Endurance: Grieving Throws Up Many Emotions

EnduranceI had a conversation today about endurance. That quality within me that keeps me going through the ups and downs of life. The quality I call on most to help with grief.

A big part of my work, naturally, is dealing with the grief of others. Both the people in the Spirit World and the loved ones they have left behind. Dealing with the loss of someone you love calls on all the endurance you possess. Because there is a process of emotions and thoughts going on. Natural responses to dealing with a change in life that can’t be reversed. I know I am used to the idea that I can change my mind. That my choices can be reversed. However, death makes a permanent change happen. My world can never be the same again. So I might feel shock, disbelief, anger, depression, sadness, guilt, despair many times as I try to accommodate the changes that a death brings about.

I feel that is when endurance also comes in. Feeling the pain of loss, processing all the what ifs and might haves, I need to be able to stick at my life. I need to keep going until I can accept the permanence of that change. Not that I will necessarily feel the loss any less deeply. But that I will reach a point where the loss has become a part of my life. Rather as if it has faded into the background and is no longer my every waking thought. When I work to pass messages on to people I am always aware that they are still enduring their loss too. That the messages from loved ones are a powerful way to help that grief become acceptance. Mostly by acknowledging the wide range of emotions such a profound change brings up.

When I need endurance my Guides always draw close. That is a great comfort to me. I know that as I deal with my challenges I will never be alone. Their steady presence will encourage me to recognise my feelings, face the changes that have happened and keep going. We all have Guides. Have you asked yours to help you endure?

Day 823 of my blogging challenge

Expressing Grief: Why Moving On Matters

I love how my day brings everything into focus. The background topic this week has been about expressing grief. Or the risk of getting stuck in grief.

I recalled today a general thread of conversations about letting go, moving on or feeling loss that had been demanding my attention for several days. Of course when there is a period of great change I have to let go of the old in order to be able to get hold of the new. There is a process to that which involves feeling the grief of letting go, of loss. Yet I know I am reluctant to express the grief. Even though I know I have to step through expressing the shock, disbelief, denial, anger, depression and acceptance of each loss in our lives. Sometimes the loss doesn’t matter too much – like loosing a glove – but often the loss is much more significant. So it’s painful.

That’s when I feel it’s important for me to make sure I am expressing the feelings as freely as possible. When I don’t do so the energy becomes stuck. Stuck energy creates problems. As more and more emotions pile up on top of old stuff it can take a lot of effort to hold it all in. To keep plodding on trying to convince myself that nothing has changed. Yet if I express my feelings as soon as possible there is one thing I definitely avoid. An emotional blow out. A volcanic eruption. Though I’ve had a few in my life because I tried to ignore the grief. Now I try to allow myself more freedom with expressing my feelings. Eventually the energy is exhausted. There is no more for me to express. I am at the point where I can move on.

Moving on is a different kind of expressing my feelings. It’s the point at which I know I’m ready to re-engage with my life as it is now. Not as it was.

Because no matter how hard I try my life has changed. Though there have been times when I’ve tried every way I could to make it go back to the way it was. Usually ending up angry, depressed and still trying to deny a new reality. So moving on at the right time is a positive aspect of grief. When I have reached the point of accepting that my life is going to be different. Moving on gives me a space to bring in the positives that change has brought. Perhaps I’m stronger. Or I have a new focus for my life. I might even have found new people to enhance my experiences of relationships. Or a more optimistic outlook.

Whatever it is, I will have my hope restored. Because grief dims hope for a while. Expressing hope even feels like an impossible ask. But when I have started to move on it means I’m prepared to give myself another chance at life. To have dreams again. And to remember with gratitude whoever or whatever has been lost. To be thankful that I can feel enough love to recognise the pain of loss. Today I reminded myself to honour my grief. I am moving on in so many ways. There is no place for the old feelings, thoughts or patterns. And I reminded myself to let go, gently, easily and hopefully.

Day 543 of my blogging challenge 

Immune to Feeling Fear? Grief? Anger?

I’ve spent quite a lot of my life acting as if I was immune to all sorts of things. Keeping my feelings below the surface quite a lot. Behaving as if I was resistant to pain, fear, hate, grief.

There is something about keeping going that is almost addictive. Because I feel it’s driven by a tiny little niggle that eats away at my certainty and will power. The thought that if I stop and feel my feelings I’ll never get going again. So pretending to be immune is a good tactic. I’ve used it as a form of protection. And sometimes even thought I was exempt from certain feelings. Like all things in life though I’ve discovered that immunity is a variable state. So I felt the grief of loosing my parents. Raw. Full on. Inescapable.

Also the pain, anger and hopelessness of failed relationships. Times when I’ve been drowning in despair. Or pulled deep into depression. Lost and alone in darkness. Perhaps what I did in response to these feelings was a protective shell. I fooled myself that I was immune so I wouldn’t have to express my feelings to myself. Or the world. I went into hiding from myself. But the reality is that I carried those feelings like a burden. Heavy baggage I was reluctant to put down. I had to wait until I was ready to see the stuckness this brought about. Perhaps even to keep battering my head against the wall I’d built around those feelings. Because that tiny little niggle made me feel weak.

If I am weak then I am vulnerable. Worse things can happen. That’s the logic of that mis-shaped thought. Better to be immune and exempt than infected and in need of help.

Because accepting help can be really hard too. I feel that we are conditioned to be helpers. Not receivers. Being in a state of needing help also sometimes ties in with feeling like I can’t handle things myself. Yet the strange thing is there are plenty of people who want to be able to help me. When I started to think about this idea of immunity from feelings I realised that it’s also a way to deny helpers. It’s easy for me to say I don’t need any support if I believe that I don’t have certain feelings. Yet I know, in the end, feelings exist. They are there first. Long before our cognitive abilities develop we feel.

But that leads to another thought. What feelings did I feel in my early years? What feelings was I allowed to have. Love certainly. Fear aplenty. Definitely anger, sadness and pain. These are all part of my human inheritance. Somewhere in all those feelings I developed a set of rules telling me what I was allowed to feel and express. And some rules about the kind of feelings I needed to be immune from. I say this not as a criticism. Or to blame. I learned how to handle feelings from the adults around me. I also learned to become a giver rather than receiver. These deeply held rules have governed my life. And I didn’t even get to negotiate or agree to them.

It’s time to put away these rules. To release myself from feeling immune to certain feelings.

It’s important for me to love my whole self. I can’t do that when I’m hiding from my feelings. Or refusing to allow myself to experience them. I need to love myself enough to allow my vulnerability to emerge. Learn to take the offers of support and kindness. Make myself a whole human being because I can feel things so deeply. And above all else, reminding myself that learning the opposites to love gives me a choice. I can pick the life experiences that boost the amount of love in and around me. Or I can stay behind the walls with my hidden feelings and await the next catastrophe that life throws at me. My choice is always LOVE.

Day 466 of my blogging challenge.

Joyful at the New Beginning

This month I have three anniversaries of loved ones passing over to the world of Spirit. Although they have happened over a number of years it took me a while to feel joyful about their loss.

I know it might sound strange to say that their loss was joyful. I felt the pain of their going. An empty space was created just at the point of the year when I feel the connection most to family and friends. Grief at a time of celebration is hard to handle. With each loss I struggled to immerse myself once again in the festivities surrounding the turn of the year. Sitting around the dinner table knowing that these people had gone beyond my means of connection. Remembering that they were frozen in time now. Lost to me as my years clicked by but theirs didn’t.

This was long before I understood about the Spirit World. The afterlife that I now believe waits for all of us. I walked through my grief thinking I had lost these loved ones forever. Each December I remembered their absence with a pang. Death happens. It is a certainty in an uncertain world. Yet I struggled to understand why these people had been taken away from me. I wanted them back. There were lots of natural reasons for my desire to make the world back into what it had been. In some ways I was still a child, afraid of the unknown, wandering in the dark.

Eventually I started to discover my ability to communicate with Spirit people. It was a frustrating and joyful process.

My views about the exsistence of an afterlife changed as a result of my experiences. I learned that there were Spirit people ready and able to talk to me. So long as I paid attention to them. I also learned that they enjoyed making the connections with us. They wanted to remind us of their love. But I found it hard to get to speak to my own loved ones. Over and over I asked them to talk to me. It seemed that they had gone silent. I wondered if they were really there. Or if they did still love me. It was my lesson in patience.

Of course I asked my Guides to help me all the time. Even they seemed slow to respond. Until one particular day. They must have decided I was ready to hear what they needed to tell me. I’m not sure I was listening as much as I should. But they have told me exactly the same many times since. My Guides asked me to think about death from the perspective of the person who had passed over. They asked me to think about this change as a birth. A new beginning or a return to where we had left off in the Spirit World.

My Guides wanted me to consider what it would feel like to wake up dead. And to find myself surrounded by loved ones.

It was a question which I thought about a lot. How would it feel? I thought at first I would be a bit shocked. Perhaps sad that I’d had to leave the Earth. But I would also feel glad to be seeing the people I loved once more. Maybe I would wonder if I’d left anything unfinished. Perhaps I would be relieved that all physical pain had disappeared. Or wanting to go back and be with someone I’d left behind. I began to see that moving from this life to the next would provoke such a mixture of feelings.

At this point my Guides reminded me that I would be reunited with people I had missed, perhaps for a long time, and there would be catching up to do. I finally had a light bulb moment. It would be a celebration to find myself back with those people. I would be joyful to see all of them again. And surely they would see this as a joyful occasion too? Even if there is no such thing as time in the Spirit World they would be meeting me as a changed person from the one they knew. One of my grandma’s died when I was a child. I wonder what we would talk about if I met her now?

That became another interesting question. How joyful to finally reconnect, share, and discuss our life together with a lady who I will always remember from a child’s point of view. Inside or perhaps hidden underneath the grief is an opportunity to once again share the love we had in this life. I am remembering my loved ones tonight with joy knowing that they found joy in returning to their loved ones. And I will share in that joy when it is my time to become Spirit once more.

Day 401 of my blogging challenge.

The Power of Grief

img_2335I write a lot about the power of love. Today I encountered the power of grief. When it’s time to let a loved one go onward to the Spirit World it can be an overwhelming wrench.

I had a reminder today about that feeling as I recalled both my Mum and my Dad. Although years have passed since they died I still feel their loss. However there is a distance between then and now that makes the shock and disbelief a distant memory. I realised I have become accustomed to the feeling of grief. Or, at least, to some of the feelings associated with the grieving process. I’m not sure how long it took for the shock to wear off. Many mornings I woke up to a sharp realisation that my world had changed. Plenty of times in my day I suddenly remembered that one or other was gone for good. Eventually it seemed to stop. To be replaced with a sense of disbelief.

There were days when I so wanted to phone my Mum. Or drive over to see my Dad. How could they be gone? Surely they should still be there for me? Time and again I would be faced with a problem that I wanted to ask them about. But I couldn’t. That got me angry in so many ways. Angry and sad. I’m still not sure how many tears were sad and how many angry. As I moved through my grief it seemed like it was never ending. Actually I didn’t realise I was moving through it at all. I had a long period when I felt stuck. That’s when I was at my most unreal. When I rejected all help because I was soldiering on. Putting on my happy face.

That’s aspect of the power of grief. That we keep going, carry on regardless or refuse to admit our deeper feelings.

There is a danger in getting stuck in grief. The power of emotions that can colour life black. I know that I was gloomy on many days. Perhaps not bitter or despairing. But times when I felt an absence of love or support out of all proportion to the events of my day. I refused to trace it back to my grief and loss. It was as if I couldn’t bear to look at my reactions too closely. Or let anyone in to help me. Over time I came to realise that I had to give myself permission to grieve. And to reach out to get the help I needed to come to terms with my losses. I loved my parents for who they were – not the idealised pictures I had in my head because that’s what we are supposed to do.

What a silly saying – don’t speak ill of the dead. That restricted me in the way I could process my grief. It blocked me from saying how angry I felt that they had left me. Even though I knew they had no choice. So it was a big step forward for me to express that anger. And to cry some more about loosing them. To be surrounded by others who helped me over that hurdle. Actually I knew they could. They had also been affected by the power of grief. They understood where I was at. Ever so slowly I came to a place of peace. I knew that my grief was also an expression of my love for my parents. That the deeper the love the stronger the grief. No wonder it hurt so much.

Now when I meet people who want to know how their loved ones are in the Spirit World, or yearn to have them back here with them, I remind myself that I have walked that path too.

My work with my Guides has put me in contact with other people’s loved ones. I have the privilege of passing on their messages of love and support. They help me to explain how it is to be in the Afterlife. That can’t take away the pain or loss. But perhaps it can help the people left here to move through their grief inch by inch. Connecting with their loved ones in a different way perhaps those left behind will also give themselves permission to grieve. To learn that the power of grief is also the power of love ❤️

Day 363 of my blogging challenge.

Permission to grieve

imageOne of the hardest things to deal with is the unexpected. Life is jogging along. Some days are up and some are down. The pattern of our days remains reasonably unchanged for long periods. Then something happens that we couldn’t predict and life changes dramatically. We have lost our pattern. At these times it is hard to recognise that we can give ourself permission to grieve for the loss of the old routine. I feel one of the skills we could choose to learn is that of understanding and letting ourselves have feelings of grief.

In my healing work I meet with so many people who have been soldiering on. Putting their feelings on one side they carry on trying to behave as normal yet feeling shocked, lost, uncertain. Mostly they are holding themselves together with sticking plaster so that the people they care about can be supported first. The love and compassion they feel for those they connect with, who are also dealing with the unexpected event, translates into a continuous flow of giving and supporting. Yet these lovely, brave people have no one supporting them. Support, if offered, is usually turned away towards another person as being more in need. They find it hard to give themselves permission to mourne for the old way of life that has been snatched away from them.

Grief is a natural process because losses, little or great, happen to us every day. Change is a fact of life. We become equipped to deal with change more or less. However, the sudden changes that are in any way life changing, life threatening, or a death itself, hit at the very foundations of our security. The feelings that major events generate can be deep, complex and confusing.  I often find myself acknowledging to someone that they appear to be experiencing feelings of grief (which can include shock, disbelief, anger, sadness, depression, lack of motivation) which they might be finding challenging to express. Especially if they feel that they have to be strong for others. Sometimes having permission to put a name to the muddle of feelings is a great relief. We all respond better when we know what we are dealing with. Often the identification of a grieving process taking place will bring an immediate lift in someone’s spirits. We have coping strategies we can use when we recognise we are grieving.

Once the feelings start to be identified there are ways that we can, individually, let those feeling out. One of my ways of releasing grief is to watch a movie I know will make me cry. My daughter always passes me the box of tissues if I put Les Miserables on.  Or to stand in the shower & cry because I don’t know which drops of water are tears and which from the shower. If I’m angry or upset and need to be physically active I get as many cardboard boxes as I can find around the house (usually in my recycling bin) and spread them all over the floor. Then I enjoy a good stomp to flatten all the boxes. And sometime I enjoy a good scream. Usually on a quiet road or in a field so that I don’t scare anyone. With the moors so handy screaming usually ends up with me laughing my head off too.

When we do acknowledge the feelings it won’t put our life back the way it was. It won’t rekindle our lost dream. But it will help us to face forward and see if there is anything good still left in our life. Being able to grieve positively about what is changing in our lives is a way of ensuring that we live in the moment. That will allow us to find a flicker of hope. Each day will be more precious because we are able to understand we may never get another one like it. A wake is a celebration of life – with ‘missing you’ rolled into it. Give yourself permission, every day, to hold a wake. What have you had to let go of? What is changing? What loss hurts right now? What are the memories about what you have lost? What space has that loss opened up in your life to find new ways of doing, feeling, being?

Grief is something we all share, all experience and all survive. Celebrate your grief because it is really a measure of the love you feel for someone or something. Grief means that you are a loving human who is still alive and living.

Day 142 of my blogging challenge.