Have you experienced a significant loss that is currently impacting your life? Do you alternate between numbness, anger, and overwhelming sadness?
“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.” – Rumi
We can experience grief with any type of loss or life change – be it the death of a loved one, loss of health, changing jobs, the end of a relationship and so on. While the emotion is often overwhelming, grief can also be a gift – a window into a deeper understanding of ourselves and a passage to more meaningful connection.
For me, grief was a gateway for compassion and my desire to help others, as well as the impetus for my own healing. As a child, I experienced the sudden death of a number of loved ones, starting with my father’s when I was eight. A few months later, I developed asthma, and the following year I was hospitalized for pneumonia. Although I seemed to have outgrown the asthma in my late teens, when I started doing humanitarian work in conflict zones – and especially following my mother’s sudden death of a heart attack when I was 25 – I developed chronic asthmatic bronchitis. On my journey to heal my lungs, I discovered Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In TCM, the lungs are associated with grief. This connection opened a door for a deeper understanding of the mind body connection, and set me on the path of helping others through healing that I am on today.
The following are six tips for deepening your understanding of your grief, and helping you get to the other side.
- Allow space for your feelings
In our culture, we often equate stoicism with coping well with grief. However, unprocessed emotions are often at the core of addictive behaviors and physical symptoms. The first step towards healing is the ability to be with the emotions that are coming up, whatever they may be – anger, resentment, hopelessness, resistance, sadness. Send yourself empathy for what is coming up for you.
- Connect with your body
When we start to be with our emotions, we may find ourselves getting overwhelmed by them, or looping into stories. According to Dr. Jill Taylor – a neuroanatomist whose book My Stroke of Insight describes her eight year journey to recover from a stroke – it takes 90 seconds for the chemical reaction of an emotion to flush through the body. Anything longer than that means that we are resisting the feeling, or assigning meaning to it. If you notice the emotions and/or your thoughts spiraling, focus on your breath and the physical sensations in your body, until these have subsided.
- Understand that grief is non linear
In our society, we measure progress in a linear fashion, and judge anything else to be a step backwards. Grief, however, comes in waves that are not linear. Accepting that grief has its own rhythm will help reduce the resistance and self-judgment that will only cause more suffering.
- Separate out the present from the past.
Riding the waves of grief is different than getting stuck in old stories, though the feeling of it can be similar. Current experiences of grief often trigger old feelings and beliefs. For example, feelings of abandonment, overwhelm, and powerlessness, or the belief that we are always going to be left, that life is unfair. Once we clear the old baggage, we can often be with the current feelings with more ease, and move forward more quickly. Notice if the emotions and thoughts that are coming up for you around your loss feel familiar. If so, see if you can trace them back to a time in your past when you experienced something similar. Give your younger self empathy for whatever was going on back then.
- Seeking support
In many cultural traditions, healing grief is a collective responsibility. The more alone and isolated we are in our grief, the longer it can take to heal. Look for ways that you can share your feelings – be it through dancing, writing, joining a support group, taking a grief class, finding a therapist or healer, and so on.
- Finding closure
As mentioned above, emotions pass quickly unless we have a belief or story that prevents them from moving through us. Unresolved issues and “what if” questions are often what keep grief stuck in us. Writing a letter to the person or thing we are grieving, or organizing a closing ceremony (for more on that read my “the Lost Art of Closing Rituals” blog post), can be a helpful way of getting closure.
Personal Reflections
Grief is the well of sadness in my chest, and the constriction in my lungs. It is the caged bird longing to be released. It is the part of me that is hanging onto the “could haves” and the “should haves.” It is an oceanic wave that engulfs me and wrings me clean. Grief is the culmination of my hopes and fears. It is a reminder of life’s impermanence, and the preciousness of each moment. Grief is both the hanging on and the letting go.
And on the other side of grief is love. Joy. Beauty. Gratitude. When I stay with each wave without resistance or distractions, and I remain present with my heart even as it shatters open, there is a moment when — finally — everything subsides. I can see more clearly, and hope stirs in my chest. Like a flower bud emerging from the earth after a thundershower. And I am able to touch more deeply into the truth of my being here. On the other side of grief is immeasurable peace.
