November 13th, 2011 Loss and Healing
Sometimes, things happen that are unexpected and sharply, deeply painful. Sometimes they happen to someone you love.
When a loss is suffered, we might be tempted to try to minimize it, to pretend it never happened, or even to try to explain it away. Worse, we might even tell ourselves or our loved one, that this sort of loss is common, everyone gets over it, it’s not that bad. We might even suggest that it shouldn’t hurt. Shouldn’t we just get on with it?
Don’t give in to this temptation.
Denying the pain of loss also denies the experience of grief. Grief is a process that allows us to go deeper into ourselves. By experiencing grief and letting it unfold in full, we come to a place of acceptance and surrender. Once we have reached this place, we can also let go of compulsive needs to explain, to question why, to blame, or to replay movies in our minds about the event and what we “should have” done.
At the end of grief, there may be times of lingering sadness, but the healing process has begun and we find ourselves ready to return to our life, however altered it now may be. When we don’t allow ourselves to grieve or to acknowledge that something has been lost, we not only miss this vital step toward accepting and healing, but we also miss the opportunity to honor the precious thing that we have lost.
Acknowledging, remembering, and surrounding our loss with love brings a deep sense of peace. It’s not something we can get to by rushing the grieving process, nor by refusing to experience the messy and painful stages of grief.
Acknowledge loss. Grieve, feel the pain, and move through the stages of healing. Some losses may heal more quickly than others. Pay little attention to the length of time and give all your attention to simply experiencing and accepting. Your healing will be complete, without places of festering, such as resentment, withdrawal, anger, blame, or guilt. Your healing will bring a deep and cleansing peace. You may even come to realize a gift or a lesson that has come from your loss.
This is not to confuse deep peace with absence of any pain. Great losses may cause moments of sadness, even years later. Yet, if you experience that sadness from a core of deep peace, you will already know that it will subside and that any returning sadness will be something that you can bear.
Feel the pain, grieve, accept, surrender, heal. It’s not easy, but it is the way to peace.
Namaste,
Patti
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~ Kahlil Gibran
“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” ~ Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
“To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness” ~ Erich Fromm (1900-1980)
