holiday season and grief Archives

Saying No to the Pity Party

25 November, 2015 — Posted in: Conscious Grieving Leave a Comment

For those of us who are grieving the death of a loved one, this season of merriment and celebration can be a difficult time. This month I’m sharing with you some ways that I’ve found to cope with grief during the holiday season. In this excerpt from Walking in Grace with Grief Meditations for Healing After Loss, I talk about being mindful of how the feelings of other people can affect your ability to grieve your own way.

Keeping Pity Energy at Bay

There are no “shoulds” about how to behave during times of loss. If you feel like laughing, then laugh. If you feel like crying, then cry. Forget what “they” say. You are in charge of your feelings. Use the Golden Sun Meditation (see chapter 3) to fill you with peace and comfort. If that means that you fill your golden sun with happiness, then do so. Do what is best for you. Be mindful of how you want this period of sorrow to unfold.

In addition, be mindful of when well-meaning friends and family inadvertently try to dump their grief in your lap. Yes, unfortunately it happens. As two people relate, they unconsciously exchange energy with one another. Underneath your friend’s encouraging words of love and support may be some suppressed feelings of guilt, abandonment, or pity. Of course your friend is not consciously aware of sending you these mixed messages—in fact, she or he would be horrified to discover they had! But it does happen. Part of being a conscious griever is understanding how to prevent these twinges of unresolved grief from encompassing you.

One of the most effective ways of doing this is to visualize your body surrounded by a protective coating of glass, Teflon, or some other impervious material. The purpose of this covering is to deflect these unintentionally distressing thoughts before they affect your ability to grieve your own way.

Healing Meditation: Keeping Pity Energy at Bay

Sit in meditation with your eyes closed and your feet flat on the floor. Feel your grounding cord connect you to the earth and your surrounding space fill with the energies of peace and stillness.
Breathe in and center, bringing all of your awareness into your body. Be in the center of your head, your peaceful meditative space. Breathe out and ground, releasing all tensions from your body as you allow them to move down the grounding cord to the center of the earth. Breathe in and center; breathe out and ground.
Now let’s design the protective coating for the energy space surrounding your body. You can change the coating every day during your daily meditation, so don’t worry that it has to be perfect. Experiment; that’s the joy. See what works for you.
Think about how you would like to prevent stray thoughts and feelings from affecting your ability to grieve your way. Sometimes I see a fine wire mesh surrounding my body. This permeable membrane allows my own scattered energies to come in but keeps out others. Other times I envision a platinum coating sealing my energy body from all outside influences. You might try out a bubble of glass or a protective coating of Teflon today, and pick something different tomorrow. You get to choose.
Now imagine this protective coating extending all the way around your body, above your head, and below your feet. Visualize it out in front of your closed eyes and allow yourself to feel safe and nurtured while encased in this protective coating. When someone thinks of you, his or her energy is coming your way, even from a long distance. Notice what happens to your protection bubble as it encounters outside energy. It may change color as it absorbs this energy, or the energy might just slide off the surface. Notice what you notice.
Set the intention that the protective coating will work for you all day, deflecting any well-meaning but unconsciously transferred pity, guilt, or grief from friends and family. Acknowledge that we all have issues that we are dealing with and that the only person you can heal is yourself. When you have the protection bubble set in place, open your eyes and come out of meditation.

Every day as part of your morning meditation, put a new protection bubble around your body. Know that it will work for you all day long by deflecting unwanted energy before it enters your space.

There are many more tools and meditations that I talk about in Walking in Grace with Grief Meditations for Healing After Loss. If you have a friend that is going through a tough time right now, you might consider sharing this blog post with them.

Listening in Stillness

10 November, 2015 — Posted in: Conscious Grieving Leave a Comment

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Often, we are so caught up in the emotions of sorrow, sadness, grief, anger, rebellion, and outright rage that we fail to hear our loved ones’ voices. But they are here. They constantly surround us with their love and support. We just have to open ourselves up to be able to receive their messages. One way of doing this is by sitting in meditation. Daily meditation offers us an opportunity to quiet the outside voices—the noises of other peoples’ thoughts and feelings—and tune into our inner knowingness, our inner wisdom. When we meditate, our bodies relax and our minds quiet. Listening in stillness, we come to know peace.

There are many ways to meditate. Some people sit quietly, repeat a mantra in a rhythmic fashion, and find stillness in the gap—that space between thoughts. Others take long mesmerizing walks and allow their thoughts to drift away as their minds fill with clouds of stillness and peace. Often peace will come in the midst of a hot bath. As the mind quiets and thoughts cease to matter, we come to a place of knowingness. We begin to communicate with our Spirit, our Highest and Best Self. Often our loved ones can reach into this space of soft awareness to let us know they are watching over us.

One of the first steps in any meditation is becoming centered and present. Being centered means to be in present time—right here, right now—not thinking of what happened in the past or about tomorrow’s to-do list. Centering becomes a practice of mindfulness, being fully present, with all your thoughts and feelings in one place, a place of stillness. As you sit in meditation and tune out the outer world, you offer your feelings a chance to be acknowledged and your inner voice, your intuition, a chance to be heard. Especially in the first few weeks after a death, activity takes center stage. People come and people go, services take place; there’s a lot to do. But there’s very little time to simply be with your thoughts and feelings. Some people are afraid to step into this space of stillness, afraid that they will be overwhelmed with emotions they’re unable to cope with. Each person must gauge this for themself. There is no right or wrong answer for when and how to feel. What I found true for me was that I needed this time of aloneness. I craved a chance to be still and to feel. I wanted to check in with my inner guidance system and determine what I needed. Instead of wrapping myself in a mantle of outward activity, I found that if I took small, five-minute breaks throughout the day to sit in stillness, I could cope. I didn’t need to think, I didn’t have to process emotions; I just was. I could close off the noise and listen to my inner voice, my inner wisdom.

The following is a short, guided meditation you might find helpful.

I took many five-minute mindfulness breaks throughout the first very difficult week after my son’s death. I continually felt surrounded by the presence of God and angels. I existed in a bubble of love, support, laugher, tears, and gentleness. Rick was with me, and so were family members and friends. I felt supported and loved.

If this post resonated with you and you would like to read more, Walking in Grace with Grief Meditations for Healing After Loss is available on Amazon or order it from your local bookstore. From my heart to yours.

Conscious Grieving During the Season of Merriment

14 December, 2014 — Posted in: Gratitude 5 Comments

The holiday season is not always a time of candy canes and festive gatherings. For many, it’s a time of remembering and grieving loved ones that are no longer with us.

My 29-year-old son died three years ago, and I’ve yet to decide how I want to celebrate this season of merry making and good cheer. I don’t feel cheerful –yet. Maybe someday, but not today.

That first year, as I approached the beginning of the holiday season, I gave myself permission to set the pace, choosing those events that I could deal with and leaving the rest behind. It was my time to heal, and I found it necessary, for once, to think of myself first. I learned to speak up and set my boundaries.

I spent time alone in meditation, and I hiked our mountain road. I took our dog for long walks, read, and tried to be fully present each day, allowing the flow of thoughts to penetrate but not stick. I cried. I talked to my Spirit Son about how much I missed him. I wallowed a bit in why-did-this-have-to-happen-to-me.

Grieving takes many shapes, and it has many layers. I thought about my life and all my stories that are untrue. I had to let them go and accept what was. As Byron Katie says, “Who would you be without the story?”

So, I asked myself, “Who would I be without the story that the holiday season is about large family gatherings? Who would I be without the story that it isn’t Christmas if one of us is permanently missing? Who would I be without the story of candy canes and good cheer?”

I thought about gratitude. I wondered if I could find at least some little thing to be grateful for. It took longer than I ever would have imagined getting to the place of saying, “Yes, I have a room in my heart today for more than just grief.” I have a daughter to love. I have a husband who adores me. I have friends to share a cup of tea with and I have pottery to keep my hands occupied. I have a home. I have a dog. I have freedom. I have food. I have love. I have so very much to be grateful for. And who would I be without the story? I’d be peaceful and grateful and in love with those people and things that love me.

As I come up to the fourth holiday season without my son, I am still waiting for a new story to unfold; a new way of marking this season of magic and miracles. I am exploring ways of celebrating that are in alignment with who I am now. Every year I inch into this new-story and bit by bit my family is making new memories.

It is taking longer than I would have imagined to become comfortable with this new way of being. But as I walk this path of sorrow, I do so consciously and in choice. Every moment of every day I consciously choose how I want to be.

May you be at peace with where you are in this journey called Life. Namaste.

Even On The Darkest Days There’s Room for Gratitude

9 December, 2014 — Posted in: Conscious Grieving Leave a Comment

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein

I used to feel disconnected from the magic and miracles of life until I made a commitment to the practice of being in an (almost) constant state of gratitude.

What I’ve learned in my daily practice is this: When you shift your focus to seeing the magic and miracles in the little things, you open the door for your whole life to transform.

Long ago, I kept a gratitude journal. Every morning I would list five things I was grateful for. But after a while I stopped journaling lists. Because everything I listed was a thing, not a feeling. It began to feel like a young girl’s night time prayer: “I am thankful for Mama, and Papa and of course the new baby brother that I don’t even like.”

My gratitude journal became a chore. And of course that’s not what gratefulness is all about. Gratitude is a feeling – a deep gut level acknowledgment of beauty, magic, miracles, grace, and love.

So I stopped keeping a list – and just started living from this feeling state as much as I could each day, every day.

Most days it is pretty easy to come from the state of wonder and magic, seeing the beauty in the most simplest things – ocean waves pounding the rock wall, a friend’s smile when you walk into the room, or a baby’s joyous laugh and gurgle .

And, I find that I can be in gratitude for even the hiccups of life. Even on the most tumultuous days such as today -when a close friend loses a son – and all the old sorrows of my son’s death come tumbling to the surface.

If I stop and allow the deep emotions of my loss and hers to intertwine in a dance of grief, longing, sorrow, and compassion, I find the magic and miracles – there – right below the surface. The magic of having someone else who understands the deep searing pain of losing a child. The miracle of knowing that my son and hers are alive as soul-brothers in another realm. The gratitude that I can walk by her side as she navigates this year of becoming something else – something more – something deeper and wiser and oh so exquisitely beautiful.

Every day there’s a chance to step into, and live from, this state of gratitude. Even on the darkest of days, such as today.