This is a fabulous, tender, truthful, healing post by a gifted psychologist, therapist, writer, and healer.
It applies to so many, in so many ways.
It is practical, heartfelt, deep and deepening.
Read. Share. Repeat.
http://adeleandthepenguin.com/struggles-and-strategies-for-the-motherless-and-unmothered/
By: Adele Ryan McDowell, PhD
About the book:
Insightful, compelling, and compassionate, Making Peace with Suicide: A Book of Hope, Understanding, and Comfort takes a good hard look at the world-wide phenomena of suicide.
This book is designed for anyone who has lost a loved one to suicide and felt that sucker punch of grief; for anyone who is in pain, walking unsteadily, and considering suicide as an option; and for anyone who works with, guides, or counsels those feeling suicidal and/or suffering the profound grief from a suicidal loss.
Making Peace with Suicide includes stories of courage, vulnerability, and steadfastness from both the survivors of suicidal loss as well as the unique perspective of the formerly suicidal. It offers shared wisdom and coping strategies from those who have walked before you. It explores the factors leading to suicide and the reasons why some do and some don’t leave suicide notes.
Making Peace with Suicide sheds light on the phenomena of suicide vis-à-vis our teens, the military, new mothers, as an end-of-life choice, and asks if addiction is a form of slow suicide. It provides a seven-step healing process and opens the door to consider suicide and the soul, the heart lesson of suicide, and the energies of suicide.
If suicidality has impacted your life, Making Peace with Suicide is a must-read! You will be guided through the unknown territory, given insights to allow understanding, stories to help you heal, and ways to make peace with a heart wide-open. Making Peace with Suicide is good medicine for the body, mind, and soul.
Praise for Making Peace with Suicide
“Suicide is one of our most painful, difficult, confusing and wounding of human experiences. Dr. Adele McDowell addresses this topic with love and beauty. She non-judgmentally restores empathy, compassion and understanding. She courageously offers deep tending in a “place of primal pain.” And she is comprehensive, sharing the history, complexity, universality, and even positive dimensions of this mysterious act. Whether you are contemplating or have survived the attempt, lost someone to suicide, or counsel and help these populations, Adele McDowell’s Making Peace with Suicide will bring you hope, healing, compassion and understanding.”
–Edward Tick, PhD; Director, Soldier’s Heart; Author, War and the Soul and Warrior’s Return
“With sensitivity and compassion, Making Peace with Suicide explores the depth and breadth of suicide and offers insights and healing. This book is essential reading.”
–C. Norman Shealy, MD, PhD
“No topic could be more timely than suicide. This remarkable book addresses people who have contemplated ending their lives as well as those who have to deal with the aftermath of those who succeeded. But it will also be invaluable to mental health workers and military chaplains, especially those who deal with young people who have been bullied and veterans with PTSD. For such a complex topic, Dr. McDowell’s writing style is reader-friendly and the stories she presents may well evoke tears. Her wise recommendations include teaching self-mastery techniques to help people cope with the stress of a success-oriented society. I have read many books on this sensitive topic, but none with the breadth and scope of Making Peace with Suicide.”
–Stanley Krippner, PhD; Co-author, Personal Mythology: The Psychology of Your Evolving Self and Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in War Veterans
“Finally. A book that explains—in the simplest of terms, in a non-sensational, non-academic manner—the phenomenal, worldwide epidemic we call suicide. If you read one book on mental illness and how it affects our world, READ THIS ONE!”
–Ginny Sparrow, Editor, American Association of Suicidology
“Adele bravely and compassionately tackles a topic that many people avoid discussing—suicide. Yet in the understanding of it, the confusion and sense of loss is greatly eased. Making Peace with Suicide is rich with insight and healing methods all intended to help heal the void we feel when we lose a loved one to suicide. It’s also written for those who are suicidal to help them understand their pain and despair, and to let them know there is always help and there is always hope. I wish I had this book to read when my best friend took her life.”
–Carol Ritberger, PhD, author of Healing Happens with Your Help: Understanding the Hidden Meaning behind Illness
“This powerful book, written by a psychologist and former suicide-hotline responder, speaks to us all, about a present epidemic, surrounded by shame, taboo and secrets. Offering many personal stories, Adele helps the reader to find peace speaking to both those who believe they’re the only person who has ever felt this desperate and to the survivors whose lives are thrown into turmoil. This excellent book, full of useful resources, is essential for everybody who feels alone with their issues of life or death, bringing greater understanding, acceptance and comfort.
–Christine Page, MD, seminar leader & author of The Healing Power of the Sacred Woman
“As a minister/therapist for more than thirty years as well as a wife who lost her military husband to suicide, I have never found a more compassionate, effective book on suicide and its aftermath. This book serves many needs and highlights the myriad ways in which suicide changes one’s life direction. I cannot say strongly enough how powerful and helpful this book is.”
–Rev. Colleen E. Brown, Unity minister
“The loss of a loved one by any means is traumatic. When the loss is by suicide, in addition to the grief of the loss itself, survivors are often left riddled with guilt, anger, shame, and endless questioning, by both themselves and by others. In Making Peace with Suicide, Dr. McDowell gently and brilliantly weaves vital suicide survivor education with comforting and inspirational thoughts and quotes, all designed to direct the reader on a path of healing, resolution and peace. A must-read for anyone who has been touched by the tragedy of suicide and left to answer the question, ‘Why?’ ”
—Carole Brody Fleet, award-winning and bestselling author of Widows Wear Stilettos…; Happily Even After…; and When Bad Things Happen to Good Women…
“A subject such as this is never easy to digest. However, with Adele’s wisdom and guidance through her experience, this is a must read. We are in a new world now. Let Adele’s wisdom guide you with her insights for a new perspective on suicide.”
–Mona Delfino, author of The Sacred Language of the Human Body
Get Making Peace with Suicide on Amazon, November 7!
In her great blog Adele and the Penguin, Adele Ryan McDowell posts about all manner of lovelies (well worth peeking in!). Her recent post is about sensitivity, about those of us who may be labeled “too sensitive” or “highly sensitive people.”
Reading it made me think–and not for the first time (Adele’s blog posts do that–they touch the everyday in novel and eye-opening and heart-opening ways).
The highly-sensitive people thing? Yep. I can totally relate …
So can many of my little clients.
Personally I don’t see being sensitive as a bad thing. Like any quality, I think the ability itself is neutral. It is how we react to it, what we do with it, how it affects our lives, and whether it adds or detracts from the person we are and can become, that is the most important aspect of it to me.
There seems to be more good than bad in sensitivity. Creative people are often sensitive. Artists, writers, thinkers, inventors. I certainly see more positive than negative in the more sensitive children who come to see me. They perceive the world minutely, they read people amazingly well (even if they don’t always know how to verbalize it), they feel deeply.
They are also, all too often, overwhelmed. There is too much, everything, everywhere, from everyone. In reaction, they snail in, lash out, fidget, shut down, alternate being acutely perceptive and deeply numbed out. They can have spectacular tantrums, meltdowns for seemingly nonsensical slights, go from happy to weepy in a blink of an eye. They get all kinds of acronym diagnoses, sometimes rightfully, often not … They can walk through the days feeling raw, exposed, vulnerable, tender, empathetic, perceptive, disorganized and evocative.
Emotional regulation is a must for all children to learn. Without ability to do so and find a place of calm attention–they will struggle at school, in public, in getting along. All caregivers of children are tasked with the teaching and modeling of emotional regulation to the children in their lives. It is even more crucial for highly-sensitive children … who can tax even the most patient caregiver. The sensitive children need more help, much more help, to learn to regulate, to know when they need to take a break, to recognize the beginning of overwhelm and be able to apply a tool for grounding.
They need more time. To play. To rest. To think. To cuddle. To get bored. To dream. To get used to new things. To gather their courage to try. It is a luxury of time all too many of them do not get these days, in our modern world that does not make it easy to be sensitive.
Our world–and within it the education system and children’s schedules–is currently calibrated for very low sensitivity: there is information everywhere and increased pace galore. Blinking screens, beeping car horns and phone messages, jingles of all manners, multi-sensory bombardment, loud, fast, multitasking everywhere. There is stimulation all the time. Every. Where.
Wake up and rush to school, bend over homework in the car to complete what didn’t get done the night before because there was a birthday party and soccer practice. After a long day at school in a class of 30 and no recess or playground because it rained and a two hour assembly in a noisy auditorium followed by lunch in an equally ruckus lunchroom, grab your bag and gobble down dinner on the way from dance to chess before you go home and try to do homework with the TV in the background, someone angry with tech-support on the phone, the vacuum and the dishwasher rumbling along. Get a math problem wrong and dissolve in tears onto a kicking puddle of misery on the floor. It is not the math problem. It is the everything and that little bump of difficulty simply toppled tolerance. Everyday stuff mushrooming to a thunderstorm.
Sometimes I think that sensitive people may be better calibrated for slower life … for long walks from place to place, bigger nature around them, more connection with animals (and their highly regulating energies), more connection to the earth and its calming breath.
It is not how most children grow up anymore, and it is not about going back to lack of modernity (there’s much to be said for running water, electricity, and even the Internet …). However, it is about helping children–especially sensitive children–learn how to stop, pause, breathe, step away, maintain boundaries.
All children need that. Sensitive children need it even more. Their drama-streak, their tantrums, their meltdowns, their whining, begging, shutting-down are all their ways of communicating to us that they need our help to manage. That they are feeling raw and need a hug, a pause, a hand.
What to do?
First what not to do … It is not about ‘helping them grow thick skin’ or expecting them to ‘suck it up’ or ‘toughen up.’ Shame has yet to heal any sensitivity. Expecting one to be what they are not will not resolve anything other than create a distance and thicker pain, not skin.
What does work?
Try to keep things simple. Establish routines and try to maintain them reasonably consistent (we’re not talking OCD here, just predictability). Make time for quiet. At the very least relegate a certain space in the house that is off-screens: a place to read, do homework, dream. Be aware of competition–of stimuli, that is–if there is much background noise you cannot control, consider noise-canceling earphones for the child to wear when they need to concentrate. Keep it comfortable: temperature and clothing, yes, but also tone of voice and your own emotional regulation. Sensitive kids pick up on your state of mind and internalize it. It filters in. It gets under their skin. They are too young to manage your adult feelings for you … and they already have plenty of their own. Keep it soothing: quiet cuddling, snuggling together with a book or a few precious moments at the end of day, offer comfort when they are distraught. Let them know you see them, hear them, feel for their discomfort. It is real.
Sensitivity is like a fragile gift. It is precious, it is beautiful, it can light up the room and make for excellent potential. It is also delicate and needs some special care. It calls for careful holding in times of transition. It needs a very safe space, for sure.
Have no worries, if you treat your child’s sensitivity (and yours, if you need to) with care and … yes, sensitivity … you will not spoil them. To the contrary, you will teach them how to control and modulate their hyper-acute-perceptions. They will learn from your attuned care how to keep aware without drowning in information, how to keep empathetic without taking on other people’s needs, how to keep their senses vibrating brilliantly without becoming blinded or overwrought. They will learn from you to take time to breathe, to pause, to consider. They will recognize their own cues and clues and find ways to respond to them healthily.
They will blossom like the rare delicate beings that they are. Come fully wonderfully into their own. Sensitivity seen, understood, utilized, known.
[Na’ama Yehuda]
Needing some guidance? Oh, have I got a great spot for you to go to!!
If your life feels upended, out of whack, overwhelmed–here’s a splendid path for you to follow–check it out: Adele and the Penguin–making sense of an upside down world, is a delightful site in general, and to top this off Adele is currently running a series of practical, spiritual, and path-enlightening entries on how to manage life’s upheaval and find light aplenty through dark tunnels of tough stuff.
Down to earth, high on spirit.
Read it! To borrow Adele’s oft expression: This is fab!
In this awesome series, there are two installments down, one to go–read them now, so you have time to mill it over before the third one makes a show.
First Installment: Challenges for today’s brave Lightworkers and Healers
Second Installment: Initiation Portals for today’s brave Lightworkers and Healers
Third one coming soon and I am absolutely sure–worth it, so be in the know!
[While you’re at the Penguin, poke around. You’ll find gems in every link. Great stuff abounds!]
In response to today’s entry re: portals--some thoughts, and much gratitude to the soulful words and instructing teachings of Adele (seriously, check out her website, you will not be sorry, and you’ll likely get a good laugh while you’re at it–she’s serious fun!):
So very important, Adele, and so true. For, yes … for the good to be distinct, we must KNOW what is bad, how to recognize it and how to forge a path to emerge from it into new homes.
Like the oscillation of a pendulum, the higher we want it to go to one side, the lower it must go to the other. It cannot go up without repeatedly dipping down. We cannot soar without plummeting. It is comforting to know this is how it is done …
For light to be defined, we must know the depth of darkness. It is the bog of hopelessness that teaches the power of a ray of sunlight and a handhold. It is the horror of cruelty that magnifies an act of kindness and instills the absolute knowledge of the transforming power of empathy and love.
Let there be light in the darkness; let there be a handhold to have in the depths; let there be hope in the void; let there be help in the desperate corners of pain; let there be friendship in the loneliest places, let there be love to weave strength with in the most desolate place. Let there be new rising bright, rising wise, from the old.
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