Finding Meaning After Loss

In 2020 there was a collective loss that we all experienced. We lost our normal everyday lives; employment, gathering, work-place connection, school for our children, the touch of our loved ones, travel, the health of our world and community and so much more. On top of this collective loss, many of us suffered terrible personal losses as well; making 2020 a year of such profound loss that it challenged us in how we processed our grief.  In 2020, I lost something that I loved and then more tragically at the end of the year I lost someone that I loved.  Those losses changed both my internal landscape and my everyday world in profound ways and forced me to look at the emotional work of grief and loss in a different way.

As human beings, I think that we all try to find meaning when we suffer loss. Both in why the tragic circumstance happened to us and then in the meaning that the loss will give to our lives moving forward.  David Kessler, a world renowned expert on grief and co-author with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (the late Swiss-American psychiatrist famous for her Kubler-Ross method comprised of the 5 Stages of Grief), wrote his latest book after the death of his 21 year old son, called Finding Meaning, which he describes as the 6th Stage of Grief.

In our fast-paced society, many of us are quick to skip over the work of grief and to jump to this later step; gratitude, purpose and meaning.  Perhaps even before we have felt the feelings necessary to find that sense of meaning.  Kessler cautions us not to try to find meaning in the loss itself, stating that “loss is not a blessing or a test, but rather something that happens to each of us.” That you don’t have to be “grateful for the trauma of loss, but that you can be grateful for what you learn from it.”  He importantly notes “finding meaning can’t happen until you feel your pain.”  Which is the work of processing those other important steps; numbness/denial, anger, bargaining, depression/sadness and acceptance.

Unfortunately, no one can do the work of grief for you and for each of us it may look very different. However, Kessler’s website grief.com is a wonderful resource for how to process and manage your grief.  It includes a particularly interesting post about the six elements you need when you are in grief. These elements while seemingly intuitive are helpful to keep in mind:

1. Surround yourself with community –this includes all kinds of people- those who “go deep” or are good listeners, people who can distract you, people who push or encourage you etc.

2. Continued connections (applicable to keeping connection to a deceased loved one)

3. Your Grief Does Not Define You

4. Treat yourself as your best friend- how would your best friend or the kindest person you know treat you?

5. Don’t Compare Yourself to Others- it’s okay that others are at a different place than you are in their grief/post-grief growth

6. Count Your Wins- think of the little things you are accomplishing or doing that are moving you forward and give yourself praise for them.

Divorce and other family law issues can be a kind of loss akin to a kind of death; the death of a marriage, the death of family life as you have known it, perhaps even the death of a part of your identity. I have learned through my own losses and the people that I help every day, that it is important to give yourself time to process your feelings and to grieve, however long it may take.

Are you ready to work through your loss and find meaning again?  We are here to support you in the painful grief work around your divorce and family law matter, to help you navigate your legal issues and find meaning in your loss. Contact Georgia Fraser, Esq. at Fraser Family Law Office LLC for help with your family law or divorce issue. 609-223-2099.

Re-Framing Your Story

This summer I did something truly amazing and truly crazy. I decided to add a 9-week old Golden Retriever puppy (meet Teddy) to our already overly busy, working-mother with her own law practice, one-dog and a 9- year old household. I find that the things that you love the most are also the things that test you the most and offer you a glimpse into the story you tell about yourself.  Our children are a perfect example. The inadequacy that parenting our children brings necessarily invites a story. Sometimes one that is pretty self-shaming.

So it comes as no surprise that the raising of this little puppy also comes with its own set of invitations around my self-story telling. It seems everyday that there is some new behavior or challenge with this confident little guy and I can’t say that with our hectic life that I am always perfectly resourced to know how to handle them. Growling at an adult dog while walking on the street, bloodying our 3 year old Black Lab in puppy MMA kamikaze-style attacks, resource guarding a squeaky toy, peeing in his crate at night without making a peep . . . it goes on and on and on.  Of course, the story that I am sometimes tempted to tell myself is that I need to be doing “more” or that if I had handled it better this wouldn’t be happening.  That if I were a perfect puppy Mommy he would be a more perfect puppy. Oh, silly, silly human.

I’m guessing by now you understand that the puppy story is a metaphor. There are lots of puppy stories we tell ourselves in life- some much, much more serious than tales of housebreaking and shoe chewing. And depending on the particular puppy story we tell we can be cast as victims, we can be survivors or we can be thrivers. I came across this concept recently and I found it so striking in terms of my own emotional growth, but also the growth and arc of the people that I meet in my family law practice.

So what is the difference you ask between these roles. I found the following chart to be so interesting and helpful:

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Personal trauma, whatever the cause, can cast us in the role of victim or survivor and sometimes the stories that we continue to tell ourselves can keep us stuck there.  So how do we move to the point where we are a thriver, where we are leading a life of wholeness and joy?  I think learning to re-frame our story is a critical piece.

So back to my puppy story- I decided to re-frame my story in a way that makes me feel more open and possible around this new adventure -if not quite to the point where I feel like a fantastic puppy Mommy.  When I started to feel inadequate to the task –I used my problem solving/researchy super-powers and resourced the heck out of it. An awesome dog-walker (thank you Simon), 9 puppy books later, reaching out to every family member, friend and colleague who had ever brought a second dog into their household, asking help from our breeder and finally enrolling Teddy in a drop-in training program (have a good day at school-Mommy’s going to the office style stuff).

How to re-frame your story in the middle of family crisis or divorce asks you to build the same muscle.  To feel more open and possible you must be open to seeing possibilities, to asking for help, and to offering yourself more self-acceptance and love.

Are you ready to be a thriver? Want to meet Teddy? (He’s training to become our office emotional support animal and available for belly rubs) Contact Georgia Fraser, Esq. at Fraser Family Law Office LLC for help with your family law or divorce issue. 609-223-2099.

Making Self-Care a Habit

For many of us self-care is synonymous with things like trips to the spa or once a year vacation and is permissioned perhaps as only an intermittent break from the stress of our everyday lives. But I believe that a habit of true self-care is essential to how we stay present in our lives, how we resource ourselves to make better decisions and create the sense of agency necessary to make changes.  It is also the well from which we draw our energy to give and care for others. But how many of us are running on empty all the time between work and home life?  How often is taking care of yourself the thing that comes last or the first thing to go when your schedule goes sideways?

I had a conversation with a dear friend recently who was looking to make big changes in his life.  We talked a lot about what the block to those bigger changes were and during the course of our discussion he revealed how little of himself was present in his everyday life; always working, doing, taking care of others. How could my friend hope to make these big changes for himself when he wasn’t creating a habit of taking care of himself every day? Here is the advice I gave to my friend:

1. Prioritize Rest: We are a society that disdains rest and glorifies “doing.” But rest – the good old-fashioned close your eyes kind -is essential not only to the body’s repair but to the repair of the emotional and psychic toll that the stress of everyday life takes on all of us.  Rest is where the energy to create and change is built. So my advice was – to find a soft place to land every day if even for 10 minutes. Close eyes. Slow your breath. Let your mind wander.

2. Learn to Say No:  How many of us push ourselves to do things when we’re tapped out, or say “yes” to something that really should just be a no. I heard a great interview of producer Shonda Rhimes in which she revealed that she cultivated a perfect “no,” by saying “No, I’m not able to.” Period. Full-stop.  Try hers or come up with your own- but cultivate more “no’s” in order to say “yes” to yourself more.

3. Don’t Take On More Than You’re Resourced For:  This is a corollary of “no,” but the obvious truth is that when you’re on empty- it’s a full-stop until you’ve re-filled the tank. This could mean more rest, more play, more joy, more connection. Whatever it is that re-fuels you.

4. Establish Your VIP Rope:  You know those exclusive clubs where there is a bouncer and vip rope that only the select people can get behind- well access to you should look like that too. Figure out who the energy vampires are and who are the people that restore and re-fuel you and establish the rules around VIP access.

5. Stay With Your Joy:  Ever go on a weekend trip with a friend and have so much fun you wonder why you don’t do “that” more often? Find ways to bring whatever “that” is into your everyday life. Its really easy to lose the thread of your own happiness in a routine that has so little of YOU in it. So find a way to say connected to yourself by staying connected to the things you love to do. (The good news is that the more you say no to what isn’t your joy the more you can say yes to what is).

Ready to take better care of yourself?  For more information about family law issues contact Georgia Fraser, Esq. of Fraser Family Law Office, LLC  at 609-223-2099.

Are there Energy Vampires in YOUR life?

As you can probably guess from some of my blog posts, I’m a big proponent of practicing good self-care. And there are many different ways we can practice self-care; regular exercise, meditation, a healthy diet, and one of my personal favorites (and the subject of my REST blog post)- a habit of good sleep. But over the years, I have come to realize there is another really important aspect of self-care that many of us don’t exercise frequently enough that is critical not only to our health but to our enjoyment of our lives, and that is practicing healthy boundaries with unhealthy people. The figurative VIP rope we establish to allow access to our interior lives.

I find that one of the main stresses that my family law clients experience is having to deal with the angry, unreasonable or downright abusive actions of their spouse or partner. These are sometimes just garden variety hurt and angry individuals, but more often in my experience they are individuals with significant personality disorders or mental health problems; the narcissist, those with borderline personality disorder or other serious anger management problems.   In these situations, the hypervigilance that is required to deal with these impossible partners leaves many of my clients feeling worn out. Oftentimes, angry and abusive conduct that can no longer happen in person is channeled through co-parenting of children or through litigation tactics themselves. And the question becomes how do reasonable people navigate these unreasonable situations? How do you disengage from this abusive dynamic?

I recently read a fantastic book that I am literally telling all my friends about, “Dodging Energy Vampires: An Empath’s Guide to Evading Relationships that Drain You and Restoring Your Health and Power,” by Dr. Christian Northrup, M.D.  Dr. Northrup categorizes the type of difficult individuals I laid out above as “vampires,” and categorizes the dynamics of the vampire relationship as one in which the “vampire,” manipulates others for their “narcissistic supply.”  “Narcissistic supply” is “ a concept introduced into psychoanalytic theory in 1938 to describe a type of admiration, interpersonal support or sustenance drawn by an individual from his or her environment and essential to their self-esteem.” The term is typically used in a negative sense describing a pathological need for attention, admiration from codependents . . .that does not take into account the feelings, opinions or preferences of other people.”  She describes this “narcissistic supply” as the blood that manipulative people suck out of their victims- picking fights, creating unnecessary drama and “doing whatever else is necessary to direct energy, attention, and money toward themselves.”  She said that you will know whether you have a vampire in your life by how you feel after you’re with them- DRAINED.

Dr. Northrup goes on to describe in detail the health risks that are attendant with being a part of such unbalanced relationships. On a basic level she indicates that this can lead to physical symptoms because of the “chronic, unrelenting release of stress hormones in the body.”  Which can also lead to much more serious impact on the immune system and create susceptibility to all kinds of infectious diseases, including autoimmune disease. 

Where do we access the proverbial bushel of garlic or wooden stake antidote to these vampires? She suggests that the best way is by creating strong boundaries, developing the ability to say “NO,” and limiting or ending these relationships where possible. Although this may sound impossible when forced to deal with the other person in a family law or divorce situations- especially where co-parenting is required-  boundary setting can be a powerful tool in disengaging from unnecessary drama and conflict.

It is clear to me that good boundary setting is a process of not only asserting to the other person how you want to be treated and what you will accept but also a commitment to yourself as to where you will engage and put your own energy.  In limiting the access that unhealthy people have to you and your life – you create room for the people and things that you actually enjoy. You also create more space for yourself- your thoughts, your dreams – what YOU want. 

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Need help getting rid of an energy vampire or creating better boundaries in your family law situation, please contact Georgia Fraser, Esq. of Fraser Family Law Office at 609-223-2099.