Grief can make us feel less but when we are ready, it can also become an opportunity for us to become more: 

This meeting and the next have a similar theme. They are both about some mental/emotional choices we can make about how we grow and build our lives going forward as well as some ideas to think about as that growth process unfolds.

Our grief is one of the most painful and disorienting times in our lives. Since we have had all of our certainties and sure-of’s thrown to the wind, as we try to rebuild, we also have the opportunity to work on things, to work on ourselves, and perhaps to learn to become better people. We have the opportunity to take more time working on ourselves now then we may ever have been able to do or wanted to do before. 

The empty moments, the time we no longer get to fill being with our spouses or partners can seem to diminish us but they can also be a gift, once we are ready, that we can use to grow in, to learn in, to change in and especially to find ways to honor our loved ones in by learning to becoming more.

As we try to come to terms with what has happened in our lives, when we are ready to consider it, we have this hidden opportunity. We have a chance to use that time to build not only the next part of our lives, but to decide who we want to be in that next place and to decide what to keep and what to change, if anything, from the last part of our lives. 

While we learn to stand and live again, each in our own way and in our own time, can we come to see that since we grieve because we love, as we move forward in our journeys, we have an opportunity to do it as another act of love. Who will we be going forward? What will we look like alone as our healing journeys progress to wellness? What will we build as we go?

In a similar way, what would our loved ones want us to do or be as we grieve? Can we honor our love and our loved ones by giving them the gift of us grieving and learning and growing as graciously as possible, with as much strength as possible, with as much courage as possible, however that looks for us?

When we are ready, can we choose to face our grief with purpose? As we begin to reconstruct our lives out of the ashes of our grief, can we reconstruct them so that we actively and consciously choose what to add, what to leave in and what to take out so that our grieving is not only about loss and sadness but also about building, learning, growing, and becoming more! 

Can our grief journeys also be about trying to find new reasons to go forward and about building a base of meaning upon which we can create the person we will be in that next part of our lives. Can we use our grief and the reconstruction that accompanies it in a positive way to change and grow and learn to become more.

Mental, social and spiritual gardening:

A wonderful idea I got from the Carlos Santana autobiography “The Universal Tone” is that of “spiritual gardening”. This is the idea of working on ourselves, of growing spiritually and emotionally as well as intellectually and taking the time to “pull the weeds, to fertilize and water” new ideas, skills and emotions and to find ways to use our bereavement as a tool for improving our lives and our selves.

Can we let our grief journeys eventually become a time when we consciously decide to open the door to change in our lives and if we want to, a time to examine ourselves and decide what we want to do or be next?

In the empty spaces of our grief, while we can’t replace what is no longer there, where the garden of our lives with our loved ones grew, maybe we can grow a new garden, a different one, not a replacement but one that is still full of love and honor and memory as well as growth, healing and life.

Learning anything helps you focus and grow. Another thing to consider that might help to “make us more”:

It’s very important to keep ourselves mentally healthy and mentally active as we grow and as we grow older. Unfortunately, grief can add a stagnation to our thinking and our growth. As we’ve talked about before, grief can put our thoughts in a furrow and a circle of repetitive thinking and remembering full of “what if’s” that can get deeper and the ruts and loops can become more difficult to get out of the longer it goes on and the older we become.

In some ways, however, a time of learning can actually help to make our thinking more clear, possibly more clear than it’s been in a long time. We may actually then become more able to learn, and by learning new things, rejuvenate our thinking and our ability to continue to grow and expand our understanding and our lives. It can be a critical part of moving us towards healing and finding ways to create the next part of our lives in ‘the wake of the flood.”

This is a line from a novel but it also applies to our grief journeys: “Once you stop learning, your life becomes so much less than it could be.” (Life long learning)

How might it work within our grief:

Learning anything well requires our full focus and attention. Our focus while trying to learn new things helps us to learn to concentrate again and to keep our minds active as it takes us out of our grief for those parts of a day spent in the learning process. 

A related idea to consider is that “one pointedness”, the total focus on a task, is a form of meditation. It is a calming and elevating experience. If you are totally focused, as you are when you are actively learning something or focusing on some task, you are also totally present, you are totally in the moment. 

We often talk about this idea as mindfulness and especially in a grief situation, our focus on a task we are doing, puts us in the present and not in the past. During the time we are focusing our minds, emotions, hands, eyes or ears on a task, we are not actively grieving, we are totally present and for that time, we leave our grief behind. 

Of course, our grief comes back. We go back to it when we stop focusing, but the relief, the time away from active grief is potentially a time of healing and growth as we experience what it’s like to not be thinking about our grief for awhile. It is also a very powerful way to keep our minds flexible and active and not let them atrophy, especially as we age. 

Some new things to consider trying. What can we learn that we might always have wanted to do or learn. What can we learn and do together as friends: 

Volunteering/helping others, teaching something you know, learning a language, learning a new skill, learning to weld, learning to build something, learning how to use a power tool safely, learning how to use a chain saw, taking yoga and or meditation classes, learning how to build a web page, starting a blog, learning an instrument or how to sing, Learning to paint, learning to cook, learning a craft or starting a collection, writing, journaling, reading new types of books, joining a book club, taking a class in something, start hiking, kayaking, skiing or swimming, learning some skill that your spouse or partner used to do or be responsible for doing!  Others??

Re-finding old hobbies and interests:

Besides finding something new to learn, re-finding old hobbies, skills and abilities is another important learning experience we can explore. Since there is now a large amount of time in our lives to occupy, it would be good to consider filling that time with constructive things to do once we begin to overcome our early inertia and begin building the life we want to live going forward. I believe that for the long run, it helps to do constructive and/or creative things that have some lasting value to your life as opposed to filling the time with diversions that might be good in the short run.

We may have to spend a lot of time soul-searching and self-questioning while trying to find things we might like to do. We may have to spend some time remembering what we enjoyed earlier in our lives or always wanted to do that we might bring back into it and enjoy doing now. Spending hours a day focused and one-pointed doing something you enjoy and can get lost in can become a very important part of the healing process. 

You can teach an old dog new tricks!

Hope and Healing:

Sometimes it takes years to find these things and make these types of changes, but it is our intent to change, our will to do the work and our willingness to spend the time to bring these changes into being in our lives that makes them important. And it’s often only in looking back at what we’ve done that we can see the magnitude of our success!

Finding hope and healing and moving to wellness is never going to be easy. It takes time and effort to learn and grow and make something new out of our often shattered lives. If we are kind to ourselves (self compassion) and we help each other and encourage and support each other, we can make the journey at least a little easier by telling our stories, sharing our grief and knowing that we are not alone, others are and have been there too.

Questions:

• What types of things might we do to become more? 

• What things can we focus on or work on that might be places for growth and learning? 

• Are there some hobbies or things or activities you stopped doing over the years that might be interesting or fun to reintroduce into your lives?

• What new or interesting things might you want to explore in the time you have available now, perhaps something you always wanted to do that you never got the chance to try?