Art of Grieving

Grieving about no matter what you’re overcoming from can be extremely painful. Often we push away our emotions to another day so that we can ignore it in the present. But what is important to understand is that, even if you push away whatever you’re grieving about, you will have to face it someday. Now some might argue that it is better to grieve about it in future than right now, but what they don’t understand is that until then they’d be ignoring the reality and living in the fake bubble they created.

Death is an unfortunate event, which is the truth of life, no matter how painful it is, the best thing to do is to face it right then and there instead of leaving it for the future you. Unless you suffer, you don’t know the value of happiness. So here are the few things I learned while I was grieving.

 

1.     Say hello to your grief

Often after a loved one passes away, we try to live in the memories by completely ignoring the unfortunate event that happened, which only makes us feel worse all the time. By pushing away the grief, you are not only lying to yourself in the present but you’re also passing on the misery to your future self because you can’t ignore it forever and you’ll have to face it someday or the other.

By saying hello to your grief, I mean acknowledging that the grief is there and you need to welcome it with open heart, feel the pain you are feeling, giving it space to breathe so that one day, you can finally let it go peacefully, without anything holding you back. Take care of your grief, like you’d want happiness to take care of yourself.

 

2.     Face the emotions

Once you've said hello to your grief, it’s time to let all the emotions that you’ve been burying in. When a loved one passes away, you can feel a lot of emotions, sadness, anger, or even a little happiness for them if death ended their suffering. Often there are so many emotions that death brings that we are left in a state of a complete mess because we don’t know how to deal with so many emotions at once, so we conveniently try to bury one or few emotions, to make our suffering easier.  

The helpful things to do here Are to sort out your emotions, know why you’re feeling what you’re feeling and try to relax so you can give equal time to feeling each emotion.

Many people might see it as ineffective but meditating for just 10 minutes a day can get you a lot of clarity about your emotions.

 

3.     Introspect deeper

Often while we are grieving, whether it’s after a loved one’s death or a breakup or falling out with someone, we take the support of guilt and go into self-pity. So at this point, it is very important to look at the side parallel to grief, which is love. We only grieve for the ones we love, hence we need to look at all the aspects which can help us not feel guilty.

Being guilty after someone’s death can be due to various reasons; maybe you fought with them the last time you saw them, you feel like you could have done something to save them (in case of a mishap), you feel like you deserved it more than they did or you somehow feel you’re responsible for their death. All these thoughts occur when our mind is empty because of the sudden onrush of so many feelings and hence we think about every possible thing.

Of course, we are sad but then we also get into self-pity because that way you’re grieving will be based more upon yourself that the one who actually died.

You should always know that death is an unfortunate event that you cannot avoid and neither can you predict, so thinking that you spoke badly to them, or the last words you ever said to them were ill were unfair, but you couldn’t have known at that point about the upcoming tragedy, so stop blaming yourself, because in your heart, you know that If you had known about it, you would have done otherwise.

So give your mind the space to look and feel all kinds of alternatives to the emotions you are feeling, don’t be trapped in the compulsions the society has put upon feeling the way one should ideally feel. Grieve slowly or grieve fast, but grieve in the way that best suits you.

 

4.     Moving along

“You don’t really get over the pain; you just learn to live around it.”

I heard this phrase a few years back and I couldn’t relate to it more. It may seem negative but trust me there’s more to it than that.

Living around my pain has gotten me pretty comfortable with my grieving process. I now live comfortably knowing that a loved one of mine has died, or the person that I lost because I accepted it and let the pain live around me. If I kept pushing it away, it would eventually come back and hit me hard.

But because I accepted it, and let it be around me, I coped up much better. Obviously, it takes time to get accept the reality, but the moment you do, your life and more precisely your suffering get better.  

 

5.     “Once we understand the art of suffering, we will suffer less.”

This beautiful quote said by The Dharma is pretty similar to what I mentioned in the previous point. You can’t completely heal unless you don’t accept your pain. Suffering will automatically reduce once you come at peace with reality.

You need to surrender to your grief,  understand that it is just as important to have pain because you loved that person that much.

 

6.     Let go

By letting go, I don’t mean the negative translation of letting go by forgetting the person, forgetting the memories but instead, I mean, accept the reality, accept that they’re gone and they’re not coming back, no matter how much you cry or how much you make yourself suffer or how much guilt you hold.

By accepting these things, you are giving yourself the power the face your emotions head-on in a healthy way, you are freeing yourself from everyday suffering and most importantly, you are preparing yourself to be stronger as life goes ahead.

 

I had been meaning to write about grief for a long time because I myself had been holding onto it for around 2 years, but today as I wrote it, I felt the freedom, freedom from the pain, and freedom from all the suffering I had unnecessarily put me through.

I hope this helps someone.

 

But do not forget that as important as it is to move on from the pain, it is also important to live it, let those tears out as much as you want, but at the end of the day, know that you deserve to be happy and nobody can stop you from it.