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

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Amen to you Amen to me Amen to being lost Amen to

Amen to you
Amen to me
Amen to being lost
Amen to being found
Amen to coming together
Amen to falling apart
Amen to the wail from the bottom of our broken hearts
Amen to the hallelujah at the top of our lungs
Amen to asking the question
Amen to questioning the answer
Amen to laughing til we cry
Amen to crying til we're free
Amen to the first I love you
Amen to the last I love you
Amen to the years that fly by too fast
Amen to the moments that feel like years
Amen to stitching hearts back together with love
Amen to stretching them open with love
Amen to mothers and sisters and daughters and throwing like a girl
Amen to fathers and brothers and sons and being man enough to cry
Amen to families made of blood
Amen to families made of love
Amen to the babies in bellies
Amen to the babies in hearts
Amen to where we're going
Amen to where we've been
Amen to who we are
Amen to who we think we are
Amen to being strong
Amen to being weak
Amen to asking for help
Amen to offering presence
Amen to owning it all
Amen to being it all
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Amen to being human.
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#onwardcourageousheart #griefisapractice #healingisanart #grief

No man or woman is an island. . As lonely and desp

No man or woman is an island.
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As lonely and desperate as grief feels, we are not alone.
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Someone else has or is feeling the same way about a different love they lost too soon.
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Hard to believe I know. That someone else has wanted to die like you; that someone else has wanted to forget or never forget like you; that someone else has felt like they are lost like you, alone like you, misunderstood like you; that someone else has lost or found their faith like you, rejected heaven when they found hell like you, wrestled angels or cursed demons like you; that someone else has ghosts in their eyes like you; that someone else lives for signs like you; that someone else feels broken, undone or rages like you; that someone else wants to scream it at the top of their lungs like you, demand the world listen like you, can barely whisper it like you; that someone else feels guilty like you, should have said or not said those last word like you; that someone else stands at the edge of their sanity like you, wishes they could jump like you, turns around and dies again each time like you; that someone else hopes like you, finds clues like you, courage like you, keeps taking one more step, breath, day like you.
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Grief is lonely, but we are not alone.
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#onwardcourageousheart #griefisapractice #healingisanart #grief

It’s what you feel. Would you still call it grie

This chat with Christy McCaffrey was so natural an

Raise your hand if you have nothing to lose. . Not

Raise your hand if you have nothing to lose.
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Not many people can grasp that feeling. When we know it, though, it shifts the lens on our world perspective powerfully.
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The end of the world is not a big concern because our world has already collapsed. We have already experienced the worst that could happen. We are already living in a world that isn’t made for us, limited in our every move.
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We already can’t breathe, daily question if we want to live, so something threatening to take our breath or life away is no threat at all. Not to us.
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We are already good friends with uncertainty. Hope has not visited in forever it seems. Perhaps it was here for a breath yesterday I thought or maybe I imagined it...
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The rest of the world is just starting to get the tiniest sense of what grief feels like, looks like, sounds like. We, however, have been walking this terrain alone for months, years or decades.
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Losing a loved one in death often registers biologically as a threat to our survival and collapse of the world as we know it.
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This new normal is not so new for us. Our worst fears have already been realized. On this side of everything to lose we keep carrying on as we always have, the only way we ever can, breath by breath by breath.
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#onwardcourageousheart #griefisapractice #healingisanart #grief

Grief is such a fluid, powerful experience. One mo

Grief is such a fluid, powerful experience. One moment it’s hopeful and the next it’s collapsed into the darkness. One moment it’s dancing through the living field of memories and the next it’s barely able to move through the thick honey of sadness. One moment it bares its teeth, growling in anger and the next it whimpers in pain and loneliness.
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Don’t be surprised when you ask it what it needs and it doesn’t know or changes its mind or resists what it asked for. It is not fickle, it is just human.
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Grief changes shape and size and color from day to day. Today it may feel as big and strong as the ocean, tomorrow it may feel as cold and small as a beach stone in your hand.
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Its rhythm and song is familiar even though we may have never heard it until now. Our ancestors wailed it, hummed it, and soothed their broken hearts with it.
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When we stop running and listen, we will be able to do the same.
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#onwardcourageousheart #griefisapractice #healingisanart #grief

The lungs are part of our ventral vagal/social eng

The lungs are part of our ventral vagal/social engagement system. They respond physically, emotionally and energetically to loving human connection and to the lack of it.
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Traditional Chinese Medicine assigns the experience of grief to two organs, the major one being the lungs.
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Literally our lungs are an organ of life. They are the way we receive and open to life.
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Our bodies will respond to loss and sadness regardless of how our mind tells us we should feel.
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Stuffing it down, holding it in, pretending it isn’t there, isn’t worsening or darkening or changing weighs our bodies down.
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They have enough work to do right now, holding up our mental state, managing fluctuating states of overwhelm and uncertainty.
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Let your sad out. It might feel bigger than you, that’s why we need other humans to help us hold it, carry it. We can do that from where we are and as we are.
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If it comes out as crying, try to breathe fully in between cries instead of those deep tight cries that allow no breath in. Breathing while crying allows our systems to cycle through completely and allows the crying to soothe us in the end.
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We don’t need to let it go, we just need to let it out.
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For more info see the “Organs Of Grief” chapters in The Grief Practice book.
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#onwardcourageousheart #griefisapractice #healingisanart #grief #griefinthebody #polyvagaltheory #lungs #covid_19

Do you recognize it as it makes wide sweeps over o

Do you recognize it as it makes wide sweeps over our world, landing at the door of each of our hearts, not fully formed or fully felt, those seed sensations buried deep in our gut or sprouting on our skin, invisibly taking shape in the belly of what-we-fear and what-we-do-not-know and what-we-are-losing and what-we-will-lose.
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It is not our enemy. It is here to help us through, to help us survive and, when the time is right, heal.
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It is one of our own, as it always has been, waiting to be invited to a seat at the table of society, right next to love and joy.
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Let us pull out the chair, place a clean plate, arrange the fork and the knife and pour the water.
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Let us lean in, ready to listen, ready to learn this piece of our humanity that has been ignored for too long.
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None of us know this grief. None of us know what this will feel like.
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We will learn it together, companioned by deep love.
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We will learn how to feel collectively. Deep sadness and deep fear and deep hope and deep joy.
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We will learn how grief feels in sadness and isolation and how it feels in relief and connection, when we give that first post-COVID hug.
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Grief is one of our own. Now is the time to walk with it for a while.
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It knows the way back home.
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#onwardcourageousheart #griefisapractice #healingisanart #grief #griefinthebody #covid_19 #covıd19 #covid

tonight I settle into the trust that is necessary

tonight I settle into the trust that is necessary when the light leaves the sky (or our life)
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into the faith that is required to run my hands over the walls of my heart I cannot see (but I feel thumping with life)
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I sink into the silence that is the answer I have been looking for (though I didn’t know it until now)
into the rhythm of life (its bass and its trebles and its current long hold)
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I step into the owning of all I have (to hold, to offer, to receive)
into the shape of my presence (and my eventual absence)
and all I am meant to create, love, hold while I’m here
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#onwardcourageousheart #griefisapractice #healingisanart #grief

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