How Do You Carry On When You've Lost A Loved One?

Grief is a long and painful process. It is one of the most challenging experiences you will make in your lifetime. Whether the passing of a loved one is expected, the pain remains a complex, and multi-layered journey. 

The grieving process is typically described as a unique and individual journey. While there is support available, nobody can go through the grieving process for you. As a result, you will go through the different stages of grief at your own pace, from denial to acceptance. There is no right or wrong. As everybody is different, the process can take an indefinite amount of time depending on your personality, life experience, emotional coping style, and relationship to the person. 

However, once you have accepted the loss, the grieving process is far from being over. A lot of people find it hard to go back to their lives. It is understandable to worry about going back to your routine, especially when the loss of a loved one forever transforms the routine. Life carries on after the loss of a loved one, and simple, practical steps can help you go back to your old self. 

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Join a class

The lockdown has enabled many of us to try out a variety of activities online. For people who are left in limbo after a grieving period, online classes have been the perfect excuse to explore new things without needing to commit. Commitment is a common worry after grief. It is natural to want to reduce interactions that could force you to redefine your routine. After grief, you are left in limbo, lost between the world of the dead and the living. But, signing up for an online class can provide a gentle and somewhat managed interruption of your day-to-day life. A lot of online yoga teachers have found virtual classes more intimate as they give an insight into someone’s life and routine. Many are happy to reach out to their students and build a bond as the class carries on. It may be the beginning of a new friendship and the key to encouraging you to go out of your comfort zone. 

Reclaim your home

You shouldn’t throw away the memories you created with your loved one. However, seeing familiar items that they gave you or that were theirs every day can be difficult. Perhaps, you want to keep those safe in a box in the attic until you are ready to face them again. You can focus your attention on creating a new interior that doesn’t remind you of them too much, such as organizing kitchen cabinets and removing the mug they gave you. Create a clean space in which you control how your decor makes you feel. You may want to change your interior again in a few months when you hurt less. It doesn’t matter! The process of cleaning and clearing your home is therapeutic in its own right. 

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Forgive yourself

When you go through grief, it is hard to say goodbye to someone who isn’t here anymore. A grief counselor can help you move through the stages of grief and progress towards self-healing. A lot of counselors have found that a lot of former clients come back for help when they are ready to restart their lives. Indeed, when you start to re-experience pleasures and joy after the loss of a loved one, you are left wondering whether you should have fun again. What you feel at this moment is guilt. You are divided between missing someone you love and enjoying your life. A grief counselor or a therapist can help you discuss your emotions and understand that being happy doesn’t reduce the extent of your affection for the person you’ve lost. 

Care for another living creature who needs you

Grief is a difficult journey. But you’ll be surprised by how much adopting a pet can transform your experience of it. Pets can naturally help to transform your brain and increase the presence of happy hormones in your system. They also offer companionship, making sure that you can become familiar with contact and social relationships. Grief can be an isolating experience, so finding a furry friend who forces you to face interactions is the way back to society. You’ll be surprised, as well, to know that most pets, dogs and cats, are emotionally tuned in so they notice subtle changes in your behavior and can help you cope by lowering stress and anxiety.  

Grief doesn’t end when you’ve accepted the loss of your loved one. Grief fully ends when you create a new routine that suits you and go back to your old self. It is a journey that is paved by guilt, fear of connection, pain, and isolation. But simple tips can force your path back to life and help you move away from grief. 

Allergy-Proofing Your Home (+ Free Allergy-Proofing Printables for You & Your Kids)

With allergy season upon us, you or a family member might be one of the millions of people who experience allergies. While you may think you are safe from allergens by spending more time at home, your home could actually be the cause of your allergy symptoms. Allergens like mold, mites, dust and pet dander are all indoor allergens that like to make themselves comfortable within your home. To reduce, or even eliminate, your exposure to allergens while spending more time at home, it’s best to add allergy-proofing to your cleaning to-do list.

Download the printable allergy-proofing chore chart below to help you stay on track of important cleaning tasks or find more tips on ways to effectively allergy-proof your home here. 

We all know that spring cleaning and indoor allergy-proofing chores can be a daunting task — especially for children. To successfully get your children involved in cleaning the home and picking up after their own messes we suggest trying to get them excited about cleaning. You can do this by making it a family competition, starting a timer and turning clean-up time into a race, offering rewards, or even blasting some great tunes during chore day! Below are a couple ideas and printable activities to get your kids involved in spring cleaning! 

Battle of the Bedrooms

Challenge your family to a Battle of the Bedrooms. Start the clock and give each family member or child one hour to clean their room. Whoever has the cleanest room at the end of the hour wins. The winner can hang their award (printable certificate above) on their bedroom door until the next battle.

Recruit a Cleaning Detective 

Recruit your favorite cleaning detectives and have them investigate different areas of the house to determine what needs cleaning up. After inspecting a room, they can list out if a toy is on the floor or if the bed is unmade, for example. This is a fun and creative way to have children help identify messes and create a chore list that they can help tackle!

After allergy-proofing your home, if you and your family are still experiencing allergy-symptoms, it’s important to get to the root of the problem to prevent future reactions. Symptoms like nasal congestion, difficulty breathing, drowsiness, itchy eyes, or even fevers are signs that you may want to pay attention to what may be causing your allergies or see an allergist. 

Jotting down notes and symptoms within an allergy-log is a great starting point for figuring out what may be causing your allergic reactions. Download the allergy log below to track allergy-symptoms or any important notes that may be helpful when trying to identify what the source of your reactions are. 

How To Respect Yourself As An Employee

When it comes to forging ahead with your career, you need to make sure that you are doing everything you can to respect yourself. There are a lot of things that you should bear in mind here, but what’s important is that you are doing a little something every day to make sure this happens. Once you know what you are doing, it should actually be pretty straightforward to respect yourself as an employee more. In this post, we will look at some of the things that you might want to focus on in particular.

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Demand A Pay Raise

If you know that you deserve one, you should make sure that you are demanding a pay raise whenever you feel you can. It might be a frightening thing to do, but if you never do it you will never actually get it, no matter how much you might believe you are entitled to it. If you have never asked for a raise before and you are wondering how to do it, the most important thing is confidence. Be and act as confidently as you possibly can, and you will find that you are much more likely to succeed.

Beyond that, make a list of your good points and ensure that you are really clear on what those are. If you can do that, and present that information to your employer in a reasoned way, you will find that you are much more likely to get the raise that you are looking for. That in itself is a great way to feel more respected at work - and of course, the money itself is not a bad thing either!

Keep Safe

Nobody deserves to come into any safety issues at work, or to be injured at work. If this ever happens, then you need to make sure that you are simultaneously taking care to be safe at work, but also that your employer is doing everything they should be doing as well. If they are not living up to their half of the responsibilities, you have every right to report them and ensure that they change their ways, as you should. If you do suffer an injury because of something that your employer has done wrong, remember that you can always claim compensation by getting in touch with the likes of Buckingham Barrera Law Firm and discussing your case. In the meantime, try to stay safe and ensure that you are keeping up your end of the bargain in keeping the workplace safe.

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Don’t Overwork Yourself

There is something of a trend these days of people feeling that it is necessary to overwork themselves. A lot of people even take pride in this, and will find that they enjoy working themselves until they can’t go on anymore. However, it’s simply not good for you to do this all the time. It might be necessary every now and then - although that is debatable - but you should try not to overwork yourself regularly. It could mean that your employer has to hire more people, or organize the workforce in a more even way. Whatever it takes, make sure that you don’t allow yourself to work to death. It’s just not worth it, and it’s no way to respect yourself at work as an employee.

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Work Hard

However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be working hard - you absolutely should. If you want to enjoy your work and to prove that you are good at it, then working hard is going to be an important part of that process. If you work hard, you will get more done, and you will enjoy the process of working considerably more as well, so it’s an important thing to think about. If you find that you are struggling to work hard, you might want to look into whether that is due to the job not being ideal for you, or some related issue, in which case you should know when to start looking for other work. It’s never good to stick to a job that you hate just for the sake of it.

Another thing about working hard is that other people will start to respect you more, and over time that is going to mean that you are much more likely to respect yourself more too. It really does work that way, so it’s something to bear in mind.

With all these taken care of, you should find that you are respecting yourself a whole lot more in no time at all.

4 Ways You Can Help Your Partner Improve Their Health

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When both people in a couple are happy and healthy, the relationship prospers. Relationships fail for many reasons, but a significant aspect that goes under the radar is mental and physical health.

Without the ability to communicate effectively or concentrate for long periods, you’re going to get bored. The same applies to partners who get stuck in ruts and don’t want to attempt anything new. Part of your role as a loving girlfriend or wife is to lend a hand when they need it the most.

Guiding your man through the process is challenging since they may not be ready to accept your reasoning. Thankfully, these tips should make a breakthrough more likely.

Don’t Push

It’s cliche, but the first part of breaking any chain is to accept there is an issue in the first place. Until your partner does that, you’re only going to receive a backlash if you try and force the issue. Instead, you should bide your time and wait patiently until they are ready to tweak their life. Of course, you can make small propositions, yet don’t give up hope if they fall on deaf ears. At some point, the penny will drop and they’ll turn to you for advice.

Explain How You Feel

Women have to deal with a lot, but so do men. Toxic masculinity, or the idea that guys are less manly due to certain admissions, impacts your partner’s decision making. Therefore, you must show them that it doesn’t matter what they say or do because they’ll never be less of a man. If anything, opening up about issues such as mental health is the most masculine thing they can do as they’re smashing stereotypes, helping others, and growing as a person. Although you might think your love and support are obvious, it never hurts to point it out.

Find Loopholes

Okay, just because they’ve admitted how they feel to you doesn’t mean they’re ready to embrace their emotions with everybody else. Unfortunately, certain issues are harder to hide, such as hearing problems because the aids stand out and catch peoples’ eyes. The good news is that different styles of hearing aids are designed to be discreet and hide the fact that the wearers have problems. With a little research, you can find loopholes that make the impending change to their lifestyle less scary. Never underestimate the effect of judgment on a man’s mental health as it’s a myth that you don’t care what others think.

Do It Together

As always, it’s less demanding to reach a goal with a buddy. Doing it alone means there isn’t as much to lose by quitting. After all, they’ll only disappoint themselves, and lots of people don’t care about letting themselves down. In a team, you will not only push them on to hit their targets, but you’ll add a sense of guilt. They won’t want to impact your objectives, which means they must think twice before disappointing the love of their life.

Challenging your loved ones to be better isn’t wrong, yet it helps if you are strategically savvy.

When to See a Doctor, Even if You're Embarrased

We have all been there at one time or another; there’s a health issue you’ve got that, while not major, is embarassing and hard to talk about, even with a healthcare professional. As women, we feel a keen pressure to not always be on top of issues relating to everything health and beauty related, but we also have a hard time talking about subjects that are taboo or embarrassing for fear that we’ll be judged or mocked. Perfection isn’t attainable for everyone, but it can just be so hard to tackle those embarrassing health issues when they arise. 

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    While it can be uncomfortable and downright embarrassing to talk about, dealing with health issues as they arise is really important, especially when it deals with digestive and/or reproductive health, two areas in which women are often reluctant to talk about. Below are a few examples of embarrassing health issues and how to stop avoiding them and deal, with minimal embarrassment. 

Chronic Sweating

We all sweat; whether at the gym, dealing with a stressful situation or just muddling through an especially hot summer, we’ve all had those moments where we’re soaking through our favorite t-shirt. But if you’re sweating seems far more pronounced than normal, and you find that your chronic sweating is ruining your favorite clothing or causing you embarrassment, it may be time to treat the issue with something more than just a strong antiperspirant. 

A doctor or pharmacist can prescribe you a stronger anti-perspirant product that can combat your increased sweating. These products usually contain a higher percentage of aluminium, so they aren’t without some risk. If a prescription product isn’t for you, there are some over the counter deodorant and antiperspirant products that, while a little pricier, might just do the trick. 

Odd Smells 

If you’ve noticed odd smells near the underwear region, it can be a huge source of embarrassment and shame. While it’s very unlikely that other people are noticing (we know that’s bothering you!), you notice it, and that’s enough. Odd smells do not mean that you aren’t clean or that you aren’t taking care of yourself. Actually, odd or unpleasant orders in this area could be indicative of a bacterial or yeast infection. Bacterial infections such as bacterial vaginosis happen to everyone, and while uncomfortable and awkward, are very easily treated. Bacterial vaginosis treatment such as Fleurstat targets the bacteria and remove their attachment from your vaginal walls, so you can feel some relief. These products work quickly and can be attained by a pharmacist. 

Bathroom Problems

If you have to go to the bathroom frequently, and/or experiencing stomach and abdomen upsets such as bloating, gas, nausea, stomach cramps or other issues, you may be tempted to ignore it. But if you’ve tried several over the counter medications, modified your diet and you’re still having the issues, it’s time to see a doctor. Constant gastrointestinal upset can be indicative of a larger issue, such as disease like Crohn's or Celiac Disease, IBS, and more. Many of these illnesses, while somewhat serious, can be easily treated and alleviated with dietary changes and supplements. It’s best to get on top of it right away. 

    These are just three situations in which you should definitely suck it up and speak to a doctor or pharmacist. Private health situations can be awkward and embarrassing, but suffering with an untreated health condition or problem is far worse, believe us. Be proactive and look after your health - all of it - today.