Good Grief- How to get better, not bitter.
I am a healer because of grief. I know it world-turned-upside-down intimately. Today I could even say, slightly hesitantly, that grief and I have become old friends. It’s natural to want to never feel it again. Yet, it’s natural that I will feel it again and again in my lifetime.
I lost my son’s father to suicide when my boy was just about to turn two. Of course I felt the sadness and emotional outpouring we feel when a beloved dies. I also felt incredibly loved, blessed and touched by spirit. I understood at a soul level that we were and always will be family. The veil felt thin. I felt his spirit in the sky and the thunder. I was touched by power and magic his, mine, and that beyond either of us. It was a high, and I expected to carry that feeling forward into my life which had deepened in meaning and purpose. So I was shocked to find that months down the road I still wasn’t over it and was now going through intense betrayal, abandonment, guilt, rejection and fear.
One year went by, and I felt I’d reached a milestone. I was relieved. The two year anniversary came, and I felt terrible! I was beginning to believe I would never, ever get back to my normal level of happiness. I felt extremely frustrated. There were many good things happening in my life. I poured my positive energy into those things. I tried to be happy for my boy, but, of course, I was really, really sad on his behalf, too. I felt guilty about any joy I had!
I knew most people didn’t understand. I knew the doctor couldn’t help me with what I had because my heart was broken, not my mind. In the midst of this, help came in a most unexpected form.
I found flower essences. I made my own, and wrote each day, seeing patterns emerge. In the same summer, I learnt Reiki. The attunement gave me a beautiful sense of re-connection to my heart, soul and body. I also received a session of Neurolink. I had an incredible experience in which I relived the shock of hearing about the suicide. Then a moment later, in a rush of energy, the shock left my body. I was so blown away I laughed uncontrollably for about half an hour after the session. I knew I had to learn Neurolink, and within a couple of months I had.
None of these things took away my grief. But they got me unstuck and helped me find this new purpose to my life.
Understanding the gifts and challenges of grief:
- Grief is the natural process of letting go and release. It can be about the death of a person, or the state of the world, or about how your parent didn’t stick around for you, or about losing your home/dog/friend. It can be about not living the life you feel you were born to live, or about how life doesn’t seem to be fair.
- Grief is a process. It takes time, and it has waves. You can be merrily going along for a month, and then you’ll have a terrible day. These are days when even though you know life is perfect and everything happens for a reason, it really isn’t and this wasn’t meant to happen and it just sucks. You don’t want to see anyone or do anything and the dishes seem utterly unimportant. These are days you just have to let end, go to sleep and wake up to a new one tomorrow.
- There is no prescription for how long it will take.
- Grief is all emotions. It is joy when you remember the love you still have for the person. It is sadness when you think of what you lost and what you can’t share with them anymore. It is fear when you challenge any unconscious stuff you have around your own death or what happens after that. It is worry at how you will cope without them. It is feeling overwhelmed because all these feelings can happen at the same time and you can’t put them into words.
- It’s normal to feel, but it’s not normal to get stuck. Grief should move and there still should be some happiness to life, from other loves and good things.
- It’s also normal to feel really guilty if you catch yourself having a happy moment, or where you didn’t think about them that day. Even though we know they would want us to be happy!
- We need support while we experience our grief. We need to talk about the person we lost and remember them with people who are comfortable with that. It’s important to remember everyone has their own fears and belief systems about death. So not everyone has a helpful perspective about it. Grief will reveal your belief systems in a powerful way for your own growth.
- Grief changes you, and it should. Let it. You’ll never be the same. You’ll be somebody bigger, deeper, more loving, more grateful, more compassionate and you’ll be somebody who understands grief for someone else who is new to it. They’ll look you in the eye and know you understand, and you’ll be someone they feel safe with. You’ll know you will never know the right thing to say, that all you need to do is be present. You’ll be there a few months after the funeral, when you know life goes on – for everyone else – just when that person needs reminding of all this stuff.
- Grief can be the most powerful spiritual awakening. You cherish life and upgrade your values, having a much better knowledge of what is important to you and what isn’t. You know that at the end of life it’s not what we did that we’ll regret, but what we didn’t do.
Blessings on your journey
