UNDERSTANDING GRIEF:
FINDING MEANING
We are living in a grief illiterate world.
Grief is on the inside, mourning is on the outside. Grief is painful to the heart but no one else can see it. Grief is like a fingerprint, no-one grieves the same.
Grief can be experienced in many different ways, for example: the physical loss of a loved one, the disconnect of a friendship without closure, the loss of a lifestyle, the relocation of a home and/ or family members, divorce, children leaving the nest and more.
Grief should be a no judgement zone, we all experience grief differently. We want our grief to be witnessed, we want and need our grief to be heard.
People try to fix people in grief, what they don’t realise is that they don’t need fixing as they are not broken, that’s just what grief looks like. It is not to be fixed, it is to be honoured.
Finding meaning is how we live in the world without them or what's been lost.
Grief is a connection of a reflection that has been lost.
It is to find our own unique way to grieve. There is no way out of the pain except through the pain.
You cannot heal what you don’t feel.
It does not mean forgetting, it means to find a way to love them/ what's been lost, in their/ its absence and honour them/ it.
“Like a buffalo runs towards the storm to minimize the time of discomfort”; society in contrast run from grief, hoping it will disappear, yet it stays behind us our whole life, and we fight it and want it to be over but there is no way to recover, we have to learn how to live with the loss.
Often those closest don’t know how to understand. Grief must be witnessed, must be listened to. In grief you need a community, we need to connect with one another.
Pain is inevitable but
suffering is optional.
Pain is part of the love. Pain is in proportion to how much you loved the person who died or what has been lost. Suffering is what your mind does, the mind can be so cruel – the blame, the ‘what-ifs’. It can put us on a timeline, we should be further along the process…
We don’t recover, it becomes a cherished wound, we are forever changed from the loss.
The guilt the mind plays, there is no wrong way to grieve and despite our best efforts we could not have changed the outcome. There is no timeline for grief.
If something in our home is broken we get someone in to fix it, we ask for support but with grief we tend to want to go it alone and not seek help.
Grief is the evidence of the love you have that somebody or something meant the world to you.
Time passes we become afraid we may forget but they/ it is in your heart always. You’ll get further from the date of the loss but not the connection or bond of the love you shared/ felt. You will learn to create a new life that honours them/ it in their/ its absence, we do not stop loving each other/ the memory, we just create a new relationship with them/ the memory.
There is a part of them/ the memory which lives within us which we need to nurture.
(reference. Tender Hearts, David Kessler
and Shakti-Life, Louise Muggeridge)
Stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.
You continue to move between and return to each and all at different times. Allow yourself to be where you are at when you are there, with patience and tenderness for yourself; and with the loving support of the community - your safe place/ person.
(Mama Bamba, Robyn Sheldon, Doula Training)
Kommentare