I’ve experienced a series of major deaths in my life. In 2007, I lost my mother to suicide, and the experience was heart-wrenching, devastating, and made a huge impact on my life. My father-in-law was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer two years after her passing. He passed away in 2010. A year later, my husband’s twin brother passed away in a tragic ATV accident. In grief after a loss, I learned there’s no simple solution to cope and heal. Grief is a personal, complicated, painful, but natural part of our human experience.
I learned through these experiences that other types of loss in life can inspire complex grief such as the loss of intimate relationships, marriage, pets, homes, health, and even jobs. There may be grief associated with ending a goal or dream that we’ve poured our soul into, ruminating about the past, regret over a missed opportunity, or even finding ourselves stuck on a single life-changing event that occurred at one point in time in our life (Podcast, Love Letters and Mixtapes, Complex Grief).
These experiences can create many confusing emotions such as anxiety, fear, uncertainty, numbness, shame, bitterness, resentment, sadness, guilt, and anger. A misconception about grief is that it’s an emotional response to only the present experience, but grief is about the possibility of what could’ve been, what made us feel safe, what we once knew, and our identities. By understanding the complex feelings of grief and how to approach it through mindfulness, we can learn effective ways to cope and help others on their grief journeys. Here are 5 mindfulness tools that can help us build our human capacity to move through the pain of grief with purpose and resilience.
Practice Awareness and Acceptance
Our instinct as humans is to avoid our painful feelings and emotions. When this happens, avoidance behaviors can develop as we look for ways to cope and we can lose our capacity to feel. Feelings of grief can be messy, confusing, overwhelming, and incredibly difficult to sit with. It takes time to slowly transition into our new reality. For some, it can take days, months, or even years. Writing is a technique that I’ve found helpful to develop awareness and acceptance within.
Writing can be a good first step to help us create space to discover what we’re feeling and eventually, help us get our needs met. We can start by taking a moment to pause to try to name our feelings and emotions. Writing them down with a pen, on a sheet of paper, with our hands, can help activate what’s in our unconscious. As we write, it’s important to become aware and observe in a non-judgmental way. I recommend avoiding the temptation to act on them and see how they resonate. There’s no right or wrong way to express grief and loss and it’s okay to express anything that shows up.
Practice Self-Connection
Moments of meditation and breathwork practice can provide support, safety, and access to bodily intelligence. It helps to find ways to connect inward when emotions feel overwhelming. Every thought and experience we have has a physiological component that is felt in our body, says grief psychologist, Julia Samuel. Meditation and breathwork have become my companion. Start by finding a quiet and comfortable space to sit or lie down. Use pillows or blankets, candles, or anything that makes you feel the most comfortable.
Close your eyes and take time to notice your breath. Slowly move into the feeling of your body’s contact with the cushion or the floor, how your clothes feel against your skin, and your body’s sensations such as temperature, tension, or discomfort in every part of your body. As you do this, take a deep breath in and count for 4 seconds, then breathe out for 4 seconds while creating a rhythm. Try to repeat this exercise for 5 minutes at a time and pay close attention to how you feel. Journaling after this exercise can be impactful.
Practice Self-Compassion and Expression
Self-compassion is the process of turning our compassion inward. To notice our suffering and respond to it as we would to a good friend having a difficult time. It’s important to find ways to comfort and support ourselves when going through these difficult and painful moments.
1. Are you being harshly self-critical? We can feel blame, guilt, or shame when grieving and begin to self-sabotage. It can be helpful to become aware of the thoughts and stories we’re telling ourselves by asking if these are true or false. For example, we may be telling ourselves, “It’s all my fault,” “I’m a bad person,” “I should be over this,” or “nobody cares.” There’s a part of our brains that are always on alert to look for danger and protect us, but it can create a negative bias and keep us in negative thought loops. When feeling this way, we begin to isolate ourselves and feel as if we don’t have what it takes to make it through the grief.
2. Express Yourself. Getting into a place where we can express ourselves and our feelings can be a significant milestone in this process. During times of grief, we most need connection, love, and support from others. When a loved one asks how we’re doing, it’s natural to say, “I’m okay, how are you?” because we’re more concerned about how we make that person feel. If we could say, “I can’t put into words how I’m feeling, but could use some company right now” can make all the difference.
3. Limits. It’s also good to be aware of our limits and boundaries in these moments, although our loved ones mean well, they can push us to do things because they want us to go back to the way we were. We may also hear comments like, “just get over it,” “Just push through,” or “Just get therapy.” it’s important to be able to communicate when we can or can’t do something being asked of us.
Practice Self-Care Rituals
1. Rituals. Practicing small personal rituals can help you feel more at ease, joyful, and safe. This can be rituals such as calling a friend or family member, making a cup of tea, reading a book, going into nature, cooking a meal that brings you into your culture, finding ways to celebrate your loved one or activities that create movement in the body. Moving our bodies is the best medicine for us because exercise reduces levels of the body's stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol.
2. Exercise. Try a 10-minute walk outside, dancing, hiking, playing sports, outdoor activities, or incorporating play with children, animals, and adventure. These actions and rituals can help us calibrate ourselves and make room for more good things in our life such as connecting with those we love or bringing us into a place where we can start fulfilling our needs or even creating the ability to ask for help.
Practice Gratitude
Practicing living in gratitude allows us to heal from our pain and suffering and is a transformative way of dealing with loss (joincake.com). Gratitude helps us connect to the present moment and move through challenging or complicated emotions.
A few months after my mother passed away, I started a gratitude journal. I could only come up with one thing per day such as a fun memory of her, appreciation for the love and support from friends and family, an act of kindness I received that day, being proud of my ability to make it through that particular day, or being able to go for a walk and notice how the sunshine felt on my face. Capturing the little things and being able to feel gratitude, got me through the hardest days and it's a consistent daily practice in my life today.
In a culture of quick fixes, packaged-up solutions, and social media telling us how to navigate anything, we must consider different possibilities of how we can approach our grief and healing such as trying new things and figuring out what we love and honor about ourselves. It’s common to be told to “just seek therapy,” but we need to explore the idea that it may not be accessible financially, or emotionally, or we may not have the ability to communicate what we're going through (Podcast, Love Letters and Mixtapes, Complex Grief). Grief is a whole-body experience and about showing up in our whole self and our whole experience. There’s beauty in the ability to create our personal survival kit, by figuring out what works best for us as individuals and learning how to support ourselves during the most painful and difficult moments of complex grief.
"Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve."
Earl A Grollman
I appreciate you sharing your words of wisdom and experiences. Your insight is helpful and comforting.