Prepare to Love Again
Copyright
2011 by Kim Olver
Smashwords Edition
InsideOut Press
Chicago, Illinois
Copyright © Coaching for Excellence, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
This eBook includes our Prepare to Love Again Action Book. The Action Book contains all the worksheets necessary to complete each chapter and can also be purchased separately as a downloadable printable workbook. The Prepare to Love Again Action Book, is available for purchase at http://www.kimolver.com/actionbooks.php for only $1.99.
Please note that this ebook was originally written as an ecourse providing one lesson per week for twelve weeks.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Empathy and Journal the Loss
Chapter Two: Denial and Anger
Chapter Three: Bargaining
Chapter Four: Depression
Chapter Five: Acceptance
Chapter Six: Are You Ready?
Chapter Seven: What are you missing?
Chapter Eight: Who will Support You?
Chapter Nine: What do you Really Want?
Chapter Ten: What are You Doing?
Chapter Eleven: What can You do to Honor the Person?
Chapter Twelve: Don’t Cry because It’s Over; Smile because It Happened
Chapter One: Empathy and Journal the Loss
I am not going to start by saying, “I know how you feel.” No one really knows how you feel. Oh, I can guess you are devastated, sad, lonely, abandoned, angry, cheated, lost and a whole host of other awful things but I don’t really KNOW how you feel. This grief experience you are going through is an experience you won’t share in exactly the same way with anyone else.
I went through life without a lot of loss as I was growing up---just the expected passing of much older relatives. It started with my great grandparents and then my grandparents and a great uncle. While I felt sad, it seemed the natural way of things. They were really old and didn’t feel well in the end.
Then, when I was 34, I learned that my husband had leukemia. Of course, his doctor said he had everything going for him. He would get a bone marrow transplant and completely recover! Sounded easy. It didn’t quite go the way the doctor planned.
My husband, Dave Olver, was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia. It was not aggressive so he would have time to find a match for a bone marrow transplant. Research had shown a possible connection between his type of leukemia and the chemical benzene---a chemical he commonly worked with as a mechanic. So, he stopped working even though he didn’t feel too sick to work. He didn’t want to get any worse.
For four years, we looked for a properly matched donor. We even raised enough money to add 500 new people to the bone marrow donor list but still no match for Dave. All his relatives were tested and the closet relative was a maternal uncle but still, out of six possible indexes, he only matched Dave on three. He was classified as a mismatched donor.
Thankfully, I had good insurance. We did our research and learned that at that time, Fretter Hospital in Milwaukee, WI had the best program for mismatched donors so we consulted with them. Dave had his transplant on January 10th. He fought hard for six months and on June 18th, the doctors told me that there was nothing more that could be done for him and he was going to die.
This was very hard to hear but the one thing Dave had asked is that he be able to die at home if at all possible. The doctors were not in favor of the idea but they helped me arrange an air ambulance to transport him home on June 19th. My husband was so relieved to be home.
We had hospice for two days and Dave, at age 37, died on June 22, 1999. It was such a difficult thing for my boys and me to see him go but I was thankful that he was home and we were all together.
This is my story. What I want you to do this week is to write out your story. You never have to show it to anyone unless you want to. Just take the time to write out the facts, as well as the emotions, of what happened. Be prepared to cry. Be prepared to rage. Anything could happen but the important thing is to tell your story. Don’t censor anything. Say exactly what’s on your mind. Don’t worry about what anyone else would say or think. You have a right to your pain. Tell it all.
If you would like to share your story with me, I would be honored to read it but it is not necessary if you’d prefer to keep it private.
I wish you well on this painful journey. I believe that the end will find you better than you feel right now. Please give yourself time to heal.
Chapter Two: Denial and Anger
Even though my story last in the last chapter was about my partner dying, you may have purchased this home study course because you want to ease the pain of the death of a loved one, the end of a cherished relationship or the separation from a loved one due to distance. In all those situations, you will be experiencing the grief of the loss of your relationship, as well as your plans for the future. We will be examining Elisabeth KüblerRoss’ stages of death and dying and how they relate to the grief you are experiencing.
Stage One—Denial:
The first stage of grieving according to Dr. Kübler-Ross is denial. When your loved one dies or ends your relationship, the first response is disbelief. This is a natural response designed to protect you from facing the new reality of your life. You don’t want to be alone. You don’t want the relationship to end so you simply refuse to believe it could be happening.
There is no magic answer for how long you will stay in denial or any of the subsequent stages for that matter. Denial may include an inability to accept your partner has a terminal diagnosis, that he or she is suddenly gone, that your partner has chosen to end your relationship or that someone important to you moved away to another location.
The sooner you can leave this denial phase, the sooner you can begin the hard work of moving though the other stages toward acceptance. You will need to acknowledge what has happened and then work through the rest of the process.
Stage Two—Anger:
Not everyone will follow these exact stages in exactly the same order and it’s even possible to move back and forth between stages. Don’t concern yourself with exactly where you are; simply know what strategies need to be implemented whenever you feel ready to move out of a particular phase.
The typical progression is to leave denial and move into an anger phase. Once you acknowledge your situation is actually happening, you often become angry. Sometimes this feels like an undirected anger, where you are simply angry at anything and anyone. Other times, your anger may be specifically focused. You might be angry at your loved one for leaving. You might be angry at another person if you believe your partner found someone to take your place in his or her life. You could be angry at anyone you perceive contributed to your loved one’s decision to leave, such as a friend or family member. Or you might be angry with God or your higher power.
Anger, like denial, can also be protective. While you are feeling anger, your emotions are projected outward. You have someone to blame who is outside of yourself. This can help you because perhaps looking at yourself and what you perceive to be the reality of your life could be too overwhelming initially and you may sink into the depths of despair. The problem with being angry is not the emotion itself, but what thoughts and actions you may choose as a result. When you experience healthy anger, you feel it and release it. The problem comes when you hold onto it and it stays trapped as a destructive energy in your body.
If your partner is dying or has died, and you are feeling angry, it could lead you to be angry with him or her, angry with healthcare professionals, the healthcare system or God. When you think about what you are trying to accomplish, you most likely want to make the time you have left memorable, make sure your loved one gets the best possible care and find a way to get strength for yourself. If you display anger in any of the ways described, are you more likely or less likely to get what you really want? Keep this question foremost in your mind and it will help you chose different behavior.
If your loved one ended your relationship, then being angry could result in public confrontations in which you embarrass yourself. You may engage in stalking-like behavior looking for evidence of infidelity. If you think of what you are attempting to gain from this behavior it is often to hold on to the attention of your loved one or to somehow justify that your partner was in the wrong. How will acting out in anger help you with this? Do you think your partner will want to be with the angry you? Does it really matter whose fault it is? The reality is he or she is gone.
When you are ready to let go of the anger, you will be in a position to move forward toward Preparing to Love Again.
What do you do with the Anger?
When you are feeling angry, you will want to ask yourself if the anger is truly serving you. Sometimes people choose behaviors because they honestly don’t know a better way. You may think you are at the mercy of your emotions. How can you change what you are feeling? Well, in our home study course, InsideOut Thinking, I teach people how to change their emotions. I help people learn ways to change their emotions by changing their thoughts and behaviors. If you would like to learn more about that, you can check it out at http://www.therelationshipcenter.biz.
The way to start feeling differently is to begin thinking and behaving differently. The best way to do this is through a process called self—evaluation. You ask yourself some tough questions designed to help you change your perspective.
If your partner left you, some things to ask yourself are: “Do I really want someone in my life who has decided he or she doesn’t want me,” “Am I better off with the wrong relationship or no relationship right now,” “Do I want this relationship if I can’t trust my partner to be there for me,” “Do I really want my partner to stay with me out of guilt or obligation” and/or “No matter how much time I’ve invested in this relationship, do I want to invest even more and possibly end up in exactly the same place?” Not all these questions will pertain to your specific relationship but you get the idea. The goal is to get out of your own sense of loss and start to question if perhaps you aren’t better off. Some questions might really hit home for you and you may come up with some of your own that are more pertinent. Keep asking and honestly answer until you get an answer that lets you know you are ready to move forward.
And if your loved died, ask yourself the following: “Would my loved one want me to stop living because he or she is gone,” “Do I really think I am honoring my relationship by remaining alone,” “Is trying to keep myself safe by being alone really working if I’m feeling this much pain every day,” “Is thinking I can’t go on alone, helping me to have the life I deserve” and/or “Will staying bitter or sad really work to protect me”?
For the purposes of this chapter, know that the questions I’ve posed are designed to help you change your thinking to ultimately lead you away from the emotion of anger. Please answer them as honestly as you can.
Conclusion:
Because you’ve purchased this home study course, Preparing to Love Again, I assume you are feeling ready to move beyond where you are at right now in your grief process. However, I know how dangerous assuming can be so I need to say you should only work the chapters in this course to the extent that you feel ready to move forward. No one has the right to rush you through your grief process.
Your denial or your anger may be helping you in ways you are not ready to let go of yet. After we discuss the other stages of grief, you will be assessing your readiness to move on in Chapter 6. You will know you are ready when the pain of staying where you are exceeds your fear of moving ahead. When that happens, you will be ready to work through these chapters. If you start before you are ready, nothing terrible will happen. You will most likely just come up with excuses for why you haven’t been able to proceed.
Your assignment in the chapter, if you are ready to move ahead, is to answer the questions on page 3 of your Prepare to Love Again Action Book. This form will help you in working through the stages of denial and anger. If you find yourself still in one of these phases, don’t despair. Welcome it. You are that much closer to moving on. It is something you must experience.
In the next chapter we will examine the bargaining phase of grief and what to do about it. I’m looking forward to it.
Chapter Three: Bargaining
In the last chapter we talked about the first two steps in the grieving process—denial and anger. The next step Kübler-Ross talks about is bargaining. This is what begins once you realize being angry isn’t going to get you what you want. Being angry with God and others doesn’t make your loved ones well, bring them back to life, or make them return if they’ve left you.
What Bargaining Looks Like:
Once you recognize this, you may begin to try bargaining—promising good behavior for just one more day, one more chance, or the opportunity to bring your loved one back from the dead. Your promise is usually followed with, “If I can just have this one thing, I’ll never ask for anything else again.” Of course, almost as the words are coming out of your mouth, you realize there will be more you want.
Since you have purchased this home study course, I believe you have already gone through the bargaining phase. If your loved one was sick, you promised God you’d do something good for more time with him or her. You promised to go to church every week, forgive a long held grudge, never to have a harsh word for anyone ever again or some other virtuous offer.
If your loved one was gone suddenly, you have bargained for it not to be true, to turn back the clock, or for a miraculous resurrection. You may have promised God good behavior in exchange for it all to be a mistake, to find out the body was misidentified, or to ask for one more day so you could set something right—say I love you one more time or apologize for the last “stupid” argument you had that you now realize was so very unimportant.
If your loved one ended your relationship or left you, you may have tried bargaining with him or her for just one more chance to get it right, to be better, to be the person he or she wants you to be. “Please John/Mary, just give me one more chance. I know I screwed it up but I will do better. I will do anything if you just won’t leave me or if you will come back and give us one more chance.”
The Benefit of Bargaining:
Bargaining is your way of trying to regain some power over the situation. Something traumatic has happened in your life. Whenever this occurs, people tend to feel utterly powerless. Life begins to spiral out of control and there is a desperate attempt to put things right again. The bargaining serves as a person’s best attempt to regain some control over a seemingly powerless situation.
Since you are reading my words, I’m guessing the bargaining didn’t work. However, if I’m wrong and you are still in this phase, then you have the option of staying here for as long as you need. I am not trying to rush you through your process but if you are ready to move on then you must do and think some different things.
If you have a partner who made a decision to end your relationship, you may still believe there is a possibility of saving things. I do not want you to give up prematurely on attempting to correct whatever’s wrong in your relationship. However, more often people in this situation tend to hold on far longer than is prudent. If you are resorting to behaviors you never thought you would to keep this relationship in place, you may be teetering on that line. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself is to graciously allow your loved one to exit your life.
Moving Forward:
Coming out of the bargaining stage usually results from a realization of your own powerlessness to control the circumstances of your life. You don’t get to choose what happens to you. You don’t control or bargain away death, divorce and separation but you do have control over how you respond to it and the choices you make as a result.
Leaving the bargaining stage behind means you have come to know there is nothing you can do to reverse the situation. If you still think you have a chance to change things, then keep bargaining away. I have a word of caution though if you are dealing with a partner who has left you and you keep trying the bargaining stage, ask yourself if your efforts are getting you what you want.
When someone you love ends your relationship and you want it to continue, you may resort to desperate measures to keep that person in your life. I have worked with people in this phase of grief and they have tried some very creative ideas to keep their loved one tied to them. A favorite bargaining chip is the children. Please be very careful if you decide to use your children as pawns to keep your partner tied to you. This isn’t fair to anyone. It’s definitely not fair for your children. It’s not fair to your partner and it isn’t fair to you. Do you really want someone to stay with you just because of his or her love for your children?
I once worked with a man who was trying to extricate himself from a relationship with a woman he had been dating for about two years. She had a son and this man was a strong role model and had a special relationship with her son. After making several failed attempts to lure him back into the relationship, she used her son by asking the man to talk to him because he was going through some difficult times and needed someone strong to talk to. It was a very difficult decision but the man decided not to call because he believed this woman had several other resources at her disposal and was simply trying to pull him back into a relationship with her. This was not fair to her son, the man or herself.
If you have to resort to extraordinary methods to keep your loved one in your relationship, do you really want to have that person under those conditions? Your loved one has made a decision to leave. As hard as that is to accept, do you really think you will be satisfied and happy in a relationship knowing your partner is only in it out of guilt or obligation?
The Paradox:
In order to get stronger and back in control of your emotions and your life, it will require the paradox of accepting that you don’t control what’s happened or is happening. It is not about you being bad or good. It’s not personal. It just is.
If your partner ended your relationship, you may feel like it’s very personal. Obviously, it’s something about you that caused this person to leave. Maybe you aren’t attractive enough, thin enough, young enough, smart enough, responsible enough, interesting enough and so on. There are all kinds of reasons for ending a relationship. The bottom line is your partner has decided he or she no longer wants to be in an intimate relationship with you. As difficult as that is to hear, it doesn’t have to be personal or mean you are not a good person or not good enough. Sometimes, two people are not meant to be together for a lifetime.
Try to remember that everyone has free will and can chose to be or not be in a relationship with anyone they want. People come and people go. Perhaps you made mistakes in your relationship. Mistakes are only tragic if you fail to learn from them. Analyze what the chapter is, receive it as a gift and do it better the next time. Don’t take it personally. Keep your self-esteem and self-respect intact.