Grief

In recent weeks, I’ve come into contact with so many people who are experiencing grief for someone that they loved which has prompted me to write this article. I recently found the most accurate description of grief which is this : Grief, in its most excruciating form, is love that no longer has a place to belong. (apologies that I didn’t keep the link to the facebook post where I read the article)

Grief is a noun, it is something that you do – a person grieves. According to Dictionary.com, grief is :
keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret and a cause or occasion of keen distress or sorrow. But whilst grief is something that you do, it is very much also something that you feel. It’s an all-consuming emotional upheaval that we all experience when someone that we love passes over into spirit. We feel grief for our animals when they pass too. But, we also feel grief for a marriage or close friendship that ends, because in much the same way, through those experiences, our lives are forever changed.

Where once we dreamed of growing old together, or travelling around the world having great adventures together, or walking someone down the aisle, without them, we now are faced with living a life that excludes them and so whatever it is that we hoped to be doing together, can no longer be.

Grief certainly has no timeline or limit. My personal experience has shown me that grief is something that we do and feel after someone we loved leaves us to return to spirit. Initially we may find ourselves doing it daily, and then there will come a time when we feel that grief just hit us out of nowhere and it is something that we will have to deal with for the rest of our lives. Yes, as time goes on, it does become a little easier to handle but it never goes away. That sense of wanting to hug someone you once loved or just have one more conversation, comes and goes but never goes away completely.

Losing a loved one means having to learn to do your life differently. It means that you have to learn to get past the firsts of everything that you didn’t get to do together and you have to learn how to deal with the anniversaries and birthdays that you didn’t get to experience together. I read a beautiful poem the other day something along the lines of ‘say my name.’ And it made me think about how our loved ones in spirit miss us too, and they want us to remember them. Yes, they are able to see us and it somehow doesn’t seem fair that a lot of us can’t see them. But, it is a comfort to know that they are with us and most of us are very aware of our loved ones in spirit and we pick them up through a certain smell, a certain sound, a visual of something outside, little feathers, coins on the floor. And even through all those comforting little gestures, we continue to grieve.

I’ve often told clients who are finding it difficult to move on with their lives, too afraid to begin to laugh and enjoy life again, that the length and depth of their love for that person who has passed, is not directly in proportion to the amount of time that they place themselves in a state of flux, in a state where they feel guilty for feeling happy or laughing or enjoying anything in their lives. So many people find it difficult to pack up the belongings of the person who has left their earthly life and so they allow that to hold them back in moving forward with their life. You have to understand that it’s not a betrayal to the person who passed over if you give their belongings away. If you pack them up, sell them or distribute them among family members. It doesn’t give them any indication of how much you are grieving for them. In fact, they feel really sad when the people who they have left behind, find difficulty in moving forward. They don’t ask that we don’t grieve for them, because as I said, they grieve for us too. But they do want us to be happy and they want us to live the full life that we always dreamed of.

So remember those words, Grief is love that no longer has a place to belong, but understand that that love belongs in your memories and your heart. It belongs in the way in which you honour the person who has passed and it belongs in the way you say their name. In the way that you talk about them and the fondness with which you celebrate their life that you shared. It’s in the way that you remember their birthdays, their wedding anniversaries, their achievements and their contribution to your life. It’s in the way that you know that your life would not be as it is if not for them.

Don’t be afraid to carry your grief with you and don’t be embarrassed to show anyone that you grieve someone you loved. All I ask is that you be aware that there is a balance between holding onto your grief in a way that prevents you from moving forward and holding onto your grief in a way that allows you to feel only love and gratitude for previous experiences and knowing that in spite of the days where you feel down, you can still be happy and still make your dreams come true.