Love, Loss, and Grief Archives

July 11, 2019 - Lisa Manterfield Leave a Comment

Fave Read: Grace After Henry by Eithne Shortall

If you’ve read (or heard me talk about) my first novel A Strange Companion, you’ll know I do love a good grief story. I have a bit of an obsession with grief, mostly because it’s such a complex topic, and yet so universal, and I’m always interested to read the point-of-view of others. Grace After Henry, a story about the aftermath of loss, examines the question of whether a lost love one can ever be replaced.

After the sudden death of her partner, Henry, Grace is trying figure out how to go on with the life they had planned together. She’s struggling along, when Henry’s long-lost twin brother turns up on her doorstep looking at lot like a good replacement for the man she’s lost. Suddenly, “Henry” is back in her life, and Grace is pulled into the way things were…until she realizes that things aren’t the same at all, and that she’s hiding from her grief in a make-believe world.

Why I Loved It

I enjoy a book that gets real about grief, without sliding into the maudlin. Bonus points if it captures the humor that so often accompanies grief. Set in Dublin and capturing that wicked Irish sense-of-humor, Grace After Henry is a funny, poignant, and very real look at life after loss. It doesn’t linger on the sadness, but focuses instead on the way the mind works when grieving, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to cope with loss.

What I Learned as a Writer

While story is key, what really brings the world of a book to life is the cast of supporting characters. I looked forward to scenes with Grace’s outrageous parents, her no-nonsense BFF, and her cadre of fellow mourners at the city cemetery.

Read This Book If…

You enjoy a wry sense of humor (think Derry Girls, but further south) and stories populated by colorful, quirky characters.

My Rating:

November 27, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield 6 Comments

What My Dearest Friend Taught Me About Time and Love

I’m writing this post from the carriage of a train, gliding up the east coast of England. I’m on my way to meet my oldest and dearest friend, Jill.

Jill and I like to tell people that we’ve known one another so long, we can’t remember not being friends. We were born three months apart, grew up two streets away from one another, and our parents even knew one another before we were born. Aside from my immediate relatives, I’ve known Jill longer than anyone else.

Jill and I were besties in high school and stayed friends when we both went off to college. We both married and got busy. I moved to California and she moved to Scotland, but we saw one another when we could. It wasn’t unusual for three or five years to pass between our times together.

Then, a few years ago Jill asked if she could come to California to visit. I was thrilled. It turned out she had lost a good friend to cancer. Her friend had died way too young, leaving behind a husband, toddler son, and many heartbroken people who loved her. Her passing made Jill re-evaluate the importance of her own relationships. She realized how important it was to make an effort to spend time with the people she cared about. Luckily for me, I was one of them.

Since then, we’ve seen one another at least once a year. She’s made the 6,000-mile trip to see me three or four times now. One time we met halfway in New York City, and another time I flew to Las Vegas to meet her when she was there for a few days. Whenever I go back to the U.K. to visit family, I make plans to see Jill. It takes considerable effort for us to get together. Aside from the trans-Atlantic flight, it’s four hours by train, even longer by car, to get from my mum’s house to Jill’s. We often end up meeting at a midway point, which is why I’m now on an early morning express train bound for Newcastle.

We’ll get to spend about seven hours together today. We both like to eat, so we’ll undoubtedly start off with coffee and a sweet treat. We’ll wander the city, maybe walk the river or pop into a museum. We’ll have a long lunch in a nice restaurant, undoubtedly including a glass of wine. And then, if history repeats itself, we’ll undertake a little retail therapy and she will talk me into buying a pair of shoes I don’t need but will end up loving.

More important than all that, though, we will talk. We will catch up on one another’s lives. We’ll help each other through whatever issues we’re dealing with. We’ll talk about our families, politics, health, and topics we might be too embarrassed or uncomfortable to talk about with others.

And we’ll laugh. Oh, boy, will we laugh. Because of our long history, we’ll finish one another’s sentences and catch ourselves singing theme tunes from childhood TV shows. She will tell an inappropriate joke and I’ll pretend to be offended, but I’ll be unable to stop myself from giggling. When she laughs, her whole face folds into itself, and that makes me laugh even more.

When it’s time for us to say goodbye, we will cling to one another like it could be the last time, and we will cry like a couple of sillies. We’ll board our trains, southbound for me and northbound for her, and before we’ve even pulled out of the station, we’ll text to say we miss one another. I’ll feel a funny combination of both joy and loss.

Over the years, I’ve learned many valuable life lessons and tidbits of advice from my friend. But most of all, she has taught me the value, in this crazy busy world of ours, not just to take time, but to make time, to see the people that we value, the people we truly love.

Between the train fare, the lunch, and the unnecessary shoes, I will be considerably poorer by the end of today. But I will unbelievably richer for the time spent with my friend.

October 23, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield 2 Comments

Can We Talk About the Sad Stuff?

Hey, you wanna talk about grief? No? Didn’t think so.

Let’s face it: Nobody wants to talk about the utter misery of losing someone, or something, dear. We don’t want to see other people grieve, and we certainly don’t want to unleash our own sadness on those around us. Better to keep those feelings tucked away until they fizzle out. It’s easier that way, isn’t it?

The trouble with grief is that it accumulates, and even small losses, like a missed promotion, a broken friendship, or an unanticipated change of address can start to take their toll on us. So, please can we talk about why we need to deal with grief, and what happens when we pretend that everything’s okay?

The Messy Swirling Cesspool of Grief

Grief is unpleasant and exhausting, but it’s also an essential part of the healing process. It helps us to keep moving forward, to keep living. And it enables us to come to terms with a new kind of life and find meaning again, even when neither of those things seem possible. It doesn’t force us to get over our loss, but it does help us to get through it.

In many cultures and religions, active mourning and expression of grief are encouraged. Many Middle-Eastern cultures believe that crying cleanses the soul, and wailing and demonstrative weeping is not merely accepted, but expected. In some African countries, it’s not uncommon for communities to send off their dead in a party-like atmosphere of music and dancing. Many religions and cultures observe periods of official mourning, during which the bereaved are expected to be fully engaged in the process of grieving. In Judaism, the grieving “sit Shiva” for seven days; in Islam, the bereaved are never left alone; and in Romani culture, they are forbidden to cook, wash, or shave, so that they can immerse themselves in mourning. These traditions can seem strange when compared to the quiet funerals and controlled grieving many of us have been raised with, but there is great value in an official and socially acceptable period and method of mourning. It creates a container for grief, an outlet for emotions, and the impetus to get out of the container and move on. After a year of enforced and concentrated mourning, I think most of us would be ready to get out into the world and start living again.

We’re Not Good at the Hard Stuff

Unfortunately, many of us live in societies where grief makes people uncomfortable and there is no room for active and demonstrative shows of emotion. This is especially true when you’re mourning an intangible or misunderstood loss, or something that well-meaning people think you ought to easily “get over.” So, instead of expressing our grief, we hold it inside and go about our lives while trying to pretend that everything is okay. We avoid the topic and we don’t tell people who care about us what we’re going through. We stuff grief away and put on brave faces because it’s easier to pretend than to risk letting our sadness show to someone who doesn’t understand.

Grieving Sideways

The problem with stuffing grief into a box and sitting on the lid is that the grief doesn’t just go away. It builds up inside us until it finds an outlet. Then, life offers social events, work obligations, and well-meaning comments from strangers (e.g. “Aren’t you over that yet?”), and our grief takes control over us and erupts in humiliating public breakdowns.

Even when we think we have our feelings under control, it has a tendency to squeeze its way out any way it can. It’s what my friend calls “grieving sideways”. You find yourself picking fights and getting disproportionately upset with people over things that wouldn’t normally faze you. And while a stranger who cuts you off in traffic or a neighbor with a yapping dog might get an unwarranted dose of anger, more often than not it’s those closest to us—family, friends, and partners—who bear the brunt of our outbursts.

What’s more, instead of acting as a pressure relief valve, these outbursts compound our grief. We behave badly and then we add shame and frustration on top of our grief, and before you know it, it’s a hot mess. So, it’s critical to deal with your loss now, even though it’s raw and more painful than anything you could have imagined.

Unfortunately, the only way to the other side of grief is through it. Allowing yourself a period of mourning—whether that’s a day in bed or a week off work—can go a long way to starting the healing process. It’s okay to feel miserable. It’s okay not to be brave or even to have decorum. It’s okay to wallow in sadness, as long as you also commit to a timeframe. After that, you have to get up, take a shower, and take the first step back out into the world again.

Grief is a big, messy jungle of emotion that we’d all sooner avoid, but in the end, going through it makes for a much shorter journey than trying to go around it.

September 4, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield 2 Comments

A Royal Member of the Grief Club

It’s hard to believe that 20 years have gone by since the death of Princess Diana. It’s one of those moments that I remember exactly where I was when the news broke. I was in the kitchen at the restaurant where I worked as a server when the host came running in to share the news that she was dead. I remember thinking he’d lost his mind, as there was no way someone so young, vibrant, and such a huge part of popular culture at that point could be gone. But she was.

In an interview earlier this year, Prince Harry opened up about dealing with—or rather not dealing with—his grief after his mother’s death.

“My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help?” he told The Telegraph’s Bryony Gordon in the first episode of her new Mad World mental health podcast.

Prince Harry was only 12 when his mother was killed in the infamous car accident in Paris. As I listened to his very frank interview about how he suppressed his grief and refused to seek help, even as it affected his personal and professional life, I couldn’t help but think about Kat and how her inability to work through with her grief affected her decisions.

During some early readings of the manuscript for A Strange Companion, a couple of people asked me why it had taken Kat so long to deal with the deaths of Gabe and her father. Hearing Prince Harry talk about ignoring his grief for almost 20 years reminded me once again that grief is a long and messy process that is different for each of us. It takes as long as it takes. That said, ignoring grief doesn’t make it go away.

“Once you start talking about it,” the prince says in his interview, “you realize that actually, you’re part of quite a big club.”

It’s this idea of speaking out that is behind the Heads Together charity the prince had founded, alongside his brother William and sister-in-law Kate, to help raise awareness and break the stigma surrounding mental health issues.

You can hear the full interview with Prince Harry here, and find out more about his charity work at https://www.headstogether.org.uk.

June 26, 2017 - Lisa Manterfield 2 Comments

I was Johann in a Past Life

While writing A Strange Companion, I did a lot of research into past lives. I read some of the pre-eminent experts in reincarnation and sifted through countless stories of past life experiences. But perhaps the most intriguing day of research came when I attended a Hay House conference and subjected myself to a past life regression.

A Skeptic’s Guide to Reincarnation

I’ll admit right now that, like Kat, I was skeptical, and perhaps a little bit nervous. Would I feel weird, would it be frightening, and what if (my overactive writer’s imagination wanted to know) I somehow became trapped in my past life and couldn’t get back? What if I uncovered some terrible past life trauma that would stay with me for the reminder of my current life?

Regardless, in the name of science, I decided to keep my mind open and trust that nothing untoward would happen to me.

I had chosen this particular conference because of one speaker. Dr. Brian Weiss was a respectable psychiatrist when one of his patients, Catherine, began recalling what could only be past life memories, and delivering messages from another realm. That encounter became the basis for his books Many Lives, Many Masters and Only Love is Real, both of which formed the foundation of my research. If I was going to visit my past lives, I wanted it to be with Dr. Weiss.

Past Life Revelations

In a room full of people, Dr. Weiss talked us down into a state of deep relaxation and through his method for tapping into past lives. In the first, we chose a door that would lead us into a particular era. I opted for Ancient Rome, where I saw myself as a Roman legionnaire whose life was in danger because I had fallen for the wrong woman. A mere sentry, I had lost my heart to a woman who was way above my station. Even in my past life, I was a hopeless romantic. I chalked this vision up to watching too many gladiator movies, and moved on.

In the next regression, we were taken back again to another incarnation and asked to picture scenes from that life. I pictured a wide valley, that I assumed was somewhere in Northern Europe. The people lived in huts in a settlement, and were perhaps farmers, maybe Vikings, Celts, or Anglo-Saxons. I seemed to be someone important in the village, because at one point, a group of men rode into the village on horseback with a message that I had been summoned to the leader. Later, the regression moved us to the end of that life, where I died of a serious wound, surrounded by my people. I was left with the feeling that I had lived a noble life and was leaving behind people who really cared about me.

During the regression, two very specific details stood out. One was that my name was Johann, and the other was that I owned a piece of important jewelry that was either sacred or a mark of status. I saw the piece very clearly and was able to sketch what I could recall afterwards, hoping to be able to find a picture online that would indicate the place and era. Sadly, I’m not much of an artist, and I’ve yet to find anything definitive.

Lingering Feelings

Perhaps the strangest part of the experience was the emotions I felt during the regressions. I wasn’t just seeing images, as if I were watching a movie. They were accompanied by strong feelings of joy, satisfaction, sorrow, and fear. I left the session feeling tired, but strangely peaceful, not at all distraught or afraid, but with those emotions still lingering, as if they had really happened.

Like Kat, though, I am a scientist at heart, and a born skeptic. I need answers and explanations, but I left with none. Maybe the images I saw were just pulled from my imagination. Maybe I saw what I wanted to see or what was most interesting to my relaxed mind. I’m a writer, after all, and stories are what I do.

But even now, several years after the experience, I’m still left with the feeling that I tapped into something important, something meaningful to me. I don’t have a firm opinion about reincarnation, but I’m open to the idea that we have connections to others that cannot be explained by science. I find it comforting that we might not just disappear into oblivion and that the people we love stay connected with us in some way.

And I think it’s very cool that I was once Johann, beloved leader of an ancient people, and that I owned an important piece of sacred jewelry.