Shelly Breen

A blog from my dear friend Shelly Breen

Master Certified Professional Coach

To my current and former coaching clients, colleagues, friends and family…can we talk about grief?

For many folks I come across in my life and work, it isn’t an easy thing to face head on. I used to stuff it deep down but it kept leaking out the sides in messy ways. So, in the spirit of community and reciprocity, I’ll share first. And, if you gain anything from what I share, I want to hear from you. Or not. That’s ok too.

Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday. He would have been 88.

This year marks the fourth birthday and the fourth Father’s Day without him.

Will I ever stop counting, I wonder?

When will grief stop sneaking up on me and punching me in the gut? How are my other family members feeling? What about his friends? Does anyone else still cry like I do?

Lately, I have been peeling back the many forms and layers of my grief.

I’ve had grief from lost relationships, estranged children, hopes that never came to fruition, the deaths of friends, the loss of familiar routines and surroundings, and a body that can no longer do what it once could. As a daughter and caregiver to my dad, who died of Alzheimer’s disease, my grief has been especially complex.

First came the ambiguous and anticipatory grief of losing him while he was still here. There was the slow fading of his memory, accompanied by confusion and occasional agitation. As the disease progressed, I grieved the loss of the dad who used to call and check in on me. I grieved receiving big hugs from his 6-foot-4, 200-pound frame that eventually became giving gentle embraces to a much smaller, fragile body.

I grieved him no longer craving Sunday pizza. What a thing to grieve.

I grieved him losing the ability to follow a basketball game on TV. I grieved the first time he didn’t know I was his daughter and the many times after. I grieved walking into my parents’ home and no longer finding him in his recliner because he had been moved to memory care.

I sat with him when he took his last breath. I grieved then, too.

And after he was gone, there was more grief. I grieved the weekly and often daily two-hour trips I took for years to visit him or coordinate his care. I grieved the nights spent sleeping on the floor beside him. I was surprised by how much I missed his hands, even though mine look just like them.

The real kicker has been missing the way his face would light up when he saw me walk into a room. Grieving that one too.

I grieved the near daily check-ins on the family text thread with my mom and brothers. I grieved the years of trying to hold everything together, to be strong and pragmatic. There was intense relief in no longer needing to be so vigilant and attentive. Then I grieved not being needed.

Grief is like a game of pick-up sticks. When all the sticks are piled together, moving one inevitably disrupts the others. The loss of my dad has triggered grief in other parts of my life as well. See above. Each time those emotions surface, I find myself needing to understand their source. More and more, though, I’m learning to let go of that need and simply allow the tears to come.

There are gifts in grieving: feeling, releasing, remembering, laughing, loving, expanding and connecting. And yet, grief is exhausting.

I’m still learning how to do it.

I’m still practicing self-compassion when a part of me insists I’m crying too much or at the wrong time. I’m still learning how to rest.

I’m learning to celebrate my resilience and my continued desire to create a meaningful, high-quality life. And I’m beginning to see how sharing my experiences and truly feeling them is helping others do the same.

Today, I’m sharing this in the hope that you might feel a little less alone in your own grief. And because when I share, I feel less alone, too.

Perhaps you might take a moment to reflect on what needs to be felt within you. What are you ready to release? What are you ready to lean into? What feelings are asking for your attention? And who might you want to share them with?

This year, I’m letting the grief come more than I have the past few years. It won’t break me, it will make me more whole. From the National Institutes of Health, “the physical expansion of a "broken heart" from scar tissue is the biological process of ventricular remodeling. When trauma, like a heart attack damages the muscle, the heart replaces the oxygen-deprived muscle cells with rigid, non-elastic scar tissue to maintain its structure. This scarring process triggers the heart to physically expand.”

Feeling and healing grief has only expanded my heart and my capacity to love more. I like these scars. I think I’ll keep at it. I hope you’ll join me in your own way.

*Shelly Breen is a certified life coach specializing in dementia caregiver support and women in transitions and children’s book author living in San Francisco, CA.

Shelly Breen

Master Certified Professional Coach

Hear my latest podcast interview here: Beyond The Job with Erris Klapper

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