This meeting is a continuation of the topic we discussed at the last meeting. This time, I would like us to talk about some things we might do to help us overcome inertia if we feel it.                                                                                                                                  

Just to remind everyone, in the context of bereavement, inertia is a term I use primarily to talk about a number of often unrecognized types ofgrief fatigue that our grief imposes on us that may make it difficult to gather the mental/emotional orphysical energy to do things throughout our grief journeys. It refers to finding ourselves procrastinating and finding reasons not to do things that need to be done that may be things we used to not have problems doing. It also refers to an active or very active way of trying to avoid elements of our grieving that we may find ourselves immersed in.

In any of its forms, inertia is a part of what our grief and grieving can do to us that tends to hold us back from moving forward and it can slow or reduce our movement through our grief journeys into healing and wellness.

Overcoming the inertia: 

Overcoming inertia usually only happens slowly on its own, we usually have to work at it to recognize it, see it for what it is and get to see significant change. If we ignore it or deny it, inertia in any form can cause us to develop what I call “habits of grief” that persist and hold us back in our healing journeys. Recognizing and breaking those habits can become more and more difficult the longer we do them.

As we can, it is valuable to let our grief journeys be about creating a balance in what we do that allows us to experience our grief and also helps us to find healing by gradually working on and through our grief. 

If we don’t tip over into and embrace one extreme of inertia or another and we try not to let the inertia turn into habitual actions or activities, we can learn to recognize and then overcome any of the types of inertia that may come into our lives. We can use the balance we find to help us to create healing and wellness as we build the next part of our lives.

Here are some ideas and strategies to consider:

Especially early in our journeys, building structure into our lives can help us create new patterns to help us through the fog and to overcome the inertia that our grief contains. 

If we want to, we can also use the structures we create to help us to change mental, emotional and physical patterns from our life with our loved ones that might not fit into our lives now. Later on in our journeys, these structures can help us change patterns and habits we may create that may be a result of inertia during our grieving that we may not want to continue. 

Routines and Rituals: 

These are structures we can use to create pathways to help guide us forward, to reduce inertia or to replace old structures that are no longer effective or useful parts of our lives.

A routine is something we do in the same way, usually in the same order, time after time, to accomplish a similar outcome. It’s a positive pattern that we purposefully build into our life. A routinecan also contain thoughts, emotions and feelings that we actively repeat purposefully, in the same way, over and over. It may also be about finding ways to not repeat negative or sad thoughts over and over as well.

A ritual is a solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed in a prescribed order. 

In grief, a ritual may be about things we do that make us still feel connected to our loved one. It can be relatively simple things like talking to their picture each night before bed or wishing them good morning in the same way each day or they can be more complex rituals we construct to help us still feel their presence and to express our continuing love. 

We can use routines and rituals to help us fill our life with structure if we want to or need to. They can help us to create new and healing patterns that can become our way of finding the energy and direction to approach each day and each task that comes before us. They can help us navigate through our life when the fog is thick and it is hard to remember what we need to remember or even what we were going to do when we went into another room!

Eventually, we can establish routines and rituals to guide us through every part of our day if we need to or want to. 

Routines especially, are tools we can use to help us to overcome inertia one task at a time, one activity at a time, one thought at a time, until we are able to function with more focus and with more energy more of the time. They can help us to begin to overcome much of the inertia in our grieving and to some extent help us to move more clearly through the fog. 

Ways to help build routines or rituals: 

Using guide-words, phrases or mantras, making lists and/or putting tasks and reminders on a calendar or even on sticky notes around our house are good ways to began to create routines and rituals. They are all tools to help us remember what needs to be done, what order we need to do things in and what we want to be working on to make sure we get as much as possible of what needs to be done accomplished each day that we can. It is incredibly useful in the early part of our journeys when the fog is the thickest and most dense and our thoughts and memories are the most compromised.

Using intent statements (from our January meeting) or guide-words and phrases that we create is a powerful way to overcome mental/emotional inertia and to make intentional changes in our lives. We can repeat them over and over as we would a mantra and they can help us to focus on and remember things we want to accomplish or change. They can help us to build new patterns to guide and (re)structure our minds and our actions and to reduce our inertia. (ie. I can and I will, instead of I can’t and I don’t).

Some simple examples are: I will…, I won’t… types of guide-statements or mantras, ie. I will be kind, I will make breakfast every day, I will clean the house. I won’t sit on the couch all day and eat junk food. I won’t get angry at seemingly unkind things people say. I won’t think negative thoughts or repeat negative mantras all day, I won’t have just one more drink. I will get up now and do whatever task I’ve been ignoring, I will go out to dinner alone or with friends. I will learn how to be at the grocery store without crying. I will “fake it ‘till I make it”. I will get out and walk every day, I will change that light bulb, I will pay attention to my actions, I will become aware of my illusions, I will not repeat “I hate my life” over and over, I will live my intent statement, I will slow down, I will reduce my activities or commitments, this is inertia and I don’t have to listen to it… or you can create whatever you want to use that helps you focus on the changes you wish to make.

You don’t have to keep the patterns and structures you create forever. Later down the road, once you get to a place where you don’t feel you need them as much, when the inertia is no longer as strong, you can begin to let some of the linearity go and let your life become less structured and more intuitive if and when you want to.

Getting out and doing stuff: “GOOTH!”

Another way to help work through the inertia is to get out and do things, alone if we feel comfortable with that or in small groups of friends or family. Walking, alone or with others is a great way to begin this process. Talking to our loved one when we are walking alone is also an interesting and often powerful thing to try. (If you wear ear buds, no one will look at you funny as you talk. lol) 

When we feel able to, spending some time actively engaged in life is a very positive thing to do. Especially if it’s only for a few hours each day to start, it is a strong and effective way to begin the process of moving forward and stepping outside our grief. It’s a time when we are not actively grieving and when we are giving ourselves a break from the intensity and inertia that sitting home and grieving can bring or enhance. 

This is not, however, the same as the idea of “active inertia” that we talked about at the last meeting but there can be a fine line between the two. “Getting out of the house” can easily turn into “staying out of the house”; and become an all-the-time, avoidance kind of thing that is something we may not even recognize we are doing as an attempt to not feel or have to deal with the pain of our grieving. 

What I’m suggesting here instead is a proactive attempt to begin the process of living again while still taking the time to experience, acknowledge and work on our grief, not to find ways to run away from it. Used this way, it can be a positive part of the reconstruction and healing process and an effective way to begin to overcome inertia. 

If we find ourselves experiencing this “active inertia” and we want to try to change it, perhaps we might consider finding or taking some time each day to just stop, to consciously not schedule anything for part of the day and later, to begin to say no to new (and old) commitments one event at a time for a while. 

Maybe at first, we can work to spend just an hour a day reading or meditating or cleaning house or any other thing we choose that allows us to just “sit back”, relax, be “one-pointed” and maybe even to spend that time visiting with our grief until we don’t feel we have to stay busy all the time avoiding it.  

With time, maybe we can learn to be able to be home alone (with our grief) for some part of the day without it becoming too hard to handle. Taking the time to find activities (at home) that allow us to be “one-pointed” and mindful may be ways to begin to overcome, slow down or moderate our active inertia. It is our home after all and we should eventually be able to learn to live there and spend time there again in comfort.

A final possibility here to think about is that if we seem to be stuck in place, if we feel like we are unable to get moving or started on something, physically, mentally or emotionally, we might consider asking for help to get going. Maybe we can allow someone to help us to make the first move and then pick it up from there. Maybe letting someone show us the way or just lend a serious hand can help us change our patterns of resistance and inertia and can be the impetus we need to start overcoming our reluctance to begin or continue a task or action we don’t seem to be able to start on your own. 

Some other ideas about how to overcome inertia to consider:

Journaling: One of my favorites and why we have the “Zen Writing” workshop each month!

Journals can be hand-written in a book, on pieces of paper or as a computer file, or whatever you are comfortable with. If you don’t like and are resistant to the idea of journaling, you can call it anything you want. It’s always about the writing, not what you call it or what it looks like. 

An important thing about writing in journals or anyplace else, is that they can be a private place to explore our thoughts and feelings that works particularly well in our grief and grieving. Writing (in a journal) allows us to express things we don’t want to or can’t share with anyone else but that we need to work on and find our way through as we navigate our grief journey. They can be a way to get thoughts out of our head when we no longer have someone physically there with us to share them with. 

Since no one will see what we wrote, journals don’t have to be edited! We can just write as it comes to us and not worry about paragraphs, spelling or grammar!  And we don’t have to read it either if we don’t want to. 

The important part is the writing, of getting the thoughts and feelings out of our head and onto the page. That’s how and when the healing happens. 

Writing is also a very good way to help us identify places where inertia is effecting us and for finding ideas and things we might try to help us come up with strategies to overcome the inertia we experience. 

Journaling or documenting our daily thoughts and activities can also be a great memory aid and reinforcement. If we choose to read our record of the day, it helps us remember what we did and helps us remember that we did it.

Some other ideas for learning or finding things to do to overcome inertia and to occupy our minds, bodies and time: 

Learning new things or re-engaging in old hobbies, doing things we always wanted to do but never had a chance to do, doing things we enjoyed doing in the past that fell out of our life and any other things that engage our attention and let us set our grief aside for awhile are all things we can do to help overcome inertia.

It doesn’t matter what it is we do, just that it engages us and holds our full attention for the time we are doing it. That is where the healing lives in these activities. We become “one pointed” for a time and we are actively living while we are doing them, not “sitting still” immersed in our grief nor running away from our grief. We will look more deeply at this in a future meeting.

*** Moving forward:

The path to healing and wellness lies through our grief whether we like it or not. It is not an easy nor a comfortable path to travel but it’s one we have to take none-the-less, no matter how long it lasts. It takes courage to face and experience your grief! 

Grief is like a serious illness, injury or surgery in many ways; it is painful, it takes time to recover and there is often a protracted period of rehab that we have to go through. Just as we don’t heal quickly from a major surgery or physical injury, we can’t expect to heal from a shattered life quickly either.

By eventually breaking into the inertia within our grief, by building routines and rituals that are outside of our grief, by beginning to engage in life again, and by changing our mental dialog, we can begin to break out of our inertia into more healing patterns,  thoughts and actions. By slowing down and learning to live with our grief, we can let new healing patterns build where we can deal with our grief and grieving and engage in life as well.

In time, moving forward, growing and not grieving all the time can become the structure and the (good) habits that we take with us into how we create and live the next part of our lives. 

Gradually, we can come to see, experience and embrace our grief and then let it transform into healing and wellness. By traveling through our grief, and by overcoming the inertia it contains, we can open the door to the next part of our lives beyond the grief and the pain. We can still embrace our memories and our love. We can still honor what we are that is derived from the love we shared and the time we spent with our loved ones and we can allow ourselves to go forward. 

Since grief arises out of love, and since love is normal, maybe so is grief. Maybe grief is something we need to go through, something we need to acknowledge and embrace even though it is often very painful. Maybe grief and grieving are even healthy in a sense.  

But it’s important as we go forward, to not let the inertia living within our grief keep us from looking for, working on and finding healing and wellness. 

Questions:

• Can you think of ways to overcome that inertia if you are feeling it?

• Have you done anything specific to fight the inertia?

• What might you do going forward to keep the inertia from stopping your healing and growth?

• Would establishing routines help to overcome the inertia?

• Would or does making lists and writing on calendars help?

• Can you think of any words or phrases that might help you to build routines?

• If you have created them, what are some examples of routines or rituals in your life that you have established to help you.

• Do you think you need to be “proactive” in approaching the building of the next part of your life?

• Do you keep a journal? Why or why not?

• Do you feel you have established any “habits of grieving” in your life?

• How might you work to break them?