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

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What I know about the end of life is that it’s m

What I know about the end of life is that it’s much like the beginning of life. Exposed, vulnerable, needing the care, presence and love of other humans for survival, comfort, and the numinous transition from here to there or there to here.
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How we living struggle with staying present for both, the beginning and the ending. Wanting to rush growth or slow decay.
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How we just can’t believe this is it, this being broken open, needing and being needed.
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How it’s as simple as holding their hand as they pass, struggle or cry because it just can’t be that touch is the real medicine.
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How presence is felt through liminality and unconsciousness and yes, they know you’re there even if they’re not mentally there.
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So stay. Sit with them. Hold their hand. Say I love you. Welcome your helplessness and humanness and the descent into a depth of being you didn’t know you were capable of.
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This is how we human on.
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Yours in the holding xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #death #birth #oldage

The inherently chaotic nature of grief defies bein

The inherently chaotic nature of grief defies being organized in the way the human mind would like.
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The mental gymnastics we do in our efforts to make sense of grief or make it orderly (for others or ourselves) are actually a response from a protective-yet-defensive sympathetic nervous system.
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This means that what we think of as our "mind" is actually a mechanism swinging into action to move the mobilized energy that can be too big to feel. (Yes, you read that right 🙂
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Our minds are part of our bodies and what we think of as our “body” recruits much more than thought and word to make sense of its experiences, reaching into the depths of its history and community; the biotensegrity of its organs, bones, and fascia; the wave-like rhythms of the autonomic and central nervous system; the external power of mother nature and the internal potential of human nature.
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The body can make sense of loss much like nature can make sense of devastation. Burned forests, fallen trees, oil spills, tornadoes, earth-shattering quakes. Nature does not hide the devastation. It’s there for all to see. It grows around and through charred or crumbled places.
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Most importantly it does not rush.
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Yours in the chaos xox-Monique
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ps. thank you to all who shared their heart on my last post. It always surprises me how it’s possible to feel accompanied even through this virtual format and reminds me of the power of our collective, connected humanity🌿
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #polyvagaltheory #somaticexperiencing #healing

When healing looks like a mental breakdown (A Stor

When healing looks like a mental breakdown (A Story.)
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I want to laugh because if anyone walked through my open front door and saw me right now they would probably think I was having a mental breakdown or had “lost it.”
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I’m sitting in a white kitchen table chair, eyes closed, rocking and crying. When my eyes open my gaze looks wild, eyes roaming around the room, hands fidgeting.
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I can just hear whoever walks in saying, “She’s lost it.”
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What’s really happening is I’m allowing myself to safely and physically feel what I haven’t been feeling lately. Feeling all that pent-up sensation connects me with an emotion of sadness, which I allow to move into my face and show itself.
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My dog Soda Pop is playing at my feet. I’m glad she’s there but I can’t connect with her right now.
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This acknowledgment of my sadness makes me cry. As I cry my body starts rocking (another form of discharge and expression.) I invite the sound that I’m holding in to be free. It comes out awkwardly, like a groan or half-baked moan.
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I hear one of our desert tortoises (Bob or Winnie, I’m not sure which) crawl in through the open front door. It’s a comforting sound. I know I can trust the reptilian-mammalian part of my brain that’s at work right now, even though my higher brain would rather be in charge.
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I move like this for several minutes, letting myself feel without trying to get away or feel better. I keep looking around so my body can see there is no threat right here and now, even though my insides don’t feel so sure.
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When things settle I can be here without the itch to move or get away. My bones don’t feel like they are lifting up and out and my face feels connected to my chest and my whole body.
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It wasn’t a big catharsis, just a moment of allowing myself to feel, to digest my experiences so I can have more room for joy.
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Healing and feeling isn’t always as pretty as it’s portrayed. Hats off to the humans and animals willing to sit in the messiness with us.
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Yours in the sway xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #healingismessy #healing

We fight grief like we fight cancer like we fight

We fight grief like we fight cancer like we fight discomfort like we fight our enemies like we fight to prove we're strong like we fight to survive like we fight because the other option is surrender.
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And we think surrender means giving up when it really means showing up.
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Showing up without the armor for the battle that was never a battle but just an unveiling of our humanity.
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That takes the most courage of all.
Being willing to see and being willing to be seen.
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Stubbornly yours xox-Monique
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ps. on a less poetic note the biological fight response and energy in grief is valid, protective, subcognitive and can be cycled through physiologically so there can be more room for feeling and healing🌱
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#onwardcourageousheart #feeltoheal #grief #griefinthebody #fightresponse #grieftruth

If today you felt more human or less human or just

If today you felt more human or less human or just had to have one more drink or bucket of ice cream or hug, I hope you know you are not alone.
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It would be completely normal if today you felt simultaneously drawn towards and repulsed by: the news, people’s shares, the day itself, the date, the past or the future.
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If this bothness made you feel stuck, absent, foggy or alone, angry, trapped, hopeless or lost, that would be normal too.
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If the public grief felt too big (or too small because you have your own looming big grief) that would be completely understandable too.
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If our common humanity terrified you or encouraged you or unhinged you, there would be a very good reason for that.
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We are all out here today, hurting and hoping, healing and humaning on.
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Our bodies remember this day in ways our minds cannot comprehend, even two decades later.
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You’re not crazy, just human xox-Monique
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#nineeleven #grief #griefinthebody

No one had your relationship with them, no one has

No one had your relationship with them, no one has your lived history, no one has your support or lack of support, no one knows how loss landed for you and in you, no one knows what it feels like to be you, missing them.
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Acknowledging this marks the first coordinate on your map that says “You Are Here.” We don’t have to know where Here is or how far away, behind or ahead it is from anyone else. It’s where you are.
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When we try to start where someone else started or follow their route or skip ahead we often just get lost. Eventually we find our way back to our truth, our starting place, to the Here and Now. Which is also the only place healing can happen.
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Yours in love and loss xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #griefsupport

Anger+Grief . Anger is not a stage of grief. It's

Body-oriented therapies and practices can be such

Body-oriented therapies and practices can be such a support in grief, especially when paired with cognitive inquiry and an understanding of how trauma impacts the body and nervous system.
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Trauma is how our body responds to our experiences, not what has happened to us.
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Many people have never heard of some of these approaches and don’t realize their traumatic grief is not a life sentence or that processing trauma somatically can make such a big difference psychologically.
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This list is from the Resources page on my website. Under the Yoga tab you’ll find some of the teachers who have studied with me and weave an understanding of grief in the body with their unique approach.
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Resources can be helpful when we are ready for them, which is often not when other people want to offer them to us. If we add them on as another thing to do or way to get rid of our grief we may be sorely disappointed. Most of these approaches help us to feel what’s there in a supported and graduated way, which is where the true healing and holding happens.
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Inward and onward we go xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #healing #griefsupport #yoga #traumainformedyoga

For many of us grief can feel like an inescapable

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