February 22: Grief

We all experience loss at some point in our lives.  It is okay grieve.  It is to be expected.  It is important to grieve. If you are one of the lucky ones who hasn’t lost a loved one yet, or experienced something devastating that knocks you off your feet, know that you will.  It hurts.  It sucks.  This great loss will leave you feeling lost, alone, abandoned, distraught, depressed, hopeless, devoid of purpose, and it may even drive you to the brink of insanity.  Loss will affect us all.  It is a price we pay for experiencing this human life.

It is incredibly useful and helpful to grieve effectively, and to learn to heal completely.  This was not a class I was offered growing up.  Most parents don’t know how to teach this important process.  Even though grief is a very personal and unique process, the load can be lightened through learning and practicing new skills and strategies.

After sifting through thousands of hours of content, I was able to come up with some of the most effectively helpful and empowering tools to heal throughout the grief process.  As we will ALL have to deal with grief at some point in our lives, please share anything helpful that you may find here.  I believe that it is better to be equipped with the proper tools BEFORE we need them.  Simply go to the goodinthehead website, click on the menu, and click on the word, HEALING, and select healing again.

Grieving effectively can grow our soul, and expand the human experience.  It takes time and patience.  It takes adjustments, skill acquisition, consistent practice, and a willingness to learn new things.  We are all at different stages of our life experience and we all have had different experiences, so the healing process will absolutely be different for us all, depending upon our beliefs, skills acquired so far, and our varying abilities.  One thing will not work for everyone, as we are all individuals and incredibly different from one another, but there are SO MANY things we can experiment with.

The most recognized stages of grieving are:

Loss and grief have the potential to heal us and makes us better by helping us realize and remember a few things:

• How fragile life really is.
• The importance of living each moment as if it could be our last.  It really could be.  Living life to the fullest, from moment to moment, focusing on the art and practice of enjoying and being fully present in the here and now, results in an even more miraculous existence.
• Our humanity and humanness.  We each are a soul, having a human experience.  We all have feelings.  We all have a heart.  We are all connected.  We are all ONE, even if we sometimes feel alone.  The darkness will only win when we believe its most destructive lie.  In the darkness we are alone and we wilt.  It the light, we are connected, see more clearly, and we blossom and thrive.
• How close we can be and how close we are to those we have lost when we simply think of them and remember them, and all of the incredible experiences we shared with them.
• None of us are alone.  We all experience loss as a part of this spiritual experience in this human journey.  In this way we are all connected.  We are all ONE.

Ways we can actually benefit from grieving a love one:

• Remember the good, positive, fun times you had.
• Be grateful your paths crossed and you had the opportunity to share time and experiences.
• Remember the benefits of the relationship.
• Take the opportunity to talk to others about your loss and theirs.  Help others grieve effectively.  Listening to others with kindness, understanding, empathy, acceptance, and love, can be the most beneficial tool in the grieving process.  Knowing and understanding we are not alone in our grief, and allowing others to realize they, too, are not alone in THEIR grief, is healing and connecting, in and of itself.

We all get to believe what we want to.  Our beliefs are a choice.  I have a growing belief that the loved ones I have lost are still out there somewhere, in some way.  I believe their life energy, life essence, soul, light, vibrational frequency, or whatever else you want to call it, still exists, and that it always will.  I like to imaging that when I think of them, their energy is attracted to me in some way, and in that moment, I am able to be with them and allow our energies to intermingle, realign, reconnect, and be experienced and enjoyed.

Today I will remember a loved one I have lost.  I will think of good times and reasons I am grateful for that loved one.  I will remember the value this person added in my life and be thankful for it.  I will look for opportunities to help others grieve effectively.  

One of my favorite pieces of content I have come across regarding this topic was given in a Ted talk, by Max Strom, called Breathe to Heal.  I share it often, with others who have also suffered from the loss of a loved one.

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Remember:  Mindset matters.  Character counts.  That which we choose to consistently focus on is what EXPANDS in our lives.  WE CREATE our personal realities.