How Long will this Last?
Wednesday Wisdom
How long do people grieve the death of a parent? I type feverishly into Google.
Google results: Most people start feeling normal after 1 or 2 years.
TWO YEARS?!?
I was on a mission to get over grief. Two years was stretching my timeline.
So instead of slowing down and allowing myself the space and grace to FEEL. I sped up. Filled the calendar with fun and pressed forward.
Being “sad” wasn’t on the agenda.
What I failed to take into account was that grief can’t be determined by a timeline or a calendar year.
It’s not the amount of time that passes that helps, it’s the extent to which you allow yourself to experience your grief.
We’ve all heard the saying, “Time heals all wounds”.
I’m calling BS.
Time doesn’t heal, it simply helps us disassociate from our pain.
Think about it like this:
What if your home was a MESS and instead of sorting through the mess, donating, and trashing your unwanted items you just stuffed the whole mess into a closet.
Filled it to the brim and shut the door.
Outside of the closet, your house looks clean. People could come over and hang out and never know about your mess.
But it’s still there.
Whenever you try to open the door of the closet stuff starts tumbling out, so you decide to leave the door shut.
The house looks good without the mess.
Maybe you begin a relationship with someone, but you keep them at arm’s length. Because if you get too close they might just move in and find out about the stuff you’re hiding in the closet.
Years go by. You want to move on to a new home.
You carefully open the closet door, hoping over time things have sorted themselves out or maybe just disappeared. But nothing has changed, you still have a closet full of junk to sort.
The mess you tried to hide hasn’t magically gone away.
The only way to get rid of the mess is to deal with the stuff you’ve been avoiding.
Grief is the same.
Time won’t magically move grief.
You can try to escape it, but it will affect your life in other ways.
Suppressed grief may show us as….
Feeling numb
Using unhealthy coping strategies
Staying emotionally distant from others
Having a lack of emotional regulation
Physical illness
Being constantly stressed out
and more…
Just like organizing your closet, the only way out is through.
Allowing yourself to sit with, sort through, and experience your emotions is how you move through grief.
A simple practice to start getting into your body and creating space to grieve…
Hug yourself, with both arms
Hold for 1 min
While hugging yourself repeat this mantra out loud: “I am safe”.
Do this 3X’s per day.
Grief can be complicated - you don’t have to go through it alone,
If you would like more support I invite you to book a virtual coffee with me.
Click HERE to schedule.