Grief as my teacher for health and wellbeing

Grief taught me how to look after my physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

Maybe that sounds crazy to you if your life is being consumed by grief or you feel lost. I can understand because I was in that place too.

I wasn’t equipped to deal with the grief paralysis, brain fog, the overwhelm and the heightened emotions that kept me in survival mode.

It was difficult to know what to do because grief isn’t talked about or acknowledged very well and our society is not very well equipped to handle it either.

The suffering had clouded what I valued in life, my family, health, connection, purpose and meaning.

That painful phase in my life felt like it would never change.

I couldn’t bring my daughter Georgia back but I started to realise that the choices I was making determined the quality of my life.

When I felt ready, I started to take action that was of a self care nature, and come to terms with “life after,” instead of yearning for “life before.” It was the start of my healing journey and grief was still travelling close by my side.

Being available and connected to my young family was important. Adding goodness into our lives instead of pain motivated me to look after myself physically, emotionally and spiritually.

This also allowed me to explore my relationship with Georgia in a different way, because I had learned how to value life in more than the physical realm.

The more I was present, connected and allowing what was, the more I discovered what I needed to move toward an enriched and meaningful life after loss.

Sounds easy but it wasn’t. I had to find out how. It took me many years of soul searching and exploring. It is an ongoing process and not a destination.

My message to you if wondering how to rebuild life after loss is to embrace what is good in your life.

Keep adding goodness.

Acknowledge your feelings and being with your grief, rather than fleeing, fighting, or giving up on yourself.

Keep remembering that change is the only constant. Grief changes and evolves and so do you.

Give yourself compassion, kindness and allow your relationship with grief to be nurtured rather than abandoned.

When you feel ready and want to, you can make choices for how to best care for yourself. This can be based on how grief is expressing through you.

Grief shows you what you need for your well-being.

Remember that every emotion and experience you are having is real and valid.

It is what needs to move through you.

Emotions are energy in motion and don’t serve us when they get stuck or blocked.

It takes courage to allow this stranger called Grief to be in your heart. Allowing space for the emotions of grief to arrive, means facing the most frightening and vulnerable parts of ourselves.

It is important to find the support you need to get through and the support for how to build a meaningful life that you can love.

Honour the relationship you have with your loved one, in a way that is meaningful to you.

Remember grief is not just about deep sadness. It’s also about fear, guilt, shame, anger, isolation, helplessness and the whole range of human emotions. They can arrive unexpected at times and sometimes all in one day.

You might be experiencing grief as messy, overwhelming, unpredictable, scary, unrelenting and consuming.

Know that it is normal to want to push it away, escape, ignore, numb or avoid and may seem like the answer but eventually it doesn’t work out well in the long term.

It takes getting to know yourself and the grief, to where you can make helpful choices that determine the quality of your life.

Dive into the well of your being and make contact with the present moment, be the observer of your experiences and respond with nurturing action.

It is action that helps us move through grief not time.

Understanding your grief is understanding yourself more deeply than you possibly ever have before.

Remember even if it doesn’t feel like it today, life is a miracle and we can become the miracle in our life too.

Dr Wayne Dyer said “when you believe it, you will see it.”

Believing becomes easier when we are inspired by others who have transformed grief into growth and have a love for life.

If you are navigating grief, remember even if you don’t want to be in grief or you are unsure how to handle it, you are worth caring for, You are here. You are doing it. Keep going.

❤️With much love❤️