Healing your grief

I have been missing my mom a ton lately.

I recently showed a few of the last pictures I had of my mom with one of my dearest friends.  My daughters were so little in those pictures with her. It made me so sad to think that there would never be pictures with them in there together again.

My mom passed away in 2008. My friends are distinctly separated into those who knew my mom and those who did not. That subset gets even smaller for those who knew my dad who passed away in 1999.  Many of those who knew my parents then don’t even necessarily know me now because those experiences changed me.

I grew and changed (How could I not?) and my frequency is not even in the same ballpark as it was in those days. For years after my mom died, I read books and listened to talks trying to understand why this all had to happen this way. 

All of that learning and exploration expanded my thinking and my heart. 

My vibration elevated and a need to honor her was triggered in me.
 
I published Angel Birthdays so other families could have a blueprint for how to handle grief in their young families and I began giving grief workshops.  One day,  my talk on grief evolved.  It evolved from the grief we feel when we lose a loved one to the idea that every time we endure a life shift, we experience grief.

While all are different experiences, their core resonance is the same — grief. 

The key here is that when we recognize it is grief we are feeling in these moments, we are kinder to ourselves, more gentle with ourselves.

When we can hold our own heart with this much tender compassion, this is when the real healing happens. 

Several years ago, I wrote a blog on the 10 ways grief shows up in our life. that range from changing jobs to having children. The sooner we become aware of the grief we are feeling, the sooner we begin to heal.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, grief energy resides in our lungs. This grief emotional energy stagnates and slows the lung energy resulting in us feeling sad, weighing us down, and causing us to constantly sigh. This is also what wakes us up between 3:00am-5:00am.  Our lung energy heals and balances itself during this window of time and we awaken when the energy is stagnant. 

Grief is heavy and slow and transformative, just like the weight we experience on our chest.

This heaviness protects and honors the vulnerability within you.

It honors the love that was shared between you and another.

It honors the new roles the Universe has decided you are prepared to handle on your own now.

It is sadness.

It is unexpressed feelings

It is unexamined experience.

Energy can not be created or destroyed, only transformed.

At some point in your healing journey, there will be a pivotal moment.

A moment where grief begins to shift to gratitude. Grief and gratitude reside in the same location in our bodies and it is this journey from one emotion to the next that heals our broken hearts.

Believe it or not, this heaviness leads us to gratitude... gratitude for our life and the people who make it wonderful because we know, in a moment, it could all change.

Grief itself is the conduit to a more meaningful life. Could knowing that gratitude serves as our healing guide be your first thought of gratitude?  

We often need to begin there because it feels like there is very little to be grateful for when we are deep in our early stages of grief.

Is it even possible to feel grateful for grief itself?  It is.  And it's a great place to start. 

There is no better teacher of how to live in the grateful present moment than grief and at some point, on our healing journey, we become aware of this and the healing momentum of gratitude begins. 

A journey back to ourselves as we shift, change and evolve through our grief process into the person we were always meant to be, one present moment at a time.

As we heal, we begin to see the work that grief is doing within our lives as sparks of gratitude begin to arise and a greater plan is often understood.

There is a spark within us that can comfort us and hold us during our grief.

And when we’re ready, we can fan this spark to ignite a fire within us that will trail-blaze us into our next chapter. It’s important to sit with this flame and Close for repair when necessary when it is time and equally important to ignite it to support us when we feel ready.

This Divine Spark within you can hold you through your darkness and offer a glimmer of light for you until you are ready to fan it.

Life is always blessing you, even through grief.

If you would have told me that I would be grateful for all that happened, when my parents first passed away I would not have believed you.

I was broken, sad, and didn't understand why this all had to happen.

I was certainly not ready to fan that Divine spark.

I wanted to remain in that chapter and hold onto her energy and all the memories we made together.

But one day, I felt brave enough to take a deep breath of courage, fan that flame and begin again.

That exhale of courage led me down the series of Divinely guided events- publishing Angel Birthdays, becoming a grief minister, then reiki master, then hypnotherapist then opening Love.Heal.Thrive. and now sharing this wisdom through talks, podcasts and the incredible online world. 

I am expanding beyond the walls of the center to bring my message to an even broader audience and I think to myself how proud my mom would be and how we both know this journey was meant to be experienced with her as the angel on my shoulder, guiding me and cheering me on, much as she always did.

We are both grateful for this road we've traveled together and grateful I took that first deep breath and fanned the flame of Divine guidance.

Who or what are you grieving right now? Can you focus on the Divine spark within you that is calling to you? Are you ready to fan that spark or is it time to just sit with and comfort your grief?

All things, including our grief, happen in perfect Divine order and always bless us.

We heal one breath at a time
 
Join me for this week's meditation, Healing your grief through gratitude, for a powerful meditation that helps to transform our grief into gratitude. 

Join me for this week's podcast, Healing your grief, as I dive into this topic even more. It releases tomorrow but you can follow my podcast today to be alerted once it is up! 

Much love to you and your grateful  grieving heart,
Erin