Grief dwells in an inner reservoir. When you focus on one particular
loss and reconnect with those feelings, you gain a clearer perspective on many
other losses. The ones that you organically reconnect with depend on your current
needs and the issues at hand. If one allows for it, there is always a sweetness
and comfort in these reconnections. This is more accessible once you process through
the shame-bound complex feelings, and a part of you comes alive once again. It
makes sense that grieving enlivens. If there was not significant and meaningful
bonding in these relationships to begin with, we would not have experienced the
loss as traumatic.
Furthermore, in the state of openness and vulnerability that is
created through grieving, new learning and corrective experience come more easily.
These can be times of significant change and transformation. Outer life experiences
tend to be put in a perspective that reflects what is truly important in your
life, and what is without significant meaning. When you re-enter and process unresolved
losses, you simultaneously begin to separate "the wheat from the chaff."
Robert Gass, who conducts workshops on loss and "opening the heart"
suggests that: "One may always feel sadness...yet rather than being crippling,
this sadness may one day become like a rich color in the palette of the soul."
As John Bradshaw suggests, there is very good news in this merging
with nature's healing process. Grief is a healing feeling. If we allow ourselves,
it will come naturally.
Healing grief is a very individual process. Each of us must be
reassured that the sun will shine again, for while we are in grief, only clouds
prevail. We must be comforted by an outside source, written or spoken or sung
words that healing will organically occur. We need to be with our unpleasant feelings
and even allow ourselves to get lost in them as need be. We must also rise above
our grief as need be. We must pull ourselves out of it to periodically socialize,
even if we don't feel like it. We must dance with suffering, allowing it to lead
sometimes in our private moments and in the nurturing presence of our community.
However, it is also important to distinguish the grief healing that occurs in
grieving unresolved losses from feelings connected with a current, significant
loss. Though the healing principles are the same, a present loss, even one that
is grieved in a healthy way will take longer to heal than unresolved losses from
the past. This is because a current loss is anchored in present reality that must
be lived day to day, while unresolved losses from the past are not anchored in
a current reality that must be dealt with. You must only "make room" for the feelings
to move through you and be respected. The revisited memories are ghosts from the
past that bring us profound and important connections with lost parts of our selves.
With this reclaiming of our soul, we develop an expanded sense of aliveness. This
process continues to quicken as we become more grounded in our wholeness.
The above is excerpted from The
Journey Toward Complete Recovery: Reclaiming Your Emotional, Spiritual & Sexual
Wholeness by Michael Picucci
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