Good Grief

My blue moon experience? Idling before bed scrolling through instagram I came across a yoga teacher who was pregnant (we pregnant mamas have new antennas for other bellies and babies :). I read through her profile and her story only to realize that just a year ago she lost her baby 2 days after giving birth and now she is pregnant with baby number 2. I was so drawn to her grief, to her sharing and expression and rawness and honesty and processing that I went to bed thinking about her, woke up thinking about her, and felt I needed a yoga class to help me process this strangers grief I so deeply connected to. I checked my local yoga studio for classes and who was teaching..? THIS SAME LADY! She is from Canada and was just guest teaching for that morning! How trippy is that?! Needless to say I made my way to the class and had a very fulfilling and insightful experience. The whole thing made me think about why it was I felt so attracted to her grief. To people’s grief in general. More specifically, to people moving through grief with awareness. Who are actively processing and moving through the bumps and waves. And I think I figured out what it is -- that it is because grief brings you face to face with one of the most important spiritual practices of all times. This one moved me so much that I blogged! More on the blog. 

When we grieve what are we doing? We are mourning loss. What have we lost? Most times really big, deep, physical and emotional connections to other Beings. Beings that we have lived with and in so many ways lived for. So what are we then forced to do? Detach from them. Live without them. And what does that detachment really look like? It means re-defining ourselves, our identity, our choices of love, our choices of companionship, our belief in right and wrong, who deserves to live, what life even is, what death is. HELLO! IT MEANS REDEFINING. PERIOD. Everything we thought we were, the make up of our entire identity and personal meaning in life CRACKS AND BREAKS. So as much as we grieve for the other person who may have suffered tremendously, we also grieve for our selves. The suffering of our identity and our emotions. 

Grieving for people that have died tends to be the hardest because it often comes without warning and without choice and without an option for things to be any different. It is our biggest wake up call to the reality that we control only a very a small part of our lives. And that nothing will last forever. Sigh! BUT if we define grief as the emotional reaction to loss, that means we grieve everyday in big ways and small. We may grieve the dying of a relationship, a friendship or even an idea or an expectation of someone. In all these things, think of what is at the core of the loss. It is WE we lose. Because we define so much of ourselves based on our family, our parter, our friend, our child, our job, our home, our values, who loves us and who we love. So when that is challenged we actually lose a very piece of ourselves. Our identity. The essence of our ego. And that sucks! It is so threatening and unstable. But remember who is one of my favorite Egyptian gods? Good ol' Khepri -- god of Rebirth. When we acknowledge what we are REALLY losing... that it is part of our own selves, arguably more than the actual person or thing that we lose, then we identify the underlying belief or assumption that has been challenged. And then the real work is to move from that part of our identity to be reborn into something new. Something more liberating. Someone more detached. Something closer to our Spiritual essence. And for the grief of your beloved -- knowing fully that the energy and memory and impact of that person really does live through you. Remember them. Talk about them. Talk to them. Write about them. Do things on their behalf. Detach, yet Keep them so alive.

The journey continues.....

THIS is why I find myself attracted to people moving through grief with awareness. Because they are actively participating in life’s hardest lesson -- detachment: to experience and live from a place that which is Free from all attachments - Your Soul personality. Residing in this space is where healing and growth and grace is born. With the contrast of this shadow of grief one can really learn what it means to be a bearer of light when people need it the most - in their darkness. Otherwise we are big balls of love and light who have no idea how to truly harness the flame of light for our ourselves and fellow human beings.