My heart goes out to Anna Nicole Smith. In death, she is still in the spotlight. [tag]Anna Nicole Smith[/tag]’s Death remains a mystery as of press time. The medical examiner says her death was “sudden, unexpected and unexplained. Upon hearing of [tag]Anna Nicole Smith’s death[/tag], the first thing that entered my mind was her grief over the loss of her son, Danny five months ago. The reality of child loss is devastating to a mother. There are overwhelming feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and most often feelings of failure. These feelings can overwhelm a mother for several months following the death of a child, and it can be quite difficult to build a support system to carry a mother through this roller coaster of emotions.
I have known bereaved parents who numb their pain through alcohol or drugs. So the second thing that entered my mind was did she die from drug overdose, alcohol or both?
Though Anna Nicole monopolized the gaudy, gossipy celebrity stage in life and in death, I can truly relate to her pain.
I don’t drink alcohol but during the early months of my grief, I just wanted to numb the pain. My doctor recommended anxiety pills but I refused. All I could think of is ” Stop my heart from hurting, please. ”
Fellow blogger 
My husband’s text message cracked me up:
I was 42 years old and reading the “Working Mom” magazine. I wanted to get back to the corporate world or do research work like I used to do or so I thought. Armed with an MBA, it shouldn’t be a problem, right? Reality sank in that Filipino employers never or rarely hire women past thirty five years old. Look at the classified ads…”not more than 30 years old”…or “not more than 40 years old” as if age diminishes our mental faculties. The problem was I quit the workforce at the age of 30 years old to devote the full time homemaker role to my three children. Those lost years deprived my exposure to business trends and development. I had a part time job though. During those 10 years, I devoted my brains to my husband’s family properties as he could not attend to it. He was a budding lawyer tied down to a law firm. He literally dropped his property management role to me. I had no choice but support his wishes as we derived substantial income from it too.
If you studied at a Catholic School during the sixties, the nuns required you to scrawl “All for Jesus” on the top page of your notebook or pad paper. As a little girl, I had no inkling what “All for [tag]Jesus[/tag]” meant. Nuns during those days threw those beady mean eyed looks if you didn’t follow their commands. I merely wrote those words like a robot. Perhaps the daily ritual of scribbling those words “All for Jesus” carried a subliminal message which I carried on during times of stress. I find myself scribbling “All for Jesus” at the top page of my monthly sales ledger.
