the healing archives is a series where i talk openly about my grief and share whatever i'm currently working through in regards to my grieving process. yesterday was mother's day and i wanted to share with you what i did. my intention is to share transparently, in hopes that whatever you're going through in your life journey you're able to create a space for yourself where you can be vulnerable and honest with yourself and the people you love. we all have things that hurt us, and we can't ignore this pain. my approach is to be gentle with myself, to move through this process with a loving awareness, patience, and honesty. i'm choosing to document this process because simply i feel it's important to. i'm not looking for pity. we all experience grief, whether on a big scale or more subtle grief - any unfinished business, an incompleteness with the past and with ourselves, a fatiguing self-consciousness. our grief manifests as self-judgement, as fear, as guilt, as anger and blame. our grief is our fear of loss, our fear of the unknown, our fear of death. grief is the rope burns left behind when what we have held to most dearly is pulled out of reach, beyond our geasp. an aspect of grief is the tendency of the mind to hold, to cling and condemn, to judge. a feeling of "not-enoughness" that longs to become otherwise.
there's a lot to work through for all of us, to pull at the root of who we are and why we do what we do, why we feel what we feel, but luckily - grief is workable. open your heart to the mind's pain. find space to explore mindfully. instead of judging everything that looks back, just observe. look directly at what's looking. watch the watcher. enter directly into your grief, encouraging it to reveal its deepest nature. speak to your pain as if it were your only child, relate to it with a new loving kindness, make room for it in your heart. the pain will decrease in direct proportion to the open space you're able to create for it.
"those who know their pain and their grief most intimately seem to be the lightest and most healed"
you're not alone
a website that really helped me with my grief: bit.ly/2VVcz2L
national suicide prevention lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
AFSP resources: afsp.org/find-support/resources/
10 май 2020
