Positive Power People – Helen Antoniak

Positive Power People

HELEN ELIZABETH ANTONIAK, Ph.D.

Helen Antoniak organized the San Diego Widowed-to-Widowed Program. She is co-author of ALONE: Emotional Legal and Financial Help for the Widowed or Divorced Woman. In cooperation with Ann Bennett Sturgis, Director of the Stress Management Training Institute, she designed a series of cassettes for people adjusting to the end of a marriage. The “Creative Widowhood Adjustment” and “Creative Divorce Adjustment” cassettes are used all over the United States.
Even though Helen is an author, speaker, college teacher and real estate agent, she primarily identifies herself as a Social Worker. She obtained her Masters Degree in Social Work from San Digeo State University in 1972. She is a member of the Academy of Certified Social Workers and the National Speakers Association. Helen’s special areas of interest are grief adjustment, stress reduction and goal setting.
The Power of Helping others through grief
“The fatherless and the widow he sustains.”
Psalm 146:9
When I see someone who is nineteen, I always marvel at how young they are. I know when I was nineteen, I was convinced I was fully grown up and mature in every way. Then an event occurred in my life which propelled me into adulthood. Explosion-like Velocity
I learned such a painful lesson that I have dedicated my life to easing that same pain for others. What seemed like a useless waste because the first step on a very positive path and a path that I can now look back upon and realize that I was guided all along the way.
It was the dawn of Saturday, June 3, 1967. It was the beginning of June Week at the United States Naval Academy and I was there! For me, it was the culmination of a dream I had cherished in my heart long before my brother, Peter, was accepted as a Plebe four years before. The only way I could have been prouder was if I were graduating myself! (This was long before anyone even dared whisper the possibility of female midshipmen).
Annapolis! The name was magic for me. My father graduated from Annapolis, so right from the start I knew I was associated with the Navy. Even today I can tell you where my Dad placed his officer’s hat as he came home when I was just a small child. When I was five and my mother gave me a “Navel orange” to eat, I wondered what fruit children whose fathers were in the Army got for snacks.
The Navy was a part of my life and the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland was the heart of its rich tradition. When a television program called “Men of Annapolis” was on, I could be found faithfully perched in front of the set. I poured over a photographic essay book called “The Life of a Midshipman” until I almost had it memorized.
Finally, I was there! My father and mother and I had driven all the way across the United States from San Diego. The trip had proven relatively uneventful. Since my brother would be on leave after the graduation ceremonies, the trip would then continue with the four of us traveling up to the World’s Fair in Canada.
The journey had been a little pushed since we had waited until I finished my final exams at the University of San Diego.
Just finding lodging in Annapolis for June Week is a major feat. My brother rented for us a little cottage which was in front of a large family home near the water. Somehow, in the course of getting the key and unloading the car, I discovered that our landlord was a doctor.
Sleep that night came easy. The cottage was stuffy from having been closed up, and the windows were painted shut, but I was too tired to worry about any of that. The next morning, I was awakened by a peculiar sound. My father had already gotten up and showered. He was breathing very loudly. My initial reaction was annoyance but it quickly changed to concern. Dad was back on top of his bed in the little bedroom. I dressed quickly. Even though I had never been confronted by a situation like this before, I knew it was urgent that Mom and I get help.
I ran frantically to the front door of the doctor. It seemed forever before he answered, and forever again before he dressed and came to our cottage. It was probably was only a matter of minutes but I knew my dad needed help and he needed it fast.
Soon we were all in the bedroom. The doctor kept asking loudly, “Sir, are you in pain?” Shortly before I had heard dad tell mom to pray when she asked what she could do for him, but now he was not responding.
We all sprang into action. While my mom went to call an ambulance, the doctor pounded my father’s chest, as I did mouth to mouth resuscitation. Periodically the doctor would stop and feel my dad’s pulse.
Finally, the ambulance arrived and the paramedics joined our frantic efforts. First, there was the plastic device that they pulled out of its wrapping, and pushed down my father’s throat. Then they brought in a breathing apparatus. It was quite an effort to get my dad out of the tiny bedroom, the bed had collapsed from all of us administering our lifesaving efforts.
Dad had played on the football team at the Academy and although he was fifty-five, he still had the husky build associated with football players. Somehow, we finally had him on a stretcher in the living room. I remember focusing on his strong, stocky arm and broad hand, hanging limply off the side of the stretcher. “He is unconscious”. I told myself.
I always wonder why they let me ride in the ambulance. Mom would have been the logical choice. Usually, they don’t take anybody, but somehow I was seated and we were speeding down the streets toward the Naval Academy infirmary. The paramedics labored over my dad as I bravely uttered reassurances. “We are almost there”. I assured him.
I followed the stretcher right into the emergency room. First, one person and then another asked me to leave. Somehow in the back of my mind, I knew Jackie Kennedy had stayed by President Kennedy right into the operating theater. I was trying not to believe that things were as serious as they were. One of the corpsmen said to another, “Why are you giving him oxygen? He is not breathing.” My mind was telling me how dangerous it is for the brain to be without oxygen for an extended period of time.
What sort of bargains do you make with God at a time like this? Of course, you want him alive and healthy. What about a compromise? How about alive and brain-damaged? How about crippled for life and in a convalescent hospital? Dad was so intelligent and vigorous he could never stand to be an invalid, even if I was willing to bargain for his life at the cost of its quality.
But there were no “deals” that morning in the little waiting area of the emergency room. Even before mom arrived I knew it was all over. The chaplain was summoned and we were brought into an office. Soon some tranquilizers were ordered for Mom. My brother ran in already red-eyed from crying. He Was Gone
It was my first close encounter with death. Both my grandmothers had died when I was in my teens, but they were old and ill. The overwhelming impact was not the same. This was different. This was my father dying before my eyes. One minute he was the man who had just driven us all the way across the country, the next minute he was gone forever.
Even though I know a lot more about life and death now, that final reality still amazes me. How can a person be alive one minute and dead the next? I was only nineteen, I knew very little about death, and virtually nothing about the intense pain that the entire family would soon be experiencing.
I now realize what the word “grief” meant. I suppose that somewhere in my mind I knew that my father would not live forever, especially in light of previous episodes related to his heart. No intellectual information could have prepared me for the emotional impact of the grief experience. It was like the difference between reading the word “lightning” and have a bolt shatter the air above your head.
The first thing that is striking about people who experience a severe emotional blow is how little the storm that is going on inside is reflected on the outside. My brother was still due to graduate and would have to remain at the Naval Academy regardless of our family loss. The chaplain recommended that my mother and I remain for the graduation ceremonies and this seemed like the best course of action. Shedding many tears, we went through the motions of families participating in “June Week”.
It was an entire week after my father’s death before we were back in San Diego attending his funeral. The time and miles, as well as the suddenness of his death, compounded the unreality of the situation.
The impact of our loss reverberated through our lives in a thousand different ways in the years that followed. At each corner was a new tunnel of emptiness and longing. Since we flew back, the car arrived several weeks after we did, having been driven across the country by a “drive-away” service. Many of my father’s clothes and personal effects, packed for what was to be a happy trip, were now sadly removed from the trunk. My parent’s 33^rd wedding anniversary was June 15^th.
Special family events, such as birthdays, would come and go. Big events like Thanksgiving and Christmas would never be the same. There was an incredible vacuum caused by Dad’s absence. There was a hollow feeling inside of me.
People who have not experienced a family loss may have the illusion that families fall on each other’s shoulders in warm support like something you might see on “The Walton’s.” This isn’t how it was for us and not for most of the people I have talked with since that time. We Missed Him
Each member of the family was missing a different person since all relationships are unique. My brother, Peter was upset that he hadn’t immediately told dad about the special award for his solar energy research he was receiving at the graduation ceremony. Peter was sure we hadn’t done enough to save Dad’s life. Mom felt she should not have permitted Dad to drive, and probably we could have saved his life if only she had accepted a neighbor’s offer of an oxygen canister before we left. My older brother, Charles, and his wife felt things were terribly unfair. My sister, Mary Ellen, the oldest in the family, was not only married but had three children with a fourth on the way and she lived over one hundred miles away. She wanted to help, yet was already missing our father very much, and had all the demands of a young family.
There were not any family feuds or fights over inheritances. It was just that we each suffered in our own way and were ill-equipped to offer solace to each other or to mom, who certainly was experiencing the most intense loss.
That summer, there were three major activities in which I involved myself. One was a language class that was necessary to complete a language requirement before my transfer from the University of San Diego to U.C.L.A. The second was a part-time job at a daycare center, the third was picking up on certain projects my father had begun around the house. I undertook gardening, painting projects, and even carpentry projects, which entailed the use of a huge, noisy table saw. Looking back on these efforts, I am reminded of a song from a musical presentation of Little Women. “I’m the man of the house now that Papa is away.” I really had done none of these handywork before, but I threw myself into the activity as though my very future depended on the completion of my Dad’s plans.
In the fall, I began attending U.C.L.A. It was a difficult thing to do. I was following through on a decision I had made with both mom and dad’s consent. Dad’s death didn’t change anything, yet it changed everything! I can still remember writing down my father’s address, as the “Holy Cross Cemetery”, on one of the many forms required by UCLA!
I was fortunate that both Social Security and the Veteran’s Administration sent me monthly checks for my two years at U.C.L.A. I lived in one of the dormitories and did my best to absorb myself into life at the big university. It was extremely difficult for me to leave my mother all alone. (Peter was already engaged in training before being sent to Viet Nam.)
There is a natural irritability families center caught up in as each member grieves over his or her own loss. Even though I knew wanted to continue my education at U.C.L.A., I felt I was abandoning my mother by leaving her alone. I don’t remember ever consciously thinking it at the time, but I am sure that subconsciously I feared that she too might suddenly die.
Any man that slightly resembled my father could instantly be the victim of a heart attack in my anxious imaginings. When my brother was doing his tour of duty in Viet Nam, I was expecting momentarily to receive word of his death. (He survived two tours of duty there with nothing more than a case of mumps.)It is Alright to Grieve
When I arrived at U.C.L.A., I bore the hidden wounds of the recently bereaved. I knew I felt terrible, and I knew it had some relationship to my father’s death, but I was totally unable to articulate what was going on inside me. I even made a feeble effort at getting help from the University Counseling Center by participating in a group. Still, I could never bring myself to tell them what was really bothering me. I needed somebody to say it was alright to grieve for the father you dearly loved, and who had died in front of you just months before, however, the counselors were very poor at mindreading. It was months even before I could tell my roommate, who eventually became my best friend, that I had lost my father.
Looking back now, I can see how wrong it was to keep such pain within. I was harboring a deep dark secret. That is the interesting thing about how our emotions differ from our intellect. We can do dumb things from an intellectual viewpoint when we are overwhelmed by emotions. It would be several years before I would be able, for the first time, to put an intellectual light on that emotional experience. In the meanwhile, Mom and the rest of us muddled our way through the months which finally became the first year and then the second,
After graduation from U.C.L.A, I spent the next six months discovering for myself what everyone had been saying. “There is not a great market out there for someone with a Bachelor’s in Social Welfare.” I returned home, held down a few odd jobs, and eventually put in my applications, to begin work on a Master’s degree in Social Work.
I suppose it was one of those red-letter days when I was accepted into the School of Social Work at San Diego State University, but the turning point in my life came several months later. Fortunately, social work is one of those fields of endeavor where you can actually get out and do something while you are pondering over the academic part. We had several days a week of what was called “field placement.” This was an opportunity to actually get out and practice the skills we were studying. There were many different social service agencies that students were assigned to. I was given a senior citizens’ center. There, I participated in a “Cheer Visitation” training course given by a social worker who had graduated a few years ahead of my class and was working full time in the field of geriatrics. Natural Grief Process
This is when enlightenment suddenly dawned. I was there to make the room look full, my thoughts fading in and out of my daydreaming when the instructor began talking about the natural grief process. Suddenly I was all ears. So that’s what I was experiencing! That’s what Mom was experiencing! Why the whole family had gone through it and NOBODY EVER TOLD US IT WAS NORMAL! That tiny bit of information given as one point in a series was an incredible revelation to me.
A burden was lifted off my shoulders. I had been given a vision that was clear, almost of a celestial nature. It was suddenly obvious to me that widows needed a place to go where they could be told they were going through a normal grief process. I pictured an office with a desk, I saw a widow sitting next to the desk, being told by the interviewer that she was experiencing something NORMAL. It was a NORMAL GRIEF PROCESS.
I couldn’t get over the simplicity of the whole thing. I knew right then and there that things would have been a whole lot easier for Mother and our family if we just had been told the simple secret of normal grief.
It was a full two years before my vision of a widow being counseled about her normal grief process was to become a reality. I am not sure when I realized that I was to be the counselor sharing that important secret.
I was just a few months into my two-year graduate program which would result in a Masters degree in Social Work. My special vision didn’t get me out of even one hour of any class I had to attend. There wasn’t even time in my personal schedule to pursue the dream on my own. I talked about it to anyone who I thought would understand, but my first real step was to undertake a research paper on services available to widows in San Diego County. There were none specifically for them, although they could get help for other problems.
In researching the library archives, I discovered the name of a sociology professor who had written several articles on widowhood. I sent a letter off to the University of Washington where he taught. A month later, I received a reply from Florida. I had asked him, “Was there any program anywhere to help bereaved people?” Much to my delight, the answer was in the affirmative. There was such a program in Boston, Massachusetts, it is called ‘Widow to Widow’. He gave the address; he also sent me a thick bibliography of books and articles related to death and dying.
This was another big day in my life! My letter to Boston not only brought me detailed information about a grief program, but the names of two women in San Diego who were also interested in a program for widows.Step by Step
All this took place a decade ago, but still remember it vividly. Looking back, I see just how marvelously things fell into place, step by step. When I was young, I used to wish that God would send an angel that would appear to me in my bedroom one night and very clearly spell out what I was to do with my life. This has never happened, yet so many times when things seem impossible, they suddenly work out. In the course of my development of the San Diego Widowed to Widowed Program, there were dozens and dozens of times when some seeming coincidence turned out to be just the missing link in piecing together the puzzle.
My fleeting vision of an office where a widow could come and understand that what she was going through was normal, started me on a ten-year adventure. Eventually, I was not just to have one office, but a beautiful office suite. Not only widows but widowers as well came to hear the reassuring message. The Widowed-to-Widowed Program became incorporated and provided much more than just individual counseling. We had group meetings, a twenty-four-hour hotline, community education, a newsletter and a wide variety of special events. Eventually, I wrote book with two other women which spread our message to an even wider audience than the thousands who over the years came to participate in our program. (The book was published in 1979 by Celestial Arts Press, it is called Alone, Emotional, Legal and Financial Help for the Widowhood or Divorced Woman.) With the help of Dr. Ann Sturgis, Director of the Stress Management Training Institute, I designed and produced a series of stress reduction cassettes for daily use by newly bereaved people. They were called the Creative Widowhood Adjustment Cassettes.
Both the book and the cassette series center around a formula which developed in my mind over the years of my work with widowed persons. Although the same topics and concerns were covered again and again, I had never had a reason to systemize them until my best friend’s father died of a heart attack, I wanted to do something to make things easier for her and her mother. I wrote my advice to her, since she lived hundreds of miles away “One Year Recovery Guarantee”. It is a set of positive suggestions that I have found virtually guarantees recovery from the normal problems of widowhood, if the person conscientiously applies them.
Here is our Recovery Guarantee. We hope this formula can help you, or someone you love.

The Widowed to Widowed One-year Recovery Guarantee

The Widowed-to-Widowed Program hereby guarantees almost complete recovery from the normal problems of grief and widowhood within one year if the participant complies with the following stipulations

FINANCIAL AND LEGAL WELL BEING

Keep careful records of all your transactions. Photocopy all forms before sending them off and note where and when you sent them. Keep all documents received as well as carbons of your replies.
Maintain a written log of all the people you talk to on the phone concerning the business, legal and financial matters [the bank, social security, mortuary, your lawyer]. Include in your log a summary of your questions and their answers.
Set up a bookkeeping system that you can live with. Include in this some budget calculation concerning your regular expenses.

MENTAL WELL BEING

At least once, carefully read the booklet “On Being Alone.” [This booklet is available through the American Association of Retired Persons [AARP]. Contact your local chapter for a copy or write Widowed Person Service, 1909 K Street, Washington, D.C. 20049.]
Read at least five books related to widowhood and grief so that you are knowledgeable about the normal course of this life event.

PHYSICAL WELL BEING

Establish or maintain habits conducive to your good health. These should include regular well-balanced meals, drinking plenty of water, getting regular moderate exercise, and following a satisfactory sleep pattern.
Learn and use at least one relaxation technique that works for you. This may be self-hypnosis, biofeedback, transcendental meditation, yoga or something else acceptable to you.
Avoid excesses in any habits. Do not drink more coffee or alcohol, eat more sweets or suddenly go on a crash diet, smoke more cigarettes, or do anything else more than you did before your loss. This applies to extreme busyness or extreme inactivity as well.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL BEING

Keep a written journal or tapes of your experiences and feelings during this year. Include recollections of dreams, random thoughts, and letters you will never send.
Maintain or cultivate a close friendship with at least one person whom you are able to call at two o’clock in the morning because you need to talk and who will listen without criticism.
Work on an album, scrapbook, or some other project which will help you crystallize and preserve the memories of your spouse for yourself and children, grandchildren, and friends. While you savor these memories, realized that life is going on and you are closing the door on the past to open new doors.
Listen politely to friends, relatives, and neighbors giving advice. Note all the pressures that are being made on you but resolve to make no major decisions unless they are absolutely necessary.
Continue or find at least one pleasurable treat in your life which you can enjoy at least weekly. This could be a hobby, sport, club or organization, going out to lunch, or taking a special trip as long as it is something that you truly enjoy and that you will be able to treat yourself to regularly. This is a difficult time and you deserve to pamper yourself.
Treat unsolicited advice and pressures from others as water off a duck’s back. You may listen politely and attentively but resolve not to make any major decisions within this year unless absolutely necessary. Be especially wary of business ventures with friends or relatives.
Give yourself permission to cry. Do not give yourself negative messages such as “not here in front of these people…” or “I am only feeling sorry for myself.” Let the tears flow. There is nothing more therapeutic than a “good cry.”
If you become concerned about your state of mind, you think you are “going crazy.” or you find yourself contemplating suicide, seek professional help immediately. Don’t stop until you find a counselor you feel comfortable with. Keep working with your counselor, be he or she a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, pastor, or whomever, until you have worked through your problems and set new goals. People who use professional help when they need it are smarter and saner than those who don’t!

SOCIAL WELL BEING

Participate in at least seven activities of the Widowed-to-Widowed Program.
Read at least one book on assertiveness and preferably enroll in a course in assertiveness training. Be honest with your friends, neighbors, relatives, and fellow employees. If you are going through a particularly difficult time, let them know. If they are doing – or not doing – something and it is upsetting you (such as not talking about your spouse), let them know what you would prefer. If you really want to be left alone or included in something, let them know. You cannot expect people to be mind readers. Even though your need may seem very obvious to you, give people the benefit of the doubt by spelling it out to them. Remember! Communication is not easy even in the best of times.

PHILOSOPHICAL WELL BEING

If you are a member of a church or religious group, spend some time learning more about their philosophy concerning the final stage of our life cycle, death. If you are not a member of such a group and do not find one you can comfortably fit into, spend time fitting the reality of death into your own philosophy of life.