On Grief
On Grief
This is an excerpt from the book What About the Big Stuff by Richard Carlson, author of the well-known Don't Sweat the Small Stuff…And It's All Small Stuff.
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Unlike a fire, trying to extinguish grief is the worst thing you can do. It makes sadness and grief less accessible and more difficult to work with. Instead of being right there on the surface where it’s workable, it festers and grows into an even bigger and more painful obstacle. That’s why I say, Grieve freely.
The need to grieve will not go away because you run from it or turn in the other direction. You can’t pretend it’s not there just because it’s time to “get on with your business.” Burying something only pts it deeper in the ground. Burying your pain only deepens it and makes dealing with it even more difficult. Running from pain makes pain the enemy. It encourages us to look at pain with anger and repulsion. This, in turn, makes us push it away even harder. It’s a vicious cycle.
Grieving is a natural process that extends far beyond the topic of death. We live in a world of constant change where nothing stays the same. Every experience has an end, as has every thought. Every accomplishment will end, as will every relationship. It’s natural to try to hang on and even cling to things, especially those things, experiences, and people we love.
Some of us hang on for a long time. We can “be strong” and push away the pain. Someone dies. It’s sad, but we get through it. We’re tough. There’s a loss, then another and another. We keep a stiff upper lip and somehow keep going.
But at some point, which is different for each of us, it all becomes too much. There is a sort of dying into the reality of life that takes place at some point in our lives. In my opinion, this is the first step toward healing.
For true healing to take place, we must acknowledge the pain that exists, and that has existed in our lives. I’m not necessarily talking about a commiseration session with a friend or counselor, but rather an ongoing reflective investigation of that which needs to be grieved.
There are as many levels and degrees of grieving as there are people who need to grieve. The seriousness of one type of grief doesn’t negate the need for another. Here’s what I mean.
For a short period of time, I was having a difficult time accepting the fact that my daughter had become a young woman. Many parents go through this as their kids grow up. I knew it was normal, but it still hurt. I missed our special times together when she was young – running through the parks, renting boats at the reservoir, playing games, and so forth. I was her hero. But then it happened. She had come to that time in her life when she would rather be on the phone with her friends than playing Candyland with me.
Meanwhile I heard about a mom and dad in our community who had lost their child to a freak accident in a swimming pool. Their pain must have been unbearable; I can’t even imagine it.
I think it’s important to honor the grieving process rather than to minimize it simply because there are others going through even more painful experiences. In other words, while one couple must grieve the loss of their child with unimaginable pain, it doesn’t negate or remove the less serious loss that I had been experiencing or that you may be experiencing. I had enormous compassion for what those parents were going through – my heart ached for them. But to pretend that I too wasn’t in pain would have been a serious mistake and a disservice to myself. Just as there is always going to be someone better looking, younger, stronger, faster, richer, or whatever else, than you are, there is also always going to be someone who is experiencing greater pain than you.
If you are in the midst of great pain, it’s critical that you grieve freely now. On the other hand, if you’re not, don’t let the fact that you’re not currently suffering discourage you from becoming familiar with the process. If you’re lucky, you can “start small,” if there is such a thing! You can build on your inner willingness to relate to your pain a little differently, with loving-kindness and openness instead of harshness and bitterness.
In some ways, it seems ironic that turning toward that which we have always run away from is the answer. Yet what I am learning and what I have been experiencing is that the more I am willing to “investigate” my pain, to look directly at it instead of hiding from it, the softer and more workable it becomes.
As pain, anger, and sadness come up, try to treat them with compassion and mercy instead of loathing and hatred. The feelings are there, waiting to be acknowledged. Pushing them away, hating them, and wishing they would go away doesn’t work anyway. More of the same will only create more pain.
Grieving freely and relating to your pain in a different, more compassionate way can be a little like learning a new language. It’s difficult at first. But also like learning a new language, the learning curve and early rewards can be high. What you quickly realize is that it takes great energy and determination to hold back our fear and pain when our natural tendency is to grieve. When we open our hearts and acknowledge and look at the pain with kindness and compassion toward ourselves and or pain, we have a chance to relate to it a bit differently. We are softer and kinder to our pain and to ourselves. We learn to treat ourselves and relate to our grief with mercy instead of with a controlling iron fist.
A valuable by-product of learning to grieve freely is that we learn to live more fully.
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I like the way he writes about grief and pain, as something to be embraced or at least faced as a natural emotion and a natural part of life. Not hiding from it. Experiencing what is in front of us for what it is and not our thinking about it. Flowing with life from a space of aliveness allows us the freedom to experience all emotions in their time.
I love the phrase "a sort of dying into the reality of life".
I have found, for me, every time I "die into the reality of life", there is joy at the bottom of whatever it looks like on the top. My fears about what grieving or pain might be have never come true.
I would go further than his "grieve freely" to say feel freely.
In the presence of each moment.
With Love,
Sara Joy
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