The Six Steps of Healing in life

The Six Steps of Healing (use in life)

I believe I have used these in many aspects of my life without realizing that someone had actually written them down.

For using the six steps in life, I would like to discuss how they applied, and still do, regarding the death of my oldest son.

Step 0: DO NOTHING

Doing nothing can be quite easy and yet challenging at the same time. There isn’t much worse than being told that your child is dead. After the initial gut-wrenching, heart-being-ripped-out-of-your-body, feeling like you want to die, reaction, all you want to do is. . . nothing. It is rather easy to lay in bed, especially since you’ve had a broken back and a concussion and can’t really do anything else anyway, and stare into nothing. There are things in your line of sight; there is a window and there are other objects. But you don’t see them. They don’t exist. Nothing exists. Nothing. Your world has come to an abrupt halt.

Sometimes your thoughts wander. Sometimes you wonder how you got to this point. Sometimes you wonder how life can possibly go on without this person who has been such an integral part of your life since the day he was conceived and yet in the next thought you know that as much as you can’t possibly imagine what it will be like, you are going to find out; there is absolutely nothing you can do to alter this fact. There are times when you wonder if this might just be a bad dream and you wonder if you might wake up sometime soon.

People swarm in and out, in and out, like the ebb and flow of the tide. They have words of condolence and you know they mean well but they do not understand how you feel. They do not understand that you wish you could turn your feelings off. They do not understand and while a part of you wishes that they did, a part of you hopes they never do.

Step 1: GATHER INFORMATION

There are many ways in which you might gather information.  One of the ways I found most useful and helpful was to surround myself with my family and to listen to words of wisdom.

Life has to go on. There are seven other children who look to you. They miss their brother as much as you miss your son although in different ways.

There was a chaplain at Sanford Hospital who is an incredible man. I have no idea no if he had ever experienced the death of a child but he had the ability to listen and to direct in a very Christ-like way. It was from him that I learned that I could use this awful pain and become stronger; even when, and if, I wondered how.

There was a grief-councilor at Avera Hospital. He was a very kind man. He also was religious. In spite of the fact that he told me that no one had the right to tell me to ‘get over it,’ I liked him. After this, he asked me what my son would tell me if he were there. I smiled a little and said, ‘Get over it.’ Then I thought, ‘Oh, he told me no one should tell me that.’ But I could hear Daniel say it. ‘Get over it, Mom. Life goes on. I am still here.’  It was from him that I learned how to tell the other children about their brother.

There were people I had never met before from whom I learned what it means to have unconditional love.

There is my friend, Diane, who said to me, ‘This might sound strange, but. . .’ She told me to look back over the days, weeks, and months previous to the accident and see if there were any instances that seemed to be a preparation for what was to come. There were. Mostly small and seemingly insignificant but now huge and life-altering.

There were books. And prayers. And dreams.

Step 2: ENGAGE THE ENERGY

With the information I gathered, and still gather today, energy is engaged. The anesthesiologist who worked on my third son happened to be the nephew of a dear friend of mine from when we’d lived in California. The doctor who worked on my second son, happened to be LDS and opened his home to our family.

The energy was sometimes like a tenuous thread. As knowledge and information were increased, the thread become stronger and more threads were added to the safety net. Even though I still sometimes physically felt like I would split in two, I knew that I wouldn’t.

There were still tears. But there was laughter. There was still pain. But there was faith. There was love. There was a cohesiveness that I never would have imagined possible in the first hours after.

Step 3: NOURISH AND TONIFY

Once all the other children knew that Daniel was physically dead, spiritual healing was able to begin. It was very hard having two children in one hospital, one child in another hospital, three staying with new friends, and one still in another state. Then it was just one child in one hospital and one in another, four with new friends, and one in another state. Then one child in one hospital, five with new friends, and one in another state. That is how it remained until we began leaving to return home one and three at a time. I took turns spending time between the hospital(s) and the home where others were staying. I certainly did not love the circumstances, but I came to look forward to the time I was being able to spend with each child. Even during the time my youngest daughter and second oldest son were not conscious, it was still good to spend time with them.

Step 4: STIMULATE OR SEDATE

During this time, sedation was certainly used and stimulation was sometimes something to be avoided. My youngest daughter and second oldest son were kept in drug-induced comas for a time in order to allow some healing to begin before regaining consciousness. My daughter was not kept this way as long as my son but it took her longer to actually regain consciousness. Once my son was awake, he had to be given sedatives to help him come off the medication he’d been given for pain. Had any one circumstance been different, it is quite likely that I would have involved tinctures and/or essential oils. When we were all home, I did.

Step 5A: USE SUPPLEMENTS

We really didn’t use any supplements other than herbs for tea and essential oils.

Step 5B: USE DRUGS

The idea was to get everyone back to normal. To this end, some drugs were used but they were discarded as soon as possible and we used only herbs and essential oils.

Step 6: BREAK AND ENTER

My second oldest son had severe skull fractures. The neurosurgeon who worked on him showed me pictures of my son and explained what he had done. Because the dura surrounding the brain had been nicked, it was necessary to make sure there were no bone fragments or other foreign objects with the brain. I would certainly consider that to be breaking and entering. Although my next younger son and youngest daughter sustained serious injuries, neither had to have major surgery.

Using the Six Steps as a guide is helpful in many ways. Specifically, it gives a foundation on which to build and even if not specifically thought of at the time, helps give some perspective. I think knowing about them will help give perspective to many things in my life now that I would not have thought of before.