Grief to allow or not?
Why is it so hard for us to let it all out?
Our exterior hard shell is difficult to penetrate. It is often masked by humor, self depreciation, projecting onto others and distraction. Sometimes this is how I try to keep it together.
What are we afraid of? What’s behind it?
How we process our grief also determines whether or not we feel rooted or unrooted…
If we are grounded there is a foundation to anchor our release.
Psychotherapist Francis Weller tells us that grief is a rite of passage, that we need to surrender to it if we are to find our core self. “Grief is a powerful solvent capable of softening the hardest places in our hearts. When we can truly weep for ourselves and these places of shame, we have invited the first soothing waters of healing to wash through our souls.” Somehow, we have lost the words and the rituals to honor this process meaningfully and communally, and this I would say is at the heart of our disease. Becoming rooted in the self forces us to undo the conditioning that sorrow is something to avoid and emotions are things to suppress. Grief, like sickness, is a journey into the shadow self, it is a place of darkness, where we must develop other ways of knowing, where we must learn to listen to our intuition, we must learn to see in the dark. Confronting ourselves in this broken landscape is where we come to know who we are; acknowledging our grief in these moments is the highest form of self-love.
The first step is a willingness to allow the door to grief to be opened. A gentle curiosity and awareness to see what’s there. Next, a compassion to integrate the shadow self and not disown it any longer. Lose the labels, good or bad. There is only energy when you take those away.
Let’s start there for now.
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