Embrace grief

Do we know what it really means? Grieving in a healthy way involves recognizing and accepting the loss, allowing yourself to feel and express your emotions, and seeking support when you need it. How can we embrace grief if we feel like victims of grief?

”Good Grief” is a typical American phrase but do we know what that really means? Is there good grief and bad grief? Do we know what grief is? Do we do it well? Ought we do it better?

Grieving is a process. Grieving is done at the measure in which we love. Grief accompanies many types of moments and is not limited to losing a loved one. When something interrupts a potential love giving or receiving moment, there is grief. When a new medical condition prevents you from spending time doing something you loved. When an accident takes a limb or a loved one. When a job ends. When a pet dies. When a dream is interrupted.

All this causes grief.

Grief is pain.

Grief is a process of feeling that discomfort and a healthy option is to navigate through it, like time. 

We cannot hold time.

We cannot rush time.

We cannot return time.

We can just be IN time and live through time and remember time and hope for time. Time is a companion that moves us, ready or not, but the most healthy living beings embrace it.

Huge Tall trees are the worlds most beautiful examples of resilience because they move with time, they honor time, the adapt to time, they live in their moment in time.  

The life of a tree is measured in rings and rings form according to weather patterns making that tree’s story unique and its very own. As seasons change plant life is designed to go inward, protect its core by focusing on it and allowing for the most extreme of its parts (leaves) to go. The beautiful process known as autumn which is visible in some parts of the world for weeks at a time, shows us the natural and brave process of trees focusing their resources at its core, its center, it’s large trunks and barks for trees, With limited nutrition that comes with the shifting sunlight, trees no longer are able to process photosynthesis to feed all the leaves and so it allows the leaves go. Snow and thin branches look beautiful but is only visible because all the leaves have gone and created conditions that can last the cold winters. Birds receive the needed signals to migrate as they follow the daylight around the globe. Then when the temperatures rise enough again, the branches awaken with the sources of life within after months of hibernation and we witness birth, growth, expansion, color, and new life. 

It is hard to let go.

It is hard to say goodbye. 

But, it is harder when we resist it. 

Advancements in technology and science can mask natural processes and in many spaces (like advanced healthcare) they do, making it harder to learn to move within the natural rhythm of life and growth and expansion and endings.

Emotions are natural but when we prioritize things over healthy emotional balance, we likely will not know how to feel or how to manage emotional responses to life’s usual twists and turns.

The best thing to do is to create time and space to feel and name and acquaint ourselves with emotions that are natural and important part of being alive and in the world. 

We must allow ourselves that time, make that time, and at times demand that time and protect that time from all the various things pulling at it. From work to children to anything that is vital and important - without a proper grieving process, we will not be able to show up in other parts of our lives with the most true and strongest version of ourselves. The strongest and most true version of ourselves can manage the emotional spaces needed for our spirits to move and be and exist within this human existence we call “life.” 

So go on. Embrace the good grief. 

Live and Love and Grieve and Grow. 

It is key to a full life.

For support walking alongside you as you grief and live and and love and grow, contact us. We are a team of coaches focused on helping folks live life to the fullest. One day at a time.

Article written by

Alexandra Zareth