After losing my son to suicide, I entered a darkness I had never known before. I knew I needed to find a way back into the light and started doing what many of us moms do. I started reaching out desperately for support.
I found the Alliance of Hope, an online forum that brought me into a community of suicide loss survivors who showed compassion and gave me hope. And I found a local support group that gave me a voice for my grief and desire to remember my son.
But still, I struggled much of the time. My thoughts tended to take me to the darkest spaces—full of pain, anxiety, and grief. And trauma had reduced my ability to focus or attend to anything meaningful.
I made a discovery: mindfulness meditation.
I discovered that mindfulness could help me anchor my traumatized mind in the present moment. And it taught me how to refocus my attention towards positive thoughts. Mindfulness meditation may not be for everyone. And it is a discipline that I discontinued after about a year. On my journey, I found there were many activities that provided the same types of help. Mindfulness activities helped me to re-engage with others, to learn to be present, and to increase time attending and focusing. Here are the ones I found the most helpful:
Walking: A nature walk can help to clear the mind of thoughts. Or it can be used to bring yourself into the present. When I really worked to focus on the sights, sounds, and smells all around me, I could be truly present. I would focus less on my internal thoughts and spend more time on the external world and the beauty of nature.
Mindful Eating and Drinking: Some meditations I used suggested using food or drinks to work on mindful eating. That was nice, but kind of boring. What I found more interesting was going to a winery with a friend or my daughter. We would get a flight of wines, sit together, and truly focus on the experience of trying each glass. Later, I discovered there were all kinds of culinary mindfulness experiences I could try. A local restaurant had a soup flight; another had a mac and cheese flight. A local coffee shop had a coffee flight. I went to a tearoom with a friend and we tried a tower of little cakes with two different pots of tea. Nearly any unique, interesting culinary experience can bring me into the present and focused on my senses, which seems to reduce my anxiety.
Pets: Those who have pets report how much they help in their grief journey. I don’t have a pet, but locally we have cat cafes. They are lovely cat shelters where you pay a nominal fee to pet kitties and sip on a coffee or latte for an hour. The experience of being with these beautiful animals, petting them, and engaging them in play took me right into the present with all of the sights and sounds (and smells!). There are many ways to share pets with friends or local shelters. These hours were some of the best therapy I found.
Board Games: I used board games in education to improve students’ attention, focus, and memory. Finding that those skills were impacted in trauma, I also found benefits for myself in board games. There were games my son adored, like Scrabble and Clue. Those are now and forever hard to pull out. However, there are games he wasn’t as fond of or that we purchased after his loss. These have given us opportunities to improve our ability to attend to one another and be fully present in the moment.
Hobbies with Hands: For me, it has been knitting. Tactile hobbies are mindful hobbies. Knitting reduces my stress and allows me to be productive and find purpose. I have now knitted dozens of blankets for a nonprofit organization that provides resources and keepsakes for families experiencing infant loss in hospitals. Any artful hobby can be a mindful activity—crocheting, coloring, painting, drawing, needlepoint, etc.
Watching Silly Shows: Television and movie viewing became very difficult after losing my son. It had never occurred to me before how often suicide was treated as the butt of a joke on TV. Or how often suicide was portrayed with no warning. TV would warn me if someone was going to smoke, but they seemed to neglect that a mourning mom may want a warning about content including suicide. So I began to select different programs. Some favorites from my early days of loss were America’s Got Talent and Shark Tank. It helped to have an hour where I could be present with a program and not have to worry about what painful things I may encounter.
All activities can be mindful, whether it’s biking, antiquing, or attending a sporting event. I eventually learned to focus my attention on the present and cultivate positive thoughts across a variety of activities. I started small and gradually expanded into other endeavors. Mindful activities were not intended to help me avoid my grief but rather served as a means to regain control over my thoughts, improve my focus and attention, and spend time living in the present with positive thoughts. Most importantly, they took me out of some very dark places.
