29 -overcoming grief - carol 1 - transcript

Copyright Robbins-Madanes Training

Reclaiming choices – Carol 1

Film Transcript

CM Cloe MadanesTony Anthony RobbinsCarolAudience

CM: What do you do when someone you love is suddenly taken away? How do you go on when an injustice has hurt or killed somebody in your life? What does it take to find peace and love in your heart again?

In this film we will meet Carol. A single mother who, just six weeks earlier had lost her beloved sixteen-year old daughter. One afternoon the daughter complained of dizziness and fatigue and she passed away within 24 hours. At the time that we will meet her, Carol is in such shock and grief that she has had trouble caring for her four other children. She came to Tony Robbin’s conference in a desperate effort to find some consolation. She raised her hand and Tony invited her to speak.

Tony: You are suicidal, huh Carol?

Carol: Yeah.

Tony: Yeah. How come? How do you know?

Carol: How do I know?

Tony: Yeah, Microphone up here.

Carol: Uhm… Can’t talk. I just lost my sixteen year-old daughter. Look I was jumping around a few minutes ago, I was doing fine.

Tony: That’s because a minute ago you are “doing joy” and now you are “doing sadness”.

CM: Although we often feel that emotions are out of our control our emotions, in fact depend on three factors which are in our control. When we are “doing sadness,” our bodies take on a certain physiology, a certain posture of sadness. Second, we direct our focus on specific things such as the things that we have lost. Thirdly, in order to be sad and stay sad, we repeat certain language pattern; words, phrases that we say over and over. These are often phrases like: “it’s so hard” or “I just don’t know”. These three factors: physiology, focus and language are how human being creates emotions. Although emotions such as sadness, depression or anger may seem difficult to manage; the truth is that we can always

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modify our physiology, our focus and our language and in this way we claim control over our emotions.

Tony: Nothing has changed by the way. She was gone a few minutes ago physically, but she wasn’t gone spiritually and emotionally. She is gone physically now, but now what you are doing is – you are doing something else aren’t you?

Carol: Exactly, and every time I think about it this is the point I get to…

Tony: Every time?

Carol: Every time.

Tony: That’s not true. Don’t lie to me, because if I’m going to help you, you’re not going to lie to me. You look me in the eyes right now, you look deep in my eyes and you tell me the truth. I’ll help you.

Carol: Okay.

Tony: You don’t every time you think of her do this. There are times when you smile when you think of her; there are times when you feel warmth throughout your whole body when you think about her.

Carol: That’s true.

Tony: So don’t lie, because lying is why you feel this way, because you have been lying to yourself. The first thing you have lied is that she’s gone. Not physically, that’s obvious, but you know in your deepest soul she’s not gone, because she is a part of you.

CM: When people are hurt they tend to generalize in a way which only increases the pain. When overcoming a loss it is tempting to think in terms of absolutes: “I always feel sad” or that “This problem can never be solved” or that “I will miss this person forever”. The truth is emotions move quickly than that. For instance Carol said that she felt pain every time that she thought of her daughter. The truth is that Carol has many feelings and memories of her daughter, some of them funny. Tony needs to break Carol’s pattern of generalizing and speaking in absolutes and so he calls it lying. This helps Carol to understand her grief in another way.

Tony: Lying is what’s going to make you feel this way.

Carol: That’s a part I’m searching with or struggling with, a part that – I’ve always believed that spirits goes on and I’ve always believed that people will be with you. I’d be the first person that pats somebody on the back and say, “It’s okay honey she’s right here with you”. But now that it’s in my face…

Tony: It’s not so comfortable.

Carol: ….it’s not so comfortable.

Tony: So the bottom line is, are you a selfish person?

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Carol: Generally, no.

Tony: No. So who’s really suffering right now?

Carol: When I – it depends in how you look at it. I look at it – I look at what she’s missing out in, to her that shouldn’t happen. That she was mistreated and that is why she’s gone. She has too much to live for and she was such a giving person.

Tony: Where do your spiritual beliefs go?

Carol: My spiritual beliefs?

Tony: Do you have any?

Carol: I do.

Tony: What do you believe?

Carol: Well, I’ve always believed that uh…

Tony: Not what you always believed. What do you believe?

Carol: That everything happens for a reason. I always believe that God never slams a door/allows a door to be slammed without opening a better one.

Tony: So you are abandoning everything that you know just because you don’t like the way it feels?

Carol: If you knew my daughter how can there be a better door? This s a kid that…

Tony: How can there be a better door? How can there be a better door for you someday?

Carol: I don’t know.

Tony: The reality of the matter is you have, based on your beliefs, you know there is a truth greater than yourself and you know that things happen for a reason. You can’t explain why a child is born with no arms and no legs. You can’t explain why your daughter left when she has too much to live or went through the abyss that she went through. You never will be able to explain that.

Carol: No I can’t.

Tony: You can’t explain why some people go blind who are really good people.

Carol: I can’t explain why she was in the right place at the right time to be treated that she died so quickly. She died of a disease that should have been recognized. She was well one minute, sick the next and dead the next morning. How can that be overlooked? I can’t explain that. It doesn’t make sense.

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Tony: No one is overlooking it. So the best way to handle this will be to commit suicide?

Carol: I can’t. I have four other children and I’m all they have.

Tony: Correct.

CM: Carol told us later that she was in such despair that she had actually had plans to commit suicide that week.

Tony: If you have told me that you are going to commit suicide, I was going to tell you, “now you are lying again” so I’m glad you at least told. So you are not really suicidal are you?

Carol: I’ve thought about it but I know that I can’t.

Tony: You are not really suicidal are you?

Carol: Okay, then I’m not going to be, no.

Tony: Yes or no just tell me the truth.

Carol: I guess the answer is no.

Tony: No, not your guess you tell me. If the answer is “yes” you can tell me “yes”. Is it a “yes” or is it a “no”?

Carol: No.

Tony: So don’t say that anymore. Because you know what you really doing when you say that? You really, really try to connect with yourself and others in a really selfish way. Your daughter deserves better than that, because if she is here right now she’ll know it.

Carol: She would say to me, “What would Tony say?”

[applause]

Tony: Now, you now know what Tony would say.

Carol: If she’s here she’s really happy.

Tony: Now Carol. There are eleven hundred people here from 27 countries. The chances of you and I interacting one on one in those four days in this way are slim to none. There had to be a perfect context to for this to occur. If you don’t believe in guidance you better take another look.

[applause]

CM: Carol has always believed in guidance; the idea that things happen for a reason. But following the tragedy of her daughter’s death, she is no longer sure. If you have spiritual beliefs, then you should know that the time when tragedy

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strikes is not the time to abandon your beliefs. Your spirituality is here in order to guide you when everything else is uncertain. For Carol to abandon the beliefs she has held all of her life right now, is to truly become lost. Tony’s goal will be to help her to reconnect with her deepest convictions which will enable her to navigate these difficult months. Now back to Tony and Carol.

[applause]

Carol: I do believe in guidance. I’ve always believed in guidance. I’ve been through…

Tony: You can’t believe in it only when it feels good honey.

Carol: No, I have been through some terrible things and I always uh…

Tony: No, no. You can’t believe it – you can’t believe it only when it feels at a level that you can deal with. You have to believe it always.

Carol: I think this is the only time that I have ever doubted it.

Tony: There can be no exceptions for faith.

Carol: How do I go on?

Tony: There can be no exceptions with faith. Here’s how you go on. This is something has got – this is you biggest way, this is God saying to you, “I can’t go on” and God is saying “six more”. He’s not done with you, there is more coming your way.

Carol: After this I’ll be able to handle anything.

Tony: That’s correct.

[applause]

Tony: That’s not very comforting right now, but is probably the most important thing for you to understand; that things are going to happen to your life. You have no idea of things that are going to happen to your life that you have no plan for. Things are going to happen around you where only a person who’s had enormous pain and conquered it will be able to make that difference. You can’t have strength without pain. Even if to have continuous pain, but you have not gone through an enormous pain, a weight so large no one else could ever understand; for you to have that kind of strength that can be able to impact everyone around you. If you don’t know that pain, you have no muscle to say, “Whoa! I’m a loving person, I tell other people, you got to believe.” You could not affect those people anymore. You can affect them now when you embody this. Because when you say that you can say, “Listen I got to tell you something, I lost my daughter at sixteen overnight, here’s what happened. That was the most devastating thing in my life at that time but you know what? Life goes on. I still love her presence and I absolutely know there’s nothing I could have done there to change that; that was meant for her path at this time.”

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Carol: I don’t believe that though.

Tony: Okay, good. Well, as long as don’t believe that, what would feel for the rest of your life? What is the consequence of the beliefs that you are now adapting?

CM: Every belief has a consequence. If Carol thinks of her daughter’s death as an injustice or an act of malpractice, that would have a consequence on her emotional life; the history of her family and the way she finds meaning from day to day.

Now take a moment to ask yourself: What are the consequences of the beliefs that you hold from day to day? What do you like to say to yourself? What are your favourite words and phrases? Do your beliefs guide you towards problems or towards new solutions? Do your beliefs focus on you powers of choice or on you powerlessness? Do your beliefs move you to focus repeatedly on the past or on the present and the future? If you want to be happy and directed in your life, you need to choose your beliefs carefully. When you focus on solutions; your ability to make choices and the things that would take you forward you will not only be happier but more able to help others.

Carol: The consequences are I’ll always be miserable, I’ll always be unhappy, I’ll always doubt.

Tony: Okay, then sit down and give that to your other four other children.

Carol: But I don’t want to…

Tony: No, no, no, give that to your other four children. They deserve their lives to be always unhappy because you don’t have the courage to tell yourself the truth about what you already believe. Make them feel like they don’t matter because their mom was always unhappy. They are not good enough to make her happy only the other child was. So the rest of their lives they can live with insecurity and fear and hurt and sadness and lack of love because you didn’t step up when God gave you the chance.

CM: Anyone who has grown up in a grieving household knows this to be true. One of the heaviest burdens for a child is when they feel that they are overshadowed by someone else’s death. That their parent is absent and that the family is controlled by a problem that nobody can change. Children need to feel appreciated and they need to feel that they can reach your heart. If your heart is preoccupied with someone who has passed away then you are hurting your children.Tony: Do you want to do that to your children? You can do it, its fine with me they are not my kids.

Carol: I feel that I didn’t step up when she was dying.

Tony: So because you didn’t step up then, you are not going to step up for the rest of your life?

Carol: No.

Tony: You are going to punish your four children because you didn’t step up one time? You didn’t know.

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CM: There is a difference between not knowing and knowing. If Carol had known that someone was going to die, she would have done anything to save her daughter. Maybe even sacrifice her own life if it was necessary, but the truth is that she didn’t know. What Carol needs to truly realize, is that she did her best with what she knew and now today she also needs to do her best with what she knows. She knows that she needs to stay alive and restore herself so that she can raise her other four children. As badly as Carol may feel about her daughter’s death; to deliberately abandon her children right now would be a thousand times worse. This is Tony’s urgent message to Carol.

Tony: You didn’t know.

Carol: No, I didn’t know.

Tony: There’s a difference between not knowing and not stepping up. If you knew you would have stepped up, you would never let you daughter be hurt. Am I right or wrong? Am I right or wrong? Just tell me the truth.

Carol: Oh, you’re right.

Tony: All I’m asking for is the truth. I don’t want placation. If it’s not the truth, tell me I’m wrong.

Carol: No there was…

Tony: If you would have known, would you have stepped up? Would you have understood?

Carol: I do.

Tony: You actually did step up. So you are lying again. All these pain comes from lies. Stop. All these pain comes from lying. Are you a liar?

Carol: No.Tony: You want your children to be liars?

Carol: No.

Tony: Then stop doing this. All these lies are a way of indulging.

CM: Carol started off saying that every single time she thinks of her daughter she becomes sad, but Tony pointed out that that wasn’t true. She has all kinds of emotions about her daughter. Then she said that she didn’t step up to help her daughter get well when she had the chance, but then admitted that she actually had pushed and tried her hardest to get her daughter medical care. Why does Carol keep saying these things and why does Tony say that she is lying? When we are in grief over someone we have lost we look for words that will express our pain. Often the most painful words are those with which we blame ourselves. Those are powerful words and emotions but as facts they are not true. Life is not so predictable and emotions are not constant.

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Tony’s concern is that Carol is using these statements in order to meet her needs in a destructive way. In order for her to meet her need for certainty, Carol tells herself that her pain is constant when the fact is, that it is unpredictable. She meets her needs for significance in a negative way; blaming herself for not stepping up, when the truth is that she did everything that she could all the time. She connects with herself by thinking about suicide instead of directing her powers of love towards her children, who need help as much as she does.

Whenever you are suffering it is important to ask yourself, “Which of the six needs am I trying to meet right now?”, “What am I doing in order to try to meet these needs?” and “What are the consequences, is this helping or leading to destruction?” If you can understand which needs you are trying to meet and how, you will understand what you need to do. Now back to Tony and Carol.

Tony: What you do is go into a real selfish mode. You are not a selfish woman, I know you are not.

Carol: No, I’m not.

Tony: You’re just hurt. So you are running for cover and the place you are running to is feeling self-pity. You’re calling it about your daughter but it’s self-pity because your daughter is not in a bad place. Your daughter has peace right now.

Carol: I know.

Tony: You’re the one without peace.

Carol: I’ve told people that. I said that, “I know this is selfish to feel sorry for myself”.

Tony: But then you do it anyway.Carol: Because it is a real pain.

Tony: Because?

Carol: It’s a real feeling.

Tony: No, no you didn’t have it two minutes ago. You are doing this real pain. You are doing this right now. You are doing it.

Carol: How do I put this in a good context that she is gone?

Tony: That is a good question.

[applause]

Carol: That’s why I’m here. That’s what I’ve told these people. That’s what I came here for was because I need to put it in a correct context.

CM: Beneath every strong emotion, there is a question that you are subconsciously asking yourself over and over. Carol way trying to find some

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meaning for her experience of losing her daughter. As long as she was not fully aware of the question she was asking her herself, she kept focusing on painful thoughts. But now she understands that what she is seeking is a meaning for her daughter’s loss. With this understanding, she can choose this meaning intelligently. Now that she understands this it is time to make it a reality. Tony is about to do something interesting. She will suggest that he and Carol switch positions. He will take on her place and Carol will take his position of being the coach. Let’s see what happens.

[Applause]

Tony: So the question is – that’s a great question. To ask that question in a great state as if you are coaching somebody else, so I’m you now.

Carol: How can you put this in a good context? How can you put this in a – I don’t know exactly how to word it.

Tony: You’re me better not – don’t do that.

[audience laughing]

Tony: I would not be standing like that. I can tell you that right now. You are me. Take on my physiology. Become me. Take over. I’m now Carol.

Carol: How can you put this in a better context so that you can go on with your life? So that you can show others that there is meaning out of these.

Tony: I don’t know. I’ve tried.

[audience laughing]

Carol: What meaning…

Tony: I’ve tried. I mean I’ve tried. I believed this stuff my whole life but it’s not working.

Carol: What kind of meaning can you pull from this?

Tony: I don’t know.

Carol: You don’t believe in God?

Tony: I believe in God, [0:19:27].

[audience laughing]

Carol: Do you believe God has a plan?

Tony: Yeah, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t understand any kind of plan like this. I don’t know how he can do this to this beautiful little girl.

Carol: You have to have faith.Page9


Tony: I have. I have faith.

Carol: He does sound like me, doesn’t he?

[audience laughing]

Carol: What is your faith?

Tony: I don’t know anymore.

Carol: What was your faith?

Tony: Everything happens for a reason and purpose and it serves me. That’s what I’ve told other people all the time when they went through hell.

Carol: So it’s good for them and not for you?

[applause]

Carol: Are you guys going to come home with me?Tony: It’s just different when it’s in my face.

Carol: It is different when it is in your face but it doesn’t change it does it?

[applause]

Tony: Good point.

[Audience laughing]

Carol: How can you make this into something good?

Tony: I can’t make it good.

Audience: [0:20:58]

Tony: Shut up, he’s running the show.

[audience laughing]

Carol: Didn’t you say you have faith?

Tony: Sometimes.

Carol: Isn’t now an important time to keep your faith?

Tony: How? You tell me how, you’re the expert.

Carol: That’s what your faith is all about. In times when they are difficult, you have to hang on to your faith.

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Tony: This isn’t difficult, this is impossible. You don’t know you haven’t lost one of your children. You haven’t had them taken from you like that. You’ll never know what that feels like.

CM: Tony is now crying. You can see from Carol’s face how this affects her.

Tony: It was totally unfair. It could have been prevented. I couldn’t figure that. I didn’t know what to do. I feel this such regret inside and I didn’t step up.

CM: Didn’t you say you believe God always has a plan?

Tony: Yeah I used to believe that. I just can’t understand that God can have a plan like this. What plan could he do to take this beautiful child away just like that for no good reason? She had so much to live. Look at all that she is missing out on.

He really shakes his head now that she is figuring out an answer. He acts like he knows what he is doing and is really strong.

[audience laughing]

Tony: As a result, he is so solid that the answer is there and through him from God right at that moment. He doesn’t hesitate for the answer. He knows it’s been given the moment it’s asked; the moment it’s needed. So he moves with a level of certainty inside him. Even when he is not moving, inside he is moving with certainty because he knows how important this is. He knows he’s guided and he knows this moment the answer is there and so he goes for it. When something doesn’t work he changes his approach until. Because he really loves the person he is communicating with and how that love he knows there is guidance in love. It’s an unconditional love, it’s a love does doesn’t come from judgment, but he can be intense when necessary just to break the pattern when somebody is feeling like they need sympathy. And you give me love and warming too because his heart really cares. So the heart guides him. He doesn’t intellectually look for the answer, he senses it. He says something and sees what works and what doesn’t and simply change his approach because he knows the outcome, the outcome to that person; to dispel the illusion of loss, because there is no real loss. There is only the feeling that there is no connection when there still is; the feeling that one is screwed up and it’s their fault when it’s not true; the feeling that there is no meaning in this situation. When there is no way to know the full meaning now, but there is absolute certainty that if used properly the meaning of this will serve God, will serve you, will serve the other four children and will serve anyone else you’ll come in contact with. That’s what he would believe. So he would act with no hesitancy, he would make many mistakes but no one would know the difference, because no one knows if it is a mistake or not, you just do it. There are no mistakes if you do something.

I wonder how you stay this way because my shoulder – these legs hurt.

[audience laughing]

Carol: Does look pretty pathetic doesn’t it.

Tony: I was jumping around just earlier and feeling pretty good.Page11


CM: Tony has been standing with a posture like Carol when she stood up. He has been crying as he stands in her position.

Carol: You said you have faith.

Tony: Yeah, we went through this.

Carol: What kind of meaning would you be able to – what kind of meaning would God want you to get from this? What can you do to make this better, to help other people?

Tony: You tell me. I could tell other people, “they could get through it”.

Carol: How can they get though it?

Tony: I don’t know. I’m not through it.

Carol: But you will get through it with you faith. You just said so you have faith.

Tony: I’ve had faith.

Carol: And so why wouldn’t you want to have faith now?

Tony: I want to, I just can’t find it.

Carol: This is when you need your faith the most.

Tony: You don’t know what this feels like.

Carol: I know what this feels like. I’ve been there before. You can do it if you have faith.

Tony: You haven’t been here.

Carol: I’ve been there. Just go on with your faith. You have to make something better come of it.

Tony: What is the meaning that I am supposed to attach to this? What is the meaning – what is something I value more than staying in pain?

Carol: Maybe you don’t have the meaning now but the meaning will come to you.

Tony: I can’t wait.

[audience laughing]

Carol: Boy, does he sound like me. I am really pathetic aren’t I?

Tony: I’m not pathetic, I’m just hurting.

Carol: It does hurt.Page12


Tony: It does.

Carol: But there is a reason for everything. Maybe you don’t know the reason right now.

Tony: So help me find a reason. Help me find a reason that could allow me to understand how this beautiful child could be taken from the world to miss out on all this opportunity and create all this pain. No, it’s so unfair. Explain to me how I can understand that kind of injustice.

Carol: I don’t know Tony, you got me. That’s my problem.

Tony: No. You are Tony. Don’t you break character on me.

Carol: You have to find meaning, you have to reach deep within yourself. You have to trust your faith. You have to find meaning.

Tony: Help me.

Carol: You know this child was a good child. You know that she touched a lot of lives. You know that she touched your lives. You know that she wouldn’t want you to be unhappy or the other children to be unhappy.

Tony: That’s true.

Carol: You know that she would want you to be strong and go on and the meaning will come to you. This is when you need your faith the most. You need to trust…

Tony: How do I have faith though? What you said is true, she’d be really unhappy with me if I went around and stayed in this state. I wouldn’t want to hurt her that way.

Carol: She’ll tell you “you are stressing”.

Tony: That’s right.

Carol: She would say, “Now you can listen to all your tapes all you want, anyone else could have turned them down”.

Tony: I guess when I think of her that way I actually laughed instead of cry. So I guess what I’ve said earlier wasn’t true. I guess I can feel such great feeling that every feeling I ever felt with her my life I have inside still. I guess it’s just my illusion that I have lost everything.

Carol: That’s right it’s an illusion.

Tony: I feel that I don’t have a future with her though.

Carol: But you do. She’s with you all the time.

Tony: How do I know? I know that intellectually, but how do I know?Page13


Carol: You just have to feel her presence. You just have to remember, you just have to hang on to the good things. You have to feel her in your heart.

Tony: What do I tell my other children?

Carol: You tell them the same thing. That she is always with you. That she loved you very much.

Tony: You know me pretty well. What is something I value more than the pain? Something that is so important and if I thought about that, I would not allow the pain, not for another minute.

CM: This is the solution to all grief and loss. We call it the global solution. When you focus consistently on something or someone that you have lost, then you are putting other people and things at risk. When Carol over focuses on her daughter’s death, she hurts her other children. She may not be aware that she is hurting her children. She would never have done it deliberately but as a clear consequence of the way she had been grieving. The global solution is for Carol to recognize that she values the lives and the happiness of her other children and that she values their lives even more than her own personal pain. When you have that recognition, you are on the road to transforming your loss into something that would bring benefit and help others.

Tony: That doesn’t mean I would have moments where I feel a little sad, but I’d snap out of it because I know that I was doing it. What’s something that’s more important to me that feeling sad? More important to me than thinking constantly about how she was taken from us – really taken from me if I was being honest and how she had suffered unfairly. What do I value more than focusing on injustice? What is more important than anything else to me, even more important than this sense of loss?

Carol: Your children and their happiness, and their future and their understanding. They can make it through.

Tony: Can they also help me?

Carol: Oh, absolutely.

Tony: I haven’t thought about that. I guess in order to be really sad, I’d have to focus on the fact that she is not here and completely delete the fact that I have three – four other beautiful children. Sorry.

[audience laughing]

Carol: I used to can’t count them either.

Tony: Four other beautiful children. I have to forget God gave me all four of those. I guess the question I’d have to ask myself is” “Is God a loving God?” That’s the real question I was asking myself. I’d say “yes” because he gave me her for sixteen years. If I have the choice of not having her, knowing that it would end

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this way, I still would have had her. How about you Tony? Maybe I’ll – as much as I say I value my other children, maybe now I value them even more.

Carol: She loved her brother and sister very much.

Tony: Maybe I’ll take all her love inside me and make sure she live everyday inside of me, all the playful parts of her. I really need to be alive inside of me because I have not been fully alive for a long time. Maybe the child of her comes back inside me and my way of blessing her and connecting with her is to make sure that she is fully alive inside me; that I do those silly things she used to do, that I say those silly things to myself and others. That I honor her by loving her brothers and loving myself so deep in the way that she did when she was here. I’ll let her know that her life did have meaning and that it has not died. Her life was fully alive inside me. That with her ending of her breath, that breathe has come inside of me and that breath, every breath I take is her breath. Through that breath she life and through that breathe she has joy and through that breath she experiences everything and I experience her too. Through that breath and through her death I find a deeper meaning in my faith that I never had before. It was a surface faith, but I now find that real faith. And I come to God in a way that I’ve never been to God before in the deepest level of my soul. Not just the liking or loving or appreciating but loving even when it seems like God took away the greatest thing I love. Maybe to remind me of what I must love most, maybe I really love my other children more than I ever did, because I pour everything into them and there will be one less division of that focus. Maybe I really will have real faith which is trusting; total trusting in my soul, that this is right even though I can’t understand it I can know it. I don’t have to understand anything, I can just know it.

Maybe what I am asking now is: If I ever start doing this stuff all I’m doing is indulgent because God has given me all these gifts. If I don’t take care of my other four gifts, God may step in again because I still haven’t learned a lesson. That’s not something I would ever want to even consider happening. So that’s not something I’ll ever let happen. Plus I don’t just need the pain to do that I want the joy of being with them. So she – her dancing, her playing, her teasing, her cajoling, her voice is inside of me. When I say now, “I am the voice” I know it’s me, but I know there is more of me now. She was always part of me, she came through me, inside of me and she is me, and she’ll guide me. She was very wise; she taught me a lot when she was here. She teaches me even more now. The more my children will have the greatest mother they’ve ever had in their lives. They are going to be so absolutely adored. I thought I adored them before and worshipped and challenged, loved and because they went through this they are going to be ten times more powerful as people because going through this. I’m going to help them go through this, because I’m going to go there first. I’m going to lead. I’m going to believe not doubt. I’m going to create for us a whole new family, a whole new level of love; not destroy what it was by living in pain.

I’m going to be a force for good, a force for God. I’m going to defy the odds and say that for the rest of my life I have to feel this way, because after all I must not care if I don’t feel in pain all the time. I must have forgotten her if I don’t live in pain. I’ve felt I’ve forgotten her because I smile. I don’t forget her because I laugh. Every time I laugh, every time I smile I am remembering her and I’m honoring her and I’m feeling the joy of being with her. I don’t need to go down there and live in pain she wouldn’t want that. I won’t live there. That’s stupid and

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that’s destructive. That would teach my children and the rest of them that they are not valued that they are not important enough for me to be happy. That they are not enough, that last thing that I’d ever do is to make somebody who I love feel like they are not enough, because I know what that feels like and I don’t want to go there either.

In fact I think that maybe I’m more than what I ever was before because I’ve gone through this. There is more of me. I am not fragile. I’m setting a brand new standard for my life now. Standard for what I’ll be, what I’ll give, what I’ll share for my children; all that has changed. As painful as it is the greatest gift that God has given me. I can’t even believe that I can say that right now. I’m actually starting to believe it. It’s hard to imagine. When I start to feel down because I know that there will be time that I’ll do, I’ll say “Ha! Ha! I want her with me it’s time to laugh, it’s time to celebrate, it’s time to jump, it’s time to stop stressing, it’s time to ask what would Tony said.” Because I know what Tony said, because I just did a magnificent therapy on him, look at that. He’s already in a great shape. I don’t even have to question what he would say. I don’t know what do you think?

Carol: I think you are right.

Tony: [0:37:01] Come here.

[applause]

CM: When we lose something or someone in our lives, grief is the natural emotional process we go through. The purpose of grief is neither to exaggerate your pain nor to pretend it isn’t there. If you try to force or control your grief either by trying to hang on to it or to deny its existence, you will have only pain. But if you let it, your grief will put you in touch with the deeper realities of life and of death and the meaning we have on this planet. Now let’s hear what Carol has to say.

[applause]

Tony: What’s that? You are what? She said, “I’m going to make it!”

[applause]

Carol: I just want to tell everybody just remember to just love you babies while you got them.

Tony: That’s right. Give her a hand, nice job.

CM: When Carol came home to her four other children, they immediately recognized that their mother was back, really back. She was able to love and support them and to enjoy their family life together while honoring the daughter who had died but without living under the shadow of her death. As a result in the eight years since Carol has talked with Tony, both Carol and her children have lived happy vivacious lives full of love and growth.

Now take a moment to ask yourself: Is there something that is holding you back from feeling connection and spontaneity with your family? What could you do

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today to reaffirm your attention and your love for the people around you? Pick one small thing that your loved ones will appreciate and do it for them today. Decide what it is right now and commit to doing it in the next 24 hours. Now let’s visit with Carol eight years later.

Tony: Your example is now almost eight years since it occurred I guess no more. I like to know if you tell the story from your perspective of where were you before we had our little interaction? What are you feeling? What are you thinking? What was your world like? Then we’ll talk a little bit about what happened that day and then we’ll talk a little about what happened since.

Carol: When I came to the event I was in a very difficult place. It was like six weeks after she died it was…

Tony: Really close.

Carol: ….really close.

Tony: I remember.

Carol: The kids’ father has left, so I was there trying to raise these five kids by myself and to cope to get and then my compensation plan changed. Then it was – just a little bit of a struggle and then she died. There was just… I can’t even explain to you where we are. I just couldn’t explain to you where – you just kind of are there and I’ve been – I couldn’t find any meaning which just didn’t seem like there was any meaning. Even though I have four other children people would say to me, “you know you have four other kids?” but it’s not like you have a handful of M&Ms and you drop one and you just go, “the rest of them are there”. To have that taken away from you, I couldn’t understand, “why would God do something like that” that’s all that went through my mind. Why would he take something so precious? I mean I was the one who is always messed up and mad the bad decision and screw it up. Here is this amazing individual who is going to do something and she was gone. I couldn’t figure that out. It’s just, I couldn’t figure it out. I know it gets better.

Tony: Back then you didn’t know that.

Carol: I know I didn’t. It still is very sad to – but I’ve been able to put it in a different place. Still is a huge loss.

Tony: Sure.

Carol: But I can look at it a little bit differently. I just remembered this huge release. I just was – I can’t explain to you it was this – and I felt okay about it. I really felt okay about it. I came back and I was able to function and I love my kids and my kids mean everything to me. I look at that part of my life and I’m sorry that I was so shut down, because I did have four other children who had nothing. We don’t have grandparents we don’t have aunt and uncles or anything. All my kids have is me. It’s really important for me to be there with them because you could never ever take back what you’ve missed.

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29 -overcoming grief - carol 1 - transcript

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