"Embracing Grief: A Path to Personal Renewal"

Grief is the feeling of loss, emptiness and profound sadness we suffer after the loss of someone dear to us. I’m talking loss that hurts our hearts. 

We can also feel grief after a relationship breakdown or even a redundancy.

No one can see our grief-our feelings of loss or guilt are mostly invisible to others.

Grief’s like having a broken rib that’s just painful to your heart that no one else can see.

When working with grieving coaching clients, my goal is to help them find a place where they can look back on their loss with more love than pain. Then they are able to honour their loss in a way that feels appropriate to them. 

If we get the right support at the right time, grief is actually a portal through which you can experience a bit of a re-birth, if handled well.

That’s because you don’t need fixing when you’re grieving. You do need to be heard and supported though - sometimes to cry and sometimes having your pain witnessed is part of the healing.

Gratitude 

I'm so lucky to have had a great relationship with my Dad. He was a most warm, loving,  family -centred person.

I still hear his voice in my head every day reminding me to look out for those less fortunate and to enjoy the simple things in life -to stand back in awe at the beauty of a sunrise - “There’s a touch of the numinous there, ma Quine” he’d say, pointing out the rays of light creating a spectrum of colour above the horizon at Aberdeen beach… 

I’m so grateful that he got time to dote on my 2 boys and share all his love and wisdom with them as well. …I’m mindful too that old age is a privilege that many are not given.

Difficult Relationships. 

In acknowledging my lovely Dad, I acknowledge the sense of grief that reading this may bring anyone who didn’t have such a good relationship with their father. The absent or aggressive Dads who were anything but a comfort in life.

One thing I’ve learned is that we don’t heal what we can’t feel so putting your feelings on paper (through journalling for eg) or talking to a trusted friend, therapist or coach is super important in such situations. 

I coach clients to help them discover their unique path to process their loss and move forward with confidence. We often work on practising radical self acceptance and forgiveness for not being able to save their loved one’s life or change the outcome.

Grief can be an isolating experience and people often don’t know how to talk about it. Sometimes, the people we would usually want to talk to, may not have experienced this transition in the same way as us.They may have had no challenges or different challenges - this is when it’s so very helpful to have a safe space to share what’s going on and get expert guidance.

Finding support is a critical form of self care because not so long ago, we used to live in close communities near our families where we grew up. We had a tight network of support. Now we live such disjointed, international lives, it’s easy to feel isolated in grief.

Some ideas that may help you;

I often say to coaching clients that grief or loss is inevitable but suffering is optional. 

Pain in grief is part of the healing process and we can’t take it completely away but we can move through it the hard way or with the support that makes it so much easier.. The suffering we sometimes experience is created by our mind.

Our mind and society can put our grief on a timeline telling us we should be further along than we are…I like to remind my clients who are struggling to come to terms with a loss of any kind:

You can still be whole but you will be different going forward. 

The aim of our work is to find a way of remembering your loved one with more love than pain in your own way.

The Mind can be cruel

Grief often involves dealing with guilt and the ‘monkey mind’ - the mind that replays haunting memories of the last days, the conversations with medical staff, and endlessly wrestles with the ‘what if’s’.  Our mind sometimes feels judgey -cruelly pretending that if we had just done something differently, our loved ones wouldn’t have died.

The truth is often that despite our best efforts, our loved ones would still die.

I work with people who are struggling after a loss, relationship breakdown or indeed bereavement  and help them understand brain science and I show them why our brains can turn on us and become part of the problem in such situations.

Our mind can behave like teflon for the good memories and velcro for the bad ones. The mind likes to replay hard images like those images of the last days  which can haunt us and hurt us…

My work as a coach is to help clients create a new life that honours them as a person and their precious future.  To do that, I show clients how to create a new relationship with themselves and good memories help us compost what we’ve been through in a way that respects our loss and also to develop that new identity and relationship.

I believe a part of our loved one lives on with us, just as a part of us died with them too…but we carry them with us always…

I hope this was helpful to you and that you’ll find different ways to apply this and that feel empowered to get support if you sense you could use it. 

Next week, I’ll discuss what the difference between coaching and therapy is and how to know which one may be a good fit for you now.

I so appreciate you taking the time to read my emails. 

If life is hard for you right now because of loss or for any other reason, I’m sending you much love and healing hugs. 

Elizabeth x