Hey guys
It's your life coach Alyssa hammond here, and I wanted to talk to you guys about
how to cope when you lose a parent
So let me start by saying if you're watching this because you lost a parent I
feel for you, it is the hardest thing that has ever happened to me and
My dad's been gone for 17 years, and I've never had anything close to
The amount of emotion that I felt when I lost him. And even now when I think about it
I just know when I lost him I felt
so incredibly alone and I
was fortunate enough to have two siblings even.
It still wasn't enough because they were experiencing everything with me at the same time
so I would have given anything in that moment to
have
Someone who had been through it and gotten through on the other side and said it was gonna be okay
so let's just start by saying as
Much as it sucks. Even if it happened years ago it still sucks, and it's always gonna suck
Man, this is such a hard topic
But I'm doing this and I'm not planning it, the way that I do with a lot of video where I kind of have an idea
Of what I'm gonna talk about. I was like
I'm just gonna turn this on and talk about how I got through it
So to give you a little bit of the story my dad died when I was 10
It was 10 days before I was about to turn 11, my sister was 8, and I think my brother was 13
We did not see it coming. We were at a family reunion, and he died in his sleep from something called
Cardiomyopathy which is a heart issue that was never diagnosed. So as a kid who absolutely adored her dad it
Rocked my whole world when this happened, and no one knew because he wasn't diagnosed
So I
Went to bed one night. I didn't even say goodnight to him and
He was gone the next day. my sister found him sleeping in bed
yeah, it rocked my whole world and
He was the best dad. I mean
People who've never even met me, they'll meet me for the first time and they'll say
Your dad was a great man. He really loved his kids. And I don't know if that makes it better, or that much harder because
You know you kind of question like would all this be easier if he wasn't so great? You know when I
See these bad parents who don't care about their kids, and that was just not
the case with him.
So it took me a long time to work through those feelings, um especially the guilt
Because I was a kid, and kids don't think to say good night to their parents
so I just went to bed and
Didn't see him again, and it was something I had to work through in therapy and
Get past that guilt, because I know my dad knew I loved him and he knew how close we were.
So I would definitely recommend seeing a therapist. I tried this therapy called EMDR
Which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing
Google it, it's really fascinating. I don't want to spend a ton of time talking about it
But this therapist realized that when people are having anxiety
attacks their eye movement tends to go up and down so she thought "if I can make them think about this traumatic experience and
and force their eyes to move in the opposite direction that they typically move
Can we kind of reassign meaning to this traumatic experience?" and in my case
Absolutely yes, I think everyone should do EMDR
It absolutely has changed my life, and that's one thing where as a life coach, I
Can only do so much to help sometimes you need to hire a therapist because therapists deal with emotions life coaches
Take people who are already in a pretty decent emotional space, but want to reach peak performance and they help them get there
so seeing a therapist is something I'd really recommend there are a lot of things that I would do differently now than I did as
a kid but I would say just let yourself just wallow in pity for as long as you need because it's better to
Spend three weeks crying and then every other day
Maybe you cry for like the next four months, but you start to get your life back in order
That's better than not processing it and putting up a wall around the people you love
Because I have seen some people who they're scared for that to happen to them again
So they don't want to get connected to anybody else
And that is no way to live. If they're not gonna be here, you should try to live the best life you can
So that you can do them honor. I always try to live my life so that it's honoring my dad
I would never say that it's been a great thing in my life losing my dad. It's been the worst thing, but there are
some benefits of perspective when you go through traumatic things like that when you're little so
Because he's gone, and I want to do things in his honor
It's encouraged me to always stay true to myself to always ask myself if my dad's watching me right now
Would he be proud? My dad was very active in his community
am I doing that? Am I being selfless or am I being selfish, so
Trying to honor him has been a way for me to find a lot of peace in
This whole experience
another thing I would say that is helpful is if you have a dog, dogs are very intuitive and
If you don't have a dog, get one. They have hypoallergenic ones. The amount of joy that
Really any pet brings into your life is
So worth the money that you have to put into feeding them and taking them to the vet once a year. But dogs
Especially are very intuitive to what our needs are and my dog Nolie, she just,
She knows when when I'm sad about something she'll come nuzzle me and it is like the most amazing
experience to feel that compassion from an animal.
And I've definitely heard that about horses and cats. My husband's a physical therapist
And he actually said one of his patients had a therapy hamster
so like like a therapy dog
But they literally would like take the little hamster and like rub its little belly while they were in sessions with him
I think that's great. Whatever you need, but I'm saying feeling a connection with something
other than human is nice because sometimes
Humans just don't know what to say. That was probably one of the hardest things for me to experience, is I was
Basically about to be 11 when it happened none of my friends had been through that
No one knew what to say to me
I mean most of my friends parents haven't even been through that. When you have the ability to
Connect with something without having to use words it can be really powerful. And as much
Pain as there is in losing a parent, there's also a whole community of people who've also lost parents
So my sister I remember the year or two after my dad died- she did a camp for kids who had lost her parents and
they all went and spent a week with each other and they did all these crafts, and they made a quilt and
She has these things that she can look to when she's struggling
so I know um
Certainly I had a kid that was going through that that I wouldn't want to send them to a camp because I want them to
Not feel alone. And with siblings
You know if they're going through it too they may not be the best source of support each of my siblings
Handled it totally differently my dad died my brother
Picked up a book and I feel like I didn't see him for days. He read
I think he read like the whole harry potter series because he just he didn't wanna talk to anybody and
He had every right to do that. None of us knew what to say to each other because there was nothing
I'm gonna emotional, there was nothing we could say to make it better and
That's the most painful thing - having these fleeting moments where you forget and you think I'm going to draw dad a picture
or I'm gonna yell dad's name because the giants game is on and I know he would want to watch that. And
You go to do it, and they're not there
And it is just it's like this open wound. And it's gotten easier
it has I mean in some ways it'll never be easier and in other ways you know time has healed a
Lot of wounds, and it's taught me a lot about
Just knowing that I'm not gonna have the answers to everything
And having to be okay with that
One of the ways I wanted to cope was I wanted to blame someone and I know this sounds so twisted
But I almost wished that my dad if he had to be dead
That he was killed. And I know that sounds bizarre
But I needed someone to be mad at and I had no one to be mad at. I just had to be like
"He's not here anymore
Nothing. I say is gonna change that and I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my life
hanging out with people who don't appreciate their parents who complained because their parents are checking up on them" and feeling this huge disconnect from
people and
just
Feeling like "God, if he took some kind of
over-the-Counter
Medication and it killed him then at least I would have someone to channel all this anger toward"
but there was no one so it just stayed inside. And
through
talking with the therapist, to
talking to anyone that would listen, to
Spending time with you know my childhood dog at the time who was really comforting when I was struggling, to getting involved with community
service and keeping myself busy those things really helped and
Keep telling yourself it's gonna get better. God. It sucks. It sucks so bad. I mean when I was getting married I
Knew my husband was the person I was meant to marry and I kept having this feeling of like why
Do I not want to plan the wedding? This is bizarre. I had a pinterest board
For my wedding. I was I always thought I want to and then when it came time to actually do it I
felt suffocated whenever I would do it. And I just had an epiphany one day that it just didn't feel right doing it without my
Dad you know not having him walking down the aisle and not having him do the first dance. I was never gonna have that and
There's just no way to make that suck less. I really encourage writing out your feelings
Journaling will be really helpful
And I also do this journaling technique where every day. I'll write the date at
The top so we'll say like you know today's july 11th, so alright
July 11th, and then underneath it'll say 2017 and I'll write out one good thing from the day, so
Even if it's like a shit day where I'm really really sad if I find something that was good
You know like I how to get interaction with someone, I found a new show
I like, I was reading a book I really like, or found a great youtube video that helped me
with something out of struggling with.
Having that kind of forces you to get out of that state of pain
but I want to be clear that it's okay to spend as much time in that pain as you need to and
Anyone who tells you that you can't either
Doesn't know because they haven't been there or they are
Being inconsiderate. I really don't see any other way around it. Because anyone who tells you,
especially if they haven't experienced it, that
You need to like 'buck up' that would be the probably the kind of person
I would distance myself from. And I just want you to know there's a whole community of us
Who've lost a parent and I'm here
I'll leave my email below and you can send me an email if you ever want to talk. I'm here and
Check out EMDR
cuz it's life-changing
It like reprocesses your brain
And I think everyone should do it even if they haven't lost a parent. If this message resonated with you, let me know
in the comment section because I'd really like to know if
Just hearing someone else talk about it
Helps even in the slightest bit
and
if you have any other tips for any of the other viewers then I think it'd be great to see you list them because
There's no shortage of ways
To make people feel better, and I'm sure I miss them so um stay strong you guys, and I am so sorry again
I mean, it's just it's just it's
Awful that this has to happen
Especially when people are taken prematurely because you feel like you got the rug ripped out from under you.
And it's very hard to not look at every relationship like that and not worry
that this is gonna happen again? But if you like this kind of content
Let me know, click like, subscribe.
I can do more stuff on death and coping and I'm happy to help if you have other topics you want me to talk about
Leave them in the comment section below, and I'll make sure to get to them. Thanks guys
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