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How do we choose what to keep after a loved one dies? It's a question that many grievers struggle with. Certified grief coach and founder of The Grief Gallery Charlene Lam has an uncommon answer: Curating and exhibitions. In this grief podcast with a twist, you'll hear stories about the stuff, find out how curated objects can help us stay connected to our loved ones, and learn how the lens of curating can help us to make hard choices and even find beauty after bereavement.
[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Charlene. I'm a Certified Grief Coach and the curator of The Grief Gallery. I want to send this message to you on Mother's Day. Mother's Day can bring up a lot of mixed feelings, whether your mother has died or you are no longer in contact because you're estranged, or if she's no longer the mother figure that you knew because of dementia or another illness.
[00:00:23] So I want to let you know a couple of things for Mother's Day to help you cope or even celebrate. One, permission. If you need it, I want to give you permission to feel however you feel, whether you feel angry, whether you feel numb, sad, resentful, jealous. It's all normal, so feel what you're going to feel.
[00:00:52] I also want to give you permission to do what feels right for you. You can decide how much you want to participate in Mother's Day, whether that really is just coping and getting through it, or whether that looks like celebrating. Two, let's look at the expectations. What expectations are there around Mother's Day?
[00:01:16] These expectations can come from the outside marketing messages. Things that people share, the images that are in popular culture around Mother's Day, are there expectations there about what Mother's Day should look like? Are there expectations about what you should be feeling or what you should be doing?
[00:01:39] Are some of those expectations coming from other people in your life? Family members, or are there expectations coming from yourself? Listen for that. Should. Should I be doing something differently? I find with my clients that a lot of the conflict, a lot of the additional suffering and pain that comes after loss is from a mismatch in expectations.
[00:02:05] If you're getting messaging that says, mother's Day should look like this, and it's a reminder that your relationship with your mother does not look like that, that mismatch in expectations can be very painful and can be a source of conflict. So ask yourself, what are the expectations there? And reminder, you have permission to do it your way, not necessarily according to expectations.
[00:02:32] Three. Acknowledging what is versus what should be, what was, what should have been. If we have lost someone significant to us to loss or to dementia, or to illness, or to estrangement, of course it's going to hurt. When we're really attached to someone and they die or are otherwise not in our lives in the way that we used to have them, that hurts.
[00:03:07] There is inherent pain in that loss, and we can sometimes add to that pain by trying to focus on what should be instead of what is. For instance, after my mother died, it was 10 years ago. Some of the most painful moments were when I was wrestling with the reality that she's actually gone. What do you mean I'm not going to see her in person again?
[00:03:42] What do you mean she's never going to make that trip to Alaska to see the whales? What do you mean she's not coming back? A lot of that is very normal part of grieving, and I also noticed it was the most painful, resisting the reality of what is versus what I think things should look like or what my brain thinks things should look like or what other people think things should look like.
[00:04:10] So consider that acknowledging what is grieving those losses. Versus focusing on what should be four for Mother's Day. For any significant occasion, consider what is unique to you and your relationship with your loved one. Your mother or your mother figure. She was unique, and the relationship that that you had with her is different than the relationship that other people had with her.
[00:04:44] So acknowledging and honoring the relationship that you actually had with your mother figure or your mother, and that means acknowledging, well, okay, maybe it wasn't the easiest relationship, maybe it was pretty complicated. Maybe there's some guilt and resentment there. You don't have to pretend that there were no conflicts or that your mom was an angel in order for you to.
[00:05:13] Acknowledge and honor who she was and to even celebrate Mother's Day if you want to. And part of acknowledging what is unique to you and your relationship with the person is Desani. What kind of support you want? Do you want to be in community? Do you want to be around family members? Do you want to be active in doing something around other people?
[00:05:37] Great. Do you prefer to be in solitude? Do you prefer to kind of be alone with you and your thoughts? Great. Do you wanna be totally distracted in doing something? That's fine. Identifying what kind of support you want is part of acknowledging what is unique to you and your relationship with your mother figure, and that brings me to 0.5.
[00:06:06] O P P one of my favorite concepts stands for other people's processes because what if Mother's Day is not just something that you get to decide on? Maybe there are other people involved. Maybe their siblings, other family members, maybe you yourself, are a parent and are expected either by children or by other people in your family to acknowledge Mother's Day in some way.
[00:06:32] So remember how I said that your relationship with your mother figure was unique? Well, other people's relationship with that person were also unique. They might have had a very different dynamic than you did with your mother figure. So, Part of this process of grieving is finding compassion for ourselves and also accessing compassion for other people that they might be experiencing the loss of the person in a very different way than you, and they might be expressing their grief in a very different way than you are.
[00:07:10] So communicate. Communicate what you are experiencing. Be willing to hear what they are experiencing, and let's bring that back to expectations. Communicating. What expectations do they have of Mother's Day and why? And what are your expectations? What do you feel up to not hiding these expectations and these experiences?
[00:07:36] It can be a way to really dissolve some of that conflict. Um, all of that kind of hidden expectations and the kind of hurt feelings that come about from not communicating. So there are some five things that I would like to consider as you're heading into Mother's Day. As you're deciding how you want to handle it, you get to decide whether you want to cope and just get through the day and be with the feelings that come up.
[00:08:04] I'm wishing you the best for getting through Mother's Day in whatever way feels most supportive to you.
[00:08:13] And you're always welcome to join my monthly grief gathering. The free gathering for The Grief Gallery is the last Wednesday of every month. You can find more at curatinggrief.com/gathering
[00:08:27] Thanks for listening to the Curating Grief Show.