journeytohealing

If you’ve just found this blog, I’ve been discussing the grief cycle as it relates to losing someone you love.I’d like to go on a tangent here, but stay on the subject of grief.

We usually associate grief with death and dying. However, grief is the natural response to any loss.

Remember, within the grief cycle are several emotions or states of being: shock, anger, depression and acceptance.

You experience loss when something doesn’t work out the way you want. This could be as major as a relationship going awry, losing a job, or as minor as spilling coffee or tea (I’m a tea person) on your clothes.

Notice I put messing up your clothes in the minor category. That may not seem minor at all if you were at a job interview … minutes from meeting the President (of the company or country) … or your own personal worst nightmare.

When you experience anger, know that you have had a loss.

If someone insulted you, you lost self-esteem.

If someone hit you, you lost security and safety.

If you’re caught in traffic, you’ve lost time.

If you’re a social activist, you might not consider your anger about abuse of the environment, children, animals, migrants, immigration, terrorism … and the list goes on … resulting from a loss. It is. Go deeper into your own feelings and you’ll find the loss.

If you erupt in anger at the slightest problem (the newspaper is on the grass rather than the sidewalk), you have deep losses you haven’t acknowledged or worked through. Getting to the source of these deep seated losses is emotionally painful.

(I’m having a difficult time staying focused with this post. I keep trying to wander off on different tangents. Solution: make a list of new topics to explore as I go along.)

Back to the grief cycle … there is anger at one end and acceptance at the other.

When you move into acceptance, you are no longer angry.

When you accept what is … when you quit pushing against what is … when  you quit trying to change what is … you move into peace, into acceptance.

When you can’t accept what is, there is a loss, probably long ago, you have not accepted. Accept that loss and so much will be relieved.

… And, yes, I’ve jotted that topic down for another post, along with 6 others.

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