Grieve It Groove It
Weekly Reading Topic for August 17, 2019: Grieve It Groove It
Well, good morning, love!
I just opened a Reading for you, my newsletter subscribers and here’s what I heard in answer to the following:
What do my readers most need to hear this weekend? What is the most important message to send to my beloved readers?
The answer was: “Grieve It Groove It”
Curiouser and curiouser!!
What follows is your Weekly Reading.
Weekly Reading │ Grieve It Groove It
Q: What do you mean, “grieve it groove it?”
A: There’s a lot to grieve right now, and when we grieve, we must set aside time dedicated to just that one, ultimate thing.
If we don’t, we get stuck. When we push grief away, when we turn around and run in the other direction, when we stick it in a corner and say “I’ll deal with you later,” there are consequences.
And the longer we wait to grieve, the deeper those consequences can be.
Now, we’re not suggesting that you melt into a blob in the middle of your commute, or in that important meeting, or when you’re reading to your kids. We don’t mean that you should fall apart and be incompetent.
We mean that you should set aside time to grieve so that you CAN groove in your important meeting, or feed your children, or listen to your friend.
Grieving is an important life skill, and it’s one most of us haven’t learned yet, even though we’ve been given lots of opportunities.
So. Let’s look at how to grieve with competence and expeditiousness.
Ha! That was a cosmic joke. There is nothing expeditious about grief. Lesson one: you never really stop grieving. When a loss is profound, it changes you. Think of grief as a physical wound: it gapes and bleeds, and eventually, knits back together, but there is always a line of scar tissue.
If you grieve well, that scar will be thin, flexible, and strong, and sometimes, oftentimes, even stronger than the “normal” tissue around it. It will be a groovy scar. It will hold you together in your broken places, give you a way forward.
If you grieve poorly or refuse to grieve at all, that scar will become keloidal, will pile upon itself until you have a rigid, misshapen lump that gives you problems. It will block your range of motion. It will stick out and hurt when it is struck. It will look weird, and cause you embarrassment. It will put your mood in a groove, and not a good one.
So, how do we develop this lovely, thin, flexible, strong scar tissue? We create the proper environment for healing: lots of rest, good food, plenty of water, and as many opportunities to feel loved as is possible.
That means when someone takes our hand, we clasp our fingers in theirs.
When a child smiles at us, we smile back.
When we find something funny, we laugh.
We don’t try to “get over it” or “move on” — we acknowledge that some days we are OK and some days we are not.
And if the days come when we are really Not OK, we get counseling, support, pastoral care. We talk to someone who is intending to listen, to comfort.
We drink hot chocolate, even in August.
We are patient with ourselves as we grieve, as we must be patient with wounds as they heal.
We don’t pick at our grief. We try to leave it alone, in the open air, to scab over and seal up. We let our natural protective instincts tell us when to go to the party, and when to stay home and watch something comforting.
We sit with ourselves and throw ourselves a Pity Party if we really need one. A Pity Party is a wonderful time, a party just for us, with our favorite foods, and our favorite drinks, and our favorite entertainments, and as long as we are aware that we are Pitying Ourselves, and that this is an Orgy of Pity that will end by morning (or the end of the weekend, if necessary), we can trust that we will not Take It Too Far.
Grieving does take time. But it doesn’t take consecutive time. At first, we might need one-day, two-day, three-day spans. It depends upon how serious a wound. There are some losses that I cannot imagine getting up from within a month.
But sometimes we must get up, and do something else for a while because the world doesn’t stop for us and our grief. No, in fact, the world keeps spinning, calling us to grieve WHILE spinning around the sun.
In these cases, we must sometimes put our grieving on hold, and do what we must do, until we have the time to get back to it.
If you put off your grieving, you will ALWAYS get back to it, whether you intend to or not. So intend to, so you won’t be surprised by your grief. That’s the thing.
As your scar knits and thins and turns from red to white, you will find that you have more OK days than Not OK days. And that will feel like something of a relief.
And that’s when you will be most At Risk for Guilt. Oh, my, the guilt. It comes at many stages of grieving, but it can be particularly harsh when we start to feel better, a little bit.
So take heart, dear one, because guess what? Guilt is part of Grieving! So you are actually doing quite well! Again, embrace the guilt, and let it be. Don’t push it away or pull it toward you. Let the guilt sit across the table from you and tell you all about itself and how it’s come to be.
Listen carefully, as you would to a good friend. And as you listen, think these thoughts:
“Oh, dear, that guilt has you all confused, doesn’t it. Oh, dear. Get it all out, and then I will help you to sort through it.”
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And then firmly tell your lovely friend that she is quite wrong about herself, that she is not a bad person or a selfish person, and it is quite normal and healthy to have some good days, some fun times, some smiles and laughs, even while grieving. And that don’t worry, there will be a day someday when the wave of grief crashes again, and she will be underwater for a while, and she will have the solace of knowing that she has nothing whatever to feel guilty about.
She has not forgotten or left it behind, whatever she is grieving. The grief is still there, living, informing her days and nights.
And it’s OK to continue living and to remember. To laugh and to cry.
We are like trees in so many ways, and one way we are like them is in grief. In grief, we grow larger and leave a ring inside around our old selves. If you were to look at a section of someone who has suffered and grown, suffered and grown, you would see rings and rings, like fingerprints. The lines upon their soul would tell the story of their years, the years of growth and drought and grief and burden.
Grief is something we are designed to process. There is nothing too hard about grief, just like there is nothing too hard about growing older. Just as there is nothing too hard about learning to walk.
It takes effort, sometimes, but it doesn’t take a lot of figuring out.
Just like you learned to walk all by yourself, you will learn to grieve, even if you do not know how.
Grieving will take you by the hand, and walk with you, holding you as you stumble, at first. It will carry you if you can’t walk. And it will stay with you until you can take your own steps, until you relearn how to run and skip and dance. It will hold you until you find your groove again.
And it will always be there for you, because: Grief is Only Just the Realization of Love.
When we love deeply, we grieve deeply. And that is not a bad thing, not something to run from.
That is something to admire, something to embrace with attention and patience, and love.
So keep this in mind, as you grieve your grievances. Allow your grief to be your guide. It knows best.
And when you need to take a break, take a break. Tell your grief:
This is what I can bear, for now, I’m going to think on this while I groove a little. Pay the bills and run the kids to school. I’ll be back to visit again.
And know that while you grieve, and groove, and grieve and groove, you will be dancing a dance that all of life dances, that no one is exempt from.
We are all loving, and grieving, inverting our hearts over and over, taking our place in the circles of the dance, all making rings, and rings, like a giant fingerprint of love, as we contribute to the whole world, as we grieve and acknowledge how deeply we feel connected, we grow not just ourselves, but each other, and all of us, and everyone, the whole planet.
Our grief-love is what we are here for, and it is what gives us Awe at sunsets, and the sparkling of stars, and the turning of the seasons.
It’s the cold wind of winter and the soft moss of summer.
So grieve, and groove, and join the dance. It’s lovely.
I am always here to serve in any way I can.
Much Love to You,
Molly
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