Grief – and 8 steps to healing

So, I thought I knew all the faces of grief because I had already lost my mom and dad.

Well guess what? It turns out that there is a whole lot more to grief than that phone call that knocks you to the ground – and quite literally knocks the wind out of you – that tells you that your 52 year young mother has just died suddenly in her home.

Collectively, I think we are all learning that we don’t necessarily just grieve the death of a person. We can grieve the way we knew life before massive change came and introduced herself to the entire planet.

I personally had grief revisit me with the loss of an investment about a month ago. When my dad died, I received an amount from his estate, and I took a large portion of that money and did the ‘responsible’ thing by investing it. Exactly one year before the pay-out date, I received notification that my money was basically no longer existent. Apparently due to bad business decisions on the part of the investment company and the covid-19 pandemic. Poof…just like that…and I have become part of the statistic of millions of people that have gone through losing a lot or everything in 2020 due to the corona virus pandemic.

For two weeks I cried about this money believing that I had attached my personal worth to its value. I couldn’t understand it because I have lost everything in my life previously. Money. Home. Kids. Job. All of it! And, because of that process, I am not big on the collective of ‘things’ today as I am totally aware that earthly possessions come and go and are constantly in a flow.

It was my beautiful sister, Melanie, that brought it to my attention one day when I was on the phone with her – expressing that I don’t bloody understand why I am still crying about this damn money – that I was not grieving the loss of the money, but that I was in fact re-grieving the loss of our dad!

Each time I thought about my father’s hard-earned money being gone, I imagined that I had disappointed him. Plus, every time I thought of the money, I thought of him – the source of the money – and I would burst into tears.

Melanie brought to my attention that when her cat suddenly died – the one that she took from our mom after our mom died – she realised in her grief that her grief for our mom was triggered again. It was like she was re-living our mother’s death all over again. The cat was a symbol of our mom. A last connection to her. Like my money was a symbol of and final connection to my dad.

Once I was able to grasp that grief was knocking at my front door again, I was able to accept, go through the process to release and then heal.

And, grief may not leave permanently. As Melanie said to me, there may be waves of grief that come and go. There are stages to grief too and these may be revisited over and over again until you are ready to move back on. It’s kind of like a dance in life I think…moving forward and backward and forwards again, until you’re ready to take a bow and move onto the next dance partner.

In fact, there are seven stages to be more precise:

What to do when grief comes a-knocking.

1. The first and most important thing to do is to accept the grief. By that I mean, allow the emotion into yourself and learn to understand it.
2. Feel the feelings you have when you have them and try not judge it, them, or yourself through the process of allowing yourself to feel. Cry as often and for as long as you need too.
3. Get plenty of rest when you need to take some.
4. Get it out by talking to someone safe and/or journaling. Writing is a very therapeutic thing for me, but you could be creative in any other way (like baking, cooking, drawing, colouring in, painting, dancing, writing poetry or a story, running, cleaning etc.).
5. Learn to ask for help for anything when you need it and if someone else steps up by noticing you need help, you’re not even aware of, then put your pride or ego aside and accept it graciously.
6. Remember to take care of yourself foremost with sleep, exercise, drinking plenty of good, clean water and good eating habits.
7. Keep to your daily routine as much as you possibly can for a sense of normality.
8. Be gentle, kind, forgiving and loving to yourself. There is no set time for grief so take as much time as you need.

Love the life you live.

Live the life you love.”

Bob Marley

I really resonate with the famous singers’ words. Life is so precious and should not be wasted for any reason!

If you’d like to know how to renew your life and live the life of your dreams, then contact us! We’d love to walk your journey of renewal with you.

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