I’m not sure who said this first, but I’ve heard it more times than I can count. I’m not particularly interested in talking about taxes… but death… death has been very present in my whole life – especially for the past few months. Don’t worry – I’m not dying – at least not any more actively than most of us. However, I’ve had to deal with the loss of our dog who died in November, and the loss of ideas, goals and beliefs.
You see, death isn’t always about someone physically dying. Death can be an ending of a relationship, it can be the moment when you realize that something you believed in was wrong, it can be understanding that a goal you worked hard for is just not going to happen. Death – all the different kinds of death – are just a part of life. The part we have control over is how we react and move through the different types of death we experience as we live. First – do you even acknowledge those losses as deaths? I didn’t, not for a long time. Next – Do you allow yourself space to grieve or do you bury your grief and do your best to just ignore it? If you bury your grief and do your best to ignore it – don’t worry, most of us do. Not only does it feel easier at the time, but modern western society promotes this choice at every turn. We’re taught to bury pain of every kind – it’s the whole “walk it off” mentality. The thing is, when we do this, we don’t actually process the pain, we don’t process the loss. Burying it means that more often than not, that pain is going to show up at a later date in different ways.
Instead, if we take the time to grieve, to actually feel the loss – to move through the pain, we have a chance of releasing it and moving forward. That doesn’t make it easy. It isn’t. It takes courage and patience… and I’m only good at one of those things… but feeling the pain, sitting with it (not IN it), acknowledging the loss of the being, idea, goal, belief… maybe thanking it for the lessons it gave you… and then releasing it is really the only way through.
Just some thoughts from somewhere between acknowledging and thanking…