Grief has a way of making regular every day things incredibly difficult. For me, learning what to put my energy and thoughts toward was extremely helpful in managing every part of my journey.

It’s like we wake up every day with 100 beans. As we go through our day, we spend our beans doing the different tasks that regular life requires. Making dinner takes a few beans, cleaning your kitchen, feeding the dog, or even just talking on the phone. Everything we do takes energy, so everything we do takes beans, some things just take more than others. But 100 is plenty to make it through a regular day. When it comes to the more difficult things we face such as dealing with conflict or putting up with unkind people… those things take substantially more beans. We can end our day with a few to spare or run out completely, leaving us overwhelmed or in need of a break.

Regardless of what we spend our beans on, we wake up the next morning with 100 more. This process actually works quite well if you think about it, we start our day with a full bucket of beans to spend throughout the day to do whatever we need and want to do. Sometimes we have some left over, and sometimes we fall a few short and we have to finish a project the next day or skip dinner and order a pizza. Either way, we have learned this invisible and silent process of spending beans and we can gauge it pretty close. But most of us don’t even realize it’s happening.

When my son died, I suddenly woke up with about 7 beans, and that’s when I became aware of this whole bean process. I had absolutely no idea how to manage. As far as I could figure, doing the bare minimum of eating, sleeping, and showering cost at least 10 beans. What about all the other things that needed to be done? The cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, kids, school…..it all required way more beans than I had. Certainly more than the minimum life requirement of 10, and well beyond my mere 7. It was then that I realized that I needed to figure out how to change my bean spending and adjust my life so I could live on 7.

So I tried to formulate a new balance. What things could I remove from my life that took a lot of beans, and what things could I add that gave me beans. Finding this balance helped me gain something powerful in my life that greatly contributed to the building of my boat. (Read more about building a boat here) It has brought me some control, some peace and a lot of calm. It resolved ongoing frustrations and brought consistent goodness into my days.

SPENDING LESS BEANS

In the beginning it was about learning how to live with 7. I had to temporarily eliminate a lot of things until I could pick them back up. That was hard. I am mom. I do all the mom things. But this journey requires a lot of resting in the beginning. So… My husband cooked or I ordered take out because dinner was often overwhelming. If I could clean, I cleaned in very small sections and then rested. I set an alarm on my phone for absolutely everything, even feeding my dogs because I didn’t have the beans to remember so I forgot….everything. I did almost everything on the weekends when my husband was home so I could have help.

I did the things that took a lot of beans in a way that required less beans. For as many tasks as I could find. I had my groceries delivered by Instacart for over a year. I actually didn’t like this because I didn’t get to pick my food and some shoppers don’t really care what you order they just grab stuff. But it only required 2 beans to grab my phone, make slight adjustments to my standard grocery order and hit “add all to cart” every two weeks. Then I called kids downstairs to help put groceries away. This was much better than spending the 15 beans it would have taken to go shopping myself. It worked and was worth it.

When my sister came to visit, she helped me meal prep a month of freezer meals that I could throw into the crockpot or instant pot. This eliminated so many beans spent on calculating dinner and helped me tremendously. If you have someone close that can help with this, I highly recommend it. (Also, I still needed help with this 2 years after my son died so don’t feel like there is a clock on this.. your heart heals slowly.)

But the biggest change was intentionally choosing the people who I allow around me. The people that are unkind and take a lot of beans by making you cry or stressing you out. Just step away and give yourself some space. For me, my tolerance for unkind people fell to zero.

Even if people are trying to be helpful, if that’s overwhelming, there is nothing unkind about telling people when you are not up for company. I like the phrase “I’m not quite up for that today, but thank you.”

It often comes down to simply asking yourself “Do I have the beans for this?” Follow your gut and honor what you need. Not all of these adjustments are permanent, but right now, these changes are such a big deal and help allow space for such deep healing.

FINDING BEANS

The other side of this is to find things that give you beans. This allows you to replace them throughout your day. What things make you feel good and uplifted? Carefully choose good healthy things, things that offer you peace and healing.

About a year after my son died I got a puppy from a neighbor. She saved me in so many ways. She is such a sweet and huggy little dog. She sat by me and napped on me and just loved me. We called my sweet Daphne my little bean dispenser, because she was just that…and often still is.

Most of the time it is a lot simpler than a puppy though. A yummy bowl of ice cream with my kids gives me beans because it brings love. Watching a movie with my husband gives me beans because I can fully rest by him. Crocheting with my daughter gives me beans because I can share my fun craft with someone who gets just as excited about yarn as I do. And coffee, coffee always offers beans. Getting my hair done gives me beans because it makes me feel good. Gardening gives me beans because roses are pretty. And Houseplants brought such peace and created a calm space for me. Coffee and deep conversations with my most closest friend always gives me beans because I feel heard and valued. and Journaling offers beans because it helps you get it all out.

Can you see the things that take your beans? Try to minimize those things the best you can. Do you know what would give you beans? Find those things and do them. Because if you can balance the incoming and outgoing beans, you create space for yourself to balance, heal and rest. And you create the foundation of what your life will look like, then you can just keep building from there. Back to the boat building again, this process allows you to learn to listen to your own heart and build a life that is filled with goodness, peace and control.

I have learned that in these small ways, we can influence our healing and build our new lives in a dramatic way. As time goes by, you will occasionally wake up with a higher daily bean count. I don’t know if we ever get back to 100, but I have noticed that the occasional increase keeps happening. And by learning how to spend beans properly, if I ever get to 100 a day again, I will be able to do so much more than I ever could before.

It has been almost 3 years since my son passed away and I now wake up with more than 7 beans a day. I would say more like 30. I can do the laundry and cook dinner and I do my own grocery shopping now. I no longer have an endless amount of alarms and for most of my days I have enough beans. I still avoid people who are difficult to be around and I still hug the puppy and intentionally seek out things that offer me beans, but I think this is something we all should do. Our energy is valuable and we should all spend it wisely.

So take one day at a time and ask yourself what things are worth the beans they require. It is okay to say no to things. Allow yourself plenty of resting days. Be gentle with your journey and have grace with yourself. And spend your beans wisely. I promise your life will change dramatically.