Grief helps are truly needed by all who are experiencing bereavement!

 No one is truly prepared for the gut wrenching experiences that comes with grieving and the loss of a loved one! 

 Our minds and our memories reach a heightened level of overload that often we have an extremely difficult time coping with grief. Grief and loss are only a true learned experience; no one prepares you for it. We are initiated and helped in facing and understanding grief and loss by steps we see our parents, our friends and acquaintances go through in similar stages of grief. When it hits us directly grief and bereavement takes a new form known only to those who find themselves in the middle of grief loss. Healing from this process takes time, sometimes a lifetime. There are grief support programs, experts on helping one move beyond grief and loss, and grief and loss books that all can help us cope. Positive reminders of memories through art can also encourage us to move beyond grief.

 Life is tempered by our outlook and our outlook is an ever changing metamorphosis of our perspectives. What you thought would be there for you, what you spent years insuring, working for or building, vanishes, moves or needs an over demanding attention. We commit our lives; spend years at the same place, sink roots into communities, follow infinite traditions, and think we have happiness, peace, and a situation that will last. We give ourselves, our hearts, our mind, body, souls and material possessions only to see evaporation of commitment and covenants. Our minds tell us one thing and our hearts another.

 Our memories are so vivid that the landscape stirs up heat, cold, images and emotion. Everyday is a progression of moving forward in time while almost simultaneously processing events and actions that have brought us to this very point. Every new relationship floods with caution, care and concern. Every experience is tempered with doubt, fear and countless positive and negative questions. We see the flow of the past move before us and the swing of feelings and emotions battle constantly against what might have been and what is. Often our efforts are impeded due to the grip that comes over us when reminded of situations, events, people and our experiences interacting with them.   

 As we step along the pathways, we encounter life’s nuisances that change us. We spend years building a relationship, becoming one with another or trying to give our very best to teach and nurture. We step in for others whose role or position it was to be there, but due to illness, other responsibilities or choice, left a void. We have given till exhaustion. We’ve received, till our joy cannot be exceeded.

 The one surety that we all believe will never come knocking on our door is death. This curse has taken from us our very hearts and souls. It has moved among us choosing to deliver heart wrenching grief. It has ended relationships, many of which gave us our life, our meaning our existence. It plays no favorite and takes no pity. It single handedly affects our memory and carves out a singular position in our mind. No matter if it was sudden or stayed a course of coping over a period of time, it leaves us empty with feelings of being alone. It causes suffering and pain, grief beyond pain. It comes like a thief and steals and leaves you longing forever for that which has been taken.

 Wikipedia, the internet’s free encyclopedia expresses, “Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of something or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event.”

 No one understands and no one can offer enough to take the memories and experiences and interactions that have caused you to love and give your heart, body, soul, and mind. No one can touch what you experience deep in your heart. The healing ointment, salve or balm you so long for is not to be found. For grief has come and set up housekeeping.

 Yet in the midst of this constant pain is that same tempering an ever changing metamorphosis of our perspectives being worked on by time. Though the answer may not be what you need or what you are looking for or even true answers to the questions asked. The shelves of doubt, fear, anxiety, and loss have things added to them each day. The glimpses of life, people, places, things, and positive memories of life experiences, are as bottles of the ointments we so desperately desire.

 It is these very positive memories that can so affect the on going process of time and the wonderful balm as it slowly soothes our hearts and minds. Art can so influence you during this grief and loss process. Once the funeral memorial has taken place and for others time seems to settle back to some sense of normalcy, it may be at the right point to consider helping yourself or helping someone with their grief loss.  You may want to take an assessment or evaluate inventory as you have come to deal with physical changes in your living quarters. Look at the pictures, the memorials, the memories. Evaluate what you are seeing and what you’ve seen over and over each and every day. Experts highly recommend new memorials, new things that transpose your mind to places and memories and encounters you have had with that loved one. Art can do this, art can help. Whether it is a new painting, new graphic, or a photo composition composite that builds and takes your most cherished memories and brings them together in a positive work for you to experience every day of your life, these are necessary and helpful in coping with grief.

Here are two excellent sites dealing with grief “helping grieving”, www.helpguide.org and “what helps grief”, www.niu.edu.

 Life is better through art and to have art for your heart working for you can make a huge difference. I have known those whose daughter was taken from them to bring this type of memoriam with them to give them inclusion during family gatherings. I have seen the tears of joy as positive memories have burst over the cheeks of warm heartfelt faces. I have heard the expressions and the deep words straight from the heart of those that were touched profoundly. I have heard as others have passed on feelings and told their friends and family how much this helped them. I have had requests for additional pieces so that other family members could experience what they had experienced for days to come. This art has helped these to cope, to live, to heal and to move forward without forgetting and while honoring their loved ones memories. There’s no question the need and the power of these pieces to enhance a positive process of dealing with grief.

There is so much pain, so many empty emotions and so many questions left unanswered that anything that can be done to help our memories in dealing with grief should be done. Positive thoughts, positive memories, positive actions feed our very soul and help us heal both physically and mentally. Acquire art for your heart and gather seeds to nurture and grow and help you on a positive way to remember, honor and cope. Do it for yourself and do it for someone you care for, someone you know who is undergoing this painful ordeal. Life is better through art.

 Find some of the Grief Helps that we have created which we has seen and experienced firsthand which have truly made a difference at www.paint-tings.com.