🔼: [[⭐️ Emotions]], [[🕯️ Love]] ## Grief A painful emotion, typically in response to loss or change — big or small. %% - *Sometimes*, grief is “[[🕯️ Love|Love]] with nowhere to go.” - Sometimes it’s the death of hope. %% - Acute Grief: very present, very noticeable. Rough break-ups, sudden losses. - [[Complex Grief]], accumulated grief - 🔑 Self-contained grief is self-destructive - [[🔑 We aren’t supposed to feel our feelings all the time]] - [[🕯️ Resourcing]]: There are always other people going through similar types of grief, for similar reasons, at the same time we are. We are not alone in our difficult losses and changes. We can connect with that shared experience, similar to a [[🧘 Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation]]. - 🔑 Grief is a doorway - Part of healing grief is integrating it into our lives and decisions. - Delayed gratification has built-in grief %% - We're often given 3 days of grief leave before we have to go back to work. We're expected to repress our grief. - Spend your grief tokens. You might be repeating yourself over and over to people. %% Grief is a form of emotional digestion that does not come in stages, but in waves. It's tolerable because it comes and goes, a natural [[🕯️ Titration]]. We don’t feel grief at every piece of bad news because we don’t know the full story. It makes sense to grieve small losses because everything is precious. To grieve the lives we chose not to live. The so-called "stages of grief" might be better understood as different ways grief can manifest. We tend to grieve in layers or waves, or grieve different facets of something, and we can have lots of different, even contradictory feelings about those different facets which can look like going through stages. - denial - [anger](https://www.healthline.com/health/anger-issues) - bargaining - [depression](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/7-healthy-habits-that-can-help-reduce-your-depression-risk) - [acceptance](https://www.healthline.com/health/grief-without-denial-6-healthy-ways-to-accept-death) - **Shock and denial:** This is a state of disbelief and numbed feelings. - **Pain and guilt:** You may feel that the loss is unbearable and that you’re making other people’s lives harder because of your feelings and needs. - **Anger and bargaining:** You may lash out, telling God or a higher power that you’ll do anything they ask if they’ll only grant you relief from these feelings or this situation. - **Depression:** This may be a period of isolation and loneliness during which you process and reflect on the loss. - **The upward turn:** At this point, the stages of grief, like anger and pain, have died down, and you’re left in a more calm and relaxed state. - **Reconstruction and working through:** You can begin to put pieces of your life back together and move forward. - **Acceptance and hope:** This is a very gradual acceptance of the new way of life and a feeling of possibility for the future. ##### The Importance of Grief There are few things more important to our long-term emotional health than learning to grieve, to accept grief, and to be willing to feel it, or even learning to lose. >"*There's no sincere path you can take in life without having your heart broken.*" >- David Whyte An unwillingness to feel grief becomes risk aversion, [[🛡️ Avoiding]] life and its richest experiences. Like refusing to play a game we’d like to be involved in, in order to avoid losing. But [[🔑 pain and difficulty cannot be avoided]], and that includes loss. So if we aren’t willing to accept loss and metabolize grief we miss out on so much of life, and so much practice grieving, and then we’re met with grief anyway. The grief of regret, of staying small, or the grief of inevitable losses. Grieving makes us more resilient, avoiding grief makes us rigid and brittle. Uncovering and tending to our grief is so important that it’s difficult to over-emphasize, because **grief is [[🕯️ Love]]**, it’s our aliveness. If we aren’t willing to get in touch with our grief, our aliveness is stifled. Experiencing developmentally appropriate losses teaches makes us more resilient and helps us grow in our [[💡 Growth Zone|Growth Zone]]. Protection from all losses keeps us developmentally stunted and then we can be easily overwhelmed when we lose something and aren’t equipped to grieve it. [[🛡️ Denying]] the loss is common. ###### Signs of Masked, Delayed, or Unmetabolized Grief [[🔑 Pain and difficulty cannot be avoided]] — avoiding grief will not save us from it, there is grief in all directions. | Emotional Signs | Behavioral Signs | Physical Signs | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Mood Swings: Sudden changes in mood, such as going from laughter to tears. | Withdrawal: Pulling away from social activities and interactions. | [[💡 Fatigue\|Fatigue]]: Persistent tiredness or low energy, even after adequate rest. | | Numbness: Feeling emotionally flat or detached from others. | Changes in Routine: Disruptions in daily habits, such as sleeping patterns or eating habits. | Changes in Appetite: Significant weight loss or gain due to changes in eating habits. | | Irritability: Becoming easily frustrated or [[💡 Anger\|angry]] over minor issues. | Lack of Interest: Losing interest in hobbies or activities they used to enjoy. | Physical Symptoms: Unexplained aches and pains, such as headaches or stomach issues. | | [[💡 Anxiety\|Anxiety]]: Increased worry or anxious thoughts, even about unrelated things. | Restlessness: Difficulty sitting still or constantly needing to move around. | Sleep Disturbances: Trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or experiencing restless sleep. [[💡 Insomnia\|Insomnia]] | | [[💡 Guilt\|Guilt]] or [[🛡️ Blaming\|Self-blame]], often without a clear reason. | [[🛡️ Avoiding\|Avoidance]]: Avoiding places, people, or activities that remind them of their loss. | Crying Spells: Frequent bouts of crying, sometimes triggered by small reminders. | | Apathy | | | | Relief | | | | Cognitive Signs | Social Signs | Spiritual Signs | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Difficulty Concentrating: Trouble focusing on tasks or following conversations. | Isolation: Choosing to spend more time alone and less time with friends or family. | Questioning Beliefs: Re-evaluating spiritual or religious beliefs. | | Forgetfulness: Increased memory lapses or forgetfulness. | Reliance on Substances: Increased use of alcohol, drugs, or other substances to cope. | Seeking Meaning: Trying to find deeper meaning or purpose in life following the loss. | | Indecisiveness: Difficulty making decisions or second-guessing choices. | Changes in Communication: Becoming more withdrawn in conversations or, conversely, talking excessively about the loss. | Changes in Faith Practices: Altering their participation in religious or spiritual activities. | | Preoccupation: Constantly thinking about the loss or the circumstances surrounding it. | Seeking Reassurance: Frequently asking for validation or reassurance from others. | | | | Overworking: Throwing themselves into work or other activities to distract from their feelings. | | #### 🦮 How to: Grief-Tending and metabolizing emotional pain When we lose something that mattered to us, like a connection or a way of being in connection with someone — or even an expectation, something that was briefly part of our life, or what we were hoping for — its absence creates a kind of absence *inside of us*. Sometimes grieving is making space for that inner-absence, channeling it, giving it a voice, witnessing it, giving it dignity as an act of [[⭐️ Self-Care]]. Turning towards it and sensing what it needs, or sometimes letting it be in the background while we do our thing. This could be through a small ceremony — acknowledging what mattered to us, and honoring the absence. It could include walking, dance, or other motion, listening to or making music (or even just drumming to ourselves), drawing, lighting a candle, sitting in silence and stillness, or something else while in contact with that absence. It’s not about making the absence feel better, but channeling it. How does the absence want to express itself? How does it want to be witnessed? --- We can start by noticing small absences, such as end of something (an ending is the beginning of an absence): - a book, film, meal, party, or trip - Seasons ending - Not getting much done by the end of the day - The end of a milkshake We might find our mind wandering and thinking about endings. Like the end of connections, or the end of chapters in life. We might sometimes notice pangs or waves of emotion in my chest or elsewhere. When they arise, we can turn to them, breath gently, and let the waves pass on their own. Grief isn’t always profound or dramatic, it can be soft and quiet. We can turn toward it with breath and presence, without trying to figure it out.— just [[🕯️ Being With]] and allowing it. We might even tell it “You can be here. You belong.” The thoughts themselves are a way of honoring it. It’s the mind sensing change. Grief is sometimes described as “Love with nowhere to go,” and it’s that nowhere, that absence, that we’re allowing to run its course. Sometimes grief isn’t only for what was lost, but for who we were in relation to it. The part of you that got to feel hopeful, curious, open, seen. Grieving can also mean honoring that part of ourself and inviting them home again. --- %% Grieving as making space for absence and expression is one facet of grief. Others: - Grief as transformation — a process that fundamentally reshapes the griever, often viewed through a mythic or archetypal lens (e.g., going into the underworld and emerging changed). - Grief as honoring — where rituals are primarily about preserving the memory or legacy of the lost thing or person, and grieving is a form of devotion. - Grief as purification — sometimes viewed as cleansing, especially in traditions where tears or lamentation are seen as holy or necessary for clarity. - Grief as resistance — in political or collective contexts, where mourning is an act of refusing to forget, deny, or normalize harm. - Grief as blockage or pathology — in some clinical models, grief is framed as something to “resolve” or “complete” so one can return to baseline. (This view can be limiting, but it exists.) %% --- Sometimes grief feels “stuck” because we have unexpressed emotions about a person, event, or chapter in our lives. We could try [[🕯️ Journaling]] about them, writing them a letter (with or without sending it), or imagine talking to them and letting those emotions out — sometimes putting a chair in front of us and imagining them sitting in it helps this. --- ”Healing” and “moving on” are byproducts of grieving and tending to grief. Not the goal, not the endpoint, but something that may happen naturally when grief is witnessed, expressed, and integrated. Sometimes the feelings complete, but integration doesn’t necessarily mean grief dissolves completely — sometimes it doesn’t. Some griefs may soften, transform, or lose their sharpness, but never completely vanish. They become part of our inner-landscape as a scar, a tenderness, a story. That’s what integration points to—not finishing the feeling, but absorbing it into your inner world in a way that doesn’t weigh or trap you. --- > “Our search for grief/loss can begin by asking this question: ‘What did I receive from my dysfunctional family and what would I have received from loving parents in the same situation?’” > — [[📖 Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families]] p 204 For some of us, answering that question might be quite difficult, because it’s a challenge to imagine what we didn’t get. Even if we don’t know what we missed out on, we missed it. The evidence of that absence is in our emotional reality and present day challenges. - [[🦮 How to detach from someone]] - [[🦮 How to Regulate Emotions]] - [[🕯️ Tending to feelings]] - [[🕯️ Sitting in I-Don’t-Know|🕯️ Tolerating Uncertainty]] ##### Practices Some of us might benefit from learning a practice for grief — they can teach us how to be with and integrate it until we learn to do it naturally. - [[👤 Pema Chödrön]] books - [[📖 When Things Fall Apart - Heart Advice for Difficult Times]] - [[📖 Radical Acceptance - Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha]] - [[📖 🟢 Radical Compassion - Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN]] - [[📖 The Grieving Brain- The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss]] - [[📖 The Wisdom of a Broken Heart- An Uncommon Guide to Healing, Insight, and Love]] - [[📖 🟢 The Year of Magical Thinking]] ###### SNOELL Basic Grief Practice (Lama Rod Owens) There is a series of meditations on this practice on the [[📱 Calm]] app called “Caring For Your Grief” by [[Lama Rod Owens]]. - Seeing - noticing something in our experience. Thoughts and emotions right now. We don't have to conjure anything up. What's here? - Naming - name what we notice. What kinds of thoughts and emotions are you Seeing? "I see sadness," "There's a happy thought," "Sadness," "Happiness," "Boredom," "Quiet," "Rest," "Empty" Practice Seeing and Naming together for a few minutes. - Owning - reflect on how everything we've Seen and Named is happening for us, in our own mind. - Experiencing - get curious about what you’ve noticed and named. Choose one of them and allow yourself to really experience it. What does it feel like in the mind, or as a body sensation? Explore how it feels. - Letting it Go - let go of the concentrated focus, relax your attention and become aware of other things. Sounds or scents in the room, the weight of your body. Let the thoughts and emotions be there without fixating on them. Continue re-focusing on other things around you while the thoughts and emotions go into the background. - Letting it Float - open your attention outwards. Get a sense of everything happening both within and around you. Take a few moments, then expand and relax your attention even more. Rest in the open awareness of everything happening in this moment. ###### Resources - Heidi Priebe on Grief: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Heidi+Priebe+grief - https://www.dignitymemorial.com/grief-and-sympathy - [The Multiplicity of Grief - Exploring the Five Gates of Grief through the Lens of IFS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T9yNCPZIFQ) - [Grief and Polarizations in Uncertain Times](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDmCGAIt7E) - The Wild Edge of Sorrow - Francis Weller, Holly Truhlar, Erin Geesman-Rabke and Carl Rabke all lead grief rituals - [Paul Dennitson: Healing Grief Yoga](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9fFP4jmlQw) - George A Bonanno - David Kessler The Color Purple Terms of Endearment Grey Anatomy Beaches The Farewell Life is Beautiful Up Brokeback Mountain any movie where a dog dies [^1]: Dr K: How to Grieve | Coping with Death https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFUilP8grFQ