DEATH OF A BAND, The Retiring Musician & The Stages Of Grief. A Bad Band Break-up can be like the end of a relationship...or the death of a relative. POP SUPERHERO Be A Hero & be there for the musicians in your life. Power Of Pink COOKIE CUTTER GIRL

MUSIC MONDAY...
I HATE MONDAYS!

Today's "Happy Monday" topic is:
DEATH OF A BAND & The Stages Of Grief.  

A Bad Band Break-up and the retiring musician, can be as complicated as the end of a relationship...
and as traumatic as the death of a relative. Be A Hero & be there for the musicians in your life.
I lost my band, which was my LIFE, (16 hours a day, 7 days a week) after a tragic stage accident.
(My Band: COOKIE CUTTER GIRL: POP SUPERHERO)

It took me MANY YEARS to get through all the "Stages Of Grief:"  
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression & Acceptance.
The first year after my band broke up was full of the first 4 stages of grief:
DENIAL, ANGER, BARGAINING & DEPRESSION.
The second year found me less in denial, full of anger, depressed, and bargaining.
The third year, I was done with denial, less angry, but still depressed & bargaining.
The fourth year held no denial, and less anger, depression & bargaining.
I'm in my fifth year of being a retired musician now...and, finally...
I am starting to work on ACCEPTANCE about the loss of my band.
NOTE: "Acceptance" does NOT mean I'll never sing or play again.
It simply means that I "accept" that MY BAND will never do so again.

A friend of mine, who is a professional, full-time musician,
just had her band break-up...again...and decided NOT to reform it this time.
Knowing what she must be going through, I wrote her the letter below.
After I sent it, I wondered, "How many others are going through this too?"
That thought prompted me to share my letter through my BLOG.
I have a many years of experience with the "Death Of A Band,"
and feel my loss and grieving would have more purpose if it helped others.
I welcome my readers to POST YOUR STORIES HERE!
Your "Band Break-Up" or "Retired Musician" tales will help others to transition
from being a "musician" to a "Mom," "Mr Mom," "Grand Mom" or "Grand Dad."

HERE IS MY LETTER TO THE RETIRING MUSICIAN:

CONGRATS: Awareness of your true & present feelings
is the 1st step to your true happiness! *smile*
I would look at this as an exciting new beginning
of the BIG ADVENTURE that is the rest of your life.

I panicked that something awful had happened.
The event cancellation really hit me HARD
with negative energy...I'm "sensitive" like that.
I felt a big fight (member quitting)...or sickness.

You are going to go through a "mourning phase"
over the loss of your band...which make take YEARS.
It's OK though. You MUST go through all the stage of grief.
I feel like I could give lectures on "band loss" & "grief," LOL
Congratulations on your new journey...I'm happy for you!

I don't expect you to be happy for you for quite a long time,

but I will be happy FOR you until you're get "there."

As for me, it took me almost 4 YEARS, but I am in pain,

and loss my band via a serious stage accident.

I expect you will be faster at getting through this loss than me.

Call or email me & tell me all about what you're feeling...

Strength Through Unity,

Lynn

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The 5 Stages of Grief:

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression & Acceptance

An excerpt from the book, "On Death and Dying,"
by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

Denial This first stage of grieving helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle. As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you are unknowingly beginning the healing process. You are becoming stronger, and the denial is beginning to fade. But as you proceed, all the feelings you were denying begin to surface. Anger Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. You may ask, “Where is God in this? Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Then you get angry at someone, maybe a person who didn’t attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn’t around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died. Suddenly you have a structure – - your anger toward them. The anger becomes a bridge over the open sea, a connection from you to them. It is something to hold onto; and a connection made from the strength of anger feels better than nothing.We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love. Bargaining Before a loss, it seems like you will do anything if only your loved one would be spared. “Please God, ” you bargain, “I will never be angry at my wife again if you’ll just let her live.” After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. “What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?” We become lost in a maze of “If only…” or “What if…” statements. We want life returned to what is was; we want our loved one restored. We want to go back in time: find the tumor sooner, recognize the illness more quickly, stop the accident from happening…if only, if only, if only. Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. The “if onlys” cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we “think” we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt. People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one. Depression After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It’s important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. The first question to ask yourself is whether or not the situation you’re in is actually depressing. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response. To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn’t get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way. Acceptance Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not the case. Most people don’t ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where our loved one is missing. In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before a loved one died. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganize roles, re-assign them to others or take them on ourselves. Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones. As we begin to live again and enjoy our life, we often feel that in doing so, we are betraying our loved one. We can never replace what has been lost, but we can make new connections, new meaningful relationships, new inter-dependencies. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to our needs; we move, we change, we grow, we evolve. We may start to reach out to others and become involved in their lives. We invest in our friendships and in our relationship with ourselves. We begin to live again, but we cannot do so until we have given grief its time. Cookie Cutter Girl, POP SUPERHERO  BE A HERO at InnerSuperhero.com