How to Move Forward When Stuck in Grief
Losing a loved one is hard. We can't get rid of grief, but we can have a different relationship with it. The key to grieving well is having enough support so you can trust the grieving process.
I struggled with different types of grief for a decade. What changed?
Realizing…
that I am whole despite feeling broken,
that grief is the shadow side of love,
that grief is a natural process, and I cannot safely opt out of grieving,
that I can have a different relationship with grief,
and that the only way out is through.
What no one told me and I am shouting from the rooftops is that having several types of support will allow you to fully grieve and trust that you will make it through this rollercoaster of an emotional experience.
And, walk away with your own life-wisdom.
By creating this support system, you can trust the grief process.
And while that may sound scary, the danger in grief is not the act of grieving but the attempt to bypass suffering.1 Unprocessed grief can lead to clinical depression, PTSD, and suicidal tendencies.
Essentially, grief itself (while painful) is not harmful, but unprocessed grief is.
So, where does that leave us?
For so long, I would do anything rather than touch in with my grief. I did not have a support system like I am laying out below. I created that after much help and guidance, which allowed me to finally move through the grief process and be stronger and more grateful for it.
Here is how to create a strong support system so you can trust the grieving process without slipping into crippling depression, numbness, or fear.
If you are already struggling with depression, these suggestions can be incorporated alongside working with a mental health professional.
**Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional. I am a certified life coach, mindfulness instructor, and ecopsychologist focusing on grief, burnout, and climate emotions. Life coaching is not a substitute for therapy but can be done alongside it. Learn more about coaching vs. therapy here.**
Individual
Having your internal support system means having a way to experience, examine, and learn from your own life. The simple four steps I lay out below are always accessible to you.
They are the most simple self-care rituals you can offer to your 12-year-old cousin or 90-year-old grandmother.
It can take 6 minutes or 60. It’s up to you.
Noting that if you are stuck in grief, your grief will be built up and most significant if you haven’t touched it for a while— but with frequent meditation, journaling, and speaking openly about your loss, you will start to have a different relationship with this feeling. One is not only characterized by pain but by love and life wisdom.
1. Always always, start with safety.
First and most importantly, answer these questions.
What makes you feel safe?
What brings you comfort?
What brings you strength?
What makes you feel understood?
Before doing any work (alone or in groups), ensure you have access to safety. Doing any work alone can be doubly harmful if you are not coming from a space of safety and self-compassion.
2. Set the Stage with Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is your ability to give yourself safety, comfort, strength, and understanding. Your ability to not abandon yourself. Your ability to be kind to yourself.
If you cannot access self-compassion, work with a therapist, coach, or spiritual teacher to cultivate it. I will write in greater detail about cultivating self-compassion in another newsletter.
To the untrained eye, self-compassion can easily be conflated with self-pity, which is digging a ditch of victimhood. A hole that will take a long time to climb out of.
If you are not familiar with practicing self-compassion, this is some of the most challenging work you will ever do. But, will shift your whole life from never being enough, to approaching life with curiosity and joy.
The best poetic definition of self-compassion I have ever read is Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on.
Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over, announcing your place
in the family of things.Even reading Wild Geese before you sit down to meditate will bathe you in the light of self-compassion. Give it a try if that feels supportive to you.
3. Then, Mindfulness
We hear it talked about repeatedly as having these incredible benefits on our lives and society that could alter the course of humanity. True.
And in the context of grieving well, mindfulness can help you
actively process your grief,
cultivate clarity
and deep resilience.
We find hundreds of things to do besides process our grief—even though grief is walking with us all the time. Grief is so powerful that it will barge its way into everything we do. It will be the earthquake on the ocean floor that causes a Tsunami on the shoreline.
Sometimes confusion or saying, “I don’t know how I’m feeling,” can also be a coping mechanism for folks. Cultivating clarity on your own may be too challenging to do alone, or start alone. If this is you consider joining a grief-focused mindfulness group.
Knowing how this loss has affected you and how it’s moving and shifting in your person will help remove the confusion from the pain and offer a bit more spaciousness.
Cultivating deep resilience is developing inner strength that we did not know was within us. We can endure hard things and overcome them. Being with our grief is some of the most challenging work you can do. There is a ferocity of spirit here that cannot and will not be snubbed out. This excerpt from The Stranger by Albert Camus exemplifies deep resilience:
My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. Truly yours– Albert Camus, The Stranger
Instruction:
Mindfulness is the practice of meeting yourself. Exactly how and who you are each time.
First, ensuring safety and comfort. Go no further if these are not accessible to you.
A grounding or presenting exercise that allows you to fully arrive and wiggle your toes, tune into your breath, doing a body scan where you feel each part of your body—coming back to the breath.
And focusing your attention inward, just listening to what comes up, and calmly bringing yourself back to your breath.
If you feel in touch with your grief, assign it a color, texture, or sound. Then set it aside and come back to the breath.
When you feel complete, give yourself a hug, or offer a little bow to close the practice.
In practicing regularly, you will be able to see how your experience of grief changes. You can keep track of this in the next step, journaling.
If any of this sounds intimidating, joining a grief-focused mindfulness group might help create the sense of safety you need to check in with yourself, even if it’s only for a moment. I’ll be starting one next week. Keep an eye out for this new offering.
Or, if this starts to feel boring, join a group. Sometimes boredom is another way we hide from ourselves. And sometimes the work only really begins once we get bored.
4. Journaling
Write about everything that comes your way. Grief takes you through many stages and emotions.
Write about all of them. The anger and injustice. The fear and fury. The beauty and richness of the experience you are having right now.
Let it all be allowed on the page.
I look back on my writing and see all the hues, shades, textures, shadows, cries, cravings, crazy, wildness, and inner strength on the page.
If free writing doesn’t come naturally, or if you want to process grief more directly. Try using these journaling prompts curated to help you process all the different aspects of your suffering.
Another option is my Intentional Grieving Workbook, which contains prompts that will guide you through grieving and honoring your loved one.
This is the process of making meaning out of loss.
And the process of making wisdom out of our experience.
Communal
Find a group you can ugly-cry in front of, and people will look on with compassion. A group where you can show up in your rawness, sadness, rage, and numbness and not have to give anything back.
And show up, time and time again, to speak openly about what is on your heart. Often this is not your family because too many layers are already there.
Grieving in public (or to strangers) is often the most challenging and transformational component for folks.
Why bother to grieve publicly?
Because being witnessed in your grief lets grief become a part of your story. It is no longer something to resist, and it is not all of who you are.
So you know that you are not alone.
To process grief in a supported setting.
To see grief in others and learn from their insights and wisdom, to see others in various stages of grief, and to realize that this intensity of grief won’t last forever.
To be accepted by others in your state of grief and then accept yourself in this state of grief.
To see grief as an expression of love.
Just as joy or wonder is a part of you, this will allow us not to be ashamed of our grief. Shame blocks self-compassion. Self-compassion is essential to admit to the world how much you love the one you lost. Grieving publicly makes us admit we are human with human emotions, desires, and pain.
You might be reading this list and nodding, saying yes, I understand that I don’t need to go and spill my guts in front of 6 strangers.
There is a difference between understanding these truths and experiencing them for yourself.
It’s the difference between reading about how to run and actually running. You will not benefit from running by reading about it or rationalizing it. As intellectual beings, we sometimes place our value on comprehending rather than experiencing.
Publicly grieving is much different than reading about or comprehending public grief.
Frequently folks feel most comfortable or supported in groups with similar types of loss. Loss of a child, spouse, sibling, or parent. Ask your therapist for one they might recommend. Or, ask for one with a particular spiritual bend— Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Agnostic, or secular. This brings me to another type of support group.
Or search online for a grief group for widows. Or grief group in San Fransisco. The internet is a great resource here.
One last reason to grieve publicly. As humans, we are meaning-making machines.
We don’t see a bird fly into a window and not offer a reason for why it flew into the window.
We do the same thing when we lose someone. We try and come up with a reason for why we lost them.
Witnessing another person in the struggle to make meaning out of something so painful will help us make meaning from our experience instead of dwelling on their why.
When we don’t have the answer to a question, we torture ourselves to find a solution.
Spiritual
Spirituality is just a philosophy of how we are all connected, providing solace when things get tough.
There are frequently cultural or felt components, but you don’t necessarily need these to find peace in these ways of thinking.
Choosing a spiritual support system doesn’t need to be religious; it just needs to work for you. And it doesn’t have to be forever. And you don’t have to be a die-hard. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Reading books or listening to talks about grief from different systems of thought can offer new perspectives and cultivate a compassionate voice in your heart.
My favorite books to read when grieving are;
The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
Tears on Dust: Grief and Praise by Martin Prechtel
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams (or any Terry Tempest)
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit (or any of her early works)
Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Any James Baldwin novel
Mary Oliver’s Poetry
Ada Limón’s Poetry poem
Gregory Alan Isakov’s Music
I love Ecopsychology because it’s where science and spirituality meet. It is not spirituality in a monastery or temple removed from the world. It is spirituality in the world. In nature, in the cities— it’s all included.
The beauty of Ecopsychology is that the ‘sacred texts’ or ‘ways of prayer’ are all around us and come naturally to the human animal.
Walking or sitting in nature and observing every being, every movement, every sound around you. That’s praise or prayer.
Giving a long presence to a flower or a weed growing in the pavement crack. That’s also prayer.
Sitting under a tree and listening to what their wisdom. That’s hearing a sacred text.
These are examples of easing your way into a worldview where the natural world is your church, and your intuition is your pastor.
I am working on the “How to be an Ecopsychologist (or cultivate an Ecopsychological worldview)” Guidebook. To help folks cultivate a close relationship with the natural world.
Key Takeaways:
Grieving is natural. We can grieve well if we are well supported on personal, community, and spiritual levels.
We cannot opt out of grief or leave grief behind, but we can have a loving relationship with it.
Gratitude
As always, thank you for reading. If you are grieving, I hope this supports you. If you know someone who could use these thoughts, please please forward this along.
Yours, Tegan
www.tegancampia.com
Wilcox, S., & Sutton, M. (1977). Understanding Death and Dying. California State College.