Walk With Jude every day

So what does Walking With Jude every day really mean? It can mean what ever you wish. This is your day and your life. But, if you have been through the previous 5 steps, I am sure you will have noticed some areas of your life that could maybe use some attention. Perhaps it is your health, your finances or your relationship.

What has happened with the miscarriage will change your life forever. You will always remember the day it happened and what lead up to it. The raw feelings do soften with time, but never go away. Each monthly period acts as a reminder of what we were not able to have. But taking one step at a time will help to get through. This is a loss and should be treated as such. You may think that you will walk with this pain every day, but that is not always the way.

The following is a suggestion of what you may want to look at and perhaps do something about when you feel ready.  Our grief takes time to heal and we need to wait until the time feels right. If you start today and it feels too much, wait a while. Experiences of other step programmes, has shown this type of process can work and we need to do this in our own time for our own reasons. We are not reinventing the wheel, so much of this is very simple.

Let’s first look at what motivates us or not. Or put another way, what motivates us to change our habits and behaviours. The greatest motivator for most of us appears to be pain or loss. We almost have to hit rock bottom to be able to find the reasons to change or move outside of our “comfort” zones. For some it can be a sickness, a divorce, a financial crisis or as in the case of pregnancy loss, the death of a loved one. Sometimes the sheer desperation of living our lives can be a motivator to change. Easier said than done I know. Do we really have to, “feel the pain to feel the gain “. Unfortunately the answer seems to be yes. Why is it that we seem to be just “wired” this way? May be its so just our way of finally surrendering.

After a miscarriage our motivation is often what saves us. It gets us up in the morning, to shower and maybe go to work. It gets us through the day. A lack of motivation is not necessarily a lack of character. It can be just where we are today and this can be exactly where we are supposed to be.

So the challenge is, how are you going to use your pain and loss to take a step forward?

The pain we feel after a miscarriage can be our catalyst to change. But, we need courage and motivation to change our behaviours. It’s the behaviours that create the habits.

What we do every day is largely dictated by our habits. In fact if we didn’t have habits we would spend our days thinking about every task we do. Getting up in the morning, bathing, dressing and even how we take our coffee are habits. Habits make room for us to think about the important stuff.

However habits can develop into something that feeds our controlling, blaming and guilt. We also live in a society that says we need to break these bad habits and there is a plethora of information on how to do it. So we spend our lives trying to break these bad habits and dealing all too often with the subsequent guilt. Alternatively we just ignore them as if they don’t really exist, they are not that big a deal (sounds like denial to me). For many this is the case with their health and it’s not until something serious happens that we make a change and then sometimes that doesn’t happen either.

Much of the literature regarding habits discusses how we need to feel success in order stand a chance of breaking our bad habits and replacing them with good ones. No wonder we walk around with so much guilt. My opinion is that we can try to change our habits by using success, but there little that motivates us as much as personal pain.

There are 3 areas we can concentrate on for Step 6.

• Goals and what we do with them
• Dealing with grief  
• Some kind of journaling or sharing.

Goals

The best way to achieve our goals however big or small is to state what they are and then turn them over to a power greater than ourselves. Often we try to control our goals, through manipulation and denial. How many of us start the beginning of a year and say we are going to achieve a big goal this year. We know what we want, but have no real idea of how to get there. We try for a few weeks or months and then start to fail. Then comes the inevitable “I can’t do this”.

So start small and just practice for today. It is perfectly acceptable to also have long term goals to aim for, but live for today, this will bring you closer to want you are wanting.

Perhaps setting short term easy goals like, be in bed by 10pm, finish one chore every day and log in to the Walk With Jude Forum to connect with others. Don’t overload yourself with too much and remember tomorrow is another day.

For long term goals like changing a job or building a relationship, break the goals into small parts. When you have lost a pregnancy it is difficult to look too far ahead. So again live your goal just for today.

Self care is incredibly important and we don’t mean a visit to a spa or gym. Every day sit or lie in bed for a few minutes and look where you are today, how far you have come. Take a look at Judes Journal for a weekly slogan. When the day is getting too much a slogan such as “Just for Today” can help. The slogans can help to replace damaging messages with healthy ones and bring some inner peace.

Finally, have a place to note your achievements, get feed back from others on how you are doing or just discuss where you are with a friend. Even when it’s not going well.

Grief

The Walk With Jude 7 steps are designed not to dwell too much on the issue of grief. Not that it isn’t important, it is. We are trying to move towards recovery and dealing with grief is a part of that, but not the only part. Signing up for a local grief programme can help this part of your recovery.  Grieve for the what ifs and the lost hope, grieve each hope separately. There is a need to talk about your child loss for as long as you feel it necessary.

JOURNALLING/SHARING

Journaling doesn’t have to come in the traditional forms we all think of. There are computer based journals, journals online etc. The whole point is to get the thoughts and feelings out of our minds and give us the space to think and recover. Some people have a recovery journal for the positive parts of their recovery and a junk journal for all the negative or angry thoughts, or mental junk they just can’t say out loud. As your recovery progresses there may be less in the junk journal and more in the recovery journal.

Take an honest look every few days at where you are, don’t dwell too long on the failures, but put these thoughts somewhere else. Leaving them to race around your head will not help your recovery. This is called “stinky thinking”.

Ask, who am I, is this who I want to be, even if the answer is no and you are not sure what to do about it write it down anyway

Try asking,

• What motivates you?
• What interests you?
• What would you do more of if you could?
• What do you want?
• What do you care about?
• What did you care about prior to this event?
• Where do you want your life to go?
• What brings you true joy?
• What are your hopes and dreams today?

Take your higher power with you every day, find that quiet place inside. When ever you are in a stressful situation take a step to the right and let it come with you, open the car door to let it in, make room at the table. If necessary ask your higher power to keep you safe that day and stay by your side.