The Experience of Grief

Oh November...

Sometimes I am just breezing right through, and then I feel a little gut punched.

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed last week, and in someone's status update, I caught a glimpse of a tiny profile picture of a woman who had commented. 

In that moment, I felt this overwhelming heaviness in my chest.

That, folks, is the experience of grief.

This woman was probably an age that would have been close to my mom's.  She looked absolutely nothing like her.  Her comment was completely neutral and unrelated to anything my mom would have written.

And yet, there was the heaviness.

I missed my mom.

I missed my mom so much in that moment that I had to sit with that feeling and breathe through it.

I looked outside the window and breathed.

The feeling faded.

The longing for my mom went back to the reserve in my heart where the grief lives.

This is such a tender time of year for all of us who are grieving.  And this grieving is more than this loss of our loved ones.  It's the loss of a dream.  It's the loss of our dreams for them.  It's the loss of our dreams for us.

For those who are feeling a little tender (or completely open and wounded) this time of year, I see you. 

Take good care.

Seek support from people when you need it.  Seek solitude when you need it.

Lean in to those hard feelings.  And breathe.

When the feelings fade or are too much to sit with for too long, let's put it away for another day.  And take in the current moment. 

Let's look around to our space in the here and now.  Look around the room, look outside the window, look at your people, look at your pets, go outside, do what you need to do to remind yourself that you are here in this moment.

And breathe.

Resuscitate

On Easter Sunday, I was in church listening to a sermon about resurrection.  Of course.  It was Easter Sunday.

The sermon was about personal resurrection.  

We all experience difficult, painful times.  Sometimes when we go through them, we are left trying to bring back the past because the present (and future) is so painful.  The word used in the sermon was "resuscitate."

That word...resuscitate.  Woah.  The idea of "resuscitate" is exhausting.  Think about all of the energy that goes into trying to resuscitate.

I thought about my own energy spent.  How many times have I tried to resuscitate a time in my life instead of leaning into what is?

A specific time came straight to mind because I have (thankfully) experienced a lot of healing around it.  2013.  I was happy and hopeful.  I felt comfortable at work, we were considering a move, life seemed full of possibilities.

After 2014 and my mom's death, I invested a lot of energy in trying to resuscitate the safety and comfort of 2013.

Because a few years have gone by, I'm able to see how much energy I invested in that process.  

Trying to make things fit that no longer fit.

Trying to recapture a life that was no longer there.

There is denial in resuscitation.  There is hopelessness.  There is stuffing of painful feelings that seeps out in unhealthy ways.

While holding onto and/or denying our pain doesn't serve us, there is comfort in the familiar.  

As I sat there and digested that word "resuscitate," I was grateful that I had let that go.  I was grateful that I was able to accept what was real.

Acceptance didn't mean I was ok with it.  Acceptance meant I was able to see it for what it was.  I was no longer trying to change it.  I was no longer trying to fight it.

I surrendered to the hurt.

And for the past six weeks, I have revisited that word a few times a week.  Sometimes with myself, sometimes with clients.  Because there is something very powerful about letting go.  And something very powerful about starting something new.

That's where the resurrection is.  

It's not renewal or refresh or starting over.  We aren't trying to bring back anything.  

We are creating something new.

There's freedom in something new.  

That something new looks different for us all.  We get to decide how we move forward.  Maybe there are parts of us to keep, maybe there are parts to let go.  

There's healing in resurrection.

There's hope.

If you are in this place of trying to resuscitate, I hope you find the courage to seek resurrection.  It's a scary journey.  

Be brave.