Honoring Memorial Day

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Honoring Memorial Day

This post is in honor of all the brave men and women who died while serving in the United States military.

For many people it’s a long weekend and picnics, but today we honor the true meaning of Memorial Day, it is a day of reflection, remembrance and grief for many veterans and families of service men and women that died.

Many people mistake honoring a memory to mean they have to stay in emotional pain. We at The Grief Recovery Method think it honors their memory to live life without emotional pain.

It’s my wish on this Memorial Day that anyone who is grieving loss find their way to The Grief Recovery Method and begin their own journey of recovery.

Overcoming Grief

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Loss is all around us and is a part of life that none of us are immune to. So often it’s misunderstood what grief and grieving is, and sometimes it’s the belief that grief will somehow go away with time. For all of you who have the experience of major significant losses, you know that’s not true. You are forever changed from loss.

 

Maybe you have just lost a loved one to death. Maybe you just got divorced. Maybe a long-term romantic relationship just ended. Maybe you lost your job.  Maybe you were delivered an unfavorable health diagnosis. These are all experiences of loss and the reality of living life. We will all be confronted by loss and the darkness of the unknown.

 

You can’t go over, under, or around grief, you must go through it! Unfortunately our earliest teaching tells us: DON’T FEEL BAD, DON’T BURDEN OTHERS with your feelings. Trying to use these few incorrect ideas, we develop a belief that suggests we shouldn’t feel bad in the first place.

If we’re taught not to feel bad when feeling bad is the normal and natural reaction to a grief-producing event, that idea makes it almost impossible for us to access healthy guidance to go through grief, rather than trying to bypass it by going over, under, or around it.

The first thing we must do if we want to deal with our grief effectively, is to allow our grief to exist by acknowledging it, and by communicating openly about it to people with whom we feel safe.

Please know that grief is the normal and natural reaction to loss of any kind. The range of reactions and emotions in response to grief-producing events is as wide as there are people on the planet. You may often hear that “Everyone grieves in their own way and at their own pace.” and I agree.

But experiencing grief, even in our own way and at our own pace, is not the only issue. For example, when someone important to us dies, or when we get divorced, we are always left with some things we wish had been DIFFERENT, BETTER, OR MORE; and with some UNREALIZED HOPES, DREAMS, AND EXPECTATIONS about the future.

These six words are the keywords that can help you discover what was left emotionally incomplete for you as the result of a death, a divorce, or any other loss. These unfinished or incomplete things is what is referred to as Unresolved Grief.

The hardest part about overcoming grief is that we are taught that it is too difficult. The actions of the Grief Recovery Method that help grieving people deal with their unresolved grief is available to anyone who is willing to take those actions. They are relatively easy to do, even though we might think that they are hard because we were never taught they exist, or how to do them, and because we may have believed the myth that grief is permanent and recovery is impossible.

Take the step to action in your recovery & you’ll discover for yourself that overcoming grief is possible.

 

Mother’s Day Mixed Emotions

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Mother’s Day is a reason to celebrate for many people, but it can bring up sad or painful feelings for others.

Death isn’t the only reason that people grieve.

Death isn’t the only reason you might be grieving around Mother’s Day.  Maybe your mom was abusive or less than loving.  Maybe she didn’t mother in the way you needed, or she did something that hurt you later in life.  Maybe you simply wish things in your relationship were different, better, or more in some way.  Have you ever thought “What would life be like if I wasn’t carrying these feelings around with me?”

Unresolved grief can have a long term negative impact on your life. Grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative. The more you try to ignore your grief, or push it under the rug, the more it will affect your life. Grief not only affects current and future personal relationships, but it can also impact your work, health, and even things you used to enjoy doing. The intensity of your feelings may lessen over time, but grief doesn’t heal on its own.

The good news is that there’s a solution!

If you’re like most people, you simply never learned how to get complete and recover from a broken heart. There are a lot of things we’ve been taught to change our feelings in the short term, and plenty of articles telling you how to do that, but you must be willing to do the work if you truly want to recover from a loss.

That starts with being honest that you want something more for yourself; that you want freedom from pain, sadness, resentment, or whatever you are feeling. Try talking to someone you trust. Tell the truth about yourself. Ask them not to judge, criticize, or analyze (then don’t judge, criticize, or analyze yourself either).

Imagine what it would feel like not feeling pain, anger, or sadness every single time you think about your mom. Wouldn’t that be freeing? You don’t have to live that way.

Get started with The Grief Recovery Method.

Could you be grieving and not know it?

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How could someone be grieving and not even know it?  It’s easy because our society uses a lot of different words to describe what could simply be grief. We hear words, or terms such as:

  • Stress
  • PTSD
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Feeling “Off”

Grief is the normal and natural emotional reaction to loss of any kind.

  • If you’re sad about a break up then your feelings surrounding it are grief.
  • If you’ve lost a job then your feelings surrounding it are grief.
  • If you’ve experienced a loss of health then your feelings surrounding it are grief.

Another definition of grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior.

Have you ever moved or changed jobs? Although you might have been thrilled about the new environment, you might also have felt sad about leaving your friends, co-workers, routines and everything else you were used to. Those conflicting emotions are grief.

Think about your last break up or when someone you know died. Do you remember wishing you could have them back just one more time? When we grieve, we grieve the loss of unmet hopes, dreams and expectations we had about the relationship.

My message to you is please know that grief might be the reason you don’t feel fully present in your relationships, it might be why you have felt “off” since you experienced a change in your life, and it might be why you think there’s something “wrong” with you.

The Grief Recovery Method is a series of actions that lead to recovery from, or completion of loss. I am an Advanced Certified Grief Recovery Specialist I encourage you to reach out to me so we can begin this recovery process.