The Grief Practice - An Exploration & Explanation of Grief In The Body

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Grief is all the little pieces wrapped up into one

How human of us to collapse when we lose them, our

This is why when we have a felt, embodied experien

A spinning world has no need for support. Support

Validation and acknowledgement don’t make everyt

Validation and acknowledgement don’t make everything okay. They often convey the understanding that everything is not okay.
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In the container of acknowledgment and validation grief can sometimes settle in to feel and into the freedom to feel.
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To feel angry, feel sad, feel hopeful, feel accompanied, feel lonely, feel lost... what the feeling is called is less important than the being able to actually feel the energy of it.
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This softening is both a beautiful physiological response we humans are wired for under the right conditions and also a communal experience we can lean into right here and now.
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Community grows the space grief has to lean into. We do not have to do this alone.
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Lean in to each other and lean on each other.
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Rest up. There is still a long way to go.
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All hearts on deck xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody

Healing is the want, the whimper and the wail. .

Healing is the want, the whimper and the wail.
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Healing is in the carrying on and in the being carried.
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Healing is the forgetting, the remembering, and the fogginess in between.
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Healing is the warp speed and the two-steps-back.
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Healing is the people on the way to the thing, around the thing and through the thing and not so much the thing itself.
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Healing is our first breath after their last one and the pause where we teeter between life and death.
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Healing is the calculated reach and the desperate leap.
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Healing is letting the joy in and the pain out.
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Healing is out there and in here and the pixie dust we buy from the gypsies we meet in between.
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Healing is the belief and the disbelief and having a foot in each world.
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Healing is when our presence and their absence sit side by side and finally feel acknowledged.
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What is healing to you?
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We human on xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #healing

Tell anyone who will listen. Labeling grief in thi

Tell anyone who will listen. Labeling grief in this way is exactly what creates the stigma and the shame and makes a normal human experience feel like an abnormal one.
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Words matter and the Tone of words matters (even in writing.)
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Pathologizing or threatening tones cue our human nervous system that something (in this case, g r i e f) is unsafe or dangerous or a threat to the rest of us.
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Maybe this is why we sometimes get the feeling people who haven’t lost are afraid to “catch” our grief? The avoidance or looking for “what went wrong” in the way our loved ones died attempts to ensure it couldn’t happen to them.
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When really it happens to us all. We love, we lose, we survive. Grief is painful, hard, and we’re not meant to endure it alone, but it is not a public health crisis.
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The grief around covid is real. Like covid, we cannot pretend it’s not there. AND people were grieving long before. It was just easier for the world to look away.
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Let’s not look away. Grief finally has secured a seat at the table of public life and you can be sure it has something to say and probably not so politely.
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Actively yours xox-Monique
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(I was inspired by the words of grief warrior @cortherapist to add my voice to this important mislabeling of grief. Check her out for courageous, clear-eyed grief support.)
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #griefsupport #healing

This retreat was created by a mother who lost her

We don’t grieve and then heal. The grieving is t

We don’t grieve and then heal. The grieving is the healing.
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Healing is not always robust, progressive and fully reparative.
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Healing can be sly, sluggish, skittish, tentative and pull at tangential wounds.
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Some wounds of separation may never fully heal and still we can reclaim our wholeness (that includes our broken parts.)
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The idea that when we’re done grieving we are “healed” or over it attempts to separate hurting from healing, forgetting that sometimes healing is hurting.
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Healing does not need to be a goal. If you are grieving, you are healing.
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Yours in hurt and hope xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #hopeinthebody

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