Katja Faber

my story

Links To Other Articles by Katja

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To read my most recent articles published Still Standing Magazine, please follow the links:

 

A Grief Like No Other — November 8, 2018

Secondary Losses – How Long Is Your List? — October 11, 2018

To The Mother Whose Son Killed Mine – Don’t Compare My Grief To Yours — September 19, 2018

My Eyes Still See Yet My Heart Can’t Feel The Colours — August 31, 2018

Releasing Emotions Without Fear Of Judgement — July 21, 2018

 

German readers may care to read Der Tag, an dem mein Sohn umgebracht wurde published in NZZ am Sonntag, 11th August 2017.

 

WRITER’ S PAGE on FACEBOOK — Readers wishing to follow my writer’s page on Facebook can do so at Katja Faber

For all other articles and blog posts, please see posts below.

 

 

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Photo credit: Congerdesign

First Man’s Impact Was Unexpected

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Having planned to take part in #ADayStillStanding with Still Standing Magazine, but unsure how my Monday would look, I was surprised to find myself at my laptop in the early hours of 8th October reflecting on the movie First Man which I had only just seen at the Zurich Film Festival.

Damien Chazelle’s film focuses on Neil Armstrong’s time at NASA and the journey to the moon as seen through his eyes, giving a personal and unique insight into the man and the times. Armstrong’s family were involved in developing the script and extensive research was done so as to depict the behind-the-scenes reality of space travel. Expecting to be transported to the moon and back, to lose myself in cinematic adventure amongst the fuel-charged rocket-ships of the 60s, I was shocked to find that I was thrown back into my grief within minutes of the opening scene.

And that’s because grief never leaves me, so it’s there to catch me when I fall.

This unusual film, depicting the heroes of space and their shaky, mechanical contraptions that jettisoned them away from Earth’s gravity, also showed the audience a side to Armstrong that few know about: his relationship to his family and his grief following the death of his young daughter from cancer. As I watched Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy hold each other whilst their little girl was subjected to radiation, my heart squeezed tight and pushed my grief right back into my veins. Immediately, the flying rockets so beautifully depicted by Chazelle seemed bizarrely irrelevant to what in my opinion was the real story – the loss of a child and the protagonist’s realisation that whatever came thereafter would be over-shadowed by this devastating event. I felt a disconnect with the excitement and tension of the plot that seemingly the other members in the audience were attuned to. By the time the daughter’s casket was lowered into the ground I needed no reminding that my son lay dead in a cemetery but a mere 15 minutes away from where we all sat.

Armstrong and his wife got on with life, and like them, so must I.  There is little choice in this matter. I manage my life, participate in events, interact with others, visibly move forward. Yet all these things don’t for one minute take away the catastrophic and all-encompassing grief which resides in my heart. It is there, whatever the time of day, every second of my existence, ready to make itself felt more strongly, sometimes more gently, but there all the same. The reality is, in the face of such great loss, not even walking on the moon can make us forget the love for our child and the grief we’ll endure the rest of our lives.

 

© Katja Faber 2018

Words That Heal

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Initially, the words that helped me to survive the first couple of years were those written by others who’d walked this path before me. I devoured articles and books on loss, desperate to find connection and the elusive feeling of being less alone. Amazon became my ‘go to’ place; books arrived and were placed on my bedside table, piled high, their pages folded or marked where some sentence had touched me, all read in fits and starts such was my lack of focus and utter fatigue. So now it’s my hope that in finding expression for my own grief through writing, my words will help someone else better understand their loss.

Grief work is hard work and quite frankly, very personal work. How could it be otherwise? It’s no surprise then that I don’t always want to bare my soul and that many bereaved parents choose to keep themselves to themselves. Writing about grief is tough, as is talking openly and frankly about the pain of loss. I have to dig deep and yet be able to reflect; I need to use words to describe what is emotional and undefined; I try to expose what is hidden and taboo so as to bring it out into the world. My loss is an open, bleeding wound that — for reasons that to me feel worthwhile and valid — I choose to share.  I’m of the opinion that connection and understanding are what truly helps those of us navigating this uncharted land. But not all days are ‘sharing’ days, and often my loss feels so very private and intimate that I need to be with it alone. In those moments I shy away from people and stay low for any number of days. In the first years of grief, it was each and every day that my loss was mine and mine alone.

 

Featured photo courtesy of Pexels (Tatiana)

© Katja Faber 2018

Releasing Emotions Without Fear Of Judgement

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When tragedy strikes most of us don’t know how to release our emotions naturally and safely. Instead, we tend to bottle them up. Afraid of being judged by others we hide the agony of our loss. Quite possibly, we’ll scream when no one hears or sob uncontrollably in the car. I know I did and I’m not ashamed to admit it. And my advice to any loss parent would be: scream if you have to! Get it out!

We may be frightened by the intensity of our feelings or perhaps scared of others’ response to our reactions. So all that anger, hurt and hopelessness will be pushed deep into the pit of our stomach where others can’t see our agony raise its head. There it will remain unless we find a healthy way of expressing it.

But why are we so scared of externalizing what’s inside in a natural way? Whose sensibilities do we think we’re sparing in not showing the world the extent of our feelings?

Our society doesn’t do strong emotions, not when they’re negative and indicative of great suffering. It’s a society obsessed with success and happiness. Anything that counters that must be hidden or shunned. If you’re sorrowful, you’d better suck it up, go to therapy or medicate. Really? Why are those the only options for the bereaved? Where’s the advice that points a loss parent in the direction of safe, cathartic, expressions for their grief? How about prescribing a daily dose of shouting in the open air, or iron forging, or digging, or kickboxing? Because as far as I can see, all that emotion must out.

To stand any chance of naturally processing what has happened to us as parents, we need to be able to express what’s inside of us now we’re grieving our child. And to express it safely without fear of rejection.

We learn early on that impulsive outbursts bring with them negative reactions from those around us. As children growing up we are told not to cry or to do away with our anger. This obligation to control childhood experiences that are direct, unfiltered reactions to events which would naturally illicit extreme responses, sets us on the path of having to civilize our instinctive, human emotions. Eventually, we leave childhood behind. We become masters of self-control. So what should we do when disaster strikes? When our child dies? What then?

Society applauds those of us who develop a thick skin and rewards us for being contained and dignified in moments of crisis. Hurrah for the stiff upper lip! Three cheers for the elegant, controlled grieving mother who shows poise and is graciously quiet in moments of stress! No matter if your baby died, your toddler drowned, your daughter was strangled as she walked home alone. Few can cope with convulsive crying. Even fewer want to hear the truth.

“You’re so strong!” was a phrase I heard over and over following the homicide of my son.
“You should go out more,” came the suggestion when I stayed in bed for days, literally grief-stricken.

As if the horror of having had my son brutally killed wasn’t enough, I was also having to deal with others’ expectations as to how I should respond to his death. Did they have a manual I forgot to read? Why did they seem to know so much more about homicide loss grief than I did when it wasn’t their child’s skull that had been smashed?

What I needed was comfort, not advice. Yet advice is what I got. Even the therapist thought she knew more than I did about how I should be feeling.

I was inhibited in fully expressing my anger and sorrow because of my fear of others’ reactions. Instead, I internalized the strongest emotions. Keeping those feelings under control took energy, pushed my blood pressure through the roof and made me ill.

In stressful situations, these suppressed emotions would crash through my armour leaving me and anyone else present in shock by the intensity of my outburst. To this day, my surviving children are able to remember the exact times and places where I totally ‘lost’ it. They laugh about it now, but at the time it was frightening to see their mother have a meltdown in public.

Possibly the most extreme example of my being chastised for not behaving according to polite norms happened when I was faced for the first time with the man who had beaten my son to death. I was expected to follow societal imposed norms, remain impersonal and polite and shake hands. He smirked as he extended his. I refused to touch him. His mere presence made my skin crawl. Afterwards, I was told that my refusal to greet him formally could be interpreted by the defence lawyers as antagonistic. To my mind, this is the world turned upside down.

As a society, we justify this civilising of our animal instincts as necessary because we don’t want people punching each other on the street in an uncontrolled rage. These are the norms of our society. We go along with them, even in grief, because if we don’t we risk becoming social outcasts.

But at what cost? What happens to us as individuals if we repeatedly push away what would otherwise be a natural response to a life crisis such as the death of our child? Why should we not scream and cry and share our sorrow in public? Do we not risk worsening the very symptoms that later require medication and therapy?

I don’t claim to have a solution to how we change this restrictive, inhibiting mindset. Yet I do believe that we need to have an honest dialogue about our needs as loss parents. We need to be frank and willing to counter centuries’ old expectations about how we should behave when our child dies. For our mental and physical health, we need to express what’s really happening inside our very broken hearts.

 

Featured photo courtesy of Pexels (Tatiana)

 

Published in Still Standing Magazine, 21st July 2018

© Katja Faber 2018

 

Purpose

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These two. They give me the courage to be the best version of me.

And,

The one that is missing. The one that is gone. The one, brutally taken from us, all of us, ripped out of our lives, leaving us breathless from lack of air, suffocating like he did, gagging on our grief because the vastness of the horror was too great, too much.

But we try, I try, to rise up against the destruction, the cruel wastefulness of aggression, of hate, of wanton violence, To find a path to healing, through the wasteland we found ourselves in, a way forward, holding my children’s hands, my son in my heart, forward, forward, towards the light.

That gives me purpose, to be his voice where he was silenced. To be the best of me for these two who are finding their own voice again. To be a voice for all those whose words fail them when their hearts are broken as they stumble through the darkness of grief.

 

 

Published on Instagram, 2nd October 2018

©️ Katja Faber 2018

Finding Sanity In The Midst Of The Madness Of Loss

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Putting my story and my son’s life into context was important to me after Alex was killed. The grief was overwhelming. I was so deeply lost in the horror of what had happened and the terrifying thought of the rest of my life without him, that I yearned for something, anything, that would help me grapple with the enormity of his loss.

Oddly enough, or perhaps understandably — it matters not — I decided to do a DNA test as well as start a family tree on MyHeritage, an online site that facilitates the creation of a tree and research into ancestors. I wanted to gain some form of perspective, to see myself as simply another person in a long line of family members, in the hope of gaining insight into what I was going through. This decision to start a family tree quite possibly kept me out of the lunatic asylum. I spent thousands of hours researching my family, and when I say thousands, I do not exaggerate. Night after night, when sleep eluded me and my mind was plagued with nightmarish thoughts of what his last moments must have been like, I would lose myself in online documents that led me further and further back in time. Some branches of my family I was able to trace back to the 8th century, others only as far back as great-grandparents. But the act of giving my brain respite from the grief and my intellect another focus really helped in keeping me sane(ish).

It’s safe to say that the tree, which now stands at over 4500 ancestors, is a testament to the resilience of the human soul to just keep going.

 

Published on Instagram, 31st August 2018

 

©  Katja Faber 2018

Social Media’s Grief Posts

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It’s an inevitable part of social media that we’ll occasionally come across a post that jars and leaves us wondering whether a response is merited. When this happens, I tend to choose the path of least resistance and simply scroll on. However, it does depend on what’s been written and on my mood. Online grief forums, grief Instagram accounts or Facebook bereavement groups are no exception where unsettling statements are concerned. And let’s be clear — I’m not talking about individuals’ own personal accounts where they express whatever they choose or when people write privately held opinions in the comments section below posts. No. What irks me is the platitudes and advice offered up under the canopy of grief expertise that is at best a not-thought-through, mish-mash of psychobabble aimed at the grieving, and at worse, reckless advice.

Believe me, it’s a jungle out there.

When you’re hurting, anything that speaks to you and lifts you up is to be encouraged. For the most part, that’s what grief blog posts, articles and pictorial texts are all about — helping the bereaved deal with their loss by offering them an insight into the grief process and giving them a sense that they’re not alone. Yet, there are times, that what is written makes me wince. In those moments an emoji with rolling eyes doesn’t come close to what’s going through my mind.

Yesterday’s little gem popped up on my Facebook feed and, unusually, I chose not to scroll by. After leaving a polite message in the comments section, I realised that over the last six months there has been an increasing number of quotes in my feed that I didn’t agree with. Worse,  I suspect that some of those quotes or advice could, in fact, increase a loss parent’s suffering. I wondered whether the posts had always been there, yet I hadn’t seen them because I was not attuned to what was being said. But whether they were there before or not, I see them now.

There’s nothing quite like noticing a behaviour you don’t like in others to make you re-assess your own. I myself am a part of this social media stage, with my own blog, Facebook and articles published on a regular basis. I would be mortified to think that anything I wrote has the potential to injure another grieving parent. But that’s not to say it can’t happen.

Misunderstandings can occur, and undoubtedly, everyone’s experience of child loss is so unique that no two people will walk the same path. But I do my utmost to write with care, cross-reference, re-read, and read again before pressing publish. On the occasions that I’ve been unsure as to how an idea will come across because it’s delicate — such as religion — I turn to my trusted child loss tribe and ask for feedback. When it’s a legal matter, I run it by a lawyer because it would be negligent of me not to do so. It’s many years since I worked as a barrister, and however much I may read and research, laws have changed and things have moved on. These exchanges enable me to measure which elements need further clarification. In the absence of an editor, you owe it to your readers to be as concise as you can be. And if ever I write anything that causes distress, let me now.

Those who present themselves as paradigms of knowledge where grief is concerned should be precise when using terms and concepts to illustrate their views. Words are a tool and using them properly is a craft. A throwaway badly expressed idea may cast those of us who are bereaved back into the deepest of despair. Wishy-washy, bland platitudes aimed at ‘likes’ and ‘shares’, or the promotion of DVDs and courses, do little to truly assist those in deep grief. Supporting a bereaved parent with the reality of life post-loss is an honour and a serious undertaking. No individual should enter into it lightly.

In my view, the only thing we the writers and speakers can do is share our own experience of grief in the hope that it helps another. In so doing, we also spread awareness of child loss and foster greater understanding in a society still very much ill at ease with death. Anything more extensive or wide-ranging should be done in consultation with others who are also intimate with grief in order to reduce the possibility of ill-advised counsel. That is the norm, thank goodness, and anything else is the exception. But nonetheless, we’re not yet in a place where a crass statement about grief on social media is so rare as for it to be irrelevant.

 

grief advice on social media

 

Photo courtesy of Boris Smokrov

©  Katja Faber 2018

 

With You When You Awaken; Still There When The Darkness Descends

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Fighting against the reality of child loss won’t lead us to the place through which we must travel: the honest, intimate, soul-crushing acceptance that we’re grieving because our child is dead. That’s what we’re being asked to do in facing this indecent truth. We’re being asked to take the hand of this most unwanted, terrifying teacher called Death and to trust our new and cruel companion. The pain is with you when you awaken and still there when the darkness descends. There is no respite or release from the grinding, relentless anguish of child-loss sorrow. We’re given no option but to walk in grief as we journey through the barren, colourless landscape that is our post-loss existence — life without our child.

The shock of my son’s death left me utterly incapacitated. I could barely function and saw no point to life. Sleep eluded me, panic attacks were the norm. This debilitating, traumatic situation lasted well over three years and, combined with the ongoing judicial process, left me a wreck. At one point I was asked to write a victim impact statement, yet it was all I could do to sit at my computer and remember my password. “Brain fog” is a nice term for what felt like brain meltdown. My body’s exhaustion was like living inside a husk that no longer worked and could barely breathe.

Yet over time, I realized that if I wanted to be whole again I was going to have to accept the reality that was my hell. I’d have to learn to absorb the grief instead of struggling against it. Instead of rejecting this poison, I needed to let it seep into me, to let it flow through my veins. To do otherwise meant I’d never get stronger. It was the denial of my new reality that was causing me to be so seriously ill, not the grief itself.

If I was to survive, grief had to become a part of my essence.

So I ceased to wage war with the devastating truth that my son was dead and I was not, and that my grief would last forever. In that realization, I felt a release: Grief was love and had been right from the start. Only then did I understand why grief had never left my side and never would — It was the love for my child and that was everlasting. The minute I willingly let reality enter my mind, heart, and soul, I began to accept that my life as I knew it was over. It was grief’s poison which contained the essence I needed to heal. It was this that would help me forge a new life.

We cannot do grief work without acceptance, and we cannot learn acceptance without opening ourselves to all that grief offers us, however much we abhor the path we have been forced to travel. This is what Death teaches us: a wisdom that is so profound and long-lasting that it must be learned piece by painful piece. To learn this wisdom, to incorporate it into our broken heart is an agony like no other. I felt I was birthing a new emotional self, and it damn well hurt — unbearably so. One agonizing tiny droplet after another, I had to allow each one to weep into my soul very, very slowly until I was drenched. Only then could I begin to function again as a whole person.

The old me is gone and in its place stands a different me.

I had to be reborn as a different person. I’m a mother who has folded into her grief and continues to mother her still-living children. I’m growing a new life around my loss — not in spite of the grief, but because of it. Grief is my teacher and I shall continue to grow because there is wisdom in the grieving process. Grief needs to reside inside of me so that I have the strength to do the necessary work in rebuilding my life around the loss of my son. And that’s because what gives grief its power is my profound, unconditional, and undying love for Alex.

For us, the child loss mothers that are still standing, grief is the love we carry inside. In the end, it is grief that will ultimately heal us even though our hearts can never let it go.

 

acceptance of grief

 

Feature photo courtesy of Andrej Barnes

 

Published in Still Standing Magazine  June 6th, 2018

 

© Katja Faber 2018

As Shock Subsides You May Dare Ask, What Now?

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Shock is the body’s response to child loss. It shields you temporarily from the enormity of what has happened. It may last only a matter of hours or perhaps several months. Yet at some point, the shock will subside and like a raging tide sucked back out to the sea it’ll reveal the corroded horror of your loss. In its wake will be left something alien and even more frightening — the realization that this loss is here to stay and will be with you for the rest of your life. And when that moment comes, you may well ask, what now?

Every single parent who’s ever lost a child, whether it be through illness, accident, homicide, or suicide will at some point wonder how they are meant to carry on. It’s a terrifying question they must all dare ask.

 

 

I was no different. Nothing could have prepared me for shock’s withdrawal. The carnage left behind defied comprehension. Without shock’s protection, the reality of the loss struck terror into my heart — Death’s ugly tentacles stretched gruesomely towards a horizon so void of colour or beauty it would have crushed even the bravest of hearts.

How was I meant to survive such savagery? Endure this agony? A life without my son?

Question after question came leaving me breathless with fear. No one could help me. No one could reach me. I felt alone in this catastrophic landscape that was to be the rest of my life. The feeling of eternal loss coupled with the suffocating non-life I was now living made me go insane — crazy with grief, incomprehension, anger. The questions tormented me, drenching me in anguished sweat. But one above all drove me ever deeper into despair — ‘what now?’

Believe me when I say I had no answers. Neither did the therapist, counsellor or priest. Friends and family sat with me, held me, gave advice, cried. But none of it helped, not with finding an answer, a way forward, a means to survive. I couldn’t conceive of a tomorrow, let alone a forever. Not without my child. Not like this.

But as the first year grated wretchedly by, and my weary body entered the second year of traumatic grief, the still unanswered question of ‘what?’ changed to ‘how?’. There was a shift in perspective as life’s incessant clamouring denied me the chance to hide and forced me to adjust my focus. What’s more, as a co-victim of homicide the reality of the killer’s arrest and pending prosecution forced me to sit up and take part in life. I had no choice but to turn ‘existence’ and ‘survival’ into what others perceived as ‘a life’.

And to my surprise, this so-called ‘life’ turned tentatively into a new life, painfully, slowly, but nonetheless, it began to happen. In forcing myself to take part in life outside of my deep grief, I stopped merely existing and began to absorb the light and laughter around me. Small, thimble-sized moments of joy began to breathe air into my suffocating sorrow.

I realized that I could feel both grateful and sad simultaneously. I could mourn my son yet love him with all my heart; I could cry at the loss of my boy and yet laugh when remembering his antics; I could feel all the emotions within my heart and still be OK. Grief taught me that I didn’t have to make any choices where my feelings were concerned because I could have them all.

The key to living life again was to connect to my feelings, each and every one of them. Even though shock had initially protected me, it was without it that I’d rebuild a life.

In a way, it was self-care that softened the edges to the horror and mellowed my response to the loss. I learned to be kind to myself. I gave myself the very thing I wished others gift me: being present in the space of my grief without expectation or fear. It was agonizingly painful to sit with grief and stare at the vastness of a loss that lasts forever, but in so doing, I realized that my grief was so wide and deep that it allowed for all my emotions to inhabit it all at once. Grief was not Death, it was very much alive and inside of me. I could evolve with it and change with it.

In responding with compassion to my loss, I allowed myself to take small steps away from the trauma of Alex’s murder to a state of equilibrium. I made a commitment to myself to learn about my own grief, to actively make time for reflection so as to rebuild a new life.

There is no single answer to ‘what now?’ But there is a painful path of self-discovery which will show us how to live again where sorrow, gratefulness, and acceptance can reside in equal measure.

 

Published in Still Standing, 19th May 2018

 

feature photo courtesy of Dean Moriarty Pixabay

The Reflection In The Mirror

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I recently read an article by a child-loss mother who wrote of how she no longer recognized herself in the mirror. Her achingly beautiful words stopped me in my tracks, and I was transported back to the days of early grief when the agony of losing my son was so great that it felt as if I was dying from the inside out. I too had looked in the mirror and been shocked at my own reflection. It appeared so different — I was a ghoul, my eyes devoid of emotion, pits of nothingness as if my body had been emptied of the soul. My skin was ashen, my face deformed, twisted by the devastation of losing my child.

It’s hard to imagine such a transformation taking place within a few hours. I knew what I felt on the inside, but it took my reflection in the mirror to confront me with the externalization of my suffering. It shocked me, seeing this woman I didn’t recognize staring back at me from the bathroom cabinet. She frightened me, she looked crazed, she wasn’t me.

And yet she was me. This was whom I’d become: withered, decrepit, someone I didn’t know. I’d lost my identity, the essence of who I was. As horror and fear had gripped my heart, the woman I had been had disappeared. In her place stood a mother suffocated by death who didn’t care if she lived.

It’s the stuff of nightmares, to wake up one day and discover you’ve turned into someone else, a monster, a zombie. That no matter how much you look, how intensely you stare into those haunted eyes you can’t perceive your soul’s light. What I saw was someone who was dead but still breathing. And to be honest, that’s how I felt. It was as if I’d had all my limbs amputated without anaesthesia and my innards ripped out and been told I’d survive. Excruciating, relentless pain in a body tormented because it could not lie down and die.

The devastation wrought on my heart was there for all to see. And if I dared to look, I too was privy to my own annihilation. But unlike the mother who had written the article that had made me weep, I didn’t avoid the bathroom mirror, I didn’t flee in terror, I didn’t turn away from my reflection there or anywhere else. I willed myself to scrutinize, to stare back at this woman I didn’t know but who I’d become. I didn’t shy away from my destroyed self and dared myself to stand before this frightening image and absorb what I surveyed. Like the shocked victim at the scene of an accident, I gazed, horrified and incredulous. I had to find out what had happened and see the ugly truth, whatever the price.

In the end, it was the sight of my disfigured face in the mirror which helped me most to accept the truth. And that truth was that my son was dead.

 

reflection in the mirror afte loss of a child

 

© Katja Faber 2018