The Best Way to Deal with Grief

Grief is a natural part of life. And yet so many of us are afraid of it, or we don’t want to process it, or we don’t know how. Crying is a normal part of life. If we can allow these discomforts, we can move forward. But if we don’t process our grief, it can lead to depression, anxiety, etc.

An added layer of suffering in thinking we shouldn’t ever have negative feelings like grief or judging ourselves for grieving anything unexpectedly.

Often we think our lives are going to turn out a certain way. We check all the boxes and do all the right things, or so we think, and yet somehow, things aren’t the way we thought they’d be. Sometimes we have to grieve the lack of what we thought would be. This is common for many middle-aged women. Looking at your life and having it not be where you want it to be, that mismatch of the picture-perfect and what it is can cause a disconnect that leads to sadness and grief.

A listener reached out to me regarding the loss of her pet hamster. Not just death we grieve but any major change. It could be a job change, a change of partner, or a divorce, grieving the life we thought we would have. Or moving cities and missing our old neighborhood and friends.

When I moved and had to let my nanny go, I cried for two months on and off, missing her after I moved.

Transitions are times of grief as well. To move forward, progress, and transform, we must process our grief and not buffer or ignore it. To live our best life, we have to be able to be uncomfortable and do the work.

Grief can be triggered during the most unexpected times. If it’s not a good time, see if you can go to a private spot like the bathroom to be alone and be with it. Be with the grief. Be present with it. There was a time when something sent me into a complete grief spin. I spent 30 minutes with my grief. I cried the hardest and loudest I have in a long time. I played music that reminded me of some of the grief spots. I played the difficult time of the past (which I never do because I don’t believe in reliving anything as in it’s not productive), but I allowed myself to do a movie of the tough times that brought on this grief, and in doing this, I processed it. Everybody’s processing is different. This is what mine looked like.

So how to process it?

Don’t run away from the discomfort.

Being able to sit with discomfort is a critical part of this work

Not buffering and being able to be with what comes up

Observe it and not judge it.

It’s okay not to be okay.

Society shames grief, crying, and anything that’s not picture-perfect, especially on social media. People don’t even mean to do it. They’re concerned.

I put a crying pic up, and a friend reached out to me, thinking I was crying for help.

I put a video up to acknowledge all single mothers on my Instagram, and an acquaintance asked me if I was okay. When I said yes, she asked if I was sure just because there wasn’t a picture perfection there.

It’s as if…when we are genuine, or we aren’t bubbly, people automatically think something is wrong. Sometimes they genuinely want to help. Other times they might be judging. I bring up a point that society isn’t necessarily open to grief, especially if it doesn’t pertain to actual death. It’s almost as if, by society’s rules, we aren’t allowed to grieve other things.

Maybe we want to grieve our old pre-baby body, and we can’t do that because maybe that’s body shaming. My point is various things other than death…an individual may want to grieve. And I’m here to tell you that it’s okay. Please grieve whatever you want to. Don’t feel shame about it, and weep as long as you need. If you take the time to do this, I promise you will be able to move past it much more quickly. It won’t eat away at you.

The truth is, most people aren’t doing the work here that we are talking about today. And that is why many of them won’t live satisfying, happy lives because it takes intention, hard work, and a little outside-of-the-box thinking.

You can do this. You can get through whatever grief you need to process. Try the mind-body connection described in this episode, and let me know how it goes.

My coaching program helps moms in male-dominated fields suffering from burnout to enjoy the life they’ve worked so hard to build, using my proven methodology to heal the underlying causes of burnout.