23/01/2022
Sometimes we let our personal life, run over.. into 'not liking myself' senses and then it brings us undone and to our lowest.
Tears, they say are a healing mechanism .. but then as a child, if you've been told, "Don't let your family member see you cry", you grow up with seeing that as.. 'not allowed'.
I was one of those children.
To be honest, as a Counsellor .. those feelings have been very raw .. more so, since my Dad passed away, early December, 2021.
When those that you hold dear in your heart, give you a sense of not doing what is felt should be done and you genuinely can't, because of personal reasons .. You feel you not only have let yourself down, but all that love & surround you, also family afar.
Grief brings out the 'raw' in all us all, no matter who we are, how old we are .. or our belief system.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Grief and Grieving mentions the five stages of Grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression & Acceptance.
No matter where you are on the Grief path ...
Remember you are not alone. Words said, are sometimes done in the 'Anger stage' and aimed at those you know are walking a similar path as yourself. Words said, or the written word, can't be taken back, but with Acceptance, in time, working through those five stages, whatever order .. We all hope to come through, no matter how many weeks, months, years or 'whatever' the time frame, understanding ourselves a little better. Be able to be there for others and have a listening ear, better than ourselves.. that lacked that 'particular time' of listening, than flowing out words that may have hurt those that were also grieving with us.
J.H.
On page 230 - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and co-author David Kessler - On Grief and Grieving, the second last paragraph says ...
The time after a significant loss is full of the feelings that we usually have spent a lifetime trying not to feel. Sadness, anger, and emotional pain sit on our doorstep with a deeper range than we have ever felt. Their intensity is beyond our normal range of human emotions. Our defenses are not match for the power of the loss. We stand alone with no precedent or emotional repertoire for this kind of loss. We have never lost a mother, father, spouse, or a child before. To know these feelings and meet them for the first time brings up responses from draining to terrifying and everything in between. We don't know that these foreign, unwelcome, intense feelings are part of the healing process. How anything that feels so bad ever help to heal us?
Last paragraph - page 231
With the power of grief comes much of the fruits of our grief and grieving. We may still be in the beginning of our grief and yet, it winds its way from the feelings of anticipating a loss to the beginnings of reinvolvement. It completes an intense cycle of emotional upheaval. It doesn't mean we forget: it doesn't mean we are not revisited by the pain of loss. It does mean we have experienced life to it's fullest, complete with the cycle of birth and death. We have survived loss. We are allowing the power of grief and grieving to help us to heal and to live with the ones we lost.
That is the Grace of Grief.
That is the Miracle of Grief.
That is the Gift of Grief.
