Navigating the waves of grief and loss

Greetings! I hope all is well in your world wherever you may be. Today what's top of mind for me is grief. So last week I lost my cousin and over the weekend I went to visit her mother. My sister and I went to go visit her mother, our aunt, and her children and her grandchildren.

And grief is such a hard set of emotions because it's not just one emotion; it's every emotion that you can think of wrapped into one, and it's like a tsunami of feelings that are complex and difficult to even come to grips with, let alone feel. My heart aches for them. My heart aches for her mother, her children, her grandchildren, her siblings, all of the family left behind. And I understand what it feels like to be the family left behind. Having lost my husband, it'll be four years next month. So I empathize deeply with them and anyone who has lost a loved one.

And so that's what's top of mind. If I can offer any wisdom having gone through my journey to heal for anyone who's listening, I would say give yourself the space and grace to really feel the loss of someone, especially someone close to you. The gravity of that cannot be put into words. I think a lot of times in our society, especially in the Western world, we do not give enough space and reverence to what it means to lose someone in the physical.

And although I believe that we are all spiritual beings and that when we leave this physical body, we return home to our spiritual bodies, to our spiritual home, that doesn't negate the deep pain and sorrow and grief that we feel when a loved one is no longer here to physically touch and hold and kiss and hug. So give yourself time, honor that grief and all of the feelings. Cry, scream. Sometimes you want to laugh at the absurdity of it. Sometimes you want to punch things. Sometimes you want to throw things. And I did all of that and more.

What helped me was to give myself periods of time alone to be with my grief and to write. Writing, because sometimes it's hard to even speak. The pain is so heavy, the pain is so much, I couldn't even voice it even if I wanted to. And so writing helped me to express the grief on my heart.

So to anyone who is going through a loss of someone dear to them, my heart goes out to you and I send you so much love and peace and compassion. My prayer for you is that you honor your grief and you feel it deeply. And when the time is right, that you allow yourself to release the grief and the pain, but retain the love and the beautiful memories you had of your loved one. Take care.