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“Mushroom Burial Suit” Called Into Question

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You may remember the “mushroom burial suit,” the alternative-burial product that promises a gentle return to the earth as your body becomes compost and nourishes a thriving colony of fungi. Sold as an eco-friendly burial option, the Infinity Burial Suit claimed to cleanse the body of toxins, return nutrients to the soil, and support plant growth around the body. Now critics question the accuracy of the suit’s claims.

Mushroom burial suit goes viral

The Infinity Suit took the green burial world by storm in 2011. A TED talk by suit co-creator and artist Jae Rhim Lee went viral with over a million online views. Lee presented a compelling case that our modern, chemical-laden bodies need extra detox before burial. Her suit claims to go beyond natural burial to actually remove and neutralize toxins from the body.

The hype reached a peak when news broke that 90210 star Luke Perry had chosen the mushroom suit as his preferred burial option before his sudden death in early 2019. In a highly publicized Instagram post, the actor’s daughter called the suit “genius.”

The suit relies on a “biomix of mushroom mycelium and other micro-organisms” to speed decomposition, neutralize toxins, and return the body to nature. Most notably, it’s use of mushrooms imagery implied that a colony of fungi will grow out of the shrouded corpse.

From movement to industry

As an art project meant to promote a “radical acceptance of death” with a compelling visual symbol of our return to the soil, the Infinity Suit clearly strikes a chord. Its arresting symbolism can doubtlessly inspire difficult conversations. Ultimately, though, the product doesn’t live up to its claims as a practical burial option. It turns out the purported benefits of the Infinity Suit differ little from the regular decomposition of an unembalmed body. 

Dr. Billy Campbell, co-founder of the first conservation burial ground in the United States, addresses the mushroom suit in a blog post. He explains that organisms like soil bacteria, insects, and nematodes all take part in decomposition much earlier than fungi do. To him, the complex biology of decomposition and mushroom ecology makes it difficult to design a better system than nature already has.

While our modern bodies contain sometimes alarming levels of heavy metals and toxins, these amounts prove inconsequential to surrounding soil. Contamination can take place when toxic sludge or pesticides get dumped in the same location repeatedly. However, there’s little danger of any substantial pollution from buried human remains. 

Lee’s other claim—that the Infinity Suit speeds decomposition—also falls flat upon closer examination:

“Faster decomposition means that carbon leaves the body and returns to the atmosphere as CO2 more quickly … nutrients such as nitrogen are released more rapidly. What if they are released at a speed faster than surrounding plants can actually take them up? Then they make their way into waterways and cause algae blooms just as fertilizer pollution does.”

From movement to industry

Critics also argue it falls into the same trap as the traditional funeral industry. They believe Infinity is selling “a solution to an invented problem” that has simpler, cheaper (if less visually striking) answers. In a piece for AlterNet, authors Sarah and Tim Crews call the suit’s claims “wildly misleading.” They also accuse the budding “green burial” industry of manipulating customers to buy unnecessary products.

As with any trend, the popularity of “green burial” will bring out products of varying quality. It’s inevitable as eager entrepreneurs mine a lucrative new market. As a generation of eco-conscious baby boomers ages and young people embrace “death positivity,” interest in alternative burial options will continue to grow.

In an industry not overly familiar with change, the public demand for alternative burial and memorial options has left providers scrambling to provide their customers with new choices. In 2019, the Green Burial Council recognized 72 cemeteries certified for natural burial, up from only 36 in 2012. Hundreds of cemeteries and funeral homes already offer a variety of environmentally friendly options. These include wicker caskets, shrouds, and eco-friendly urns.

Let the earth do the work

Creative, personalized memorials and innovative burial techniques can help us make peace with dying. They also can help us develop modern mourning rituals, and reduce the carbon footprint of burial. At its core, natural burial is simple and economical. The key is to keep humans out of the way (when they, for example, wan to enclose a grave in a concrete vault). The earth’s self-regulating mechanisms can do quick work of decomposition, needing no specialized equipment.

Supporters of the green burial movement value simplicity, affordability, and sustainability. Therefore, they must turn a critical eye to the upsurge of commercial interests like the Infinity Suit. These threaten to undermine their ethics and co-opt the movement with misleading claims.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Our Experience of Grief is Unique as a Fingerprint

David Kessler on the Difference Between Mourning and Grief

By David Kessler

For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.
–Elie Wiesel

Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.

This need is hardwired in us, since our emotions bind us to one another, and in those bonds is the key to our survival. From the moment we’re born, we realize we’re not alone. Our brains are equipped with mirroring neurons, which is why when the mother smiles, the baby smiles back. This continues into adulthood. I remember walking down the street one day and a man said to me, “Howdy.” I’m not usually someone who says “Howdy.” But I instinctively said back to him, “Howdy!” This is more than copying each other’s expressions. It’s also about the emotions underlying the expressions. The mirroring neurons enable mother and child to pick up on each other’s emotions.

Dr. Edward Tronick is part of a psychology team that made a short video that shows what happens if babies do not feel their emotions reflected and acknowledged by those around them. First we see a ten-month-old sitting in a high chair, eyes wide and happily fixed on his mother’s smiling face. The baby and mother mirror each other as I described above. One laughs, then the other laughs; the baby points and the mother looks in the direction in which he’s pointing. But then at the direction of the researchers, the mother turns away, and when she turns back to the baby, she has a blank look on her face. The confused baby does everything to try to get a reaction out of her. He cries and screams in distress. This is an innate reaction, because children know on a subconscious level that they need others for survival. If their survival is dependent on someone who is unable to be truly present for them, they suffer.

The same is true for adults. If they are grieving, they need to feel their grief acknowledged and reflected by others. But in our hyperbusy world, grief has been minimized and sanitized. You get three days off work after a loved one dies and then everyone expects you to carry on like nothing happened. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for those around you to bear witness to your pain, and this can be very isolating.

I was touring in Australia when I met a researcher who told me about the work she was doing to study the way of life in the northern indigenous villages of Australia. One of the villagers told her that the night someone dies, everyone in the village moves a piece of furniture or something else into their yard. The next day, when the bereaved family wakes up and looks outside, they see that everything has changed since their loved one died—not just for them but for everyone. That’s how these communities witness, and mirror, grief. They are showing in a tangible way that someone’s death matters. The loss is made visible.

In this country, too, it was once common for us to come together as a community to bear witness to the grief experienced when a loved one died. But in our current culture, the mourner is made to feel that though his or her own world has been shattered, everyone else’s world goes on as if nothing has changed. There are too few rituals to commemorate mourning, and too little time allotted to it.

Grief should unite us. It is a universal experience. If I’m talking to someone with a physical ailment, I can listen and empathize, but I may never have that particular problem. When I’m with someone whose loved one died, however, I know I’ll be in their shoes someday and I try to understand what they are feeling. Not to change it—just to acknowledge it fully. I feel privileged when someone shares their pain and grief with me. The act of witnessing someone’s vulnerability can bring the person out of isolation if the witnessing is done without judgment.

Too often outsiders who may have the best of intentions will suggest to a bereaved person that it’s time to move on, embrace life, and let go of grief. But grief should be a no-judgment zone. Those who understand what you’re going through will never judge you or think your grief is out of proportion or too prolonged. Grief is what’s going on inside of us, while mourning is what we do on the outside. The internal work of grief is a process, a journey. It does not have prescribed dimensions and it does not end on a certain date.

When people ask me how long they’re going to grieve, I ask them, “How long will your loved one be dead? That’s how long. I don’t mean you’ll be in pain forever. But you will never forget that person, never be able to fill the unique hole that has been left in your heart. There is what I call the one-year myth—we should be done and complete with all grieving in one year. Not remotely true. In the first year of your loss, you’re likely to mourn and grieve intensely. After that, your grief will probably fluctuate. It will seem to lessen, then something will trigger it, and you’ll find yourself back in the full pain of loss. In time it will hurt less often and with less intensity. But it will always be there.”

From Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, by David Kessler.

That’s about as specific as I can get in answering the question. As vague as it is, it still doesn’t cover all the possibilities. Over many years of grief work, I’ve come to realize that if I’ve seen one person in grief, I’ve only seen that one person in grief. I can’t compare one griever to another, even if they’re in the same family. One sister cries a lot and the other one doesn’t. One son is vulnerable and raw. The other just wants to move on. Some people are expressive. Others shy away from their feelings. Some have more feelings. Some have less. Some are more productive and practical in their grieving style. They have a “buckle down and move on” mentality. We can mistakenly think that people who show no visible signs of pain should be in a grief group, getting in touch with and sharing their feelings. But if that is not their style in life, it won’t be in grief, either. They must experience loss in their own way. Suggesting otherwise will not be helpful to them.

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In our modern world, our grief is often witnessed online. When I post quotes about grief on social media, I notice different kinds of responses. If I post hopeful, optimistic quotes about healing, they give hope to many people, but don’t resonate with others. Those who are in a dark place aren’t ready to hear about hope, often because they’re at the beginning of the grieving process and their grief is too acute to allow for any other emotions. They just want the darkness of their grief to be seen and acknowledged. Their tears are evidence of their love, proof that the person who died was someone who mattered deeply. If I post something like, “Today it feels like the pain will never end,” or “Grief feels like a dark cloud that encompasses the whole sky,” that will resonate with them. It mirrors and validates their feelings, which can be far more consoling than trying to find something positive in the situation.

Some grieve with darkness, some with light, some with both, depending on where they are in the cycle of grief. It would be a mistake to conclude that one is better than the other or that there’s a right way to grieve. There are just different ways to grieve, different feelings evoked by loss. This is also true of our relationship to hope. Hope can be like oxygen to people in grief. For others, however, especially in the early stages, it can feel invalidating. “In my sorrow, how dare you want me to feel hopeful . . . about what? Do you need me to hope to make you feel more comfortable?”

Hope has a very close relationship with meaning. In the same way our meaning changes, so does hope. Sometimes when I work with someone stuck in grief, I will say, “It sounds like hope died with your loved one. It seems all is lost.”

Surprisingly they perk up. “Yes, that’s it.”

They feel witnessed. I often say, “A loved one’s death is permanent, and that is so heartbreaking. But I believe your loss of hope can be temporary. Until you can find it, I’ll hold it for you. I have hope for you. I don’t want to invalidate your feelings as they are, but I also don’t want to give death any more power than it already has. Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.”

Sometimes I meet someone in grief who tells me that a family member or friend said something terrible—which often turns out to be some variation of “time heals all” or “be happy your loved one is at peace now.” Such statements can make the bereaved think that their feelings have not been witnessed. Most of us want to say something helpful, but we may not realize that our timing and delivery are off. If the griever needs to remain in a dark place for a while, then trying to offer some kind of cheer will be very hurtful. We must really see the person we are trying to comfort. Loss can become more meaningful—and more bearable—when reflected, and reflected accurately, in another’s eyes.

We also have to remember that our own thoughts about the one who died are irrelevant. Maybe we think our friend’s mother was so awful that she wasn’t worth grieving over. Or we know that our sister’s husband had been unfaithful and wonder why she is nonetheless sobbing over his death. What we think has nothing at all to do with the feelings of those who are in grief, and they will not be comforted by hearing us criticize their loved ones as not being deserving of their sorrow.

People who mourn the loss of their pets often comment on how little people understand about their grief. In the months that followed the death of my son, one of my dear friends experienced his own loss. His beloved dog died at the age of 16. When I reached out to him to express my condolences, he was taken aback by my concern. “Your loss is so much worse than mine,” he said. I couldn’t see his tears and think that his loss was any less painful or meaningful than mine. Every loss has meaning, and all losses are to be grieved—and witnessed. I have a rule on pet loss. “If the love is real, the grief is real.” The grief that comes with loss is how we experience the depths of our love, and love takes many forms in this life.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Did Neanderthals bury their dead with flowers?

Iraq cave yields new clues.

The bones of a Neanderthal’s left hand emerging from the sediment in Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq, is seen in an undated photo.

By Will Dunham

A Neanderthal skeleton unearthed in an Iraqi cave already famous for fossils of these extinct cousins of our species is providing fresh evidence that they buried their dead — and intriguing clues that flowers may have been used in such rituals.

Last week, scientists said they had discovered in Shanidar Cave in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq the well-preserved upper-body skeleton of an adult Neanderthal who lived about 70,000 years ago.

The individual — dubbed Shanidar Z — was perhaps in his or her 40s or 50s. The sex was undetermined.

The cave was a pivotal site for mid-20th-century archaeology. Remains of 10 Neanderthals — seven adults and three infants — were dug up there six decades ago, offering insight into the physical characteristics, behavior and diet of this species.

Clusters of flower pollen were found at that time in soil samples associated with one of the skeletons, a discovery that prompted scientists involved in that research to propose that Neanderthals buried their dead and conducted funerary rites with flowers.

That hypothesis helped change the prevailing popular view at the time of Neanderthals as dimwitted and brutish, a notion increasingly discredited by new discoveries.

Critics cast doubt, however, on the “flower burial,” arguing the pollen could have been modern contamination from people working and living in the cave or from burrowing rodents or insects.

But Shanidar Z’s bones, which appear to be the top half of a partial skeleton unearthed in 1960, were found in sediment containing ancient pollen and other mineralized plant remains, reviving the possibility of flower burials.

The material is being examined to determine its age and the plants represented.

“So from initially being a skeptic based on many of the other published critiques of the flower-burial evidence, I am coming round to think this scenario is much more plausible and I am excited to see the full results of our new analyzes,” said University of Cambridge osteologist and paleoanthropologist Emma Pomeroy, lead author of the research published in the journal Antiquity.

Scholars have argued for years about whether Neanderthals buried their dead with mortuary rituals much as our species does, part of the larger debate over their levels of cognitive sophistication.

“What is key here is the intentionality behind the burial. You might bury a body for purely practical reasons, in order to avoid attracting dangerous scavengers and/or to reduce the smell. But when this goes beyond practical elements it is important because that indicates more complex, symbolic and abstract thinking, compassion and care for the dead, and perhaps feelings of mourning and loss,” Pomeroy said.

Shanidar Z appears to have been deliberately placed in an intentionally dug depression cut into the subsoil and part of a cluster of four individuals.

“Whether the Neanderthal group of dead placed around 70,000 years ago in the cave were a few years, a few decades or centuries — or even millennia — apart, it seems clear that Shanidar was a special place, with bodies being placed just in one part of a large cave,” said study co-author Graeme Barker, a University of Cambridge archaeologist.

Neanderthals — more robustly built than Homo sapiens and with larger brows — inhabited Eurasia from the Atlantic Coast to the Ural Mountains from about 400,000 years ago until a bit after 40,000 years ago, disappearing after our species established itself in the region.

The two species interbred, with modern non-African human populations bearing residual Neanderthal DNA.

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How to Help Your Partner When They’re Grieving

Psychotherapist Megan Devine on the impossibility of taking pain away from your partner, the difficulty of two people grieving one person, and how loss can impact sex.

By Sophia Benoit

Like so many people, I’m fascinated, consumed, and appalled by death. I read books about it, I occasionally write hypothetical eulogies for loved ones in my head, and I even have a tattoo that says memento mori—Latin for “remember to die.” And as part of my preoccupation with death, I’ve found myself wondering how my boyfriend and I will handle it when one of us inevitably loses someone.

How partners show up—or don’t—after a loss can profoundly impact the relationship, either strengthening it or exposing the cracks. Ideally, a partner knows what to do and say, but many people struggle with exactly how to respond.

I asked friends who’ve lost someone about what their partner did that helped and, on the flip side, what really didn’t. When my friend Sam’s grandpa died, her ex was pretty reluctant to engage with her about it at all. “Anytime I would bring up my grandpa, he would seem visibly uncomfortable, like he was not excited about the emotions he was going to have to respond to. We unsurprisingly broke up,” she said, citing these stilted conversations as a big part of that decision.

Another friend of mine, Glenn, gushed about how wonderful his partner, Rob, was when his mother passed: “On the night she died, when I called, he didn’t say anything. He came over and just held me as I cried, laid in bed with me so I wasn’t alone. He never offered any platitudes, or really condolences in any typical way. He gave me the space to reckon with a loss that each person can only figure how to handle in their own way.”

In long-term relationships, chances are that one or both partners will experience the death of a loved one; knowing how to support one another as best as possible is invaluable. So I spoke to Megan Devine, psychotherapist and author of It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand, about how to support your partner through grief.

GQ: Both my partner and I have older parents—and very different relationships with our parents—so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what we’ll do when the time comes and how we’ll help one another.
Devine: That’s good that you’re already thinking about that! Most likely, your parents will die before you. The time to have conversations like this is before anybody dies. We practice fire drills, so that in the event of an emergency, these things aren’t new to us. It’s really hard in fresh grief to have a high-level, highly skilled conversation about your emotional needs. That’s asking a lot of a person when they’re in pain.

You can make some good guesses, but until you’re in the situation, you won’t know. But by opening those conversations beforehand, you’ll be able to say things like, “I know we talked about this and I thought I was going to need this, but this is different than anything I expected. Can we try this instead?”

So, what can a partner’s role in a time of grief be? Can they actually do anything?
Well, yes and no. We look at the people we love, and we see them in pain and we want to take that pain away from them. That’s a normal human response. But, you can’t. It’s not actually possible.

All the things that we normally think of to say to do that, like “Your dad wouldn’t want you to be sad,” or “Your mom lived a nice, long life” don’t work. Look at the second half of that sentence, or what I call the ghost words. There’s an implied “…so, stop feeling so bad.”

If I see you and say, “What’s up?” and you say, “My dog’s really sick, and we don’t know if he’s gonna make it,” and I say, “Well, at least it’s sunny out!” I just completely dismissed what you just told me, even if I did what I think I’m supposed to do, which is cheer you up and tell you to look on the bright side. The biggest thing for people to remember is it’s not your job to take away somebody’s pain. It is your job to accompany them inside it. And what that looks like is going to be different for everybody.

So, are there concrete, universal things that someone can do to help their partner?
When someone’s person dies, life around them still goes on. There might be kids that need to be taken care of, laundry that needs to be done, a dog that needs to be walked—whatever you can do to take over the daily life activities for that person to give them the space to fall apart, or be quiet, or slow down.

A lot of people feel like, “If I’m not cheering them up, what am I supposed to do? Let them be sad?” Well, one, yes. But two, it’s not that you do nothing—it’s that everything you do is in service of making things gentler for that person. Taking the trash out. Ordering a meal-delivery service. Offering to take care of pets. Picking up dry cleaning.

What is something that’s difficult about grief, particularly in romantic relationships? I imagine that loss is either a binding agent of sorts or a massive stumbling block, and it can really go either way.
When you’re talking about romantic partners, sometimes they’re grieving the same person. A really big thing to remember is that everyone grieves differently, and even when one person dies, you’re each grieving a different person. You lost two different people.

This is very gendered, but often the male or male-identified person feels like they need to be strong or brave for the family or keep their shit together. The female-identified person can feel like, “Why don’t you have any emotions around this? I can’t even get out of bed because I’m crying so much, and you seem to be stoic and fine.” One person cries, one person doesn’t cry. Any expression of grief is normal. Everybody has the right to grieve differently.

So what do you do when you’re both grieving the same person?
Ideally, if you’re the one grieving, you’re able to say, “My dad died and I want to acknowledge the fact that your father-in-law died, and this is going to be impacting you too. I don’t know how available I’m going to be to talk with you about that, but I want to let you know that I see it. And to the best of my capacity or ability, I’m willing to listen to what this is like for you.”

What would you tell couples, then, about what might help them both go through the grieving process?
The time to prepare for these things is in daily life before grief. This means having challenging conversations about what you need, don’t need, and how to manage that together. Those are not easy conversations. This is why I really stress getting accustomed to what therapists call “process conversations,” outside of an emergency, like the loss of a loved one. Many people have an aversion to these types of conversations because it’s not normal for us.

To ask you to suddenly learn how to use really grown-up, ninja-level communication skills amid an already challenging time is asking a lot of people. But if you’ve started, it’s easier to lean on that in times of need.

Exactly. Grief brings up all these feelings that we have limited experience talking about. Especially for couples, it dramatically alters daily life, and little things we take for granted can become really fraught. For example, when is it okay for me to start trying to initiate sex again? In a month? The next night? Should I actively try to engage my partner about what they’re feeling? Wait for them to bring it up? We don’t know what we’re doing.
Yes! “When is it okay to invite my partner to have sex again after their dad dies?” Well, we don’t know. But you know what you can do? ASK! These are questions that we should be talking about more. You can say something like, “I’m not really sure what your clues are that you feel ready for me to initiate. Can we talk about that?” Being willing to have a conversation about it is the key. Have the conversation!

In my experience, people are really afraid to sound foolish or weird. I’m a strong proponent for prefacing conversations like this with “I know this might sound weird, but…”
Precisely. You might be scared that it’s going to be weird or awkward, but sweetie, it’s all awkward. You can either ignore the issue, potentially allowing things to get worse, or you can address it and feel weird and have a much better chance of things smoothing out and resolving. Both paths are awkward and uncomfortable. Only one sets you up for potential success.

Okay, I’m sure there are 5,600 things, but what is something that our culture misunderstands about grief?
Because we don’t tend to talk about grief at all in our culture, we have really skewed ideas of what’s normal. The first thing is that grief lasts as long as love lasts. When your dad dies, there’s not going to be any time in the future when you’re going to stop missing him. He’ll always be your dad. As long as you love your dad, there will be grief present. Grief will shift and change—it’s not that you’re gonna be rocking in a corner wearing all black for the rest of your existence.

There’s nothing wrong with grief, and I think that’s surprising for people. We [preach] these transformative narratives of the cranky old widower who is only cranky because he hasn’t found a new love, and once he does, everything is okay again and grief goes away. That’s just not the way it works. That’s not reality. Because we don’t talk about grief as a normal part of relationships, we don’t know what’s normal and healthy, and everybody grieves in a different way. Somebody might find comfort or solace in humor, while someone else might not. Just because grief can look messy and emotional, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Love is not enough for end of life decisions…

This ground breaking video is challenging the commonly held perception that a loving relationship is all you need to ensure your end-of life wishes will be met.

The launch of the video is timed to stimulate interest and discussion in the lead up to the third annual, National Advance Care Planning Week, 23 – 27 March, an initiative led by Advance Care Planning Australia (ACPA), with funding from the Australian Government.

Produced by the award-winning Creativa video production agency, the Love is Not Enough video introduces two couples and one father and daughter, testing how well they know their loved one. While they were mostly able to correctly answer questions about preferred foods and holiday destinations, when it came to questions about end-of-life treatments they were less sure.

Interviewees were confronted with tough hypothetical treatment decisions for their loved ones including whether they would accept tube feeding following a stroke or extend their cancer treatment if it meant never leaving hospital.

This discrepancy is backed up by research[1]that shows that the people closest to us often don’t know our end-of-life wishes unless we expressly have the conversation or write our preferences in an Advance Care Directive.

“We created this video to shine a light on the fact that even with those closest to us, it is wrong to assume they would know our preferences for end-of-life care,” explains ACPA Program Director, Linda Nolte.

“While the questions posed in the video may seem confronting, these real-life scenarios play out every day in hospitals across Australia. It’s a terrible burden for families to bear having to blindly make life and death decisions, without knowing their loved one’s preferences. A simple discussion today can save a lot of heartache tomorrow.

“Despite legislative and policy support for advance care planning across Australia, public understanding and uptake remains low. People need to know that a loving relationship is no substitute for advance care planning. The person closest to you may not be the best choice to make decisions for you if you become too unwell to speak for yourself.

“With National Advance Care Planning Week coming up, it’s an opportunity for all of us to consider our future medical care, whether it’s attending an event or having a chat with loved ones. I urge all Australians to join us and find out more,” says Ms Nolte.

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The superpower that comes while grieving

There are pages worth of downsides to the grieving process, what is often not talked about though is the secret superpower so many get.

By Noelle Rollins

I was talking with a friend last month as the one year anniversary of her husband’s passing was approaching, “Noelle, I feel like I’m in a freaking movie, like it can’t be real. All the stuff happening.”

She went on to explain people who seems to come into her life daily during the last year as if on cue to give her a message or sign. The perfectly accidental meeting of others with stories to share for her benefit. Odd meetings that she would have brushed off in the past, now she was hyper-focused on allowing them to unfold. I couldn’t help but nod in agreement. Yes, I knew exactly what she was talking about. It’s the grieving superpower.

After losing someone who was a part of your daily life, there is a time that follows that event where life feels like it has been busted into millions of pieces. Every daily routine now altered, every holiday forever changed.

Imagine yourself in a tunnel, with laser like focus on processing one thing; grief. All attention is on trying to understand the loss, remembering your loved one, and figuring out how to move forward. All other sounds are now muffled in the background, things that seems to matter before often seem frivolous during this time. This time, although a time I wouldn’t wish on anyone… does bring it’s own gifts as well.

If you are in the midst of this time… I’m sending you so much love. It’s hard. It is full of unknowns and times where the floor feels to drop out from under you. Here are 7 ways to honor the superhero grief period:

1) Write in a journal – during this time of intensity it can feel as if things will be this way forever. Write things down. Write your feelings, write your memories. Write all that you notice. Signs from spirit, dreams, the kindness of others. Write them all down. Continue writing when you feel anger, sadness, fear and yes, even joys. During this time of hyper-awareness and simplified life it’s the time to capture what you can to gift yourself with later.

2) Know that you are not alone – find your people. Sometimes those around us are understanding and can be an incredible support system. Others are not that lucky and don’t have people around that are able to support you. Find online grief groups, read blogs, read books (mine is coming in 2020). You do not have to experience this time alone. Being so in tune with grief and our loss it can leave everything else as a blur. Don’t be afraid to find help to rejoin and bring focus back onto that outer world as well.

3) There is no proper timetable for grief – I’ve heard too many stories of a boyfriend or spouse expressing frustration that “your not over it yet”. In-laws who don’t get it. Friends who seem annoyed that all you talk about is your loss. Family who wants you to move forward and quit “moping”. People try to understand but we all handle things differently. My advice is this: trust your knowing. Find people who can help you move forward and honor your grief. If you are not able to handle your career, your kids, your life then I encourage you to find help. Find a counselor, pastor, or therapist who can walk you through honoring your grief while also honoring your other life commitments.

4) Gather wisdom from this time – I have always tried to gather any nuggets of wisdom or purpose from all hard times. Is there something you could take from this unthinkable time that could help others? Is there a new perspective you’ve gained? Finding truth and wisdom doesn’t mean you are glad the event happened. It means that if you have to walk through this fire… at least try to harvest what you can from it so you can reach out a hand to the next person to help them through the fire as well.

5) Find a way to honor the memory of your loved one. There are many options, find one that resonates with you or your memory of your loved one. Write about them, create a photo album, find a creative outlet such as drawing or singing, crafting, cooking or even redecorating. When my mom passed my sisters and I gathered up all her favorite recipes along with photos of her cooking with her grandchildren and put together a cookbook. That following Christmas we gave those cookbooks to all my mom’s siblings and our for each of us. It was a therapeutic process creating that book and allowed us hours of conversation and reliving memories of our mom in the process. Even 11 years later I can now share those recipes and memories of my mom with my son who never go to meet her.

6) Honor your knowing and the signs – don’t waste your energy trying to convince others of your beliefs or experiences that have happened. The night after my mom passed away I had a very clear dream that turned out to reveal a place that we later held her funeral. I also got signs almost immediately from her. I kept a journal where I wrote about the dreams and signs. I made a decision early on that I would be open about my experience but I really didn’t give any care to whether anyone believed me or not. I knew what I knew. Just as my friend shared with me about her experiences, pay attention to those who enter your life and gift you with conversations and perspective.

A feather that appeared on my paintbrush while creating a painting to honor signs from spirit.

7) Take photos. I wrote about this extensively here but I’ll sum up my point with this: If I could tell every person who has just lost someone dear to them one thing it would be, “take photographs”. Go into your loved one’s space and take a photo of the way the reading glasses are sitting on the side table, how the spice cabinet looks or the jacket hanging on the hook. Photograph the wall of framed photos, the collection of ball caps or figurines. Capture the yard, the tools on a workbench in the garage, the view from the kitchen table, even your favorite chair.

In the year following my mom’s death the walls were repainted, furniture replaced and passed down to us kids. Slowly my mom’s decorating style and personality were taken out of the house. I’m so grateful to this day of any photos I have where I can see parts of her decorating and style in the background.

This time will pass. Grip it with all you can while you are in this sacred, painful, hyper-focused emotional and mental place. Even though you’d never choose to be in this situation… someday you’ll look back and realize that this hard time was sacred. There was a bond still to your loved one in your daily thoughts and activities.

Sending you much love and wishes for healing and the gift of memories of your loved one. I hope you find these 7 tips helpful. What would you add? It’s a beautiful thing when we can all help one another navigate through grief. While I certainly don’t have all the answers, I happily share what I can in hopes that even one thing can help someone else who is experiencing a world shattering loss right now.

Best wishes to you, Noelle

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Study suggests overtreatment in end-of-life care despite POLST

Patients with treatment-limiting Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) are less likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) but may not always receive treatment that is consistent with their wishes, according to a study published online Feb. 16 in the Journal of the American Medical Association to coincide with the Society of Critical Care Medicine annual Critical Care Congress, held from Feb. 16 to 19 in Orlando, Florida.

Robert Y. Lee, M.D., from the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence at the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues investigated the association between POLST orders for and ICU admission for patients receiving end-of-life care. The included patients with who had POLSTs, died between 2010 and 2017, and were hospitalized within the last six months of life.

The researchers found that of 1,818 decedents, 401 (22 percent) had POLST orders requesting comfort measures only, 761 (42 percent) requested limited additional interventions, and 656 (36 percent) requested full treatment. Patients with comfort-only and limited intervention orders were less likely to be admitted to the ICU; however, 38 percent of patients with comfort-only and limited intervention orders received POLST-discordant care. Patients with cancer were less likely to receive POLST-discordant care, while patients admitted for traumatic injury were more likely to receive POLST-discordant care.

“Lee et al have provided important new information about the relationship between POLSTs and overtreatment of patients at the end of life,” write the authors of an accompanying editorial. “These insights will assist clinicians in developing strategies to help ensure that hospitalized near the end of life receive only those treatments that are both desired and beneficial.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!