Honor The Loss & Create Legacy

Hello & welcome to the Grief Unplugged podcast. I am your host, Heather D. Horton.  Grief Unplugged is a podcast that frees professional women from the blockages of unresolved grief to find purpose in their pain so that they are able to embrace their new “normal” and sustain productivity at work and in life.

In my three prior episodes, I have provided you with a vast toolkit of resources to begin shifting you from grief to a place of gratitude when you are ready. You know that giving yourself permission to grieve is fundamental to moving forward. Next, I showed you how to stand firm in your faith and face your fears because you are not inadequate as Marianne Williamson describes in her poem but you are greater than you could ever imagine because of where you are right now. We talked about what therapeutic support means and how you have to be intentional about it to support you on this journey.  And lastly, you learned how to leverage your emotions, invite them to tea or your favorite non-alcoholic beverage and then escort them out the door and take back your power. 

Now, I want you to take the next step and start to transition from focusing on the death/loss you experienced to remembering and honoring the life of the person you loved or the thing or situation that no longer exists.  Think about and focus on the essence of who your loved one was or what that special thing or experience meant to you, the values the person or thing instilled in you, the accomplishments gained by having experiences with that person or thing, the lessons learned, gifts shared, memories treasured and the legacy the person or thing left with you. 

When you begin to think about showing gratitude to a life lived or a situation experienced without someone prompting you to do so, you are beginning to shift yourself from grief to gratitude.  Remember that the reason you grieve is because you loved that person, thing or situation.  They added value to your life and validated you.   Grief can also teach us something about life if we allow it to.  Repeat.  I believe that after listening to my prior episodes and really applying the principles I discussed in your life, you may now be more open to this revelation of honoring the loss.  So, I want to ask you a question - What can you use or what did you take from the experience you gained after having spent time with that dear deceased loved one or dealing with that specific situation? 

Honoring the story about your loved one or your experience is synonymous with opening up to grief.  When you are able to talk about it, healing occurs more successfully and rapidly.  I want you to think of a way to deposit the value that you received from your loved one or experience into someone else’s life to not only help them to move forward but also to help you move forward.  There is a quote from Thomas Campbell that says to live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.  Repeat.  If the memory that you cherished about the person or that thing still lives in your heart, that person still lives with you or there is still hope despite your situation.  After my mother passed away, my sister and I sold her house and divided all my mother’s remaining possessions amongst the two of us.  We had given away tons of clothes, home goods, furniture, etc. but kept the things that were most sentimental to us. 

Among the items I kept were my mother’s wedding gown and her wedding ring.  I moved at least four times after her death but I never managed to let go of much of anything each time I moved.  Normally when people move, they tend to declutter somewhat so that they can start afresh in the new space.  That was not me. I wanted to hold on to my mother’s things for as long as I could as a reminder of her and the memories we once shared.  Instead of decluttering, I just always rented an apartment home large enough to accommodate my things and her things that I took from my childhood home. And I carried around those items for 10 years.  Finally when I moved back to Washington, DC in December 2014, 9 years after my mother’s passing, I felt it was time to determine if I really needed all the things I cherished from my family home so that I could begin to start to live in the present rather than the past.  I specifically rented a space that was half the size I would normally rent to force myself to declutter to make space for other people and situations to come into my life.  I became so overwhelmed by the lack of space and the amount of clutter and unpacked boxes around me that I hired a professional organizer in 2015 so I wouldn’t lose my mind because I had to bring my A-game to work in this new position in the C-suite. 

When in doubt, hire a professional is my motto.  Remember I said in an earlier episode that I realized my grief experience was God-orchestrated.  Well, my organizer’s mother worked in a ministry that collected old wedding gowns used to make funeral gowns for preemies since they were not sold in stores.  While we were decluttering, my organizer waited patiently before presenting me with the opportunity to repurpose my mother’s wedding gown.  Once he had learned more about me, my upbringing and what my mother meant to me, he encouraged me to donate my mother’s wedding gown to his mother’s ministry. 

My mother was a supreme seamstress so acting on this opportunity was a no-brainer.  My mother’s dream was to be a fashion designer.  She lived in the pageant world for a few years before committing her life to help students advance in the classroom and being the best mother my sister and I could ever have.  As a mother to us and so many others, she taught and led, my mother, exuded servant leadership and showed unconditional love to any and everyone that graced her presence. 

I realized the moment my organizer shared that opportunity with me that this was the reason I still had my mother’s wedding gown 10 years later.  To donate her dress to such a cause would be something she would have felt honored to do if she were still living.  I also realized that I was not ready to let go of the dress until that moment.  We took pictures of the dress so I could remember it in its original splendor.  When he left my house that day, it felt weird that I no longer had that box, but I focused on the legacy it would carry in serving someone else’s need.  Then, months later on a day that I was having a major grief burst, uncontrollable outburst of tears that happens with or without a trigger,  on a day I just wanted to see and talk to my mother, my organizer sent me a screenshot of a FB post where his mother posted a picture of my mother’s original wedding gown alongside the funeral gown she’d made for a preemie that had transitioned.  It was truly the highlight of my day, although bittersweet.  That picture helped me move one step closer to a place of gratitude for having experienced the wonderful love, the life, and legacy of my mother, Cherral Ann Jack Horton. 

She would have been 70 if she were still here physically.  In what way can you make someone else’s life better in honor of your loved one?  What lessons have you learned as a result of the loss or grief that you experienced that you can incorporate into your own life?  Has your grief/loss taught you anything about forgiveness?  How can you take that lesson forward on your journey?  What action step can you take to build the legacy for which you want to be remembered? 

Another way to honor legacy is to create rituals of remembrance.  You can create personal, family or community rituals to honor your loved one or commemorate a life experience that reminds you of a lesson learned as a result of your grief/loss that can help others.  For personal rituals, do what feels right for you.  A personal ritual for me is to go to the cemetery every time I travel home to Baton Rouge, LA to change the flowers on my mother’s gravesite.  I bring flowers in her favorite color home with me.  Her favorite color was yellow. I go to Southern Memorial Gardens and I clean the area around the gravestone, I change the flowers, and I sit down and just have a conversation with her and reminisce.  I can’t buy her beautiful clothes and jewelry any longer, but I can adorn her gravestone with the most gorgeous flowers just the same. 

It gives me such peace just to be there even though I know her soul is with the Lord.  A family ritual that my sister and I just started was making my mother’s famous potato salad for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.  It was a recipe that my mother never wrote down.   Every time we had a family gathering, my mother would make pounds and pounds of potato salad.  I know because my sister and I would have to peel and cut up all the potatoes and help stir the pot.  For years after my mother’s death, I had no desire to make or eat potato salad. 

In my opinion, no one’s potato salad could ever taste as good as my mother’s potato salad.  Then all of a sudden two years ago, my sister and I were both home for Christmas.  We bought all the ingredients from the store that we thought we remembered in our mother’s potato salad.  We put our heads together and we were able to create my mother’s recipe impeccably.  So now we continue that ritual annually and get praise from our family members that we are outstandingly carrying on the torch. I even make my mother’s potato salad by myself as my dish when I attend holiday gatherings I am invited to in honor of my mother so others who never met her can experience her to some degree.  There was definitely love in that potato salad.

One thing I desire to accomplish as a community ritual is to create an endowment in memory of my mother to the Southern University College of Agriculture, Family and Consumer Sciences to honor her legacy as a distinguished graduate of our alma mater so that some young lady or young man can realize her/his dream of becoming a fashion icon as my mother always dreamed.  Focusing on the legacy left with you is a vital part of helping to begin to create your new normal and sustain your productivity at work and in life.  It gives you something else to live for.  

I want to thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you will join us for our next episode of the Grief Unplugged podcast.  I truly believe that community = strength.  So, if you want to engage further with our community, you can join our private FB group, Professional Women Transcending Grief or if you are interested in one-on-one support, email me at [email protected] to get more information about my 90-day intensive grief coaching program, Reclaiming Your Power.  

To stay engaged with the podcast or learn more about my products and services, access my website at www.heatherdhorton.com. Also, please subscribe to the podcast so you know when the next episode is available and feel free to post a review, let me know what topics you want to hear discussed and share the podcast with your tribe.  Until next time, keep moving forward.