Managing Death:

In May 2013 my oldest daughter died. After that my two brothers died within one year of her death.
Then my favorite brother in law died the following year.
That is four deaths in less than three years.
I speculate death had something to teach me.
Everything I was trained to do in psychotherapy regarding death did not prepare me for this experience.
Before her death I read all the literature as a trained psychotherapist.
I thought I understand death, grief, transitions and the emotional reactions to death.
WRONG.
Very little in the literature and my experiences were similar.
All I can assume is that managing death and dying is a very personal experience and writing about the experience and watching others handle the issues can be very different from managing the experience when it happens to you.

In October 1967 I was present in Roseville Hospital when my daughter Stasi was born.
Stasi as we called her, was born breach.
She was to be a home birth baby but when she turned breach, the doctor told us he needed to take her to the hospital, so as I had an agreement with him that if an emergency happened, I would be permitted to be present with my wife for the delivery.
A little ahead of my time, as in 1967 most fathers sat in the waiting room waiting to hear if their baby was a boy or a girl.
I was trained to be present to support her mother breathe and manage the birthing challenge, so the hospital reluctantly permitted me inside the hospital room while they delivered Stasi.
In 2013, I was present in a Kaiser hospital when Stasi died.
I was completely unaware she was going to die. I was not prepared to deal with death, nor did I ever think Stasi would die.
But sitting there after Stasi was no longer in her dead body, I  knew Stasi as a "consciousness" was gone, and I was sitting with her dead body while she was elsewhere.
It was obvious to me that Stasi and her body were two separate entities.
Her body and her consciousness or soul or spirit were two seperate entities.
Stasi was a consciousness, that had left her body like a passenger on a train leaves the train when they arrive at their destination.
Where was she?
Was she in heaven, in the bardo, on the ceiling, or completely erased.
The answer for me was simple, I have no idea.
I'm not religious so i don't believe in an firm answer.
I do believe however she existed for 45 years as a consciousness and that she was now departed from her body.
I had this strange feeling she was sitting on the ceiling watching me kiss her hand and talking to her dead body and telling her how much I loved her.
After a period of time my son came into the room and said "dad, the hospital wants you to leave".
I was in shock and so I jumped up and left bewildered while my son drove me home.
For the next six weeks I just sat on the couch and looked out the window trying to make sense of what had happened.
I don't recall very much of those six weeks.
I don't recall anything really until the mother of Stasi called me and told me Stasi's friends wanted to have a celebration for her life.
Then it occurred to me that her death was not really the tragedy, rather never having her as my first born child would be the real traegedy.
It became clear that Stasi was a wonderful gift for 45 years.
I really wanted a daughter and I got that wish in 1967.
Stasi was a larger than life.
Her sense of humor was so much fun.
She developed a personality that made her a natural born leader.
She loved deeply and was deeply loved in return.
She was very accomplished in so many fields.
She created a very successful marriage with her husband for 17 years.
She started working at 18 years as a waitress and never stopped climbing lifes ladder of success.
She loved children and was a child like adult. No one was more fun with small children than Stasi.
She started working as a waitress and ended up as a highly successful real estate agent in San Francisco. Working her way up the ladder of life with only a high school education.
Stasi's life was such an incredible success. She travelled all over the world. She took up belly dancing. She worked to make the planet a better place to live.
She was a total success in so many ways.
She was a gift to me, her mother, her sister and her brother.
She was a gift to her husband, her coworkers and her friends.
She was very loved by so many poeple.
As I let her successes in and as I thought of all the gifts she gave her family and her friends, the more I realized that the real tragedy of her life is not being present today.
The gift was her life, her love, her passions.
To never have had her would be the real tragedy.
Her death was merely the ending of her life at 45 rather than after I was dead.
The tragedy was in the timing of her inevitable death.
No parent wants to see their child die before them.
No friend wanted that friend to vanish too soon.
No husband wants to have his wife die in the middle of their loving marriage.
But on the other hand, no one would be happy never having Stasi in their life.
So for me, death is not just a tragedy, it is inevitable, and no one who loves life has the timing of that death known.
So for me I focus on the fabulous gift I received for 45 years, and I will not allow my thinking to postulate of 46 years or 47 years.
I accept her death at 45 and am so grateful for those 45years.
And as long as I celebrate her 45 years and not allow my thoughts to think of more years with Stasi, I am merely happy to  have had her as my first born child.
This is not to say I don't have bad days when I miss her presence in the now.
Of course I feel intense sadness sometimes.
Sometimes it feels overwhelming.
But 90% of the time I am so grateful Stasi was my first born daughter, and the 10% of the times when I experience deep sadness, I try to remind myself that the real tragedy would be to never have had her at all.

Should I surrender or should I fight on?

Should I surrender or should I fight on?

by Stephen Martin, MFT.

In May 1988 my father died of prostate cancer. His last words before his consciousness left his body were, “I’m distressed. Do I surrender, or do I fight on?” What a wonderful to express the greatest dilemma we all face. We face death every day but when death is at the door, it becomes paramount to examine. 

When do we surrender, and when do we fight on?

The Eastern philosophy tends to guide humans into acceptance, not into struggle. Surrender does release stress, and stress is essential for change. Change is traumatic. In times of change we cannot surrender, we have to fight on.

Of course there are two ways of fighting. Violence has been mankind’s default position for mastery over others and self-defense. However, nonviolence became popular with Gandhi and he worked magic forcing the British to leave India in the 20th century.

After Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King succeeded with nonviolence. Of course, such leaders were excessively persecuted, jailed and spied upon. Martin Luther King was placed in jail over 100 times just for asking for equality whinin this country, which promised liberty and justice for all. But in the original U.S. Constitution, those promises didn’t apply to women, slaves, homosexuals or non-land-owning white males.

For my father, whether or not to continue to live on was his dilemma. Fighting on was difficult, as he was at the end stages of prostate cancer. He was a dead man walking. So at the end he mused aloud about whether to slip quietly into that long deep sleep of separation from his body and consciousness, or stay in the human form and fight on.

I believe Alcoholics Anonymous has the most accurate answer to this question. It’s called the Serenity Prayer, and the original version is often attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr.

"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; 
enjoying one moment at a time; 
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 
taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it; 
trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life 
and supremely happy with Him
forever in the next.
Amen."

What a beautiful description of dilemmas such as my father’s. The conflict is within us all — when to fight for change, and when to surrender to what is.

Stephen Martin is a marriage and family therapist with offices in Moss Beach. He can be reached at 650-726-1212 or by email at stephen@healmarriage.com. His website is www.healmarriage.com.

The Winter of our Days

The Winter of our Days

 

by Stephen Martin, MFT.

 

I know, I know.

·      “Growing old is not for sissies.”

·      “I have no energy.”

·      “My entire body aches.”

 

Yes, we have all heard the disconcerting comments about aging. And of course they are one side of the aging process. What is there to look forward to in the winter of our days?

 

The lessons we have learned are not truly formed until we reach the season of winter. First comes spring, a new birth. Then comes summer, the young adult phase. This is followed by autumn, the adult preparation time necessary for us to face the winter of our days.

 

Without spring, summer and autumn, winter would have no meaning. Winter can only be understood within the context of four seasons. It is the winter that it all begins to make sense and we begin to learn to finally live with ourselves.

 

Self-acceptance begins to sprout, and we feel more joy and love for others than we have ever felt before. It is not until the winter that we realize that every day really counts because there are fewer of them before we reach the end. The capacity to living in the “now” is one of life’s major lessons, and without that capacity, we will never truly with at peace with ourselves. For it is living in the present moment that allows everything to be sharper and clearer. We learn how to focus and truly enjoy “now” rather than multitasking and ending up doing nothing while going around in circles.

 

Winter is also a time for solitude and self-reflection — not so much solitude that we become fearful of other people, but enough that the time to think is completely available. It is during winter that the conclusions to all our stories finally arrive and the plot of our lives finally makes sense.

 

In winter, we as humans are less hostile. They say it is testosterone in the male that creates war. With age, testosterone decreases in the male. Maybe with aging we finally wake up to the utter stupidity of war, and the destructive competition where others are hurt just so we can feel like champions. Older people are nicer people. They are not looking for a fight.

 

The best part of the winter of our lives is spending time with our friends and family. Most people give and receive such love and support in their families and circle of friends. In winter, many of us find grand parenting. Being a grandparent is said to be one of life’s greatest joys.

 

In winter the concept of love is completed. Love is the fascination of poets, writers and singers. I have felt love for others and I have felt it from others. I assume everyone else has had the same experience. We cannot physically see this thing we call love, but we can feel it. It can motivate us to action. It can cause us great pain. Love is the ultimate glue that holds a group of people together, while war and fear are what drive us apart.

 

As we age, we generally yearn for peace. Gone are the days of outrage. Gone are the days of war. Old soldiers fade away and furious males become gentler.

 

It is in the winter of our days that it all finally comes together, it all begins to make sense, and we finally face the wall where our consciousness and our bodies are separated.

Why Good Marriages Fail?

                                    WHY GOOD MARRIAGES FAIL:

                                        

                                          Stephen Martin, MS. MFT.

Having spent the past 32 years working as a therapist guiding marriages, I have watched too many good marriages turn sour. I continually ask myself what causes this disastrous turn of events. No one gets married thinking it will fail, yet the divorce rates are too high.

My observation is that three causes are the predominant reasons for the failure of otherwise good marriages. If these three aspects of a marriage are understood and negotiated, marriages can escape the disaster of a divorce. If however, you let your relationship drift into neglect, this could destroy your relationship whether you get a divorce or not. Many couples elect to have an unhappy, lonely marriage rather than find a solution to their issues or get a divorce.

Why do so many marriages fail? First observation is that married couples begin to lose sight of their common purpose, the reason they got married in the first place. The couple had solid reasons for their marriage when it began. Most people use their wisdom and intuition to select a partner. Some might call this intuition romance, but romance alone will not sustain a marriage for a lifetime. With the passing of time and the inevitable growing apart that all marriages experience, you can lose sight of your original purpose for marriage. Some people accept divorce as a natural conclusion to losing their purpose. Others, who wish to continue their marriages, fight to regain that purpose and in so doing they can negotiate their way back into harmony instead of the continuing power struggle that occurs when two people are not working as a team, but rather are competing with each other and fighting most of the time.

If you have children together that is an excellent reason to stay married. Family is the original noble purpose for marriage. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, it was fashionable to get divorced and assume the children would be better off if they witnessed their parents happy rather than unhappily married. The research doesn’t support that conclusion. Children are often emotionally crippled by divorce if they are less than 18 years of age. Children crave security, especially in an unsafe world. If their parents cannot work out their problems, how can they imagine they can work out their issues? Children are the silent victims of divorce, and the current research proves this to be true.

Secondly, the couple loses the gentle art of communication and begins to be nasty and dishonorable towards each other. Just look at the two party systems in politics in the USA today. There is not gentle communication in politics. It starts out mean and nasty and only gets worse. Political parties have become enemies. Politics is now an internal war. If America was a marriage, it would need to be divorced. Both parties are equally responsible for this behavior. They blame the other and refuse to compromise, while saying they are both willing to co-operate. This is not good for the country, and is disaster for a marriage. 

Marriage requires a gentle loving communication system, not a make no compromise position that the current political system has descended into. Marriage requires romance and civility, kindness and respect. Romance isn’t a one way street. Men require romance and civility just as much as women. Something is rotting inside politics today and we all know it. If you run your marriage the way politics is run, you will have nothing left but hatred, anxiety and chaos. Politics is for the political junkies to watch, not quiet, civil people who want harmony and respect in their lives. Politics will bring you emotional pain and fatigue, and so will a marriage that uses the tactics of politics within their marriages.

Third, marriages start to lose trust and belief in the sincerity, compassion and the love of their partner. This distrust begins in small areas and over years can develop into complete distrust. But once distrust sets in, it is like termites infecting your house. Termites are everywhere, and if infected, your home will need a tent with heavy duty chemicals to remove the millions of infesting insects. Trust is hard to re-establish. It requires honest communication and complete transparency between the couple. But without trust, marriages will eventually fail.

So, if you wish to have a good marriage, go in the opposite direction to politics as it is currently practiced. Find and renew your common team vision as a marriage, speak kindly and lovingly with each other, and compromise with honest communication to rebuild the trust in your partnership. Finally, leave politics to the politicians and the political junkies and rather than follow their example, use them as a lighthouse deacon warning of dangerous rocks that can ship wreck your marriage.

Three Keys To Achieving Your New Year’s Resolutionsby Stephen MartinNow that the new year has arrived, many people are thinking about changes they want to make so that they can be happier or more effective — or just better people.A new year seems like a good time to begin assessing the coming 12 months, just like midlife is a good time to assess how you are doing with your life. New Year’s resolutions are common in our society and they can be very effective in producing change.So what changes do you want to produce this year? Do you have financial goals? Relationship issues you want to explore and change? Or are there dark sides to your nature that need to be examined, cared for and nurtured into a healthier place?New Year’s resolutions usually fail because most people do not give the goals and objectives much thought. They are merely a passing fancy. “I want to lose weight.” “I want to make more money.” The trouble with these types of statements is that they have no depth of intention, no specific details, no thoughtfulness or determination to produce results. It becomes like people buying lottery tickets and fantasizing they will win big and end all their financial troubles. Good plans must have character. They have intention, procedures, insight and follow-through.First, you must know what you want to achieve. That can often be hard, especially if you prefer to live in the moment and not plan for the future. Goals must be realistic, not pie-in-the-sky wishes. Remember, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Make certain you have achievable goals that are measurable and realistic.Second, you must establish measurable steps that will carry you towards your ultimate goal. If you want to make more money, define the small steps that will lead to achievements along the way towards the ultimate goal; that way you can measure your progress. Once some small progress is made, the goal begins to have character and it gains momentum. Most goals aren’t achieved because they are too broad and too unrealistic, and there’s no plan of action to reach the end result.Finally, achieving resolutions requires visualization of the results and the unity of the unconscious and conscious mind working in harmony to produce the result you want. Always remember that the unconscious is the most powerful part of our consciousness. Setting the unconscious on course requires visualization, affirmations and daily meditation towards the success you want. No easy task. And that is precisely why most people fail in their resolutions. They do not have the determination or follow-through to achieve the objectives they think they want.So if you want to succeed this year with goals and objectives, make certain they are measurable and clear, that you have small goals to achieve before the big goal is reached, and that you work every day with both your conscious and especially your unconscious mind to achieve what you want for your life. Stephen Martin is a marriage and family therapist in Moss Beach. He has practiced on the Coastside for over 30 years. He can be reached at 650-726-1212 or by email at stephen@healmarriage.com. His website, www.healmarriage.com, offers more information.

Psychology Today published chapter 5 of my book "The Everything Guide to a Happy Marriage".
Check out the article and the chapter.
Also take the free marriage test at my web site www.healmarriage.com.


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/awakening-psyche/201201/how-not-ruin-marriage-veteran-counselors-ten-rules-fair-fighting

Marriage is like a three-legged race.

When I was a child I remember picnics where we ran the three-legged race. Two people had their middle legs attached, and the objective was to run in unison with your middle legs tied together, so that between the two of you the couple had three legs. The race required coordination so the couple ran together in harmony. It was not an easy task, but eventually the couple learnt how to run together by coordinating their bodies as one.

Marriage requires a similar skill. Marriage is a team effort, where the two of you are stronger than each alone. A good marriage can be defined as a union where two people are stronger as a couple, than as two separate individuals. If however, the two are divisive, and competitive with each other, you weaken the team. And thus a poor marriage is where two are worse for being a couple, than being a coordinated team.

The secret to running as a three-legged team is collaboration. Being critical of your partner only slows the team down. It is like your right hand hitting your left hand and pretending your body is not hurt. When you attack your partner, you attack yourself. If after running a three-legged race, you lose and criticize your partner for not helping, you are guaranteeing that the team will fail. Better to look at the problems that caused you as a team to fail, than criticizing your partner individually. In a three-legged race you either win together or you lose together. So too in marriage. You either both succeed, or you both fail. Blaming your partner for a marriage failure is like the left leg criticizing the right leg for not winning the race. It may make the left leg feel better, but it will not remedy the failure.

Marriage is not for everyone. Some people prefer to be single than to work together as a team. Unfortunately we as a society have pathologies singleness. We assume single people are lonely, unhappy and looking for a marital partner. This is simply immature, excessively romantic and idealistic. I know many people who are happier as an individual than as a couple, and assuming this is unnatural for humans is ridiculous.

If you wish to be married, then you must work at becoming a team. You must learn how to be a couple, as two people have to learn how to run a three-legged race as one. The key to running a three-legged race is to move your combined middle feet together as a unit, not separately as an individual. This requires coordination, a spirit of teamwork, and patience as you learn how to support each other rather than criticize and tear each other down.


All team sports require the individuals give up most of their personal ego for the benefit of the team. For example, on a football team, it is imperative for a quarterback to be blocked by his front line. Every successful quarterback always congratulates his front line when they win, and when they lose they are very discrete about criticizing in public their team members. Successful football teams work together as a group. With group sport teams, they all succeed or they all fail together.

Marriage is the same as team sports. Team is the essence of marital success. The team cooperates, coordinates and collaborates. In so doing they either succeed together or they fail in their mission as a team.