Are you grieving…the loss of how your life used to be?
Or grieving the loss of a job or the loss of a social life?
This time may be bringing the grief from past losses to the surface, such as a loss of a parent, or a good friend.
Hard to put your finger on just what you are feeling? Because of the complexity of grief sometimes it is hard to know just what you are feeling.
Our lives are different now, we have lost much as far as life-style and certain freedoms as well as social connections.
All of the uncertainty in the world and perhaps as this reflects back into our lives, our world is changed, altered and it looks as if it will be this way for a while.
What is the sensation of grief in your body?
This is a great question since there are five stages of grief, it may be hard to pin-point which stage you are in.
Here are the five stages of grief:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression and/or sadness
5. Acceptance
These stages are not static and may rebound back up to the top two or three as you are healing.
These 5 stages were first delineated and written about in 1969 by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her book, Death And Dying.
Later on David Kessler added a 6th stage, “Meaning.”
I find it helpful to track my grief daily as I sit in my meditation or just with a simple body scan.
I may then sketch a picture of what I felt in my body or put a display in my sand painting.
Another way of discovering more about your grief is to journal or write a three card soul story (ask me about this).
At the end of this process, I will ask myself which stage I am in today and what type of support do I need?
This process takes courage as you will be sitting with the discomfort of grief.
Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun and teacher at the Gampo Abbey, talks about this process of sitting with ourselves with kindness and compassion – a reminder of the layers of Self and to be soft with these outer layers knowing that there is a jewel inside.
She says, “We already have everything we need. There is no need for self improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves, the heavy duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds, never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.”
