Sacred Grief E-Book

Leslee Tessmann

• Herausgeber: Loving Healing Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Serie: Spiritual Dimensions
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Seitenzahl: 171

Beschreibung

Are you ready to discover what lies beyond the ordinary experience of grief?

Sacred Grief offers an intriguing exploration of the far-reaching ripple effect of our present-day opinions about surviving grief's emotional roller-coaster and the unnecessary suffering our judgments unconsciously promote. You'll find comfort in discovering that there's another dimension to this universal experience--a dimension that fosters trust, kindness and compassion, peacefully heals, and steadfastly moves you towards your soul's deepest desires and dreams.
Praise for Sacred Grief
"Because we will all have the experience, Sacred Grief is a compelling guide for everyone searching for the sweetness in life's great passages."
--Gregg Braden, author, The Divine Matrix and The God Code
"Sacred Grief is a holy handbook for gleaning the gifts of the journey called grief."
--Mary Manin Morrissey, Co-founder, Association for Global New Thought
"Sacred Grief is a welcome departure from the conventional advice about 'surviving' grief."
--Jill Carroll, Ph.D., Executive Director, Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University
"I highly recommend this book to anyone that has experienced any type of loss in their lives and is willing to look at the loss through a different set of eyes. Tessman, in Sacred Grief, will lead the reader to a place of compassion for oneself, create a relationship with his/her own grief, and ultimately create a place of understanding and a healed soul."
--Irene Watson, Managing Editor, Reader Views
SEL010000 Self-Help : Death, Grief, Bereavement
FAM014000 Family & Relationships : Death, Grief, Bereavement
SOC036000 Social Science : Death & Dying

Leseprobe

Loving Healing Press

Sacred Grief : Exploring A New Dimension To Grief

Copyright © 2008, 2011 by Leslee Tessmann. All Rights Reserved

Cover design by Shaila Abdullah.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

First Edition: April 2008

Second Edition: January 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tessmann, Leslee, 1953-

Sacred grief : exploring a new dimension to grief / Leslee Tessmann.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-61599-055-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 978-1-61599-086-3 (trade paper : alk. paper)

1. Grief. I. Title.

BF575.G7T46 2008

155.9’37--dc22

2008002569

Distributed by Ingram Book Group (USA/CAN), New Leaf Distributing (USA), Bertram’s Books (UK), Hachette Livre (FR), Agapea (SP), Angus & Robertson (AU).

Published by:

Loving Healing Press

5145 Pontiac Trail

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

www.LovingHealing.com or [email protected]

USA/CAN Tollfree 888-761-6268

London, England 44-20-331-81304

Fax [phone]

Praise for Sacred Grief

“A powerful exploration of a universal human experience! Using true-life accounts and personal examples, Leslee Tessmann masterfully leads us beyond the process of grief itself, into a bold new perspective of our lifelong relationship with change. Because we will all have the experience, Sacred Grief is a compelling guide for everyone searching for the sweetness in life’s great passages.”

—Gregg Braden, authorThe Divine Matrix and The God Code

“With sensitivity and grace, Leslee Tessmann leads the reader through a dark and difficult passage into the light of awareness, acceptance, and new aliveness. Sacred Grief is a holy handbook for gleaning the gifts of the journey called grief.”

—Mary Manin MorrisseyCo-Founder, Assn. for Global New Thought

“Many thanks to Leslee Tessmann for this significant contribution to our understanding of grief. Sacred Grief presents a perspective not only on the grieving process, but on how a fresh context for that process can transform the experience as whole. Sacred Grief is a welcome departure from the conventional advice about ‘surviving’ grief.”

—Jill Carroll, Ph.D., Executive Director,Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University

“I highly recommend this book to anyone that has experienced any type of loss in their lives and is willing to look at the loss through a different set of eyes. Tessman, in Sacred Grief, will lead the reader to a place of compassion for oneself, create a relationship with his/her own grief, and ultimately create a place of understanding and a healed soul.”

—Irene Watson, Managing Editor,Reader Views

“I enjoyed the book very much. Rather than the old strategy to try to suppress or manipulate one’s way through life and grief, Sacred Grief provides readers with a new path, a new way of being in the world with their grief.”

—Marc Levine, MA, MFCT, Bellevue, WA

“Sacred Grief was so honest and real, it just touched my heart. Leslee gives definitions and solutions that make complete sense, almost like we should know this information from a primal instinct but we don’t until she shares her inspirational insights learned through her own pain and grief. It is a book I will read again and give to my friends and family.”

—Tammye Read, Seattle, WA

“Sacred Grief makes sense. Unlike most of our culture’s conversation about death and grieving, this book is not concerned with ‘fixing’ or ‘getting rid’ of grief. Instead, Leslee Tessmann creates a context for grief that is as practical as it is inspiring. As a young woman who recently experienced the sudden death of a parent, I know that there is no easy way through grief. But the opportunity to relate to our grief as sacred is the most powerful tool we can have during those times when we feel our most powerless.”

—Nishta Mehra, Houston, TX

“In Sacred Grief, Leslee generously gives us an intimate look at her journey through an event most of will experience but few of us are willing to discuss, much less embrace. While there is no way to avoid pain and sadness after the death of a loved one, she shows us that suffering is optional when we approach grief with an attitude of acceptance and curiosity rather than fear and resistance. A good book to learn how to be gentle with yourself when life is feeling harsh.”

—Beryl Kaminsky, LPC, CTGrief Counselor, Houston, TX

“Leslee Tessmann tells her compelling personal story in a compassionate, strong voice. Sacred Grief offers gentle wisdom on a tough subject and provides a message the world needs to hear.”

—Donna Walker, Librarian, Denver, CO

“This book gave me an unexpected view of grief—to actually cherish the moments of my grief without indulging in the emotions, and then move on. Leslee’s generous sharing of her story allowed me to accept more of myself and carry that acceptance and the sacredness of every moment into all of my life.”

—Linda Fraser, Houston, TX

“Tessmann has a lengthy background in technical writing. Using her personal life’s experiences, this author has turned her writing in a different direction, focusing on the subject of grief. She runs self-help workshops and gives classes and lectures to help others find their way through the sometimes difficult labyrinth of grief.

This book is full of compassion. Sacred Grief is a self-help book, but it is also a guidebook to life, one that gently leads us through our emotions and provides us with a way to come to terms with the most compelling feeling that strikes us all at one time or another: grief. Sacred Grief, is highly recommended.

—Emily-Jane Hills Orford,Allbooks Reviews

This book is lovingly dedicated to

my father and mother,

LeRoy and Jean Tessmann.

Thank you for inspiring me with your love,

courage, and respect for life.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface to the Second Edition

Introduction

Chapter 1 Sacred Surrender: Leslee’s Story

Chapter 2 Just the Facts Ma’am: Separating Fact from Fiction

Chapter 3 The Power of Language: Declaring “Sacred” as a Context

Chapter 4 The Pitfalls of Preferences

Chapter 5 Mischief: Grief’s Masquerade

Chapter 6 Authenticity: To Be or Not to Be

Chapter 7 Uncertainty: Hanging-Out in Freefall

Chapter 8 The Middle Way: Having It All

Chapter 9 Compassion: Unbridled Generosity

Chapter 10 Making Waves: Little Stone, Big Sea

Appendix Self Reflections: A Study Guide

Resources

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

Acknowledgements

The manifestation of Sacred Grief is a community effort and victory. What began as a divine thought from the source of all life was lovingly guided through the lives and hearts of many. Perhaps every writer is faced with the dilemma of how to acknowledge all who have contributed to one’s written work. It would be impossible to list everyone, just as it would be impossible not to acknowledge anyone. My desire is that everyone who has touched my life and helped inspire Sacred Grief accepts the following as an acknowledgment for themselves as well. I offer my heartfelt appreciation and gratitude for your contribution towards the fulfillment of this tender and creative work.

From the very beginning, I have been blessed by my mother, Jean Tessmann, and her steadfast faith and belief in my dream to write a book that would make a difference for others. Her ongoing prayers were generously offered and lovingly propelled me forward each step of the way. I could not have asked for a more loving, caring, and giving mother and friend.

The heart of Sacred Grief comes from the lessons I constantly learn from my siblings—Dolores, Mary, Jim, Carol and Allen, and my daughter, Jennifer, and grandchildren, Maxwell, Lexus, and Lydia Grace. They have all been the perfect teachers of one of life’s greatest paradoxes—that the depth of love one experiences is entirely dependent on the willingness to open one’s heart and accept another exactly as they are and as they are not. Thank you for the love you generously offer and the difference it made in the unfolding of Sacred Grief.

I offer deep gratitude and respect for Victor Volkman for his partnership in manifesting my first book and for his wisdom, courage, and the integrity he brought to the birthing and publishing of Sacred Grief.

This would be just another self-help book on the shelf were it not for Sandy Lawrence’s brilliant promotional guidance and willingness to help hold the vision for Sacred Grief’s contribution to each life touched by its message of freedom and peace.

I thank Irene Watson, my agent, for her loving and straightforward guidance in paving the way for Sacred Grief to be published by Loving Healing Press, and her willingness to explore and experience firsthand all that the book offered so that she might authentically express that in her reviews.

Editing one’s book and labor of love is a delicate endeavor. Consequently, I owe great thanks and appreciation to Mark Bruni and Stephanie Gunning who were instrumental in using their extraordinary editing talents and skills to bring clarity to Sacred Grief’s powerful message.

I also offer deep appreciation and thanks to Gregg Braden, Mary Manin Morrissey, and Jill Carroll for their generous endorsement of Sacred Grief and for taking time from their immensely full lives and demanding schedules to read the manuscript and offer wisdom and encouragement along the way. It’s difficult to stop or hold back when one is being called to be by such powerful and extraordinary human beings such as Gregg, Mary and Jill.

So many great friends offered their love, support, and wisdom to keep the vision for Sacred Grief alive and encouragement to keep going whenever I began to doubt or question myself: Linda Fraser, Trina Marquez, Tammye Read, Marc Levine, Ed and Joanne Schmidt, Anita McHarg, Amy Larsen, Lynn Boyd, Michelle Land, Deborah Enderle, Evelyn Heaton, Steve Braun, Marta Defex, Kim Reeves, Aileen Sanchez, Nan Stombaugh, Sarah Wyckoff, Liz Zalazar, and many others from my spiritual family at Unity Church of Christianity in Houston, To all of you, I offer my love, appreciation, and gratitude.

A special heartfelt thanks needs to be expressed to Marjie Parrot for participating in my personal transformation and helping me remove the obstacles that held me back from following my heart and “singing my song”. Marjie, I am eternally indebted to you for unlocking my passion, living my calling, and opening my heart to the world.

Last of all—and perhaps the one acknowledgment that touches my heart the deepest—is that of my father, LeRoy Tessmann. Dad, thank you for being such an amazing father and for teaching me about courage, commitment, and the power of faith and prayer. I love and miss you deeply. Wherever you are, the world is a better place because of your presence.

Preface to the Second Edition

Sacred Grief is a book whose message and time have come. Up until now, human beings, particularly in the Western world, have turned to established theories about the grief process. Sigmund Freud’s early research, observations, and findings regarding the “tasks of grief” and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ writings on the stages of grief are justly credited with expanding our capacity to overcome the unexpected and devastating losses in our lives. However, we live in such complicated times that the difficult and truly unimaginable circumstances surrounding today’s losses challenge us to go deeper and take a fresh look at what the grief process is all about.

Along with the profound losses attributed to disease, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, accidents, domestic violence, and divorce, we are now dealing with aggressive and untreatable cancers, gang wars, high school shooters, and acts of terrorism. We are also dealing with a new breed of ferocious natural disasters that have taken a catastrophic toll on the environment as well as the inhabitants of the places they strike. At the time of this printing, recent flooding in India has affected up to 20 million Pakistanis, covering almost a fifth of the country and destroying or damaging more than 250,000 homes. In January of 2010, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude crumbled buildings and homes in Haiti and left more than 230,000 dead, 300,000 injured, and 1 million people homeless. And it’s not just what’s happening now. The long-term aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is evidenced by the New Orleans Police Departments’ ongoing challenge to bring calm to the escalating violence caused by criminals, gangs and drug dealers that have slipped through a battered and struggling criminal justice system, and a suicide rate in Orleans Parish the last two years that was almost twice as high as it was prior to the levees breaking in 2005.

In most cases, grief associated with these types of events and losses is deep, long-lasting, and complicated. Many of the above-mentioned situations have left a wake of children confronted with the loss of parents and siblings to circumstances beyond one’s imagination and comprehension, as well as left parents grappling with the violent or traumatic circumstances surrounding the death of their child or children. Global conflicts have surpassed the horrors of past wars: Viet Nam was a catastrophe and Iraq is a living nightmare, continuing to take its toll on returning soldiers and military personnel who are now dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and drug and alcohol abuse, and whose lives have been interrupted and dramatically altered since troops were initially deployed there in 2003.

Given all of these sobering facts, it seems logical to conclude that we are faced with a large part of humanity dealing with deep, complicated, and, most likely, unresolved grief. If that’s the case, we now need to consider that our current understanding of the grief process is not enough to move us through the depth and complexity of these losses. In fact, it seems that we are being forced to give up understanding the process and just be with the pain, because with many of these circumstances there is no understanding.

Mostly what there is, is pain, but human beings don’t like experiencing pain, so we tend to go to great lengths to do whatever we can to avoid it. Rather than work with the body’s natural healing process, we search for answers and explanations in a desperate attempt to understand and strike back at that which took the life of a loved one. Unfortunately, the pitfall to this normal reaction is that the drive to understand now becomes the means to either indulge or suppress our pain and grief, rather than resolve and move through it.

You would think that it’s enough that we endure the natural suffering caused by life’s unexpected twists and turns. But we’re human beings with language so, unfortunately, we add to it by layering non-stop judgments of what we are experiencing on top of the natural suffering already there, which produces yet more judgment and an endless cycle of self-induced suffering. Before we know it, grief becomes a dirty or bad word, or worse—the enemy.

The choice to relate to grief this way may be unconscious, but nonetheless it is still a choice, and the reality is that the impact of relating to grief as the ‘enemy’ can be harsh: long periods of depression and dissociation, panic and anxiety attacks, complex emotional and physical health issues, and the acting out of anger, blame, guilt, self-pity, and sadness for a significant portion of our lives. Our most cherished relationships, our personal development, and the fulfillment of our lives are drastically impaired, if not completely cut off. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, I assert that the natural unfolding of our lives would have us say “No more!” Thus, Sacred Grief.

I lived a large portion of my life as I have just described. The circumstances may not have been as complicated as those we face today, but the result was the same—a tremendous amount of unnecessary, self-induced suffering, and a delay in the natural unfolding of my life. Ever since discovering this, my journey has been about exploring what moved me along that path and my relationship to grief. Sacred Grief recounts that journey and invites readers to consider what might be possible if we were to consciously create a friendly relationship to grief. A relationship whose context would be more than just a process; it would be sacred. As such, reverence and respect would be given to every loss, emotion, and moment of our grief.

Sacred Grief presents an intriguing discussion of what gets in the way of moving through grief with compassion and kindness. It doesn’t assume to tell you how to create a friendly relationship to grief, but rather nudges you into the unfamiliar and uncertain, that fertile space of creation. Moving into that place allows your perception of grief, death, and loss to shift such that you can willingly work with grief on its terms—its duration, depth, and expression—with trust, kindness, and respect. From there, Sacred Grief opens the path to surrender, a surrendering that brings peace and allows you to experience grief with curiosity rather than disgust, and embrace its unexpected, exquisite gifts.

Sacred Grief stands on the shoulders of contemporary authors such as Thomas Moore, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Steven Levine, and Ram Dass. It also expands on Sigmund Freud’s and other contemporary psychologists such as J. William Worden’s observations and significant writings regarding the tasks of grief. In 1969, Kübler-Ross brilliantly laid the groundwork for defining, understanding, and working with the stages of death and grief. However, it’s time to take that work a quantum leap further by taking a closer look at our relationship to grief. Sacred Grief opens the door to exploring a new dimension to grief and the possibility of using language to consciously and willingly alter our relationship to a process that is such a pervasive part of our everyday lives. This exploration is the missing piece that will allow us to declare “sacred” as the context to our grief, and ultimately to our lives.

The personal result of reading Sacred Grief is movement forward with your life with peace, purpose, and passion, intimately aware of the sacredness and fragility of every given moment. The global result of Sacred Grief is an eternal well of compassion and a global shift as mankind makes peace with and moves through years of unresolved grief. Over time, that shift will create a massive ripple effect that will allow each and every human being to participate in the natural unfolding of our planet. Ultimately, if we allow grief to become our ally or friend, we might actually experience the world as our friend, no matter how it looks. For that to happen, we have to give up our expectations and agendas. The true essence of world peace lies in being with things just the way they are. As such, it will require compassion on the part of everyone to experience the workability of the world, no matter how it looks, for longer than a few fleeting seconds. Our global existence therefore depends on compassion. Sacred Grief boldly asks, “Are you willing to join forces with your grief so that the world can evolve and experience itself as all that it can be?” That is a question whose time, like Sacred Grief, has come.

Leslee Tessmann, October 2010

Introduction

Going Beyond Survival: Exploring a New Dimension to Grief

Well, here it is—another book on grief. I suspect that’s one thought that may have crossed your mind when your eye caught the title of this book. Another thought might have been something like, “Sacred? That’s interesting. I can’t imagine relating to grief as sacred.” Finding that concept interesting indicates curiosity, and curiosity will make all the difference as you read on and explore further. Finding the concept unimaginable indicates no prior reference point to what a sacred relationship to grief might look like. That dimension or space of “can’t imagine” is the perfect place from which to create an experience full of endless possibilities and unexpected discoveries.

Unlike many of its predecessors, Sacred Grief is not about the grief process. Rather, it is about our relationship