Mourning Well: Why We Need to Express Our Grief Outside Ourselves
It’s almost Mother’s Day, and I’ve been thinking about how this holiday brings up both gratitude and grief for so many of us.
Gratitude for all the good mothering we’ve received from family members, friends and mentors.
Grief for all we needed—but did not receive—as children, and may still struggle to find.
Grief for all our beloveds who have graduated this life for the next.
Gratitude for our children and our other projects or creations.
Grief when our children or creations struggle and falter, and especially when our children graduate this life ahead of us.
To celebrate our gratitude without acknowledging our grief seems inauthentic and false.
But healing after a loss can be difficult. Grief can be difficult.
How do we access to our ability to transform grief… in a way that allows us to move through uncomfortable emotions and embrace our lives?
Mourning, the active outward expression of grief, can help us metabolize grief and transform our experience of the process.
Mourning well, and expressing our grief in community, makes change possible. We can release and transform the ways we have been holding on to our grief. Experienced facilitators, proven modalities, and a conscious community within a safe space can give us the support and courage we need.
On May 20-21, 2023, co-facilitator Dean Walker and I will offer “Hearts Broken Open: Grief as a Sacred Path to Reconnection and Resilience,” an online retreat. If you feel called to join us, you can learn more here: https://livingresilience.net/griefretreat/
In our “sudden community,” each person will bring their grief about their own loss. Perhaps you are grieving a deeply personal loss, or a family loss. Perhaps you are also grieving one or more of our collective losses: the loss of civil discourse, the loss of democracies around the world, the losses to all of us that result from climate change, and from economic and social injustice.
On this Hearts Broken Open journey, should you choose to join us, we’ll use creative tools to expand our personal and collective capacity to metabolize grief. Breathwork, movement, journaling, alter items, and sharing (to the extent you are comfortable) will transform your experience. At the end of the day, you’ll feel cleaner, clearer and more current in your emotional life.
In “The Six Needs of Mourning,” a book by Alan Wolfelt, Ph.D., other ways of mourning, or expressing grief outside ourselves, are described as essential to the healing process. “Crying, sharing stories, putting together photo albums, journaling, and other actions” should be part of the healing process, he says.
He says there are six steps, or “needs,” of mourning that help us move forward after loss. These are our ability to:
Acknowledge the reality of the loss
Embrace the pain of the loss
Remember the beloved one who died, or the relationship that is gone
Develop a new self-identity
Search for meaning
Receive ongoing support from others
We can all agree that the quality of support we receive as we journey along the sacred path of grief is vitally important.
Mourning as an expression of grief outwardly honors all that we have loved so deeply. May you find yourself in the company of others who have the capacity to understand and accompany your grief journey, and support you as you heal.
May your Grief and Gratitude be fully expressed, thus becoming part of the Love and Compassion with which you fill yourself and serve others.
Melody Magdalene