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Director's Page Archives

l Death and Dying l Substance Abuse l Rape l Aging l

April/May 1997

"April- Death and Dying- by Bill Schaefer,-Immutable though the fact of death is, a good many people have spent a good bit of energy denying the fact. Hidden in hospitals, sanitized by various funeral customs, the topic has been one of the great taboos of our 20th century western culture. But denial has kept us from helping others and prevented us from learning our own lessons. Gradually, the taboo is being lifted. In the past 15 years or so, hospice programs have been set up to help people cope with terminal illness. Individuals and groups have sorted through their experiences and given attention to the fact of their own mortality. As they have done so, they have come to realize that the experience of dying - or of any loss - is a process with recognizable stages. Families and caregivers experience the same process. The stages are not meant as a map or prescription. Some people pass through them all with relative swiftness. Others spend a great deal of time in a few. Other people zigzag and backtrack. It is not our job to shove our way through the stages, nor is it our job to push anyone else through. Our job is as simple and difficult as being with those we care for, and allowing ourselves to be. Understanding those stages can help: 1) Denial - Pretending it isn't happening. Too often people see denial as inappropriate. It can absolutely be the appropriate stage to be in. Sometimes we do need to put our attention somewhere else. denial. Other times, in the mistaken belief the other expects it. 2) Anger - Often the most difficult. We direct our anger at people who are safe, people who won't desert you. The person who is the target of the anger may realize, intellectually, I know they're not angry with me. But the pain is there, just the same. 3) Bargaining -If only. Numerous are the stories of those who have proclaimed something like, If only I can live until my son comes home from Europe ... until the holiday ... until whatever. Once the milepost is reached, the individual is ready to die. 4) Depression - The stage that is most universal. on rare occasion it is the only stage an individual experiences. It's difficult. Offering options may be helpful, but the individual can't be forced to do something he or she doesn't choose. 5) Acceptance - A rare, and, often fleeting experience. We have it for a moment, then we lose it. Sometimes family members see it as giving up, but there comes a point to let go. Acceptance cannot come unless we are willing to let go. what the ? your loved one wants, not what you want. If all he or she wants is for you to cut their fingernails twice a week, cut their fingernails. Dying is a process beyond our control. You can offer some sense of control. Instead of saying, I'll bring you something to drink, say, We've got some cranberry juice or orange juice. Which would you like? Love them. Cry with them. Allow the emotions you feel to be the emotions you where with them. You open yourself to the gifts they give you. In acceptance is the experience of transformation. If you are involved in that process, the transformation is not just for the person who is dying. That person will offer that gift for you. The whole process of dying is moving away from denial, from pretending this isn't happening. The pattern begins with conception, which begins an unbroken period of growth the point of maximum growth. The eastern philosophers call it effulgence. After this is deterioration. We give ourselves permission to have growth and effulgence. But we say, I will not look at deterioration and death. This denial is not the way to integrate oneself into life. The process is a way we experience what our life is about. If we give ourselves permission, something remarkable happens. Why put your attention to this grieving? This darkness? We cannot live here without deterioration and dying. As we begin to live through he darkness - and it is scary, it is dark, sometimes we can only hold onto each other and cry - as a result of living both sides of this pattern comes wholeness. For the moment, you can't find the light. An Episcopalian priest compared it to the experience of God's absence, which is not saying God is not there. We can feel so hopeless unless we do it together. None of us needs to do that alone. That's why we choose words. To share this. We will not be overwhelmed. We will experience life as life really is. We begin to understand the limitations of our life but the possibilities of our death. This is not an esoteric philosophy. It is the experience of wholeness, of darkness, and of light. We can have that understanding of God, or whatever words you use to describe God. It is an opportunity for you to experience, *the peace of God which passes all understanding.* We can only have that if we are willing to work through it together. ©Bill Schaefer, 1997"

June/July 1997

" Substance Abuse " by Bill Schaefer Our culture does not deal well with loss.We are encouraged to deny our pain, encouraged to stuff it back into our minds and bodies where it sits, hard and heavy as a concrete roadblock.hen another loss throws us for a spin. Up goes another roadblock to hold the pain at bay.But the pain remains simmering behind this wall, transforming itself into various symptoms. <br>For some, drug or alcohol addiction becomes the symptom.Addiction, above all, is a process of loss. Before the addiction sets in: the individual has experienced tremendous loss issues - a series of deaths no one encouraged him or her to grieve over, perhaps. The denial of the losses affects self-esteem when the individual has the misguided sense that he or she should have handled the loss and couldn't.During the addiction: Loss of family, job, material comforts, identity.Post-addiction: Grief because the substance is gone, the coping pattern is gone, the network of friendships based on the habit is gone.In the past 15 years or so, various individuals and groups have worked to break through the cultural denial of death, or loss. Some have founded hospices and cared for people with terminal illnesses.Among the hospice pioneers was Elisabeth Kubler Ross, who observed that the dying people, their families and caregivers experience predictable stages of bereavement: Denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. the stages follow no specific sequence or time-frame, but the process applies to any loss. <br>Those who are recovering from addiction and begin to understand how the losses built up in their lives, and, as they do, can begin to let go of feelings of unworthiness.There is an appropriate self-centeredness that goes with looking at how he or she got into that substance abuse. <br>Those who are recovering from addiction are breaking down long-standing patterns of denial and need permission to be in that grief process as long as they need to. Grieving is no a sign of weakness. It is appropriate. And no one is ever meant to grieve alone. <br>You who are recovering can be with others who will love you, not because you get your worthiness from them, but because they reflect your worthiness back. Recovery requires you, in the community, to become supporters, lovers, connectors. If you do that, those who have been through recovery will become your teachers. They are about courage. They are looking at what life is all about. <br>When you give yourself permission to look at what your life is about, you cannot avoid seeing the spiritual aspect of life. <br>Do not believe you can recover without looking at the meaning of your life, without looking at the whole, at God, however you define that. <br>Recovery is impossible without relation to the whole. As you recover, you will open yourself up to something great, to an experience greater than you.We cannot be whole unless we are also willing to be involved in that process. ©copyright Bill Schaefer, 1997

August/September 1997

Rape - An Issue of Loss</P> <P>So much has been written about the issue of rape in our generation. But it is surprising how little attention has been given to the issues of grief and loss as they relate to rape.</P> <P>First we must understand that the grieving process plays itself out in every loss. In our cultural death/loss/grief denial, when we are aware of the grieving process at all, it is usually associated with death, dying, and bereavement.</P> <P>What we have discovered after over two decades of examining grief and loss is that no matter what the loss the grieving process is always triggered. We cannot experience a loss that does not bring a grief response along with it. We may not be conscious of it, but it always comes with the loss.</P> <P>When we think about the issue of rape we cannot help but see not one, but many losses. For the victim, loss of sexual safety, loss of self-image, loss of sexual freedom in the future, loss of control, and often the loss of intimacy. Because the rape often comes profound changes in relationships, there is often the loss of what a relationship was before the rape. There are losses for the family and loved ones, too. Loss of relationship the way it was before. Loss of control. Often loss of intimacy , and many others.</P> <P>So many losses. Each in its own way, separate but connected to all the others, causes a grief response.</P> <P>Unless we understand the grief process the healing for the victim and their family and loved ones is very difficult. So many of the reactions after a rape are classic reactions to the stages of grief.</P> <P>Being conscious of Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief is so important in creating an environment of recovery after a rape.</P> <P>Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally an acceptance that allows growing through the terrible darkness, are all parts of the process of healing. If we look at post rape symptoms and reactions with the grief stages clear in our mind it is easy to see the connection.</P> <P>The question then becomes, what do we do about the grief.</P> <P>First we understand that all the emotions are an appropriate part of the process, not some sigh of weakness that needs to be buried or hurried along. We need to validate the emotions and find appropriate, safe environments in which to express them.</P> <P>We need to allow the stages to repeat themselves as many times as is necessary.</P> <P>We need not fix the emotions only experience them. And we need not be alone in the experience. Together with supportive family, loved ones, other victim, and community members, we can pass through the dark time.</P> <P>No one or any process can take away the world of rape. Healing does not mean forgetting. Healing means surviving and coming back into the light still able to grow, still able to love.</P> <P>Two keys to that healing are understanding the grief and finding folks with whom to pass through the darkness.</P> <P>Together. Together. 

October, 1997

AGING -- REALITIES AND POSSIBILITIES by Bill Schaefer</P> <P>How different might it be if we could truly accept aging, if we could accept the angers, work through the losses? How different would it be for us as individuals and for our human community?</P> <P>*******************************************************************</P> <P>I once knew a man who was seventy-seven. He had been a lawyer in what his culture perceived as his "productive period." He had been a victim of polio as a child, and his right leg was bound in a steel and leather brace. He was tall and lean. His face, when I knew him, was gaunt and his hair was white. His eyes were clear and bright. He was dying of cancer.</P> <P>He approached his death as I am sure he approached a particularly difficult case before the bar. He looked at the facts. He weighed alternatives. He made choices. He controlled what he could and let go of what he could not control. He exercised his articulate and precise mind.</P> <P>But he also exercised his loving heart.</P> <P>He drew to him his children and grandchildren. They responded. He had been an integral part of their lives, and he became even more connected.</P> <P>He moved into his daughter's house and, rather than be bedridden in an out-of-the-way bedroom, lived open and involved in the family room.</P> <P>Those of us lucky enough to become part of his support system were drawn in, too. "Here I am," he seemed to say. "Can you help, can you come close, can you feel the love?"</P> <P>He didn't hide the pain or the frustration when he felt the struggle would never end. He shared it. He made no excuses for the times when the pain and the losses and the struggle made him angry and depressed. He shared it.</P> <P>In times of balance, when the pain was absent or controlled, he would share laughter and stories of the old days, or he would talk just as seriously as a man could talk about "this dying business." He taught with words and by example. He taught with love.</P> <P>Once, very near the end, I told him how much being with him the last months had meant to me. "I hope when my time comes I will have the grace to do what you have done. And the courage," I said.</P> <P>"Come over her and help me with this brace," he said. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his bad leg making little clanging sounds from the metal brace bands tapping on the bed-frame.</P> <P>I kneeled on the floor and began to loosen the straps and buckles.</P> <P>"You're going to be just fine, you know." He spoke softly, and when I looked up from my position on the floor, he seemed so high up that I felt like a little boy. "You're going to be just fine," he repeated.</P> <P>I don't know. Sometimes it just seems to be too much."</P> <P>I carefully freed his leg from the brace. I looked up at him again.</P> <P>He looked into my eyes for a moment and then laughed a happy, hearty laugh. "I'll tell you what," he said as the laugh wandered lightly between the words, "When the time comes, I'll come back. I'll help you over." The laugh bubbled new and bright.</P> <P>I looked at him with his head thrown back, hands spread far to each side, bracing himself against the rumbling power of that love-laugh, and it felt like a caress.</P> <P>When the laugh was completed, he looked down at me and his eyes were serious. "No," he said, "I won't be able to help you over. But I promise, at that moment, at that dying moment, I'll be waiting."</P> <P>He lifted both arms out and away, palms out in a gesture of welcome. Then he reached down and patted my cheek. Twice. For a moment both his hands held my face; then his eyes brightened again, and he said, giving my head a little shake, "You're going to be just fine."<BR> *******************************************************************</P> <P>As we grow old in our technological, production-oriented culture, the denial of aging and death that exists at all levels of our society directs our path from one of cultural integration to one of isolation. Because we fear death, we reward ourselves for denying aging. We idolize youth and youthful beauty while failing to recognize the deeper more holistic beauty of the old.</P> <P>Because we give no value to age, we make consuming a value. Rather than an appreciating system where value increases with age, we make a value out of that which is disposable. We do this with our material world and we do it with people.</P> <P>Our personal progression from youth to old age too often leads us from a world where we perceive ourselves as being strong, involved, and in control to a narrow, isolated, lonely existence in which we believe we are no longer of value. I is in this context that we begin to experience the unavoidable reality which we have gone through such pains to avoid facing -- our aging bodies begin to breakdown, our lives approach their inevitable end -- death.</P> <P>We can no longer produce in the way we could when our bodies were young. We can no longer pretend that time leaves us unaffected. Because we are enmeshed in a society that believes as we do, that has, in fact, taught us to hide from the reality of our own mortality, our decreasing sense of self-value is reflected by those around us. Most tragic is that we lose the sense of, or make much more difficult, the final and culminating stage of our existence.</P> <P>Old age is a time meant to be our final stage of growth. We can only experience that growth if we recognize our own value -- what our life has taught us, what we have become. And it is almost impossible to maintain that perspective if those around us fail to recognize our value.</P> <P>It is not an easy time. It is a time of struggle, loss, and letting go. The newest saying is "Old age ain't for sissies."</P> <P>Along with the struggle and loss it can be a time of most powerful learning and fulfillment. It is also a time when the potential for teaching is perhaps higher than at any other time of life. The lessons of remarkable depth and of critical value. But they can be shared only if we come together.</P> <P>Our cultural and personal denial stimulates increased isolation which makes that final growth process much more difficult and keeps the young from sharing the experience. The separation guarantees continued denial, unfulfilled growth, and unnecessary pain.</P> <P>What a shame. What an unnecessary shame. </P> <P>******************************************************************* How different might it be if we could truly accept aging and death?</P> <P>Very, very different.</P> <P>My dying friend was a special man, a special teacher. His most powerful lesson to me was helping me to remember that I was special in the very same way.</P> <P>He taught me that it wasn't just him and me.</P> <P>It is you, too.