Letting Go: Grief

This morning on my morning walk I got a pop-up on my phone of a memory. The memory was a video of my dear, Grandma, Gladys who passed away last June. It was just a comical little video capturing one of our many moments being silly and lighthearted together. I began crying, walking, and crying. I was just a sobbing mess but still driven to complete my 3-mile walk goal. This moment had me thinking of October’s Yoga theme “Letting go.” In my mind, I was like “Wow, you are really letting go and clearly have your shit together.” This is sarcasm of course. I don’t know what that the hell I’m doing but I am really in-tuned with my emotions. 

Grief is a tricky and sneaky little devil that shows up just when you think your grief feelings are resolved. This is important, death doesn’t always have to be the culprit of grief. It could be the loss of a marriage, friendship, and job, etc. In my case, the grief is the death of my Grandma. I grieve over other shit too. Recently I grieved over two fires that burned down my neighbor’s homes. I grieved over the loss of my friendship with my best friend for years. I grieved over the tumultuous relationship with my Mother. Sometimes my grief is over the ending of a really good book if I’m being honest. Of course, I will get over a book quicker but the point is it shows up in many different ways for different reasons. 

Most of us have not been taught how to deal with grief and a lot of cases are encouraged by knuckleheads to “move on” and never really deal with the feelings of grief. We’ve been taught this idea of “being strong” aka push it deep down in your body so you don’t have to see it and feel it. My least favorite line of them all is “pull up your big girl panties.” I hate that shit. First off don’t talk about my panties and the “big girl” I hate that for a multitude of reasons but mainly because it sounds like I wear these big ass white bloomers that I can parachute with and that’s simply not true. I loathe other people telling me how to feel when to move on and trying to give me the “bright side.” In fact, I hate being told what to do PERIOD. Just had to get that out. Seriously, as a conduit for energy healing, I can tell you right now if you do not heal from grief it will manifest. It will eventually show up as a mental, energetic or physical issue. Of course, no one wants to sit and have a cup of tea with grief…poor grief…so lonely and it needs you. It needs you to feel its pain and loss and be prepared it will show up when you least expect it, such as a Sunday morning walk. 

Letting go doesn’t mean we forget and move on, suppress, and “pull up our stupid big girl panties.” No, quite the contrary it means we don’t let it become a bag of rocks. A yoga student of mine recently said “we all carry around a bag of rocks.” I loved this because it’s so true and such a great analogy. Really, letting go isn’t just all of sudden dropping your bag of rocks, you might hurt your toe, but rather just allowing that bag you carry to become lighter. This process of feeling lighter can only be done when we work through this grief and guess what sometimes this just means being patient and compassionate with yourself. I would like to add I don’t want anyone to get in a deep, dark depression dealing with grief. Sometimes we need help to work through this grief like counselors. Reiki is also a wonderful healing modality to help with this. 

Another thing that happens with grief is sometimes it becomes a mirror for other shit we are holding in. As I am walking down the road sobbing my eyes out my husband walks up and asks “Are you crying?” No this distorted, wet look on my face is something I’ve been playing around with to see if I can attract more tall, handsome men such as yourself. Men…not only are they observant, they ask the darnedest things. He actually was very helpful, my hubs is a really good listener and can handle all the crazy. That silly question led me into letting go of some rocks that were weighing me down. I even said to him “seeing my Grandma was a mirror into some other things.” We talked about it, I cried, and then it was gone. My bag of rocks is much lighter. Always remember Grief isn’t the scary beast we make it out to be. Grief is actually a beauty because it is the response from the highest part of ourselves….LOVE.