Grief can make us feel less but when we are ready, it can also become an opportunity for us to become more: 

This meeting is another look at some mental/emotional choices we’ve talked about in passing that we might now consider in more detail, about how we might grow and build our lives going forward, as well as some ideas to think about as that growth process unfolds.

Our grief journey can be one of the most painful and disorienting times in our lives. Since we have had all of our certainties and sure-of’s thrown to the wind, as we try to rebuild, despite the pain and sadness we may feel, we have the opportunity to work on things, to work on ourselves, and perhaps to learn to become better people. We have the opportunity to take more time working on ourselves now then we may ever have been able to do or wanted to do before. 

The empty moments, the time we no longer get to fill being with our spouses or partners can seem to diminish usbut they can also be a gift, once we are ready, that we can use to grow in, to learn in, to change in and to find ways to honor our loved ones in by learning to becoming more. 

At some point and at some level we may want or need to learn to understand that it is more healing to focus on what we need to do and how we want to do it, than to continue to dwell on and tightly hold on to what we feel we have lost!

As we try to come to terms with what has happened in our lives, when we are ready to consider it, we have what I see as a hidden opportunity. We have a chance to use that time to build not only the next part of our lives, but as we do that, to decide who we want to be in that next place and to decide what to keep and what to change, if anything, from the last part of our lives. It can also become a time to lift ourselves out of stagnant places we may have fallen into during our lives with our loved ones. It may let us break out of habits of thought, action and/or behavior that we may no longer need or want in our lives going forward. And we don’t have to feel guilty about considering these things or changing anything we choose to change.

While we learn to stand and live again, each in our own way and in our own time, can we come to see that since we grieve because we love, as we move forward in our journeys and our lives, we have an opportunity to do it as another act of love. Who will we be going forward? What will we look like alone as our healing journeys progress to wellness? What will we build as we go? Who will we be and what will we bring into the new relationships we might develop?

In a similar way, what would our loved ones want us to do or be as we grieve? Can we honor our love and our loved ones by giving them the gift of us grieving and learning and growing as graciously as possible, with as much strength as possible, with as much courage as possible, however that looks for us?

When we are ready, can we choose to face our grief with purpose? As we begin to reconstruct our lives out of the ashes of our grief, can we reconstruct them so that we actively and consciously choose what to add, what to leave in and what to take out so that our grieving is not only about loss and sadness or keeping things from changing but also about building, learning and growing. Can our grief journeys also be about trying to find new reasons to go forward and about building a base of meaning and purpose upon which we can create the person we will be in that next part of our lives. 

In all these ways, can we use our grief and the reconstruction that accompanies it as a positive path on which to change and grow and learn to become more. Can this be what healing really means?

Mental, social and spiritual gardening:

A wonderful idea I got from the Carlos Santana autobiography “The Universal Tone” is that of “spiritual gardening”. In the context of grief, this is the idea of working on ourselves, of growing spiritually and emotionally as well as intellectually and taking the time to “pull the weeds, to fertilize and water” new ideas, skills and emotions and to find ways to use our bereavement as a tool for improving our lives and our selves.

Can we let our grief journeys eventually become a time when we consciously decide to open the door to change in our lives and if we want to, a time to examine ourselves and decide what we want to do or be next?

In the empty spaces of our grief, while we can’t replace what is no longer there, where the garden of our lives with our loved ones once grew, maybe we can grow a new garden, a different one, not a replacement but one that is still full of love and honor and memory as well as growth, healing and life.

Learning anything helps you focus and grow. Another thing to consider that might help to “make us more”:

It’s very important to keep ourselves mentally healthy and mentally active as we grow and as we grow older. Unfortunately, grief can add a stagnation to our thinking and our growth on top of what aging might bring. Grief can put our thoughts in a furrow and a looping circle of repetitive thinking and remembering full of “what if’s” that can get deeper and the ruts and loops can become more difficult to get out of the longer it goes on and the older we become.  We can also get caught in the “fog” and have our thoughts seem to stagnate and get lost someplace in our grieving minds. 

As we go forward in our journeys, a time of learning can actually help to make our thinking more clear, possibly more clear than it’s been in a long time. We may actually become more able to learn, and by learning new things, rejuvenate our thinking and our ability to continue to grow and expand our understanding and our lives. It can be a critical part of moving us towards healing and finding ways to create the next part of our lives in ‘the wake of the flood.” It may well help to move us out of the comfortable tracks of our lives with our loved ones that might now be not so comfortable and maybe even painful to continue.

This is a line from a novel but it also applies to our grief journeys: “Once you stop learning, your life becomes so much less than it could be.” (…Life-long learning)

How might it work within our grief:

Learning anything well requires our full focus and attention. In our grief, our focus while trying to learn new things helps us to learn to concentrate again and to make our minds active again while it takes us out of our grief for those parts of a day spent in the learning process. 

A related idea to consider is that “one pointedness”, the total focus on a task, is a form of meditation. It is a calming and elevating experience. If you are totally focused, as you are when you are actively learning something or focusing on doing some task, you are also totally present, you are totally in the moment. 

We often talk about this idea as mindfulness and especially in a grief situation, our focus on a task we are doing puts us in the present and not in the past. During the time we are focusing our minds, emotions, hands, eyes or ears on a task, we are not actively grieving, we are totally present and for that time, we leave our grief behind. 

Of course, our grief comes back. We go back to it when we stop focusing, but the relief, the time away from active grief is potentially a time of healing and growth as we experience what it’s like to not be thinking about our grief, to not be grieving for a while. It is also a very powerful way to keep our minds flexible and active and not let them atrophy, especially as we age. 

Some new things to consider trying. What can we learn that we might always have wanted to do or learn. What can we learn and do together as friends: 

Volunteering/helping others, teaching something you know, learning a language, learning a new skill, learning to weld, learning to build something, learning how to use a power tool safely, taking yoga and or meditation classes, practicing mindfulness, Tai Chi, learning how to build a web page, starting a blog, learning an instrument or how to sing, photography, learning to paint, learning to cook or to cook new things or how to cook for one, learning a craft or starting a collection, writing, journaling, reading new types of books, joining a book club, taking a class in something, finding a (new) sport, start hiking, walking, camping, kayaking, skiing or swimming, start going to the gym, beginning a new relationship, making and spending time with new friends, learning to use your computer and the internet comfortably, learning some skill that your spouse or partner used to do or be responsible for doing!  Others??

Re-finding old hobbies and interests:

Besides finding something new to learn, re-finding old hobbies, skills and abilities is another important learning experience we can explore. Since there is now a large amount of time in our lives to occupy, can we consider filling that time with constructive things to do once we begin to overcome our early inertia and begin building the life we want to live going forward. 

I believe that for the long run, it helps to do constructive and/or creative things that have some lasting value to our lives or the lives of others, as opposed to filling the time with diversions that might feel good in the short run.

We may have to spend a lot of time soul-searching and self-questioning while trying to find things we might like to do. We may have to spend some time remembering what we enjoyed earlier in our lives or always wanted to do that we might bring back into it and enjoy doing now. Spending hours a day focused and one-pointed doing something you enjoy and can get lost in can become a very important part of the healing process. 

You can teach an old dog new tricks!

Making changes and not just talking about them as another part of moving forward and becoming more:

It’s usually pretty easy to think of things you want to do or be. Throughout our lives, we may have had “great ideas”, we may have made promises to ourselves or to our loved ones, we may have made “resolutions” and made plans to do things, to change things or to learn things. In the day to day stuff of living however, many of those things may never have gotten done, something came up or we didn’t have the will or the time or the resources to follow through or carry them out. In general, I think that’s pretty common behavior for most people.

During our grief journeys, however, it may be more important then ever to follow through, to live up to the mental promises we make and the intent we have than it was before. We now have the time to make those things happen and we now have important healing reasons to make those things come into being. Not following through on our promises and intent may also be another part of inertia that we need to learn to recognize and overcome.

But a very powerful part of making changes in our lives, of becoming better and more, of doing things for our own purposes and of learning ways to move forward, is following through. Actualizing our intent as often as we can, I believe, is a very important part of the long-term healing process.

And if we say we want to do something or change something, (and maybe more so in the mental and emotional sense than in the material sense) it’s important that we go forward and try to make our goals and intent happen as and when we can and that we work on them and practice them and keep at it until we master them or actualize them. But, it’s also very important to consider that our goals, large or small, should be realistic goals.

As we learn to become more, I think an important part of how we grow is to not let ourselves be or become mentally lazy, to not let the inertia in our grief keep us from learning and changing. I think its important to not get in the habit of procrastinating and instead, learn to do stuff when it needs to be done. And I believe that we will actually feel better about ourselves if we make those types of changes and we find ways to end or reduce any inertia we may have developed or built in our grieving and into our lives.

Hope and Healing:

Sometimes it takes years to recognize and make these changes. But it is our intent to change, our will to do the work and our willingness to spend the time it takes to bring those changes into being in our lives that makes them important. We usually only move forward if we want to and when we are wiling to do the work it takes to make it happen. And it’s sometimes only in looking back at what we’ve done that we can see the magnitude of our success!

Finding healing and moving to wellness is never going to be easy. It takes time and effort to learn and grow and make something new out of our often shattered lives. It isn’t simple but it is very well worth the effort to learn to become more! 

Questions:

• Can you see how you might use the time you now have alone to build the next part of your life?

• Can you use that time constructively?

• Can you entertain the possibility that you can actually learn to become more?

• Can you find ways to build the next part of your life to be different than the last part of your life was?

• Are there things you wished you had been able to do or learn in earlier parts of your life that you might want to do or be willing to do now?

• Is it ok to do that?

• What would your loved one think if you started to add new things in your life now?

• What would your loved one think if you started to let go of things from your life together?

• What would you think if you did either or both of those things?

• Are you willing to consider changing and becoming more in the next part of your life?

• Have you begun any new activities and things to occupy yourself?

• What have you always wanted to do that you may not have had time to do in the past? Could you find a way to do that now?