When we are sitting in the “well of loss” – otherwise known as grief – we feel it, not just in our bodies, but in our souls. For some, it feels like an intense darkness and heaviness. For others it feels like paralysis. For some, it may feel like a gnawing or intense pain and often an intense loneliness and a feeling that we have become untouchable or unapproachable. Our pain may distance others who notice or even feel our pain, but who don’t know how to engage with us or who don’t want to be drawn into the “entanglement” or even unfamiliarity of such grief. Grief can be incredibly isolating. It may be we need our “own space” to heal and find life’s meaning again, or maybe we feel we have become someone “different” who even we may not recognise. We feel like we are strange or strangers to ourselves. At a soul level, we feel like we have died, or at least that we may never recover from such intensity of feelings and experience. We may be angry with questions – “Why me? Why this? Why now? What next?” and most of all “Who am I now?”
Grief could be from the loss of child or loved ones, infertility, miscarriage, abortion, loss associated with aging and ill-health, the loss of work, change in significant relationships or empty nest, changes in the family situation, disability, the loss of hope and in fact, anything that involves change – whether completely “out of the blue” or even planned or desired.
Grief creates change within our body, its systems and its ability to function and heal. It can “depress” our system – not just in the form of “depression”, but in the form of making our “system” sluggish. Take for example, our digestive system, when we don’t want to “digest” what has occurred in our life, or changes to our reproductive or hormonal system that can occur when we grieve. Our suppressed emotions can sit within our bodies as pain, discomfort and “stagnancy”. Grief can cause havoc on our mental clarity and can also be “shed” and even expelled through our body’s elimination system, perhaps in the form of irritations, outbreaks, diarrhoea or change in menstrual flow.
It makes sense therefore that we might want to run from grief, rather than love it! Society tells us we should dampen it with medication or numbing substances, we should “get over it” and we should suppress it rather than express it. Does this suppression however not create more un-wellness – physically, emotionally, mentally, creatively, socially, sexually and spiritually? How would it be if we:
- saw grief as the healing agent rather than a “sickness”? If we expressed it, raged at it, got mad with it, sat in the agony of it, embraced it and even loved it, our body would be “naturally” releasing its feeling of loss, and perhaps even heal what preceded some of our pre-grief un-wellness, ill-health and stress-related stuff.
- thanked grief for its opportunity to slow us down at times and give us the rest we need, and to propel us forward more quickly at other times?
- used such an emotional roller-coaster to fuel our creativity and ignite our real life purpose?
- saw grief as a chance to be more in touch with the heights and depths of our senses, sensuality and even sexuality?
- recognised that it might be our soul’s purpose and intention that we go through what we are going through to be the “best we can be,” and to see our life as more “full and complete” having experienced such extremes of joy and despair. Maybe we may even throw more caution to the wind and live life with more excitement and adventure!
So here’s to loving our grief and not running from it!
