Opening To Grief support: Loving More Freely
“Grief is like water: we can drown in it, but we can also drink from it and be strengthened and nourished by it. For our grief and sadness reflect our ability to feel, to love, and to mourn the loss of what we love so dearly.”
As a doctor, I have the privilege of witnessing the most intimate details of peoples’ lives. As I inquire about a patient’s symptoms, I often discover that their disease process began after a significant life event such as an accident, trauma, loss, or shock.
Depending on the underlying state of health and balance, an individual will traverse the life event with balance and ease, or fall into a state imbalance and disease. If an individual is already experiencing significant stressors, sleeps poorly, eats a poor diet, and feels isolated or disconnected from a sense of community, then a significant stressor can be the straw on the camel’s back, leading to the onset of ill-health, disease, or depressed / anxious mood states. One stressor in particular that seems to play a significant role in disease is that of loss. It is not uncommon for someone to begin experiencing digestive complaints, autoimmune disease, cancer, depression, back pain, insomnia or other symptoms following a significant loss.
The human organism contains within it mechanisms to recover from stressors. Just as an animal shakes itself off after experiencing trauma or shock, our system knows how to auto-correct and free itself from the impacts of stress. Following a significant loss, grief can be seen as an in-built tool that allows us to traverse the experience with health and wholeness. Most traditional cultures have an understanding of the role of grief and how to support those within the community to experience it fully by enacting various grief rituals. Most westerners, however, have forgotten how to grieve and respond instead through a fight / flight / freeze; we stuff grief down, push it away, numb ourselves, ‘pull ourselves together’ and ‘carry on.’ By doing this, we shut-down the very mechanism that is meant to support us, and instead become stuck, depressed, tired, or otherwise sick.
Grief is complex and multi-faceted. It often follows loss, and has the ability to open our hearts and souls to a powerfully transformative and deep passage of renewal. As we open ourselves to experiencing the many faces, textures, phases, layers, and colors of grief, we also open ourselves to living more deeply, to feeling more profoundly, and to being renewed in our bodies, emotions, hearts, minds, and spirits. Grief not only allows us to process the initial loss, but it also opens the door for us to process older losses that have been stuck within our memory body and nervous system. I have observed that if an individual experienced a particularly big loss but did not have the time, space, capacity, tools, or support to grieve, then the next ‘loss’ can provide an opportunity for grief. In other words, it's never too late to grieve.
I’d like to offer some simple ways to support the grief process. But more so, I would like to propose that grief is a good thing. Grief is a scary, daunting, overwhelming, all-encompassing portal that is ultimately a benevolent and compassionate part of life; it supports us in becoming more whole and allows us to live and love more fully.
Support for the grief process:
Flower Essences:
Yerba Santa: allows movement of stuck emotions in heart, moves tears
Angel’s Trumpet: fear of death, letting go of material life, allowing change in the soul
Dogwood: Awkward and painful awareness of the body; latent emotional trauma or abuse affecting the body, accident prone
Chaparral: Psychic and physical toxicity, disturbed dreams and chaotic inner life, violence or post-traumatic stress
Golden Ear Drops: Suppressed memories of childhood; feelings of pain and trauma about past events, affecting present emotional identity
Retreat
Self-reflection, permission, compassion
Somatic practices or somatic-based therapies
Grief Circles
Community Grief Rituals
Crying
Sitting for 20-30 minutes by flowing water
Homeopathy (constitutional)
Foundations of health: get plenty of sleep, daily exercise, meditation, eat healthy food, avoid too much caffeine, etc.
Wishing you love and support this fall season,
Dr. Lisa