healthy grieving

grief is a normal and natural response to loss. in some way or another, we have all grieved. obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is grieving the death of a love one, but we have all experienced it in other ways as well. some have grieved over the loss of a pet, another over a championship title which slipped between our fingers. i've seen people grieve after saying good-bye to good friends or old houses, as well as bands splitting or business closings. whatever it is, however intense, we have all done it. but have we ever really embraced it so that we might grow from it?

healthy grieving is an active process of continually acknowledging the pain and mending the wound. it brings us to recovery and healing, though it is a slow and emotionally painful journey; it becomes less painful as we understrand it is a natural part of life. fortunately, much of the process of healthy grieving seems to be 'built into' our genes. acknowledging and growing from losses is such a natural process that much of it will happen without our direction. if we relax our expectations of how we should grieve and give up some of our need for control.
it is not true that you just need to give it time.

grieving is not forgetting, nor is it drowning in tears. healthy grieving results in an ability to remember the importance of our loss but with a new-found sense of peace, rather than searing pain. grieving losses is important because it allows us to 'free-up' energy that is bound to the lost person, object, or experience so that we might re-invest that energy elsewhere. until we grieve effectively, we are likely to find reinvesting difficult; a part of us remains tied to the past.

i have been grieving the end of a seven-year relationship. though i never stated it specifically, most of the underlying tones of my posts have been linked to this process. i felt like a part of me had died because things happened so quickly and without warning; i was left vulnerable and without control in the situation. it didn't seem right, had i missed all the clues? how could i have felt so confident about something only to have it stripped away from me? i've gone through cycles. first there was pain, then anger. next i would move into lonliness and despair, only to finish with confidence and an "i am woman, hear me roar" kind of attitude. [sorry for any guy who stepped in my path during this one] though the time periods i spent in each varied, i have gone through this process over and over again the past four months as i learned what it means to embraced the pain andallow myself to grieve.

i don't know if you can decide to be done grieving; but if you can, i did. i don't know what changed or when i was able to fully let go, but my grieving is over. i have a peace again and a weight off of my shoulders. i will still cry, i may still get angry, and it will be awhile before i can trust a man again, but i have worked through the pain. grief has allowed me to confront the emotions i have felt, not trying to hide them away, block them, or judge them. i have dealt with them, learned from them, and am now healing from them.

i say this not as an announcement, but as a challenge. i have seen how much easier it would have been to "move on" without grieving. we all, especially guys, would rather tuck things away to deal with at a more convient time than to deal with them. what we don't realize is that until pain is addressed, it will always be there. we may become good at hiding it, but eventually it will come out. it is baggage we become accustomed to carrying not even realizing how much lighter our load could be if we would just let things go.

our scars are a part of us, part of our stories,
this wound too will be.
You've turned my mourning into dancing.