Losing My Mom (the Lady in Pink): A Professional Therapist's Personal Grief & Recovery - Paperback

by Carol Lynn Winters Lcpc Crc (Author)

The saddest moment of my life was the night that my precious Mom, the Lady in Pink, died unexpectedly. I should have been prepared, after all, she was 97 years old and had been in a nursing home for the last 4.5 years. I had been blessed with having a Mom for a colossal 62 years, but somehow, in a childlike fashion, I felt my mom would always be there for me.The daily routine of picking out her clothes for the next day, picking up the cookies that she liked, buying her little gifts to surprise her, visiting her daily at the nursing home, going to the nursing home parties with her, celebrating all the wonderful holidays together at my home, these were to be no more. My entire world changed overnight. As a professional therapist, I had counseled many clients on grief and loss, and now it was my turn. Nothing I had read or studied on grief and loss helped to ease the deep pain that I was experiencing. There is the old "hole in the heart" description on losing a loved one, that is, oh so true. Will it go away in time? Is there a way to fill it? Oh yes, the answer came to me, "if you can keep her memory, love and life alive in your heart you can recover and go on." If her values and ideas live on in me then she is still alive. So I did just that My mom is now with me living vibrantly in my memory and in my heart and she always will. Hopefully, by sharing the strategies that I have used to overcome my deep loss, others in a similar situation will find solace and inspiration. Mom has transitioned to another realm, a heavenly realm, and we must remind ourselves that we are eternal souls and that nobody really dies, we simply transition into another form of existence.This book will offer to the reader a number of ideas on how to reintegrate your loved one that passed on into your everyday consciousness. They are actually simple things to do, but they have been highly effective for me and I hope that they will be for you too.