HealingHQ.com speaks with best-selling author Barbara A. Glanz to discuss her latest book What Can I Do?

In her latest book, What Can I Do?, best-selling author and public speaker Barbara A. Glanz shows how we can comfort those who have experienced the loss of a loved one. Having experienced loss in her own life – her son died at a very young age and her beloved husband more recently passed away – Barbara presents practical ideas gathered directly from those who have experienced grief.

HealingHQ.com caught up with the buoyant author on the morning before her trek to Antarctica, where she will be speaking on a naval base, making her the world’s first public speaker to speak on all 7 continents. As Barbara says, “I stayed home with my children for 19 years and started my company in 1995 when I was 50 years old. I’m proof that anything is possible!”

You mention that it took you a long time before you could write this book because you hadn’t fully worked through your own grieving. What finally signaled that you were ready to write this book?

I’m not sure exactly what it was. At the beginning of 2005, which was about 5 years after my husband Charles passed away, I felt that I was finally over the hump. I think it’s important to remember that for those who have experienced loss, the second and third years are often harder than the first. In fact, just this Christmas I went out to see my mom in Colorado and went skiing for the first time in years. And when I got my ski jacket to put it on, the tag on it was dated 01-03-96, the last time I had gone skiing with my husband. So there are those moments even years after someone has passed that make things very difficult. People who haven’t had a major loss often don’t realize the length of time it truly takes to become whole again.

Is having a sense of wholeness possible after experiencing a tremendous loss?

There are lots of people who never let go and spend their lives living for what could have been. But the legacy you leave to your loved ones is that you heal enough to live a full life and give back to others. It’ll never be the same wholeness that it was in the past, but I do definitely think that you can be whole again.

How do you make sense of life when death is such a painful reality?

For me, it was holding on to my faith. Even though there were many, many, many days when I could not get up until noon, I just held on for dear life. I knew God was out there somewhere and I also knew that I had a lot of people praying for me and thinking about me. There’s a beautiful verse in the Bible that speaks of the Holy Spirit taking over when our pain is too much to bear, so even though I felt God was a million miles away, I was holding on to that thread. It was simply survival.

I had also gotten a book that talked about living life five minutes at a time. That was one of the most precious gifts. It taught me to be fully in the present moment. Even now, all my friends say I get more done in a day than anybody else does in a week. And it’s because I learned to focus so intently on the project at hand, that I’m just doing it five minutes, by five minutes, by five minutes. We can always do five minutes.

Why do we allow so many minutes to slip right by us?
There are so many distractions in our world, but it’s that silence and centering that we all need. For me, walking on the beach is my prayer time, my quiet time and my centering time. Whether it’s a spot in nature or a spot in your home or simply meditation, there are wonderful ways to find our center. It’s about mindful living.

There’s a touching quote in your book from Dana Reeve, widow of Christopher Reeve: “When you least feel like it, do something for someone else.” It’s that underlying idea of how giving is receiving.

When I do my public speaking, I often tell the story about how I was going into a public restroom at O’Hare Airport in Chicago one day and there was this woman cleaning, just sort of hunched over and going through the motions. So I walked up to her, touched her and the arm and looked her in the eye and said, “Thank you so much for keeping this washroom clean. You’re really making a difference for all of us who travel.” Well, she just perked up with a big smile and started cleaning with a passion. By the time I got ready to leave, she was handing towels out to all the women who were washing their hands. I left with tears in my eyes because I realized it cost me nothing yet it made a huge difference in her day and maybe even longer. That’s the gift of mindful living. Every interaction we have can make a difference for someone and make the world just a little bit better.

If in death we find eternal life, why is it so difficult for us to embrace this transition?

Because it’s our loss. I know my husband and son and all those I have lost are just fine. But it’s me who misses them because I can’t hug them, I can’t touch them.

How do you stay happy?

I choose to be happy. I always talk about [Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor]  Victor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Meaning in which he says we can’t control our circumstances but we can always control our responses to them. A lot of people ask me why I’m smiling all the time, that I must have a perfect life. And I say to them, “I don’t have a perfect life. My husband died of cancer, we had a child who died and I’ve had a lot of pain in my life. But I choose to be a happy person.” We always have a choice. Certainly I have bad days, but it feels so much better to be happy!

Interview by: Mar Yvette

http://www.barbaraglanz.com