Ken Matthies is an expert on the
stages of healing from loss, grief and bereavement. His expertise comes
from overcoming the tragic death of his youngest daughter, the deaths of
his mother and father and helping others heal through the stages of
grief.
Get Ken's Book
"I Know You're Hurting;
Stages
of Healing
from
Loss, Grief and Bereavement"
The
book details the loving relationship between father and daughter, the
experience of her death and its aftermath, and the path to healing Ken Matthies found to overcome his grief.
It firmly establishes the existence of hope, relief from pain, and the
possibility of a renewed life following the death of a child or other
loved.
My granddaughter turned ten years old the other day, and it was as I was
calling her to wish her happy birthday that I realized she was already twice as
old as the day her mother died. On my granddaughter’s scale of years she has
lived another whole lifetime over the past five years.
Anyone who has experienced the pain of a loved one’s loss can identify with
the concept of a whole lifetime having passed since that death occurred. It’s
for certain that my granddaughter can.
Grieving Advice Tips - How Memorial Symbols Can Help You Heal from Grief
In the early days of grief amid the numbness and shock of loss the thought of
memorial symbols is not yet a part of your grieving or healing process. But
there comes a point in the days following where suddenly it seems that’s all you
can think about, and a drive to remember the one you’ve lost compels you to do
something of lasting value to honor them and maintain your heart link to them.
It’s good for your eventual healing that you experience this drive, and even
better when you allow it to guide you into creating memorial symbols which are
uniquely representative of your loved one – something you’ll treasure always and
keep in the forefront of the changed life you live in the aftermath of your
loss.
The form your memorial takes is important only to you and can consist of
anything your aching heart chooses it to be – from a simple framed picture all
the way up to an organization begun in their memory, or beyond. Only eternity
can or should limit your options, or the actions you take to create a memorial
symbol of healing value to you.
Grieving Advice Tips – “Let Your Little Light Shine”
“This little light of mine…I’m gonna let it shine…” So go the words of a
Sunday school song of ancient memory as I sit down to write today’s blog post –
and in them I’m finding a source of solace and strength as I continue walking my
healing path more than five years after a daughter’s loss.
It seems to take forever for light to show up again in your life after the
death of a child – or after the death of anyone else in your life that you loved
with all your heart. The loss is just so huge and the darkness of death so
complete at the time that the concept of light becomes an alien subject for your
mind to comprehend.
Yet the truth is that the light of your existence remains, forever shining
bright beyond the darkness of your grief, and eventually revealing itself to you
again as you begin the journey of healing that allows you to once again see and
value its brilliance – and its vital importance to the completeness of healing
that awaits your open and aching heart.
Grieving Advice Tips – “Road Construction Next ___ Kilometers”
You’ve probably seen this sort of example a thousand times before in your
life and never had cause to think twice about it on any of those occasions.
Returning home yesterday from a visit to a nearby community I passed through
a section of road being rebuilt and widened. The signs in advance of this area
from either direction warn you of it saying “Road Construction Next ___
Kilometers”, with the empty blank of the number of kilometers to be traveled
filled in by hand with a black felt marker pen.
It struck me how well these signs equate to the individual journey of grief
itself.
Stories of the Grieving Process After a Child Dies – “Boxes Full of Memories”
An excerpt taken from page 133 of my book entitled I Know You’re Hurting available for purchase at
http://www.kenmatthies.com
“I think it’s probably about this time too (October - three months after her
death) that I finally work up enough guts to start pulling the boxes of Leila’s
personal effects that she’d left behind out of their storage places around the
house and out in the shed. I carry them all into our office downstairs and stack
them close to my desk.
I can’t even open them yet. It’s just too hard to think about what I’ll find
inside that I know will rip me wide open and leave me bleeding all over the
floor. They stay that way all winter. And for the next summer I’m gone too. I
still can’t bear facing it, so all I do is look at them all the time.
Stories of the Grieving Process after a Child Dies – “Sliding Into Disbelief Again”
An excerpt taken from page 137 of my book entitled I Know You’re Hurting
available for purchase at
http://www.kenmatthies.com
“Somewhere along the line after writing her obituary I eventually get to
sliding into disbelief again that this is all real. That’s probably what starts
me jumping off the deep end inside again too; and world once more spirals into a
rotten kind of personal madness you can’t talk about with human sounding words
just yet.
It’s no wonder relationships and families fracture and get scattered into
billions of useless shards when something like this happens.
Here you are, living amongst the shattered pieces of your own endless puzzle
palace, vainly looking for the pieces that will throw a temporary patch on the
most extreme pain of the moment; and of course none of them fit or lock
together, so the patch doesn’t work and that particular wound keeps oozing away
more of the fluids of your life.
Stories of the Grieving Process after a Child Dies – “Fighting the Glimmer of Light”
An excerpt taken from page 140 of my book entitled I Know You’re Hurting
available for purchase at
http://www.kenmatthies.com
“It seems on further examination that I’ve been living a double, or maybe
it’s been a triple life during this past endless pain-scape of months.
In the first one of them – the deeply hidden, darkly private and personal one
you never ever under any circumstances of life or death show anyone – I’m going
through all the great stuff I’ve just described on the preceding pages! You
know, rough twisty trails, cute snakes and leaking life fluids. Not the
prettiest of pictures, or places.
In the second one, I’m a real regular guy by the name of Ken that everyone
knows and loves (yeah, sure!), just plugging along in what appears to be a
normal everyday life pattern, otherwise known as Living the Façade or Hiding
Behind the Mask!
30 Blog Articles and Counting – Are they Helping You Heal?
It seems I only began writing articles for this Keyboard Culture Blog on the
topic of ‘Healing Stages of Grief’ a short while ago – and yet time has already
flown a total of 30 of them into the cyberspace of your journey to find healing
from loss, grief and bereavement.
I truly appreciate all of you who have been coming to this site to read them,
and thank you for doing so. I understand how intensely private your personal
journey to find healing is, yet it’s also important for me to know if the
articles I’m posting are helping you to find your healing – so today I have a
very simple request to make to all of you reading these posts.
Grieving Advice Tips – “Keeping the Vision Alive in Your Heart and Mind”
What are you doing to keep the vision alive in your own heart and mind of the
loved one you lost? Finding a way to do so is a vitally important part of
dealing with your loss, grief and bereavement because it helps lead you deeper
into your healing.
Whatever way you choose to help you do this, know that its constant presence
around you will serve to keep that connection vital and glowing in your heart,
and offer a healing reassurance to your wounded soul.
For example, sitting on the phone table behind me in my office is the
portrait taken of my daughter and I shortly after she arrived back in my life at
the age of 19. Even though she’s gone I feel as though she remains, always
watching my back (there for me) and encouraging the writing I do in her memory.
Grieving Advice Tips – “What’s Helping you Heal Today?”
The journey of your healing from loss, grief and bereavement will continue
for you through a lifetime of learning – and I’m coming to understand that as a
good thing – not something negative to drive me to further despair.
The process of healing from grief is designed to be a gradual one for us as
human beings because we’re not physically, mentally or emotionally equipped to
be able to deal with all of it at once – suffering a grievous loss one day and
magically cured from its effects the very next day, month, or even year.
Grieving Advice Tips – “What’s Helping you Heal Today?”
The journey of your healing from loss, grief and bereavement will continue
for you through a lifetime of learning – and I’m coming to understand that as a
good thing – not something negative to drive me to further despair.
The process of healing from grief is designed to be a gradual one for us as
human beings because we’re not physically, mentally or emotionally equipped to
be able to deal with all of it at once – suffering a grievous loss one day and
magically cured from its effects the very next day, month, or even year.
Stories of the Grieving Process After a Child Dies – “Go Rest High on that Mountain”
When I walked into the funeral parlor prior to my daughter’s funeral for a
private family viewing time, the powerful music and words of Vince Gill’s song
“Go Rest High on that Mountain” was playing on the speakers. The poignant words
and haunting beauty of this song drove me into a pew at the time, curled up and
covered in pain and tears with the harsh reality of her death before me.
The fact that this was also one of the songs I’d chosen to be played at my
own funeral someday only served at the time to drive home the truth of the bond
– now forever broken, it seemed – which had existed between my daughter and I.
I’ve thought often about those moments of time when these two universes
collided – and over the course of my healing time in the years since, have come
to see a higher meaning for myself in the music and words of that song and the
events which shattered me on that day.
Today, ‘Go Rest High on that Mountain’ speaks to me of two wonderful truths
about both of us.
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professional. The information on this blog/website/community is
not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a
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intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified
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is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the
research and experience of the blog expert and his/her
community. Experts herein encourage you to make your own
decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a
qualified professional in the area of your need. The information
on this blog/website/community is written in general and not
intended to replace your one-on-one relationship with a
qualified professional and is not intended as professional
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