it (resentment, despair, guilt, fear, envy, anger ...) it seems to me that there are two main directions to strive to follow.

First of all, as best we can, we must remain connected with the world, not withdrawing into ourselves, not withdrawing into our pain and our unhappiness. Even if this link makes us suffer, because we can only see the absence of the loved one, it is nevertheless the link that will help us to live again, little by little.

Then, to give ourselves the right, precisely, to live again. From where she is, Lucie always loves you and will always support you.
It is she who will give you the taste to live again, to look at the sun and the sky, the flowers that offer themselves and the children who laugh, smiling, despite everything. Despite the sadness. This sadness, it will never leave you. But it will gradually become sweeter, and will one day bring you peace. It will allow you to think of all the happiness you had with Lucie, without it making you cry or sigh, but just smile softly: you can be happy, really, to have had such a daughter, capable of such beautiful words, of such great generosity, happy of all the happiness lived at her side, happy that she loved life so much.

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Never forget these joys, it is very important; never chase away the sadness
never chase away the sadness and suffering that will sometimes come to obscure them, as the clouds come to hide the sun, it is also important. Let your emotions live, but never forget to think, regularly, of all the joys that Lucie has given you, keep them alive in your soul. Open your eyes also to all the little bits of happiness that will slowly reappear in your days, without you realizing it at first, like flowers on the edge of this path that is currently so painful.

Don't listen to people who ask you to "mourn" (don't blame them, either): you will go through this journey at your own pace, no one can force you to go faster, and no one can move forward in your place. Take your time, but look into the distance, look at the sky and the stars, as often as possible. It's not an image: really look at them, look at them often, breathing, thinking of Lucy, smiling at her.

[...] Your daughter was wonderful, keep her alive in your heart, continue to talk to her, to share with her all the beautiful things that you will now come across on your path." [...]

- Excerpt from a letter by Christophe André, written to a mother whose daughter was murdered by the terrorists at the Bataclan, in 2015 and taken from his book "Consolations, celles que l'on reçoit et celle que l'on donne" - (Éditions l'Iconoclaste - EAN 978-2-37880-274-5)

Grief is a process

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Mourning is a suffering, mourning is an ordeal, mourning is ajourney, mourning is an mourning is a journey, mourning is an inner work; all of them last only for a time even if they always seem very long. We experience them as painful moments of existence that are also witnesses of a process, a process of adaptation to a certain type of ordeal.

- Michel Hanus - "Resilience, at what price? Surviving and rebounding" (Éditions Maloine - ISBN 222402729X)

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This is the most difficult thing: learning to live with the lost.
To put them away in a box so that they become memories.
To keep them at a distance so that they stop hurting us.
To love them infinitely so as not to be devoured by the lack.
To turn this painful thought into a calm thought.
To pass from the raw pain to the fragile softness.
This takes time and perseverance.
And when one has learned, then one is unbeatable.

- Philippe Besson - "The Atlantic House"

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On earth, everything is experience.
Some are bright, others are dark.
Some expand the heart, others test it.
Some are comforting, others are terrifying.
When you are in pain, don't look at your life only in terms of suffering.
Consider it as an indivisible whole, with its ups and downs, its joys and sorrows, its light and shade, and remember the happy moments of the past.
Then you will be able to continue to love life despite everything.

- Frédéric Lenoir - "The consolation of the angel"

The mother - Khalil Gibran -

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The mother is everything in life.
She is the consolation in sadness,
the help in distress,
strength in weakness...
She is the source of tenderness,
compassion and forgiveness...
He who loses his mother,
loses a breast to lay his head on,
a hand that blesses him
and a look that protects him...
For every being on earth,
the clearest word is "mother"
and the sweetest call is "mother

Absence

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Absence is a voice that we will not hear again, but which will speak to us from the heart in the darkest hour, on the most difficult day.

Absence is a hand that you can hold tightly when another hand slips away and your courage seems to fail you.

Absence is a memory that to anyone - but not to you - will seem banal.
It is a black and white photograph, a sentence that contains a world.

Absence is the time that seemed inexhaustible and is no longer there, the time of all that you could not say, that you could not do.
This is the love you carry inside, this is what remains when everything ends.
The ultimate story, the meaning of life.

- Gabriele Ferraris -

Little girl of winter

To You Babou,
To your Chu, our little Maëlie

Little girl of winter, little ephemeral fairy,
Small shooting star, small bright flame,
Little love apple, small with velvet eyes,
Precious little treasure, mischievous little Chu,
Small fragile moment, indelible softness.

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You have gone elsewhere, your mission completed,
Angel, you were on earth, and Angel, you stayed,
In absolute Love and in eternity.

I accept your departure since you are not far away,
May our souls come together when you feel my need
To hear from you, from these beautiful countries,
Where Love, joy and peace reign eternally.

I leave you in my heart all the Love of mine,
Since it was written, that it was your destiny,
And I close my eyes, thinking of Mary,
Our heavenly Mother who sees you and smiles
And I can still see you endlessly saying to me,
Go, live, laugh, enjoy life,
This is how I love you
Sweet Mummy dear.

- Babeth Varlot - © protected text -

Times of great suffering

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Times of great suffering are potentially times of great transformation.
For transformation to occur, we must go deep, to the very roots of our pain and experience it as it is, without blame or indulgence.

- Osho -

I have chosen to become again what I was

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I was enclosed in a shell.
I thought I was powerless to change my life.

Then
I have met
the depth of the sea,
    the beauty of the sky,
     the freedom of the birds,
      the power of the wind,
        the lightness of the clouds,
       sunlight,
      and I felt that I was that all of it
       was me.

I was as deep as the sea
as beautiful as the sky,
free as a bird,
powerful as the wind,
    Light as the clouds,
    light like the sun,

and then I chose to become what I was again.

- Annie MARQUIER - "The Power to Choose"

Now that I'm gone

Now that I am gone, let me go.
Even if I still had things to see and do, my road doesn't stop here.
Don't cling to me through your tears.

Be happy for all the years we have spent together.

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I have given you my love and you can only guess how much happiness you have brought me.
I thank you for the love you have shown me, but now it is time for me to continue on my way.
Cry to me for a while, if you need to cry, and then let your sorrow turn into joy, for it is only for a moment that we part.
Bless the memories that are in your heart.
I won't be far away because life goes on.
If you need me, call me, I will come, even if you cannot see me or touch me, I will be near you.
And if you listen with your heart, you will perceive all my love around you in its sweetness and clarity.
And then, when it is your turn to come over here,
I will greet you with a smile and say: "Welcome to our home".

- Hawaiian poem -

You'll learn ...

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After a while,

You will learn the difference between reaching out and rescuing a soul.
And you'll learn that love doesn't mean support, and that company doesn't always mean security.

You'll begin to learn that kisses are not contracts, gifts or promises.

You'll begin to accept your failures with your head held high, like an adult, not with the sadness of a child.

And you will learn to build your paths today, because tomorrow's terrain is uncertain, and does not guarantee the fulfilment of projects, and the future has a habit of not keeping its promises.

After a while,

You will learn that the sun burns if you expose yourself to it too much.

You will accept that even the best people can hurt you sometimes, and you will have to forgive them.

You will learn that talking can ease the pain of the soul.

You will learn that it takes many years to build trust and only seconds to destroy it, and that you too can do things you will repent of for the rest of your life.

You will learn that true friendships continue to grow despite separation. And that it's not what you have that matters, but what matters in your life.

And that good friends are the family we are allowed to choose.

You will learn that we don't have to change friends, if we accept that our friends change and evolve.

You will experience that you can have a good time with your best friend by doing anything, or doing nothing, just for the pleasure of enjoying their company.

You will discover that we often take the people who are most important to us lightly; and for this reason we must always tell these people that we love them, because we never know if it is the last time we will see them.

You will learn that the circumstances and the atmosphere around us have an influence on us, but that we are solely responsible for what we do.

You will begin to understand that we should not compare ourselves to others, unless we want to imitate them in order to improve ourselves.

You will discover that it takes a long time to finally be the person you want to be and that time is short.

You will learn that if you don't control your actions, they will control you.

And that being flexible doesn't mean being soft or having no personality, because no matter how delicate or complex a situation is, there are always two ways to approach it.

You will learn that heroes are people who have done what needed to be done, assuming the consequences.

You will learn that patience requires a lot of practice.

You will discover that sometimes the person you think will trample you if you fall is one of the few people who will help you get up.

Growing up depends more on what you learn from your experiences than on the years you have lived.

You will learn that you take after your parents much more than you think.

You'll learn that you should never tell a child that their dreams are nonsense because few things are as humiliating and it would be a tragedy if they believed you because it would take away their hope.

You will learn that when you feel anger and rage inside you, you have the right to do so, but that doesn't give you the right to be cruel.

You will discover that just because a person does not love you as you wish, it does not mean that they do not love you as much as they are able to, because there are people who love us but do not know how to prove it to us.

It is not always enough to be forgiven by others, sometimes you will have to learn to forgive yourself.

You will learn that with the same severity with which you judge others, you too will be judged and sometimes condemned.

You will learn that no matter how broken your heart is, the world keeps turning.

You will learn that time cannot go back. You have to grow your own garden and decorate your soul instead of waiting for others to bring you flowers.

Then, and only then, will you know what you can really endure, that you are strong and that you could go much further than you thought you could go when you thought you couldn't move forward.

It's because life is only really worth living if you are worth facing it.

- Jorge Luis BORGES - "APPRENDIENDO"

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The ordeal

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We curse an ordeal, but we don't know, when it happens to us, that it
will make us grow up and take us elsewhere. We don't want to know. The pain is too strong to be recognized as a virtue. It is when the pain is over, that we turn around and consider, amazed, the long road it has taken us on.

- Katherine PANCOL -

Mourning and mediumnity

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When a loved one leaves us by suicide (or not, for that matter), the loss and the lack are so intolerable to us that the temptation is strong and practically irresistible to consult mediums, seers, and other esoteric means to reassure oneself, to convince oneself, to try to get answers or signs.

After their departure, we find ourselves in an extreme state of emotional and psychological weakness. Our way of thinking is modified by the emotional state we find ourselves in and we lose all discernment. We are then particularly sensitive, fragile and suggestible.

Death is an area which, since man has been man, has given rise to many mysteries and fantasies. He has to explain at all costs what he doesn't understand, what he doesn't master. In today's society, mourning has become a business, making the sanctity of life, death and love more and more remote, giving way to profit at all costs, fraud, lies, delirium, selfishness, charlatanism...

These fields are very lucrative, in practice, in private, by telephone, on the internet, in bookshops, at the cinema, on the radio ....

It is important to know that when it comes to mediumship and clairvoyance, a bit of psychology and the magic of the internet (facebook and other social networks say more about us than we think) are enough to define us and our history. It is also easy to rely on general patterns: love, money, work, death. They always include the same functions, with the same emotions, the same attitudes (jealousy, grief etc...); it is also easy to play with our fears, our anxieties, our desires, our expectations...

These practices are more than dubious and can be very destabilising and catastrophic. The utmost caution must be exercised. It is better to move away from these kinds of people and practices, especially if the cost is high!

Others may be bona fide or even possible, and it is essential to verify the truthfulness of what is announced. Never trust blindly. Only our reflection, our deepest feelings are true guides. Follow your heart and your intuition, they never deceive us. Trusting life, living one's grief in all its dimension, leads us towards peace and harmony.

We manage to find the answers we need and a certain serenity. It is a long journey, a long quest, which takes time, a lot of time; a time made up of encounters (human, therapeutic, psychological, philosophical, spiritual), help, comfort, support, listening, understanding, reflection, analysis, inner feelings, ...

It remains a personal approach and a personal journey that is lived by oneself, within oneself, in the depths of one's heart and soul.

This is called mourning ...

- C-A-G -

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Learning to live again

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There is no age to relearn how to live. It even seems like that's all you do all your life. Starting over, starting again, breathing again. As if you learn nothing about life except, sometimes, a characteristic of yourself.

- Françoise SAGAN - "Bonjour Tristesse"

(Hello Sadness)

Liberation and peace

The pain never goes away. It is there, part of our life, part of our history, lurking in the shadows, ready to reappear at any moment; but to be able to survive, we must first put it to sleep, then tame it; to be able to live we have no other choice but to work on it to overcome it and accept it.

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"Accepting" with "Forgiving" are terrible words and actions (linked to the word "mourning") we refuse them so much they are inconceivable to us. But in our journey and our progress, we are forced to realise that life is always right, it is life that decides, always! Because it is bigger, more vast, more powerful than what we can imagine. We must then understand it, then understand OURSELVES to be WITH it and NOT AGAINST it. We thus understand that if we want to continue to live, we will have to face, integrate and go beyond acceptance and forgiveness. They are the final step, the only tools in our journey to find peace and liberation.

If we don't, we find ourselves confronted with "a wall" (that of our convictions and illusions); a wall so high, so wide, so solid, so resistant, that it seems impassable to us. So we go around in circles, tangled in pain and sorrow, guilt and anger, resentment and bitterness ... It is no longer possible for us to move forward. No matter what we do, no matter what we say, no matter what we think, if we fail to accept and forgive "all that is Our Life" we will remain lamenting and withering at the foot of this wall.

We stand here AGAINST Life, not WITH it. And if we are "against" it, it cannot accompany us, guide us, offer us. We can only struggle in a spiral of depression, sorrow, anger, sadness, rejection, injustice ... of inertia and death instead of being in movement, action, energy, love: the very essences of Life.

Sometimes we know all this "intellectually", but we only have to begin to hear the idea (accept, forgive), it takes time, a lot of time, Then integrating it is difficult, painful, intolerable so we relegate it to a corner of our head and try to hold on, "move on anyway", but we are in the illusion.

(photo: Willie Hsu)

Then, one day, we are forced to admit that we can no longer move
forward, we can no longer go in circles; worse, we fall back down again in a spiral that leads us towards "death" (the opposite of life). Our whole being freezes after having used its last strength to smash against "this wall" of the unacceptable, of the unforgivable that we cannot, that we do not want to cross.

Then we can no longer "live", enjoy life, what it has to offer us. We have no more perspectives, no more projects, no more support, no more friends, no more understanding, nothing but loneliness, emptiness, nothingness that leads us to avoidance, isolation, withdrawal, self-destruction ...

In the depths of our heart and soul, we become aware that there is something to be done if we want it to stop and to continue ... to continue LIVING ! with all the possibilities of joy, discoveries, encounters ... that this offers us.

Breaking down the wall of our intolerance, marred by our suffering, will lead us to our ultimate goal: liberation and inner peace.

It is difficult and painful but it is possible with the help of all that life (life itself!) puts on our path of tools, help, support, meetings, exchanges, sharing ... We must become aware of it, trust it and act.

It is at this price that we will finally know liberation and peace.

( C-A-G)

Autumn

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There is no better time than autumn to start forgetting the things that
bother us.

Letting them detach from us like dry leaves, thinking about going back to dancing, enjoying every crumb of a sun that is still burning. Warming the body and mind to its rays, before it goes to sleep and is only a faint glow in the skies.

- Paulo COELHO -

Sadness, an essential emotion

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Sadness, which has such a bad press these days, is nevertheless an essential emotion, even a very useful one. It allows us to give up... to better move forward and even create. So, when you have a heavy heart and you struggle to avoid the tears that are beginning to sting your eyes, don't do anything about it! Let go of the flow that is trying to rise within you.

Feeling sadness, and accepting it, is beneficial.
First of all you feel in your body that "it feels good"" when you cry.
Then at the psychic level, this emotion is the closest to acceptance and renunciation. We cry when we feel that something is irremediable, when we lose something or someone and nothing can give them back to us.
It is therefore an energy that allows us to say goodbye, to leave a self-image, an ideal or a material or emotional situation before moving on to something else.

In fact it is a process through which, after a period of loss or disappointment, we prepare to experience something else about ourselves. Provided that we don't stay there too long, and don't fight against it too much, which could lead to a depressive syndrome. If you go through it and live it consciously, the sadness can then take on beautiful colours, exactly the ones we are currently admiring in the trees in autumn, with a nostalgic background.

- Sophie PETERS - Psychoanalyst - "Libre Antenne Europe 1".

The real mourning

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True mourning is not the time it takes to forget.

It is the sacred and precious time dedicated to resurrecting in us those who have gone, so that they continue to exist through us in a memory that becomes a living action.

- Yvon AMAR -

Success or failure

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But today, when every minute is full of life, experiences, struggles, victories or relapses, followed by a return to the struggle, today I no longer think about the future: I don't care whether I do or don't do great things, because I have the deep conviction that from success or failure something will always come out.

I used to live in the preparatory stage, I had the impression that everything I did didn't really count, was just a preparation for something else, for something great, something real.

- Etty Hillesum-

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It is in us that we must be silent.

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That the weather is good enough for you?

I can well say that the weather is fine,
Even if it rains on my face.
To believe in the sun when the water falls.
The words in me die so hard,
Which so strongly bruise me.
Words that I do not form.
Is it their death in me that bites?
Misfortune is knowing what
I don't speak at the same time
And yet what am I talking about?
It is in us that we must be silent.

- Louis ARAGON -

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Guilt and anxiety

(Picture: Nathalie Picoulet)

Guilt and anguish in human beings are deep, constant and unassailable data.

The objective of psychology is not to suppress them but to ensure that they do not invade the Ego by reducing it to slavery.

Above all, it is essential that anxiety and guilt can become conscious in order to be felt and expressed in words and to take on meaning.

- Moussa NABATI - "Depression, an ordeal for growing up" - (French book)
(Éditions Livre de Poche - 13/01/2010 - ISBN: 2253085081)

Confronting grief

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Grief is a wound that needs attention to heal.
In order to work through our grief and exhaust it, we must face our emotions in a spirit of openness and honesty, express them, release them completely and accept them, to heal.
We fear that grief will overwhelm us if we acknowledge it. The truth is that the grief we experience dissipates.
Unspoken grief is grief that lasts forever.

- Judy TATELBAUM -

Our children do not belong to us

"... And a woman carrying a child in her arms said: "Tell us about the children"...

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And he says:

"your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of the call of LIFE to itself.

They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, they do not belong to you.

You can give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.

You can welcome their bodies but not their souls, for their souls live in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You can try to be like them, but do not try to make them like you, for life does not go backwards, nor does it linger with yesterday.

You are the bows through which your children are projected like living arrows. The archer sees the goal on the path to infinity and he reaches out to you with his power so that his arrows can fly fast and far.

May your tension in the archer's hand be for joy, for just as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves the bow that is stable..."

- Khalil GIBRAN "The Prophet" -

The road to recovery

One day our life can change.
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Then we have to rebuild ourselves and look at life differently.

It is a long, difficult and often painful road that we travel in front of ourselves, apprehending our own sufferings, but it is at this price that we can get up again when we have fallen.

Marie Lise LABONTE, psychotherapist, in her book (in french):

"LE DECLIC (THE TRIGGER) -
transforming the pain that destroys into pain that heals".

expresses this with real accuracy.
Here is what she says:

"...This healing involves a choice of no return. The strength that comes from it allows you to regain hope and the courage to change your life.

This trigger, this grace, this plunge is a death for a rebirth; it is dying to a belief, dying to a way of functioning, dying to a tension, dying to an attachment, dying to one's fundamental pain, dying to be reborn into the unknown.

To heal oneself is to meet one's primary pain and all the mechanisms of confinement that were built around this fundamental wound, to understand its meaning in order to free the deep factors that underlie it and to be reborn to oneself.

To heal oneself is to allow the pain and the symptoms of the disease to transform us ...

I separate myself from myself in order to build another myself".

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It's not a farewell, it's just goodbye.
Just a new start

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Since you have to, since you are leaving
On other slopes, on other paths
I'm getting ready to let go of your hand
Like a flag hoisted very high
I raise my eyes to our love
And I keep in me all our gifts

It's not a farewell, it's just a goodbye.
Just a new start
This is not a farewell, only our hands are parting.
We will meet again

I've put everything in my drawers
Like a treasure, I looked at everything
And then came the time of departure.
I have a secret, that of believing
May nothing, not ever, separate us
As long as I carry our memory

It's not a farewell, it's just a goodbye.
Just a new start
This is not a farewell, only our hands are parting.
We will meet again

If you too are crying
This is quite normal
If you beg what hurts you too much
We must give time, time to calm down.
Allow time to cool down
When all your tears stop flowing
You will be able to sing again and turn the page
You will be able to return to your places of travel

It's not a farewell, it's just a goodbye.
Just a new start
This is not a farewell, only our hands are parting.
We will meet again

Source: a song in french by Céliane

Beautiful misfortune

(translation of Emmanuel Moire's French song "Beau Malheur"

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You tell me that nothing passes

Even after a while

That a beautiful day it is an impasse

And behind the ocean

That we always keep track

Of a love,of an absentee

That you resurface

As yesterday straight ahead

You tell me that nothing serves

The word or the time

That will be needed a whole life

For a day pretending

To look backwards.

Return smiling

By keeping what it is necessary to mute

And then make as before

I can only tell you

That I needed the fear

To be reassured

That I knew the pain

Before being consoled

That I needed crying

Nothing to hide anymore

That I knew the rancour

Before being calmed

You don't know yet

What I know by heart

beautiful misfortune

You tell me that nothing erases

Neither the chalk nor the blood

That we learn after the class

Or after his 30 years

We can say 3 times regrettably

That nobody hears him

As nobody replaces

Those who leave for a long time

You tell me that comes the winter

That we forget the spring

That we empty shelves

That we fill differently

That we remember the green eyes

The laughter all the time

That after all the voice gets lost

But the words are alive

I can only tell you

That I needed the fear

To be reassured

That I knew the pain

Before being consoled

That I needed crying

Nothing to hide anymore

That I knew the rancour

Before being calmed

You don't know yet

What I know by heart

You tell me that it is a trap

A game for the losers

That the boat is in cork

And the armor in white iron

That nothing to protect you

Otherwise not for a long time

that is like a spell

Being alone at the moment

I can only tell you

To be reassured

Before being consoled

Nothing to hide anymore

Before being consoled

That I needed the fear

To be reassured

That I knew the pain

Before being consoled

That I needed crying

Nothing to hide anymore

That I knew the rancour

Before being calmed

You don't know yet

What I know by heart

beautiful misfortune

Suffer less

(Miho Hirano)

To get out of it, or at least suffer less, it is better to make sense of your suffering.

Each has something to offer us, even if it is not obvious at first.

Sometimes it takes us years before we can make sense of it. But the day we get there, a sweet sense of peace comes over us. Because giving meaning to what does not seem to have it allows us to welcome what Life has put in our path with a little less resistance, this famous resistance that feeds our suffering so much.

- Diane GAGNON -

A wonderful silence

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I know that this silence is there, between us and I guess that, in this interminable silence, something else is playing out.

It is our relationship that begins to exist, to take shape.

It is a link that is invented. And this silence becomes an intimacy, a confession.

It is, of course, a wonderful silence.

- Philippe Besson -

Transform our weaknesses into life force

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What has been repressed has not been lived, felt. It was blocked, relegated to a corner of consciousness called "unconscious". It was put in the closet with the intention of forgetting it, of not thinking about it.

But the consciousness that we are knows it knows. And it takes a lot of energy, effort, attention and intention to keep the object of the repressed repression.

To reduce and integrate the stress of a traumatic incident, there is one way, that of completing the experience that we have stopped, blocked by repression. By living this experience fully, by feeling it, by welcoming it, we allow it to leave our present and belong to our past.

This is how we turn our weaknesses and vulnerabilities into life force.

- Christiane PERREAU -

Like a reason for life

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You were the most beautiful time of my life.
That's why not only can I never forget you,
But even I will always have you constantly
In the deepest memory
Like a reason for life.

- Pier Paolo PASOLINI -

Mourning: a profound upheaval

We all face the loss of a loved one at one time or another. Depending on the degree of emotional attachment that binds us to this person, the course of our life is upset more or less deeply and our psychic balance can be endangered.

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Whatever our personal journey, whether or not we have prepared ourselves spiritually, philosophically for this type of trauma, the death of a loved one represents in all cases a profound upheaval in our existence.

Grieving people are weakened emotionally, psychologically and philosophically as well as physically, and a long road of rebellion, sadness, anxiety, depression, guilt and, ultimately, acceptance opens before them.

Depending on the circumstances of the death and the degree of attachment to the deceased, the grieving process can be complex and prolonged over time.

- Stéphane ALLIX, Paul BERNSTEIN -
"Clinical manual of extraordinary experiences"
(Interéditions - INREES - 2009)

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The grieving process

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The grieving process does not consist of forgetting the deceased, of not thinking about him any more, nor does it consist in maintaining a fusional relationship, identical to what it was during his lifetime.

The grieving process is about building a new relationship. A relationship with the same love, the same strength, but integrating the absence caused by leaving.

... Death invites us to reinvent relationships, it only puts an end to them in appearance.

... Thought connects beings. They no longer speak, they are in permanent osmosis ... The love that binds us to them is the thread.

- Stéphane ALLIX - "The test" (French book)
(Éditions Albin Michel - November 2015 - ISBN 978-2-226-31908-1)

You have to know how to let the deceased follow their path

"Our dead must evolve on their side. Death does not mean that they have abandoned us. We must try to put ourselves in their place and consider that not wanting to evolve in our suffering can make them feel guilty. By this, we attract them. constantly to us.

(Vincente Romero Redondo)

In such situations, imagine them as helpless witnesses of our pain.
How do you think those we have lost would like us to live? They are alive. Everything did not stop with their departure, not everything is frozen in the suffering, even if the absence created by a death suggests to those who remain, to us, that it is the case.

You have to think of them as beings who go on with their lives. "

- Stéphane ALLIX - "The test"
(Éditions Albin Michel - November 2015 - ISBN 978-2-226-31908-1)

Mourning, depression, some marks ...

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Many people who have suffered the loss of something or someone imagine that by accomplishing the work of grieving, they will eventually forget more or less completely the distressing event that caused them pain.

(...) How can you stop thinking or not feeling anything while evoking a death? (...)

"To forget", "to no longer think", "to no longer feel anything", "to act as if nothing had happened", is more a repression mechanism than a real work of mourning. Moreover, the more we try to forget, the less we succeed and mourning becomes impossible!

In order to be successful in mourning, the "bereaved" person must be able to satisfy 3 conditions:

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1) She must first of all "TAKE HER TIME". In our culture haunted
by order and speed, the tested person seeks, encouraged by those around her, to heal her wound as quickly as possible, to stop thinking about it (...). This way of fighting against pain, (...) risks aborting healthy depression, opening the way to subsequent depression. The verb "to suffer" also has the meaning of "to be patient"!

2) She must be able to BE AWARE, in particular, of her GUILT as an INNOCENT VICTIM. In other words, it is absolutely essential to recognize the guilt that one feels for having been powerless to prevent the traumatic event (...)

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3) The third necessary condition (...) is relative to the question of FORGIVENESS. (...) Forgive yourself (...) for having suffered, (...) without having been able to prevent it. This does not mean forgetting (...). Only awareness and forgiveness promote peace of the soul. Otherwise, we witness the appearance of a "pathological mourning" and interminable. (...)

However, the achievement of the work of mourning seems to meet a number of obstacles in our societies. We could cite, for example, the disappearance of value systems, rituals and collective ceremonies supporting the affected person and helping her to cry out about her distress in order to be able to better metabolize it, to free herself from it.

But the major obstacle is indifference (...)

We could further suppose that if depression is so widespread, it is due, among other things, to the repression of natural depressiveness during the decisive stages of existence and psychic growth, in the name of the dictatorship of form, of well-being and good humor, but also because of the denial of suffering and guilt.

- Extract from the French book "Depression, a test for growing up?" by Moussa NABATI -
(Lire de Poche Editions - 01/13/2010 - ISBN: 2253085081)

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The little fairy

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One morning a fairy came to land
And asked me what wish I wanted to grant.

So I slowly began to dream
What maybe she could bring you back.

The little fairy told me she was sorry
Because in this case, she could not help me.

That she could just relieve me
If I would listen wisely.

So calmly she told me
That Angels are made to fly,

That our tears cannot prevent
Our Loves to leave and thus to leave us.

The little fairy calmly reassured me
Telling me that you were by my side

Promising me that you were relieved.
So I begged the little fairy

To tell you how much I can miss you
To whisper to you to be serene and not to worry.

And not to forget if she crossed you
To cover you with a thousand kisses
And remind you how much I loved you.

- Unknown author -
(From the French Facebook page JPV29 "Sans Toi Mon Enfant")

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Perinatal grief: The pain of the forgotten

"There is no sub-mourning". If there is one message to get across , this is it.

Why is it important to talk about it? Like the bereavement of children, or that of the elderly, perinatal bereavement is socially taboo and excluded from society.

"How can you put yourself in a state like this for someone who hasn't even lived?" This is the insolent, thinly veiled question that society poses to these parents who live the unthinkable. Between heaviness and clumsiness of administration and the lack of support and coordination from the state and hospitals, a whole section of the population is being made to suffer.

- Sarah PAQUENTIN BERRI -

The bereaved child

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The grief of the grieving child is often misunderstood and underestimated. In order to better understand the attitude of a child who suffers the loss of a loved one, here are some points of reference that I took from a conference given by Doctor Guy CORDIER, child psychiatrist.

What to say ?

What can be done to help him apprehend this painful moment in his life?

(Reference french book: "The mourning children - Portraits of grief" Michel HANUS, Barbara SOURKES - Frison Roche editions - April 1998)

Why don't we have always notice his grief?

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- The fact that he continues to play, that he does not cry, leads those around him to think that "for them, it is not the same".

- Often, the child will seek to be forgotten so as not to be an additional worry for his parents, whom he perceives as fragile and painful.

- The entourage caught in such an emotional upheaval is not able to worry about what the child is going through deeply.

- Even today, children are too often excluded from mourning rituals. It is then difficult for him to express his pain, his questioning. He then keeps his grief to himself which, for want of being able to be verbalized, will take various forms.

What are the different expressions of his grief?

* Sleep disorders

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They are almost constant the first days. The child is afraid to fall asleep. He tries to delay the moment. He seeks the presence of a parent by his side, very often asks to sleep in the parents' bed.

* Regressive behaviors

They are very common, related to the idea that death can be contagious and that it takes other members of the family. To protect himself from it, the child does not imagine any other solution than to "stick" to his parents, generally refusing to seperate from them.

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* School disorders

They are very common and most of the time unrecognized insofar as they occur some time after death and can be extended for a very long time. So the link with the death is not always made.
The child is inattentive, dreamy, distracted, lonely. He has difficulty concentrating and memorizing. He has difficulty learning and retaining his lessons.

* Aggressiveness

If in the early days of mourning, the child tries to go unnoticed in order to relieve parents whom he perceives as fragile and painful, the moment arrives when the complex feelings which pass through him will have to be expressed. This very often results in aggressive behavior towards parents, siblings, friends.

How to help a grieving child?

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WHAT TO SAY ?

- The truth - The child needs to know the truth, that is to say that the loved person is DEAD and not only that she is "gone, that she will not come back, that she is in heaven , whether she takes a long trip or sleeps forever ... "

For those around them, saying the word "DEATH" appears to many, too difficult, too painful. However, the terms used by adults dive the child into the greatest perplexity, feeding, without wanting it, the hope of a return ... because we always end up coming back when we go on a long trip and why not could we not come down from the sky?

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It is also necessary to tell the truth when the parent has committed suicide. For many, the temptation is great to postpone this truth there, so cruel it appears, at the time, to add an additional trauma to what is already so difficult to accept. Experience shows that what is not said at the same time becomes more and more difficult to say and that we then becomes, little by little, a prisoner of this secret with all the weight that this represents and the silence. that it imposes.

The child perceives that there is a hidden truth and for him, we hide what we feel guilty about. Also, is it advisable to tell the truth by giving the reasons that push someone to commit suicide: he was in too much pain, he could not get out of it, she no longer wanted to live, she could not see no other way out ...

- That he is in no way responsible - The child tends to believe that he is responsible for the death of a loved one. To reduce the effect of guilt and relieve the child, we must help him to put words to what he feels deep inside him and that he does not dare to express.

How to do it? Like Doctor CORDIER who accompanies bereaved children, it is possible to say:

"you know, when someone we love a lot dies, it often happens that we think it's our fault, because we weren't nice to him, that we says nasty words or because we wished him bad or because we are jealous ... All these things are true, but they are not the cause of the death of your daddy or your little brother. He is died because he had this illness or because he had such an accident. It really isn't your fault. "

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- That neither he nor the parent who remains are in danger of death - The child who finds himself confronted for the first time with the death of a loved one lives in fear that this death will be contagious, that it will take away the other members of the family, that it take him away ... hence regressive behaviors where the child "sticks" to his parents in the hope that this control of all moments of life will protect them , prevent their disappearance.

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It is then a uestion of telling the child that death occurs most often when we are old ... It is so in a long time!

If death has occurred in a young person due to an illness, then it will be a question of explaining to the child that "only certain very serious illnesses that cannot be cured are at the origin of this death ", otherwise the child will experience any disease as a source of extreme danger.

- That those around him will take good care of him (especially in the event of the death of a parent) - The death of a parent causes major changes in the organization of family life: change of domicile, loss salary ... Many children are also worried about the possible disappearance of the remaining parent, resulting in permanent anxiety, hypervigilance, the fear of being completely abandoned.

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It is therefore necessary to reassure the children about the new

living conditions, to show an extended family solidarity will very often appease the child in large part of his fears.

It is also a way of relieving the child of his ambivalent feelings towards the one who has just died, just as it is an encouragement to be able to talk about it regularly, to remember it.

It is striking to note the importance that children give to parties, to birthdays when the absence is particularly felt.

WHAT TO DO ?

- First, offer to participate in mourning rituals: see the body of the deceased, attend the coffining, participate in burial or cremation ceremonies.

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At present, many children are excluded from these rituals. Their family thinks they are doing the right thing by protecting them from this special climate that surrounds the days following the death of a loved one. We want to prevent them from crying, from being confronted with rituals that risk, we think, shock them.
However, in doing so, we only make it more difficult for them to recognize the reality of death. Adults know how much it is necessary for them to be confronted with the reality of the dead body in order to overcome the instinctive reaction of denial that runs through us when we learn of someone's death. Not seeing the body, being absent during the rituals makes the work of mourning more difficult. This is the reason why this body is exposed and why we come to visit it.

For the child, being deprived of this confrontation risks delaying the beginning of his mourning, he who does not already have the same capacities as an adult to understand reality.

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It will therefore be a question of proposing to the child to participate in each of the rituals, by explaining to him precisely what he will see, what will take place, by reassuring him by our presence at his side.

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Sometimes a child refuses this proposal. Most often, it is out of fearor of sufficient explanation. If it is then necessary to respect his position, to try to understand it so that he does not feel guilty afterwards, it is nevertheless good to talk to him about it again, after this first refusal, to make sure that he has not changed. notice.

If inviting the child to participate in mourning rituals will help him better understand the reality of death, it will also allow him to put words into the feelings that upset him. The child will be able to connect these feelings, these emotions which cross him. It will be much more difficult for him if he is excluded from these rituals and he often risks to misunderstand later, on the origin of the sadness or the confusion of those around him.

- Encourage the evocation of memories through photos, anecdotes, memories, birthdays ... -

If the adults who live with the child never spontaneously evoke memories in the presence of the child, the latter will very quickly refrain from asking the slightest question and will interpret this silence as forbidden.

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Remembering, sharing memories, is a way of prolonging in us the presence of the one who has left us, of not forgetting him or her. This gradually helps to alleviate the inevitable feelings of guilt (don't we blame ourselves for having "forgotten" to think of this deceased loved one when we find a little taste for life?)

For some bereaved children, the circumstances of the death (murder, suicide, accident) do not always favor the evocation of memories. The attempts, after the fact, to evoke these difficult moments can meet with a conscious or unconscious refusal according to the mechanisms of defenses put in place.

Any care must both be respectful towards the child and at the same time never lose sight of the need for him to overcome his resistance.

It is the silence that surrounds some bereaved children that should worry us and not this word that emerges, liberating, carrying affect, sign of a living child, in contact with what he is experiencing.

- Favor the expression of painful, complex feelings attached to the missing person -

Otherwise, these emotions will become encysted, favor the establishment of defensive structures, delay mourning. Everything that will promote the expression of his feelings, of what he feels deep inside him without always being able to put into words, will be decisive. His participation in mourning rituals, the regular evocation of memories, the words put by adults on what they themselves feel, will help him to be in contact with his feelings.

But this is not always enough, so little are we used to, little trained to be in contact with what we feel and so difficult it is also for us to put the right words on our feelings. It is not part of our education, of our culture.

As far as he is concerned, Doctor CORDIER uses a simple tool: the MANDALA of feelings, developed by Barbara SOURKES, Canadian psychologist.

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This involves drawing a circle on a white sheet of paper and
associating a color with a feeling (red for anger, gray for sadness, etc.).

He also offers the child he is accompanying the range of five feelings (anger, sadness, fear, guilt, hope, joy), then asks him a specific question (what do you feel deep down today when you think about your father's death?) and ask him to fill the circle with colors according to how he feels.

Children and adolescents have no difficulty expressing the range of their feelings which often varies from time to time.

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Once he has finished, Doctor CORDIER returns with the child to what he has colored, which allows him to put into words what he feels. It is also a way of "allowing your feelings". He can thus discover that a feeling is neither good nor bad, that it is neither good nor bad to feel anger, sadness, joy or guilt.

Encouraging the expression of emotions, those feelings that most often do not come to the surface, is certainly the most important help we can give to bereaved children.

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This detour is still the way

It is two years, five years, ten years since night fell: is it time wasted? It would be if time were just a count of years.

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But above all, it is the page where the history of our lives is written. Thus, this great detour that I made, exiled, far from everything, to do nothing but survive, breath and speech cut off, this detour is still the way.

- Martin STEFFENS - French book "Life in blue"
(Why life is so beautiful, even in hardship)
(Éditions Marabout - 02/05/2014 - ISBN: 2501084454)

"Live without you" - Muriel PAUL -

To you Seb,
To you Muriel,

Because I know your story and that I have a special affection for you both, it is important to me to publish this poem that you wrote Muriel, by drawing from the depths of your heart, the words that resonate in you, since Seb put an end to his life, by what an insidious door has been imposed on him ...

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There is fog around me
The one that no one sees.

There are paths in front of me
Those that I finally distinguish.

There is this cruel reality,
The one that is imposed every morning.

You are no more, you are no longer there.
There is that I advance without you.
There is so much to do without you.

There is your path that I do not know.
There are these paths in front of me.
I know the ones that I wouldn't take
The ones you don't want.

There's that dead part in me
There is this living part in me.

My love, my child, I want to tell you,
What living without you mean to me.

Live with my pain and the paradoxical fluctuations of my thoughts.

Live with your absence from my boat capsizing me.
Live because you didn't want me to die.
Live because there is your sister.

Live with the despair of not being able to see you.
Live with the hope that you can see me.
Live with the hope that one day I will see you.

Live because life does not stop on earth.
Live because I am the one you chose for mother.
Live because you need me like I need you.

Live because you didn't have a choice.
Live because I love you, I love you more than me.
Live because you are the light that cannot be extinguished.

I allow myself to add this sentence:

"Live for what you are the light that will never go out!"

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"Between heaven and earth" - Antoinette EGIDI -

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"I think that despite the difference, each of us has an immense heart that loves and suffers."

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Between heaven and earth,
I sail like a bottle in the sea.
Sometimes on the surface of the water
Often engulfed by the waves.
What can I do?
Accept my ills,
In order to write these words.

Between heaven and earth,
I travel between sleep and wakefulness.
Sometimes a beautiful unreal dream,
Often the nightmare of the real.
What can I do?
Accept this state, let the tears flow
To relieve this drama.

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Between heaven and earth,
I swim in the moment.
A vision that matters at the moment.
Love has no distance, no remoteness
Sometimes be,
Often seem.
What can I do?
I am, I live.
Accept that I exist.

Between heaven and earth, I float on the ephemeral.
Mother earth, feed me, support my footsteps,
Accompany me on this Stations of the Cross.
Father the sky, dazzles me, gives me the strength to forget.
Of these moments, which pass without you,
And, which inevitably lead me to you,
The courage to move forward, step by step
What can I do?
Rediscover faith.

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Between heaven and earth
Of the violent jokes of this life,
Between suffering and lull,
What can I do?
Color my survival with the colors of the universe.

SORROW

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Is your heart filled with sorrow today?
Is! I am with you!
Make a big place for it, welcome it, let it manifest itself.
You need it.
It is an open door to joy.
When sorrow sleeps on your bed, a place for joy is prepared
to welcome you.
The worst thing would be to deny your pain.
Breathe in this sorrow, it is legitimate and it has the right to exist.
You will see ... It will pass.
My friend, I who love you so much, I promise you, the sun will shine
again in your heart.
Have confidence, the future looks better and your strength lies in your ability to accept your vulnerability!
I admire you !

- Unknown author -

No words for the loss of a child

(from the French book by Nadine BAUTHEAC
"100 answers to questions about grief and sorrow"

Editions Albin Michel - 2010)

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Children in mourning for their parents are designated by the word "orphans" which comes from the Greek "orphanos" meaning "servitude, forced labor". In the past, children without parents had no choice but to enlist as serfs in order to survive.

The term "widowhood" comes from the Latin "videnus" which means "empty, deprived of". Anyone in mourning feels empty, deprived of something ...

How to explain the fact that there is no word for the bereaved parents?

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We notice that the other typologies of mourning go back to Latin and are words that come from afar, therefore testifying to the need to be able to express a situation.

In ancient Greece, young children who died had no funeral or funeral ritual; in colonized Mexico, bells were not ringing for the death of a child.

In our own country, there were not yet recently, religious funerals for an unbaptized baby or at least unblessed ...

We can hypothesize that the death of a child was alas, so banal, so usual until recently that it was not necessary to define it by a term to be situated in relation to it. But just because the children's deaths were so present, it didn't mean that the parents didn't suffer. Watching a child die has always been an ordeal for parents, whatever the latitude and time.

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In front of the grammatical void, a Belgian host association for
bereaved parents created, in the 1980s, the expression "childless parents" to define themselves. Françoise HUMBLET, now deceased, founder of the association bearing this name, having lost four children, extracted this term from the book of Genesis in the Bible. Many parents recognized themselves in this expression.

Bereavement support associations have developed since 1995 on the initiative of the bereaved. The fight to name the parents to live without their deceased children appears to be ongoing.

Let the time

A time of mourning

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"... The feelings that overwhelm you when you lose a loved one deserve all your attention, they allow you to be more lucid, to understand the nearness that you lived, your way of life, the meaning of your life and the mystery of God's love.
And that takes time.

Because there is no way to escape and because you have to "do with", steps are needed to get by. Let yourself live the experience of mourning to go beyond. Integrate fully the loss of the loved one in your life to enrich the meaning and be reborn.

Mourning is demanding. But the deep healing happens one day and metamorphoses you ... "

- "A time for mourning" - Karen KATAFIASZ -

The experience of mourning

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"... If the experience of mourning is slow and painful and difficult, it is also rewarding and full.

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have experienced defeat, struggle and loss and have found a way out.

These people have a sensitive and understanding way of appreciating the life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, care and love. We do not become handsome by chance.

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... What a blessing to take the time to integrate losses in our lives so that when we lose a loved one, we also do not lose our ability to love. Mourning can make us grow.

- Elisabeth KÜBLER ROSS -

"DEATH, last stage of growth"

To walk towards mourning, an attitude with hope

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Whether or not we believe in a life after death, it seems good to adopt the attitude advocated in the following excerpt from Anne GIVAUDAN's French book "The rupture of contract" - Message of the "suicides" in the world "living" because it helps not only to walk in mourning and will be for some bearer of hope ....

"... Whatever the ways in which we have stopped our physical life, it is essential that those who remain do not feel guilty about our death." No being, whoever he may be, has enough power to make us act contrary to what we would have wanted ... "

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"... We ask those who have love for us not to suffer in our place because this suffering weighs on us and darkens everything around us ..."

"... Do not hold back from us the act we did but find the best moments we spent together."

"When you think about us, you who stay on Earth, remember the moments of joy or tenderness that we could live together. See the beauty that was ours, the one we could no longer perceive ourselves ..."

"Speak to us as we speak to a person we love, not to regret our departure or your present difficulty, but to honor the path we have traveled in your company."

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"Do not keep our tracks like relics, do not recreate sanctuaries that fix us in a painful past."

"Help us make our journey less painful, not by your actions but by the acceptance and serenity that you will grow in your hearts."

"Accept us fully as we have been, with our strengths and weaknesses. Unquestionably the day of repair will come on earth and that day, we will be carried by your ability to transmute the pain that we have caused you ... "

"The rupture of the contract - Message of" suicides to the world of "living" - Anne GIVAUDAN - (Editions S.O.I.S - 2006)

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The path of acceptance

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"The path of acceptance is very difficult.
It requires as much courage and tenacity as fighting against the elements.
Sadness will often come to you. Know how to welcome him, because it will help you to move forward and allow you to measure the progress made.
When she leaves you, you will have arrived at your destination. "

- Charles BRUHLART -

To grieve and to be in mourning - What difference ?

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"To be in mourning": Whenever in our life, we undergo a change and have to let go something or someone, or a part of ourselves, we are in mourning.

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"To grieve" is to integrate and overcome these losses and the emotions that are linked to them. (Sometimes, we never get past them ...). To grieve is to be able to face the suffering that we feel and overcome. It is an emotional, psychological, energetic and spiritual healing process.

"To grieve" is to let the emotions speak, let go of what one is attached to, not to hold back, to tame the physical absence while living in a different way with this being at the best place in our heart and our memories. It is to realize that the bond which unites us to him is eternal and indestructible.

OUT OF MOURNING
Overcoming grief and relearning to live

(Anne ANCELIN SCHÜTZENBERGER, psychotherapist, analyst and psychodramatist group of international renown.

- Évelyne BISSONE JEUFROY, psychologist and coach, specialized in punctual accompaniment of people passing through a temporary difficulty.

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The stages of mourning

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"Grief is a process of adapting an individual to the stress caused by a significant loss.After the loss of a love object, the subject goes through stages or stages, as shown by Elisabeth KÜBLER ROSS .

The loss of the other also causes the loss of a part of oneself, of what one was before the loss.

"The work of mourning, says Marie IRELAND, President of the association" Until death, accompany life "is to recognize and accept the loss and its consequences."

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All bereavements do not live in the same way, everyone does it in his own way. "It all depends on how the individual was built, the difficulty of experiencing his first mourning of his existence and the link that attached to the disappeared." says Marie IRELAND again.

The stages of mourning that are : shock, stun, denial, anger, fear, depression, sadness, acceptance,
forgiveness, the quest for meaning and renewal, serenity and newfound peace.

The stages of mourning do not necessarily follow each other: they can overlap or operate back and forth. Sometimes we do not reach the end of mourning and peace of heart without a specific work of confrontation with the reality of loss.

Children and bereavement :

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On this occasion, let us remember that children, in their own way, live in mourning. To be able to go through the stages, the child has the right to the truth and he needs it. That is why it is essential to keep him informed and to give him useful information: that he say goodbye to the sick, dying or dead parent, that he attends the ceremonies (at the church and at the cemetery) because the child needs images and memories.

In "Dying today", Michel HANUS writes: "They must be told that they are not guilty (or responsible) of the death of their parents or their brothers or sisters and that we will always keep in our heart, the memory of the person who died."

The children in mourning can not approach the psychic work which is imposed on them only if the entourage could take the initiative to help them there. Whatever you do, some of the work will remain on hold until they are mature.

The loss of a child :

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The loss of a child is particularly painful because is contrary to thenatural laws of the succession of generations. One "bleeds guts" and one remains with a surplus of love and energy unused, to reinvest, amputated of so much love which will not be given, of so many links which will never be woven.

The loss of a child is dramatic also for other children and especially for the replacement child.
If we manage to do the work of mourning, we open ourselves to the sufferings of others, we become rich with new links and discoveries that otherwise would never have existed.

Mourning work as a healing process

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Almost all of us have unfulfilled griefs that have accumulated over time. They concern the death of a loved one as much as a breakup, the loss of a friend, his country, his house, a job or a business, a retirement or the end of a professional ideal or the loss of a part of his body "before" the disease or following an accident, or the disappearance of his pet. In all these cases, which are so many traumas, we lose our basic security, our relationships to the world change and become tenuous.

It is better, however, one day or another, to face his sorrow and overcoming losses that, we never forget, are inevitable in the life of every human being or the changes to which we are obliged, whether we like it or not, to adapt.

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It is common to hear that there are no words to say the suffering of the loss and this discomfort that persists. Western society does not help us; she asks us to stay dignified in pain, not to complain, to quickly become "as before" and going strong. But there are words to say it. But they must be heard and listened to. One can also express oneself without words, with a presence, an affectionate gesture.

For a long time, we have been taught self-control, the reserve, to suffer in silence and not to show it. What one "returns" thus, "comes out" unfortunately often in a psychosomatic way. Physical disorders or serious diseases such as cancer: we get sick sometimes, and we still die of grief, for lack of having been able to express it or to have learned to revive "without".

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We are taught to win, but we are not taught to lose. But life is a succession of changes and losses. Balance, serenity, health, life in a couple, friendship, require frequent care and maintenance: they are to be reclaimed every day. Even faith and inner well-being are to be reworked and rediscovered, for example by recharging oneself.

As Confucius said :"Our greatest glory is not to fall, but to know how to rise every time we fall."

According to the french book "To get out of mourning, to overcome your grief and to learn to live again" - Anne Ancelin Schützenberger - Evelyne Bissone Jeufroy -

(Payot Small Library Publishing - ISBN 978-2-228-90360-8)

WELCOME

MOURNING

Beautiful misfortune

(translation of Emmanuel Moire's French song "Beau Malheur"

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