This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant

Tragic events give us all the unique chance to pay attention to our blessings, even when we are hurting. Life continues its cycle, whether we are miserable or not. So we feel what we feel, but eventually we must make a choice.   It’s easy to say, and hard to do, but we must, if we are to carry on.

Sometimes it seems to us like disasters and tragedies rain down on us relentlessly, one after the other. This is even more true if we are members of that 15 to 20% of the population called HSP’s, or Highly Sensitive Persons.

It’s a tall order to stay focused on a positive outlook, and on gratitude, when we are the ones going through something awful, like losing a love one, or some other type of horrible occurrence. . Even if the events we hear of aren’t happening to us personally, and to our own families, if we have tender hearts, we feel things deeply.  It can be easy to get depressed and to get caught up in constant sadness and gloom and doom.  When we, ourselves, have already lived through our own huge challenges, as many of us have, we find that news of these misfortunes and catastrophes hit us like giant hailstones, and bring back a lot of the difficult feelings we have had around our own losses. Even if we think we have completed our grief over our personal losses and moved on, they tend to crop up again in different ways.

Things do seem to happen in clusters. Just during the current month of April, there was the Oso, Washington landslide that took so many lives, the horrible sinking of the Korean ferry, that lost over 300, mostly teens, the Fort Hood shootings by Ivan Lopez, the multiple stabbings by 16 year old, Alex Hribel in Pennsylvania,  the avalanche in Nepal, and then, here in CT, this past week, a talented 16 year old, Maren Sanchez, was stabbed to death at her high school on the day of her prom, allegedly because she turned down a prom date with the young man.

A bit closer to home,  I learned that last Tuesday evening, a lovely family with whom I had placed a child for adoption many years ago, lost their wonderful 31 year old daughter, mother of three very young kids.  Just after absorbing this news, a couple of days ago, a friend called me with some disturbing information about the life and choices of someone else I care about and have known for many years.  When I turned on the news earlier today, I saw the results of the tornadoes that hit several states here in the U.S. and wreaked havoc.

Then, this morning I got a call that my dear cousin, Loraine Stayer, had succumbed to ovarian cancer and had passed away very early today. I knew she had been placed on hospice care this week. I knew she was weakening. I knew she was tired of suffering but still…..this hits me hard. Our family, once large and pretty close, has shrunk badly, as happens over time. Lori and I were less than half a year apart and she was one of only a couple of people left who shared my childhood and family memories. She was the fourth among the cousins on my mother’s side to die. She lost her younger brother a few years ago, and my own brother and sister are long gone.

Of course, this is a personal loss for me, being a family member, but it is heaped onto everything else. As I think about all of this, I can feel my mood sinking.   I know some things instinctively, from past experience, that I have to remember.   First, when I need to cry, I must cry. The cleansing power of tears is very powerful and beneficial, and it is not good to hold that back.  Secondly, I must immediately start focusing on gratitude for the good things in my life, and on even the smallest of joys.

When what we learned as kids was contrary to recognizing gratitude and joy, we have to consciously work at doing this.  It doesn’t come naturally to many of us, so we have to practice and practice till it becomes second-nature.

We have to pay attention to self-care when we are feeling bad, so we don’t sink further and further into more negative thinking, because it’s a vicious cycle. Finally, we have to make ourselves reach out to others, and do something for someone else, because that’s the surest way to get out of our heads, and our own brand of  misery.

It may seem like a herculean task to stay  focused on keeping a positive outlook, on gratitude, self care, and on doing for others.. It is a huge challenge not to give in to negativity and gloom and doom, over and above normal grief.  Still, if we are to survive, if we are to live meaningful lives, if we are to continue in ways that honor and preserve the memories of lost loved ones, or even of nameless or faceless victims of terrible fates, we have to figure out how to minister first to our own hurting hearts.

One way to help our own hearts, and to keep the sadness of the world from overwhelming us, is definitely to reach out to others.  We have to figure out how we, in our own humble ways, can make a difference in the world. We won’t all do it in the same manner. We don’t all have the same talents, interests or resources, but each of us really does have the ability to make some type of difference.

When your heart is hurting, what do you do for yourself?

Does paying attention to your own blessings help you?

How might you go about noticing or reminding yourself of your blessings?

Is there something that you have done, or that you currently to, do make a difference in the world, that honors someone you loved and lost, or a group of people who have suffered in some way that has touched your heart?

Can you take the first step toward choosing joy over sadness?

Had I not been subject to darkness, I would not have seen the light — Jewish Midrash (translated from Hebrew)

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.-Abraham Lincoln

One joy scatters a hundred griefs-Chinese proverb

“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection – or compassionate action.” 
― Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

Certified and Credentialed Coach, Iris Arenson-Fuller, PCC, CPC, is a Life and Grief Transformation Coach, Life Reinvention Coach helping people (mostly midlife women, widows and Baby Boomer women}create a better present and a more promising future, no matter what they have been through in the past. She also  has many decades of experience in Adoption Loss and all adoption issues.

Contact Coach Iris: 

ir**@vi*******************.com