Julie Cluff: 11 Tips For Healing and Dealing With Grief

Julie’s life changed one day when two of her children died in a car accident. She shares heartfelt tips on how to recover from & help others through grief.

About Julie

Julie Cluff is a full-time entrepreneur, Build a Life After Loss podcaster, hope giver, life coach, grief recovery specialist, and artist but not always in that order. She is a wife to a wonderful husband who brings the fun, the mother to 6 beautiful children including 2 angels and a spectacularly young and vibrant grandma. Julie shares her story of the loss and grief after her two youngest children died in a car accident on Mother’s Day and her transformation to bring hope to others who are grieving. She believes powerfully in the human spirit and the ability for all to rise from the ashes and create beauty.

An interesting thing about Julie is she decided to become an artist a few years ago. She used the time she was recovering from surgery to watch and learn all she could online so she could become a painter. This is now one of her passions. She loves painting large abstract paintings

Julie’s Story

The Accident

On Mother’s Day 2007 Julie loaded her three youngest children in the car and took off from the Houston area to make the drive to North Carolina to visit her in-laws. As they approached the Mississippi/Alabama border Julie remembers “waking up” (even though she doesn’t remember being sleepy) driving down the median of the highway. As she tried to pull the car back on the highway it started to roll. Her suburban rolled several times and they ended up upright on the opposite side of the freeway on the grass.

Due to hitting her head during the accident, Julie temporarily lost her vision. She could hear her 12-year-old crying in pain in the seat beside her but she couldn’t hear Carrie and David who had been in the back seat. She started calling for them, but there was no answer.

As her eyesight gradually began to come back, Julie noticed all the windows on their car were shattered and there were people congregating 20-30 feet away. That is when she realized Carrie and David had been thrown from the car. A gentleman approached her car and she asked to borrow his phone. She then made the call to her husband and told him they had been in an accident and she didn’t know what was going on with Carrie and David because they had been thrown from the car.

Medical Help

The ambulances came and Julie and her son James were placed on striker boards and taken to one hospital while Carrie and David were taken to another hospital.

Once they arrived at the hospital, Julie kept asking the nurses if they had heard anything about her other two children.

Julie had an aunt and uncle who lived in Mississippi who drove up to be with her when they found out about the accident. When they arrived they put her husband on the phone who told her Carrie and David didn’t make it.

Five minutes after this call, the doctors informed her that her son James had to have emergency surgery on his leg. So, they wheeled her back to talk to him. She didn’t tell him about Carrie and David, but she did comfort him and explained what the doctors were going to do and he would be alright.

After that Julie describes how her body just couldn’t seem to process everything—the grief, the shock. It was too much for her to comprehend.

Support

After James got out of surgery, they put them together in a room which had a lobby. This was a blessing because they had so much family and friends who came and held vigil with them for the next week while they were recovering in the hospital.

Powerful Actions Which Helped Julie Heal

1. Recognizing Miracles

The doctor who operated on James had developed the very surgery which he needed to fix his leg. Another miracle was as the car rolled Julie heard a voice in her head say, “Bring in your arm” which she did and didn’t lose her arm.

Over time, Julie realized the very miracles which happened to save her arm and to save James’ leg could have happened for Carrie and David. It was clear to Julie from the very beginning that it was their time to go. It wasn’t easy to process this grief, but as Julie told a friend that first night, “[Carrie and David] are eternally safe.” They didn’t have to deal with the difficulties of this life any more, and they would “be there when it was her time to move on.”

2. Remembering God’s Merciful Preparation

The month before the accident Julie attended the funeral of a friend and during the funeral she had a revelation of how much God loved this husband who had lost his wife.

During a trip she heard the story in 2 Kings where Elisha was surrounded by earthly armies and prayed God would open the eyes of his servant to see “They that be with us are more than they that be with them” (2 Kings [6:16]). They were surrounded by chariots of fire and the army of the Lord. This story taught Julie God was powerful and sent angels to surround us here on the earth.

Julie learned God wants to help us as we have hard things pass into our lives. We just have to have eyes to see how He is trying to prepare us.

Miracle Meditation

A few months before the accident, a friend had walked her through a Christ-centered meditation. Her friend taught her to visualize meeting Christ in a meadow and giving Him her burdens. And so, as she sat there in shock she went back and forth between crying and visualizing meeting Christ in a meadow and giving Him her burden. That brought her comfort.

3. Going to Therapy

After the funerals Julie still had to physically and emotionally recover from the accident. She ended up with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and went through therapy for two and a half years.

Julie was grateful she was able to reach out to counselors and give herself patience and permission to grieve. Do whatever it takes to heal!

4. Emotional Recovery

Close to the year mark of the accident, Julie did start getting impatient with herself thinking, “I should be better.” Then she wondered why she wasn’t choosing to be happy. Julie then started to beat herself up because she couldn’t figure out how to be happy. She began to wonder if there was something wrong with her. This line of thinking only made it worse.

“We think that by being unkind to ourselves it will help us and propel us forward, but it doesn’t.”

Julie had a hard time forgiving herself for being the driver of the car. She had almost a hatred for herself and wished she could get out of her skin and get away from it all, but that wasn’t possible. “It was horribly painful, and horribly lonely and dark and depressing. But there was always hope in the background because of my faith in God.”

Physical recovery when we are sitting in a hospital it is easier to be patient with ourselves. But emotional recovery is more challenging because we often think if we had enough faith the pain would just go away. “Our Heavenly Father loves us so much that he is not just going to make everything okay for us. He is going to allow us to grow and learn.”

Julie has counseled Christian women in the past who thought just having faith was enough. But she believes God expects us to use all the resources available to us: neighborhood tennis, counseling, support groups or whatever it is, “we need to be seekers for healing.”

“It’s been said that time heals all wounds, but in reality It is what we do with the time that helps us heal.”

5. Remembering & Having Hope

Having survived a brother committing suicide, and a divorce, Julie knew God had helped her through those difficulties and He would help her again.

Julie knew “The way things look today is not the way things look later. Things can improve.”

Julie continues, “The belief, the hope that there is recovery, that there is healing is huge. Because if we don’t believe we can heal, we won’t.”

6. Staying Involved

Julie explains if you have suffered a loss it is really important to get out and be involved in activities. For example, she played tennis and did things with her friends–even when she didn’t feel like it. It helped her to get out and be involved.

It helped her to rub shoulders with friends and feel loved, and a chance to think about something other than grief.

7. Permission to Be Happy

Grief is one of the lowest emotions. We don’t like how it feels, but then when we feel happy, we feel guilty. Julie explains that especially the first few months that if something made her happy and she laughed she would think, “If I loved my children I wouldn’t be happy right now.” Often mothers who have lost children feel this way.

But she believes the opposite is true. “It is honoring our children to find a way to heal and be happy again.” If her kids were in the room with her she know they would want her to be happy again.

8. Having the Right Focus

Sometimes after someone dies, we focus on the last words we said to them or what we wish we would have said to them. Julie said instead we should focus on the good lives they lived. Don’t discount the rest of the relationship for the final few hours.

The last exchange Julie remembers with Carrie was when he daughter told her David was driving her crazy and then she moved to the seat behind Julie and buckled up. Carrie then told her “Happy Mother’s Day mom!” Julie then reprimanded David and reminded him to mind and be good. Julie can’t hyper-focus on the last thing she said to David being a reprimand. She loves him and she knows he loves her.

She loves to remember that her David was busy and they have so many David stories—like water dripping off of the chandelier, or David ripping up the “No, David