Mindfulness and Grief: Finding Peace in Loss

The last week was filled with grief for me because my dog of nearly 16 years passed away. She was very old and ill, and we had to put her down. I had never had to euthanize a pet before so this was even more challenging. Looking back, I saw the many ways that my mindfulness practice helped me get through it.

Grief is a part of life for all of us at some point. It can be a hard thing for lawyers to experience because the emotion often comes with a huge lack of control. There is no way to make grief easy, but I experienced this week that mindfulness can help us avoid making it worse.

Here are the things I noticed this week as I let my mindfulness training help me work my way through grief.

Mindfulness Can Help You Not Make Grief Worse

As I sat with my scared sick dog in the vet’s office, I was pretty sad and scared too. And you know what? That was a perfectly appropriate response to the situation.

Mindfulness isn’t about trying to turn situations into ones that we would prefer. Instead, it is about accepting how things are. I was sad in that moment because it was a sad moment. The good news, as I experienced, was that I didn’t make it worse by trying to pretend.

As we all know, sadness is not a pleasant emotion. But from experience I can say that it feels better than being sad and trying to pretend I am not. Sadness also feels better than being sad and ignoring reality or resisting my feelings.

Acceptance is perhaps the hardest part of mindfulness to learn because it means we have to confront the parts of life that we may not like. The gold on the other side, though, is that we get to see and feel the peace that comes with not making things worse.

Image with quote from blog post about mindfulness and grief that says "Sadness is not a pleasant emotion, but it feels better than being sad and trying to pretend I am not."

Mindfulness Can Help You Avoid Overwhelm

Another reason mindfulness helps with grief is that it can help you manage overwhelm. Sometimes when grief comes, we don’t have any choice but to be overwhelmed. Of course, nobody should fault themselves for feeling that way either.

In my situation, though, I really needed to avoid overwhelm because I wanted to stay as steady as possible to help my dog. As sad as the situation was for me, it was much scarier for her. In addition, I was her person. She had bonded to me and so I wanted to be a support for her.

As I sat in the vet’s office holding my dog, tears and sadness came. But I used my breath to ground and soothe myself. I kept my attention in my body, feeling the weight of her body on me as I waited. The situation was sad but I was able to stay in my window of tolerance as I experienced it. This helped me help my dog as I faced what I needed to face without overwhelm.

Responding to Grief with Kindness

One of the important ways that mindfulness can help us avoid overwhelm is that it isn’t just training clear awareness but kind awareness. In times of difficulty in mindfulness practice, we train the skill of responding to ourselves with care and concern instead of judgment and criticism.

This kindness helps us see clearly and opens the possibility for us to take wise and skillful actions. As I sat in the vet’s office with little control in a sad situation, kindness came out automatically.

I tried to support my husband and let him support me during the experience. As I mentioned, I was focused primarily on reducing my dog’s fear and pain. And I showed appreciation for the staff at the vet’s office and let their show of kindness affect me.

The hard reality is that kindness does not fix all problems. Kindness didn’t make the situation less sad, but it did make it bearable. In that hard moment, I was glad that I and the others in the room responded to the grief with kindness.

Image with quote from blog post about mindfulness and grief that says "Kindness does not fix all problems, but it can help to make a hard situation bearable. "

Remembering the Good Supports Equanimity

When I first started exploring mindfulness, I was confused about equanimity. In times of grief, the idea of equanimity – not being thrown off balance – feels like it doesn’t make sense. How can we be nonreactive in a situation where we are clearly sad?

Years of practice have helped me see the equanimity does not mean that we don’t feel things deeply. Instead, it means that we can allow ourselves to just feel. By this, I means we can feel how we feel without attaching more onto it, blocking it, or clinging to it.

One way that I find equanimity in challenging times is by coming back to the things and people in my life that are good. In times of grief, this can be hard. Sometimes sadness can make us want to stay sad or reach for things that are sad.

As I left the vet’s office, though, I couldn’t help but see the good in the situation. My dog had died, but she had lived a very long and mostly healthy life. She died surrounded by her family and caring medical providers and she was not in pain long.

This recognition helped me see that this sad situation, like so many others in life, was also infused with joy, kindness, and good memories. In hard times, remembering the good is essential. I was glad my mindfulness practice helped me remember it on that sad day.

Mindfulness Practice Cultivates Kind Attention When You Need It Most

By no means can a blog post with a few points about mindfulness wave grief away like a magic wand. And I don’t claim that mindfulness practice can do that either. But it can help. Sometimes during hard times, even a little bit of help and a little bit of kind attention can go a long way. With mindfulness practice, you can cultivate kind attention so it is there for you when you need it most.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.

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Lessons from My Lawyer Dad that Could Have Come from a Meditation Teacher

This post was originally published a couple of years ago. I read it again and it still rings true. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads of all kinds and father figures out there!

My lawyer dad doesn’t know a thing about mindfulness, but he’s still one of the best meditation teachers I have ever had. He’s steady, hard-working, kind, and decent. He’s not closed off to new ideas, but he favors tradition. In this way, he has rarely sought out new practices and approaches to help manage his life.

Dad worked as a lawyer for or with local governments his whole career and he loves things like procedure, budgets, and finance. As an introvert, he’s rarely the life of the party, but people listen when he talks because they know he thinks first. He was picked on in school because he grew up on a farm in a small town called Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, so he usually prefers not to stand out.

My Lawyer Dad Was Not into Meditation but He Taught Me Good Lessons

For these reasons, my dad would never seek out information about mindfulness and he has never tried meditation. Dad only knows that mindfulness has helped me quite a lot in my life and it makes me happy to teach and write about it.

You know what? That’s just fine. In the Pali canon, it is said that there are 84,000 doors to enlightenment. I take that to mean that we have options and various interconnected winding paths that can lead us to growth and fulfillment as long as we stay open to learning from what comes to us along those paths.

My dad doesn’t know a thing about meditation. Still, as one of my first mentors in life, he prepared me to benefit from it. Many of the lessons he taught me are similar to those I learned in my meditation practice or from meditation teachers. In honor of Father’s Day and to celebrate my lawyer dad, I am sharing them with you here.

Image with quote from the blog post about mindfulness and the importance of openness in family and professional life

1. Simple is good.

My dad’s favorite ice cream is vanilla. His favorite snack is saltine crackers. His beverage of choice: ice water. Sometimes he mixes things up but he usually keeps things simple. Sometimes this simplicity can be magical.

He makes the best fried chicken I have ever had anywhere and he doesn’t bother with the Colonel’s 11 secret herbs and spices. His recipe is just salt, pepper, and flour. That’s it.

In my years of meditation, I’ve adopted the same approach. I’ve tried lots of different styles and practices. Most of the time I just like to sit and relax into the silence. I’m so glad I learned early on from my dad that simple is good.

2. It’s okay to be quiet.

If you are a meditator, it helps if you have at least a decent relationship with silence. When I teach about mindfulness, people often ask me if I am naturally calm. I tell them, emphatically, that I absolutely am not. But I have one secret advantage: I love silence. Silence isn’t lonely to me. It’s peaceful. It makes me feel at home.

I’ve never had trouble with silence because my dad always liked it too. He often drove with the radio turned off. He would read for hours on end. In a world that constantly wants to make noise, my dad taught me that it was okay just to stop and be still. That’s perhaps the first lesson that any new meditator needs to learn, so thanks dad.

A quote about how meditation is a practice for life so there is no need to rush results

3. Don’t be a martyr.

I’ve written before about struggling after the birth of my first daughter because she was tongue-tied and I couldn’t breastfeed her. During that time, I remember my dad saying this to me:

Claire, you will have her whole life to make sacrifices for her. I don’t have any doubts that you will be willing to do that most of the time. You don’t have to try to make all the sacrifices all at once right now.

Achiever types like us lawyers love to set standards and meet them. That tendency can easily turn to martyrdom if we aren’t careful. It can also show up in meditation practice. So, remember this lesson from my dad: you have a whole life to practice. You don’t have to do it all at once. Trust that you will make the right choices as you go along and give yourself some grace.

4. Fear is a part of life.

My dad was a successful and respected civil servant with decades of experience. After he retired, he went into private practice, just a few years before I graduated from law school. I remember sharing with my dad that I was scared about business development and my dad gave me the best response possible: he admitted that he was scared of this too.

To see someone who had accomplished so much admit that he was afraid helped more than any pep talk that simply told me “you can do it.” It helped me understand that fear is just a part of life and it has nothing to do with your competence or chances of success.

As you start meditating, you may think that you “get over” or “advance beyond” difficult emotions. Not so in my experience. As human beings, we never get over things like this no matter how hard we work or how awesome we are. But, as my dad helped me see, fear is a part of life, but it helps when you can share it.

A quote from the blog post about how mindfulness can help us persist through disappointments and hardships

5. Don’t quit just because your ego gets bruised.

I loved basketball growing up and as a very tall kid I was pretty good at it. In high school, though, the competition caught up with me and my coordination and skill didn’t grow at the same pace as my height. I had an injury my sophomore year that benched me all season. My tryouts during junior year didn’t go well and, though I missed getting cut, I ended up on the JV team.

I was so ashamed that I was in a pit of despair for a week and contemplated quitting. My dad told me that I didn’t have to play but that I shouldn’t quit just because I was mad or felt embarrassed. He reminded me that basketball was a sport and was, you know, supposed to be fun.

I ended up deciding to play and had so much fun with the younger players. As team captain, I was able to be a leader in a way I never had before. That season was one of the best sports experiences I ever had because of this opportunity to lead.

In our meditation practice, we may get upset when we struggle because it hurts our ego when we find we can’t do it perfectly or advance as quickly as we’d like. Of course, if you can keep going, you may learn an entirely different lesson than the one you started out to discover.

6. Any moment can be a teachable moment.

I was a kid who asked a lot of questions. Deep questions, usually starting with the word “why.” It didn’t matter how out of the blue it was. It didn’t matter if my dad was cooking dinner or working in the yard. He didn’t skip a beat. He’d answer the questions and a lot of time throw some back at me to force me to think through the issue myself.

Lots of meditation teachers will tell you that any moment can teach you about yourself if you keep your mind and heart open. In the same way, my dad’s constant comfort with questions and unwavering willingness to teach showed me that any moment in my life could be a learning moment.

A picture wishing everyone a happy father's day

Though for many, meditation can feel strange at first and many may worry that the practice may change them. In my own experience, I have found that meditation didn’t change me but allowed me instead to connect more deeply with who I really was. This is why it’s no surprise that my dad’s wisdom and the wisdom from so many wonderful teachers lines up. I

f there are 84,000 doors to enlightenment, I am glad that I found one running to me that started on a farm in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads, step-dads, foster parents, and father surrogates out there. Thank you for teaching us kids in your own way about mindfulness, meditation, and life.

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Fear and Loathing on Family Vacations and How Mindfulness Can Help

This summer, I had the odd experience of having two family vacations. I went to Disney World and Universal with my family for our typical family trip. Then my husband and kids tagged along for a trip to Colorado Springs for a conference with the FDCC where I taught a mindfulness mini course for my fellow lawyers.

Spiritual teacher/standup comedian, Ram Dass, once famously said “If you think you are enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” Applying this wisdom to my own life, my ventures this summer gave me not one, but two, chances to prove something I already know. after a decade of meditation practice and lots of training, I still am not enlightened.

The Issue: Family Vacations Can Be Hard

Traveling in the summer with your family means traffic, long lines, intense heat, whiny and ungrateful kids, and bad moods all around. On the flip side, though, it also presents the opportunity to explore new things, have some fun, and reconnect with your loved ones. How do those of us who remain unenlightened avoid option number 1 in pursuit of option number 2?

Even though it can’t make family vacations easy, mindfulness sure can help. Here are the five ways that mindfulness helped me this summer while traveling with my family.

Image conveying the difference between reality and expectations on family vacations

1. Managing Expectations

We all have these idyllic images in our head of a life-changing and mind-expanding family trip that we can remember fondly for years to come. The cold, harsh reality, however, is that traveling with family is hard. First, traveling is a lot of work. It involves planning and effort and many activities that involve deferred gratification.

For instance, we spent a day at the Magic Kingdom on my first family trip this summer. Kids love amusement parks and Disney is an expert at contriving whimsy and fun. My weather app, however, told me the experience would be brutal because the temperature would be in the mid-90’s.

From “Magical Day” to Survival Mode

My plan? I had no plan. I just accepted that the day would be miserable and exhausting. As I walked into the park with the overtures from Disney staff to have a “magical day!”, I internally set the goal of survival and trying to make the best of it. My priority was basic needs: keeping us as cool as possible, managing hydration and blood sugar levels, and monitoring sun screen applications.

Was this magical? Probably not in the traditional sense. But we got out of there with any major meltdowns, we rode some rides, and joked around while waiting in line. Given the circumstances, I’ll call that miraculous.

Image sharing how sheetali breath, a pranayama strategy, can manage heat along with mindfulness

2. Staying Cool – Literally

Did I mention that heat? It was super hot on both trips. Sometimes we were standing around in full sun just waiting. In a word, it sucked. This is where my mindfulness and yoga training really came in handy. Two practices in particular really helped. The first is sheetali breath (a pranayama practice), which my kids love because we call it “taco tongue.”

Sheetali is a cooling breath. To do it, you curl your tongue lengthwise to form the shape of a taco and stick it out through your lips. Then you breathe in through your tongue, pull your tongue in your mouth, and exhale. Essentially what this does is turn your tongue into a fresh air collecting device and it produces a cooling sensation in your mouth.

When Yoga Really Is a Lifeline

I also stole a trick from yoga nidra practice. Yoga nidra is a practice intended for deep relaxation and sleep. It’s dynamic and includes several different strategies in one practice. One helps in challenging times: exploring the opposites.

As I stood waiting in line for the Haunted Mansion in full sun, I avoided diving deeper into the fiery hell that was my current experience. Instead, I tried to focus on anything cool. If a breeze came, I savored it. When I took a drink, I leaned into the feeling of the cold water. If I got a few minutes in the shade, I absorbed it like a sponge.

Do these practices really and truly cool down the body in intense heat? I’m not sure if my body temperature changed, but the cool sensations were pleasant. In addition, breathing deeply and monitoring my attention helped me stay calm. I’ll call that a win.

Image that discusses the importance of self-compassion in parenting and on family vacations

3. Common Humanity

I’ve written before about my youngest daughter. She comes by her stubbornness honestly, but daresay I think she may be more stubborn than me. When she doesn’t get her way, watch out. Though she is very good-natured and loves to have fun, her mood will shift drastically toward defiance, obstinance, and even recklessness when she’s mad.

On our trips, this happened a few times in front of large crowds of people. The bad thing about this is that I had the added pressure of looking like I was a “good mom” in addition to being a human trying to deal with an angry kid. So, what’s the move here?

The thing that helped me was common humanity. When your kid is throwing a fit in front of others, it’s easy to assume everyone is looking at and judging you. Maybe some are, but most people have had to deal with kids being kids before. If we are being honest, most of us have been that kid before.

It’s a Jungle Out There with Your Kids at the Zoo . . .

When I remember that a kid throwing a tantrum in public is something all parents have experienced at some point, my little one’s leverage disappears. I no longer have the time pressure to stop the tantrum at all costs because I’m not worried about my status as a good mom.

Instead, I can let my stubborn girl know where she got her stubbornness, not with anger, but instead by taking my time. This lets me help her understand the consequences, make the choice to calm down, and get to the bottom of what her problem is, so we can all move on.

By remembering that all of us parents are trying to do the best we can, I dodged the harsh sting of perceived judgment, focused on the issue, and got back to having fun more quickly.

An image explaining the self-compassion and mindfulness strategy of savoring good things on family vacations

4. Savoring Good Things

I may have made these two trips sound like all work and no play, but that’s not how it was. There were a lot of great things about the trips and many memories were made. How are memories made? Memories are made from experience and attention.

Given all the work I was doing as a parent to plan the trip and help my kids cope, I made a point of savoring the good things that happened. A few days after our visit to Magic Kingdom, we spent a day at Universal Studios. I really don’t enjoy theme parks that much, but my oldest daughter is a Harry Potter fan so we couldn’t avoid it.

Wait a second! This is actually a bit magical.

And you know what? The weather was not so hot, Butterbeer was so much tastier than I expected, and I was surprised to find myself having a magical moment when we first stumbled upon Diagon Alley. Did this completely offset the heat or my kids fighting while standing in line or the motion sickness I sometimes experienced on the rides? No. But it sure helped, and it allowed me to watch my daughter’s reaction to the experience, which was the whole point.

Likewise, in Colorado Springs, the scenery offered a built-in stress management tool. Half of my family, including me, experienced physical side effects from the altitude. Even so, it was easy to understand the effort while taking a tour in Garden of the Gods (a place so beautiful that even it’s divine name doesn’t do it justice). Perhaps my kids were fighting while driving from place to place, but I just had to look up and see the mountains across the horizon to change my mood.

Noticing these good things didn’t take the bad aspects away. It wasn’t a practice of avoiding the work and the frustration and fatigue of travel. Instead, savoring the good helped me remember why I had decided to travel at all.

An image showing how looking for good in hard times is a mindfulness strategy for managing your mood and mind

5. Seeing the Good in Hard Situations

The last test for my mindfulness skills was the return trip home from Colorado Springs. My husband had joined us on the trip but flew elsewhere for another event the day before. This means that I was left to travel alone with two girls. We had to get up early, drive an hour to Denver, drop of the car, get through security, and onto our flight home.

The first few steps went well and we ended up in the line for security a little less than two hours before our flight. I thought we were golden and was already imagining the breakfast and coffee I’d be ordering while waiting at our gate. Then I saw the security line. And when I say “saw,” I mean that we kept walking and walking to try to find the point where the line started. I had never seen a security line so long and I felt panic creep up on me.

In fact, the man behind me started to verbally panic, saying things like “I should have gotten here at 5 AM” and “there’s no way we are going to make it.” If I was by myself, I admit that I might have succumbed to this too, but I had my daughters with me. If I freaked out, they certainly would. So what did I do?

Look closely and you may find some good.

I did the only thing I could do: wait and see. I told the girls (and myself) let’s get in line and watch how it moves. To my astonishment, it moved quickly. Within 15 minutes, we were in the actual line. We celebrated with a big “yay” when we got there. Within 30 minutes, I could see the TSA staff herding people along. I celebrated by feeling grateful for their efforts.

We arrived at our gate with only a few minutes to spare but we had time to get some protein and a cool drink on the way to make the flight more comfortable. The best news is that we all ended up on the flight in a reasonably good mood. As I’ve said before, seeing the good didn’t take the bad away, but it offered me (and by extension my kids) balance so we could stay steady.

I’m not sure anything can make traveling with family a breeze. There are emotions and history and challenges in store for anyone who travels long distances with their loved ones. Mindfulness practices and strategies, however, go right to the heart of your experience as a human. By helping you manage your body, heart, and mind, mindfulness may take some of the fear and loathing out of family vacations.

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The Story Behind My First Children’s Book

When you start to indulge your creative tendencies, you become a connoisseur of ideas. Just like food or wine, you notice the variations in intensity. You instinctively understand that some ideas, like an avocado, have to be used immediately upon peak ripeness. But some, like dried mushrooms or good vinegar, can be stashed away to be used in small doses when the time is right. My first children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute (available for preorder now), was like the good vinegar that sat on the shelf of my mind until I had the right ingredients to turn it into something fantastic.

I had thought for a long time about writing a children’s book. I have several lawyer friends who have done so, including Becki Lee and Michelle Browning Coughlin who wrote the foreword for my book. The idea started to coalesce in 2021 when I wrote a post about the struggle of finding a quiet space to meditate in a house full of kids. At the time, I could see that this was fertile ground for a children’s story, but the idea was not quite ready to germinate.

The following year, I was distracted by transition to a new law firm and writing my first book. Clearly, I would not add another project to that situation, right? As it turns out, this is not how my brain saw it. The very week I gave notice at my old firm and as I was about to begin writing my book in earnest, I found myself with a spare 20 minutes before my daughters’ bedtime.

Perhaps it was that the book writing plans had primed the pump of creativity and churned old ideas up first. Perhaps I wanted a fun distraction at a stressful and emotional time. Or perhaps my brain just got on a roll making rhymes and couldn’t stop. Whatever the cause, I found myself opening a Word document and typing out a funny poem about a mom negotiating with her kids for a few quiet minutes so she could meditate.

I read it back to myself and saw instantly that, despite a few problems with meter and awkward rhymes, it wasn’t bad. Before doubt had time to set in, I sent it to a few of my adventurous and creative friends, including two that proved quite fortuitous. The first was my friend, Naomi L. Hudson, whose brain comes up with pictures like mine comes up with words. Naomi’s daughters had attended daycare with mine and we had been friends ever since. She had experience illustrating children’s books, so she gave me a green light and agreed to illustrate.

My other friend was J.W. Judge from Scarlet Oak Press. He had helped Becki Lee publish her books. I met him through LinkedIn and lawyer groups. His brain comes up with even more words than mine but his publishing company helps other lawyers easily self-publish books. He, too, gave me a thumbs up as well as much needed advice on rhyme, meter, length, and much more after Naomi finished the illustrations.

In the months that followed, I let Naomi work her magic. I gave her some general ideas about what I envisioned and suggested a few silly ideas, like adding my dog Lyra into the book because she has a funny habit of sitting on my lap when I meditate. Overall, though, I trusted Naomi to follow her instincts. This decision was a good one because it was fun to see how the pictures helped transform the poem into a story.

I’ve written before about how creativity doesn’t always require lengthy and uninterrupted blocks of time. Sometimes a few minutes here and there, as you juggle other life demands and projects, is all you need. As Naomi and I suggest in Mommy Needs a Minute, this is true of mindfulness and self-care practices but it can also be true of our creative efforts.

Ideas can sometimes take time to germinate in our minds until they are strong enough to take root. This is why making mental space through practices like meditation or exercise or journaling can make such a difference. We need space so we can clearly see when an idea is emerging and trust ourselves enough to let it come out.

And when that happens, it certainly helps to have some creative and adventurous friends around to help you turn your little seed of an idea into something fantastic. I’m lucky that I had both and that Mommy Needs a Minute will be out in the world very soon.

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