Five Practices to Help You Move Through Your Grief
Grief is a regular part of the human experience and needs time and space to be expressed, felt and experienced.
If you or someone you care about is reeling because of the disruption caused by a loss, consider a few practices that will help you grieve well and eventually find the healing you hope is possible.
Five Practices That Will Help You Grieve
1. Be honest with yourself
If you try to tough it out after a serious loss, you will only hinder the grieving process.
He who conceals his grief finds no remedy for it. — Turkish Proverb
2. Share your grief with trustworthy friends
There’s a time to be left alone in your grief and a time to lean on the support and love of traveling companions. Make sure to take time for the later.
Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief. — French Proverb
Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. — Peter Levine - Trauma Researcher
3. Use poems, prayers, and quotations to express your grief
Sometimes we can’t find the words to express how we feel. When that happens, borrow the words of others.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. — Serenity Prayer
Tears water our growth. — William Shakespeare
When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure. — Author Unknown
4. Practice patience
When traveling through grief, be willing to slow down and travel at a new speed.
SLOW
You can’t rush grief and will be better off in the long run if you learn patience while grieving.
Grief makes one hour ten. — William Shakespeare
5. Let yourself feel deeply and cry as necessary
Tears are God’s built in relief value for the hurts of life. Let them flow.
What soap is for the body, tears do for the soul. — Jewish saying
There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. — Washington Irving
Final Thought
Your loss doesn’t need to be huge — like the loss of a loved one. It can be the loss of a dream, your identity, your health, or your job. All losses need time to be grieved and processed.
What does it look like for you to validate a recent loss you have had?
Who do you have in your life that you can divide your grief with?
