What is Grief Wellness & Mindful Grieving?
Grieving is the internal process of suffering from a loss. The more significant the loss or connection to what or who is lost; the more intense the feelings of sorrow are. There are many factors that weigh in on how long we grieve. The type of relationship we lost, the length of relationship that was lost, the secondary losses to that loss and if death is part of it, the mode of death. All these factors can help us understand the intensity and duration of emotions during our grieving.
Mourning is how we express the grief we feel on the inside towards the outside world. It is the cultural representation of grief; things like dressing in black for a period of time, cutting your hair, tearing your clothes, celebrating life or covering mirrors would be signs of mourning.
Grief is THE reaction to loss. For most grief is love without a place to go and for others it is an intense emotion on the opposite or nearing the opposite side of love (hate, resentment, a need for justice). It is possible to grieve someone you had no connection to; like an absent parent or to grieve a person who was abusive and neglectful. Grief in short is the turmoil of emotions bubbling up inside.
It tends to be a time where we grope through the darkness trying to feel our way through as we try to figure out what is recognized as familiar, safe, scary, isolating or different.
Mindful grieving is the allowing of an organic unfolding of how the heart, mind, body, and soul chooses to release its sorrow while staying present in the grieving.
More importantly it is giving grief the permission to allow the pain to be experienced without judgement, avoidance, needing to fix it, having it fixed by someone else or punishing yourself for what is happening.
Mindful grieving is being open to the growth from the awareness of the discomfort grief brings. It is facing fear, shame, guilt, anger, joy and other vulnerable emotions with compassion, empathy, curiosity and above all kindness even when you don’t believe you deserve it or it is merited. Mindful grieving is turning down the volume or silencing the chatter in your mind of what could of, or should have been. It’s allowing yourself to be present in the moment of what you are feeling without holding on to the past or worrying about the future. It’s the here and now of grief.
Grief Wellness is doing grief work with the purpose of living life and grief with intentionality. It is the place where life and grief meet and are able to encounter healthy coping skills while understanding the multilayer process of grief. It’s understanding what is happening to you, why it’s happening and what you can do to get through it without being stuck in grief, pain and suffering forever. Grief wellness looks at how grief affects your mind, how it shows up in your body, why you feel the intense emotions you are experiencing and how all of it affects you at work, home, place of worship or school.
If you are ready to
Push pause on that tape recorder in your head that says you can’t do this
And you are ready to relinquish the suffering without having to suffer forever with your loss or your loved ones' memory