Karen Cocco, Psychology, Cedar Knolls, NJ, USAsays
I think the sharing related to ‘titrating’ in the grief and pain was really useful. I know my clients dealing with grief would be able to tolerate this approach much easier than directly talking about the pain they are experiencing with the loss of their loved ones.
What’s been hard for me is when it feels endless– like falling into a black hole, or a void. Do I want to be in that feeling forever? There needs to be at least some sense that I can be a phoenix, and not just stuck.
In being with my grief what has been difficult and surprising is the amount of fear that has presented itself. Fear in so many aspects, not just being alone but fear that I would die and not live the gift my husband gave me. He choose to stop dialysis because he felt he was a burden and that life held no hope for him. His choice although I understand and honor it, left me with so many questions and unresolved feelings and fear was the first to show up in a big way. I also realized how unsafe I felt how my need for safety showed up in the things I did and tried to control. If I could only show him that life is a gift would want to live. Looking at my fear, how unsafe I have felt (in my whole life), not denying the hurt in my heart and the triggers of unworthiness and I am not enough are painful and difficult. Grief has felt like a Pandora’s box has been opened as I walk through this new life. In Choosing to Love, the bad “othering” is how I treat myself.
Donna Hildebrand, Other, Philadelphia, PA, USAsays
The “self help”/personal growth profession suggests the importance of community. I am supported by a greater power when i turn toward grief in solitude and prefer being alone to genuinely feel that support. community is difficult
I jave experienced difficulties turning toward losses in fear of overwhelming sadness that I want to avoid at times. other times turning gthe mind toward my experiences came esier–and experiencing sadness and allowing to take me to places I need to explore helps me move on–it depends on the losses and how quickly they come that makes grieving complex for me and many of my clients. I am hoping g to discover more strategies to help embrace the depth of losses without what I call “setting up camp” in a swamp of sadness.
I’ve been afraid I’d be alone for eternity, and I am recently growing in the ability to feel sadness and sorrow with acceptance and gentleness rather than deriding and shaming myself.
The tears. The heaviness of the emptiness. Closed off. But with all of that I felt closest to my mom. After the tears the lightness comes and I temporarily feel more open to life again. I smile with the memories I relived.
The loss I confronted was the fact that my adult son lives with his family in Finland. I have visited multiple times, but now I will not be traveling there again for many reasons. It is a loss that I have not fully connected with – yes, too painful. My grandson will only know me from video calls and I am so grateful for that technology. But . . . I am aging and I will navigate these last years without their physical presence.
To sit beside this pain was very helpful in beginning to allow it. I am grateful that ny Buddhist practice has brought me to the refuge of sangha.
Anthony Allen, Another Field, Beaverton, OR, USAsays
Dear Tara, you often speak about the importance of turning toward grief rather than avoiding it. I seem to struggle with something a little different.
I don’t fear turning towards my grief. I’ve spent considerable time sitting with it and allowing myself to feel the sadness, regret, shame and attachment that arise. Yet the grief returns with tremendous intensity, bringing emotional storms that feel overwhelming despite my willingness to turn toward it.
I’m beginning to wonder whether my repeated efforts to understand, accept and eventually release the grief may themselves contain a subtle form of striving.
How do we distinguish genuinely turning toward grief from repeatedly working on it in the hope that it will finally let go?
My loss is “ambiguous”–my wife and best friend of 60 years has dementia and is both here and not here. It is hard to connect with the grief at times, hard to understand and hold this strange situation.
I am afraid the sadness will Destry me, it paralyses me. I feel that I will never be able to be happy again. It helps to be with it and it helps to put a hand on my heart.
Last night I felt myself heading there again and I tried the Hawaiian prayer: “I’m sorry, Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” It was the first sentence, “I’m sorry”, that brought the tears. I thought I must be saying sorry to the part of me I’d hurt that morning by letting the panic run roughshod over me. Then I revisited my triumphs of the day and noticed I was feeling better. Then I brought forth memories of places and people whom I’ve loved, who’ve taught me peace, among them, you, Tara. And thinking of Tara I remembered a recent short guided meditation of Tara’s in which she said that the field that holds all this is tender. That word “tender” held healing. Broader and deeper—those words I brought in—bringing attention to sounds from outside my head, my house, this street. I noticed how the good feelings beginning to wash through me literally, physically, were washing the panic out of me. And I don’t remember ever before experiencing so clearly that physical exchange of sensations—from wrenching to okay, pleasant, even. And then I fell asleep, a miracle in itself this week.
Thank you for sharing this. I’d forgotten about the Hawaiian saying, called I believe ha aponopono. Hadn’t occurred to me that we can say it to ourselves. I was swamped with fear last night too, and will try this tonight. So glad you got restful sleep!
I do turn towards the feelings of loss. I can feel the feelings that come up. I can sense strongly at times the connection the bond we shared. it’s bitter sweet. But there is a part of me that is still learning that it’s true, my beloved is not coming back and then feeling the pain of the sorrow.
Thank you very much Tara for your sharing of this. I felt connected and moved with what you said and for the first time resonated with the word mindfulness. When I have heard and read about it before it has not clicked with me. I think I find it a bit cold and mechanical. I loved your tone and pace – I feel I have heard some gold dust this morning. Thank you.
Is there any chance of a transcript?
I have been practicing mindfulness for almost 30 years. I have weathered many significant losses, but I lost my daughter 8 months ago – this loss is unbearable at times. But, the practice is here for me and I am so grateful. I am truly facing this pain moment to moment and I am gently and genuinely honoring the feelings. Abby is right with me as I practice. For now, i hold her as she holds me. Thank you, Tara. I love you and how you are offering this supportive and healing wisdom 🙏🏾💙💜💜🙏🏾
Fear of and actual overwhelm, and the additional feeling of isolation in your pain.
I have always found Kritsten Neff’s shared humanity element of Mindful Self Compassion very difficult. I find myself caught in victim mindset and this also stops me turning to painful feelings as I don’t like being caught in victim mindset but I also can’t help it. Intellectually I understand we all experience pain and loss, it is part of life and being human, but I can’t seem to be able to feel that yet.
Offering your suffering to a higher being asking for help with it helps a lot, and not having to do it all in one go sitting next to it rather than in it. There is a reason feelings have been buried, wading in slowly is an empowering notion.
In facing the loss the pain begins again and I’m afraid that I will once again fall into that deep, dark pit of despair that I’ve worked so hard and long to climb out of.
I lost my 50 year old son in2025. It has been hard. It was a clean relationship and he had often told us we were the best parents and he loves us. I feel like I can be with him and love and tears are ok. Then I have no relationship with my sister since I basically had to or chose to leave it to her. I feel betrayed and not safe with her and don’t feel like I am part of my birth family. I need to be more compassionate with myself. Thanks for your ideas.
I’m overwhelmed by my thoughts and emotions lately…too much coming in too fast. I’m leaning in and allowing the “guesthouse” to fill, while inviting presence. But I feel my body wants to move. I try to allow this impulse for action while walking and doing tasks to honor both needs. it is a lot of space to hold.
I appreciate Tara’s words but labeling a pet’s death as minor is offensive. Nonhumans are the only beings who actually love unconditionally and grieving my beloved Heather is as heavy and heartbreaking as losing a human being.
Please be more sensitive to the fact that many of us have stronger bonds with beings other than human beings. Dogs especially are unconditionally loving and understanding; they are loyal companions who are there for you.
I do appreciate Tara’s meditations, advice and podcasts. Thank you
Lost my husband of 58 years three months ago and I am now just starting to sob uncontrollably. I have lost the rudder of my boat. The constant keeping busy is no longer working. I don’t want to be strong and have a poker face anymore. He needed constant care for his last two years and help for five before that. I am worn out and I loved him deeply. In the end I couldn’t express my feelings as I was numb.
It’s hard to turn to loss because the feelings of sadness, loneliness,& vulnerability are sometimes so overwhelming that I feel too small to hold them. Facing loss also makes me face my own mortality which is unsettling & kind of scary if I’m being real about it.
As a mindfulness facilitator, I always invite to gently open the heart to all feelings, using the body as an anchor. But I don’t feel ready to accompany someone who is facing deep grief. I need more specific tools.
First New Year gathering of the family without my mother. Now I feel the strong emotion of left alone in the world. When my father died 6 years ago I didn’t have the time to grief because I was busy caring for my mother. Now I feel it doubled.
Loss triggers my childhood fears of abandonment.
For a long time I met loss with shutting down and distracting
Now as I am learning to inquire into my emotions I am more able to allow them to be there and to be felt.
Turning towards loss fills me with fear, even though my intellect tells me I will survive it.
All losses throughout my 64 years reflect back on the trauma of my mother drowning in the sea while saving my life when I was 12.
When loss goes hand in hand with trauma, and when that loss and trauma happens in childhood, the fear of dealing with loss brings a different dimension.
Through Tara’s teachings and generous heart, I have however come to believe that I can ‘be’ in a different way by opening my heart. For example, take off my armour, be softer and kinder to others and myself, and open the barriers to creativity and lightness.
Turning toward loss is difficult for me because one loss often opens into many others: being left, not being chosen, losing my place, realizing how much something mattered. My instinct is often to make meaning quickly, to understand or fix, rather than simply let myself grieve.
What supports me is presence: being in nature, being with people I trust, writing, beauty, music, and increasingly my own body. I’m learning that I can turn toward what hurts without abandoning myself inside it.
What is difficult with feeling the loss is the sorrow of not being able to be with the person I lost in a more whole way. I at the time she was living could be anoyed with her helplesness. Knowing that helplesness is a feeling I want to learn to contain and accept better. What helpd is always for me -to see my feeling in a bigger picture. Knowing also that pain is a universal feeling we all go through.
I am replying to Rosy Fox. I am feeling that you are a very strong lady and anything but a professional mourner. You would seem to have had more than your fair share of losses and disappointments in this life. It is said “God” doesn’t give us more than we can handle but that can be hard to acknowledge or remember when we are in deep and or what feels like agonising emotional pain. As someone who in the past has continually powered through I got to a point when I could do it no more. I am still on that healing journey though the pain can and does surface at times. When it comes to the likes of dementia the loss is real and hard to take at times. Our loved one is still with us, in my case my mother specially when she could remember my siblings but not myself. A game she had seemed to play when she was well, playing favourites. The strength I learned was I feel because and throughout my childhood. It is said that in times of stress we revert to old behaviours that have worked for us in the past. Thus our very strength later works against us. I celebrate you and the lady you are and I wish you much love and grace in your healing journey. Sometimes it is said that we need to see ourselves with compassion and feel seen by others as well. I see you and so celebrate you for all you love and care you have given to so many. Many blessings Marianne
I’m so bad about oversharing!
Father died at age 3.
My 23/ yr old brother died my junior year of high school.
Tremendous unresolved family grief there. We loved him so much.
My husband says I’m a professional mourner.
That when someone dies I dig up all my loved ones and grieve for them all over again.
Took care of mom through cancer and dementia. I felt that I pregrieved her loss. It was almost a relief.
Then I began to lose older siblings. I missed one brothers funeral bc I was across the country dealing with my son, his recent loss and relapse into drug use. Reminiscent of my 23 year old brother’s struggle.
I had spent a lot of time with that brother caring for his daughter who died at age 39 from a glioblastoma. So w didn’t feel guilty missing the funeral. Leading one brother to say, “ You will do anything for someone while they are alive. After they die you don’t have much use for them!”
That brother died during Covid. There was a video memorial then a proper one later the next year. Then my oldest brother succumbed to Covid. We had lost his adult son the year prior.
Those last losses affected me tremendously. I realized by going to support group meetings about my sons substance use that I wasn’t ready to feel the pain of death again so soon.
I didn’t follow advice to detach with love.
I didn’t want to spend the last years of my sons life being estranged from him. Did what I could live with although that wasn’t what was best for him.
I enabled him and his wife( with mental health issues)to move in so he could finish an internship. The dysfunctional situation went on for 5 years with moments of progress. Last year we made it impossible for him not to get help. He went to rehab. While there I finished cancer treatment and his father was diagnosed and began his treatment.
We had 5 sober months with our son. No job but sober. Then we found him OD’ed in the bathroom in May. Wife took a bottle of pills the next day. Went to hospital, sober living and I don’t know where she is now.
I have been frozen in suspended animation.
I have had no funeral. No memorial as of yet. Nor have I posted an obituary. I feel that I made my peace and hugged him goodbye years ago while going to al-anon meetings.
I told him then I would always love him no matter what.
I’m getting by. Feeling guilty about no celebration of life yet. Starting in the shallow end of the grief pool resonated so much with me. I know I have to do some work that won’t swallow me whole.
Thanks for this series.
Grief and loss is messy isn’t it?
my thoughts…. its spectacularly cruel to sat youre a professional mourner. its not as if you chose to be surrounded by loss (unless youre actually a serial murderer which i dont think you are).
I have no idea how tou have kept standing throughout all of these losses.
Working on my art work, getting lost in creating for hours and feeling Joy and delight.
Walking in nature, where I feel totally at ease and accepted by the elements, the trees, plants, animals. I remember we are one.
I can certainly relate to the sense of not ‘feeling safe enough to feel my feelings’ after bereavement. Turning towards the emptiness associated with the loss is frightening. I have found personally and within my work with client that loss also forces us to look at the wider context around what space has been left and how to fill that space, that in itself has felt scary to me following grief. It takes a lot individually and for clients to sit with the vulnerability in order to find that acceptance, strength and belief that life can continue in other ways.
When I’m not well supported by wisdom/contemplative practice I experience sadness as nearly intolerable, and feel very real seeming embodied reactions of escape and distraction.
I find it difficult to accept myself for not crying very much. I’m just feeling numb and like I’ve been punched in the gut. I really miss my Shelby Rose Dog.
From video 2 when I turn to the tragic loss of my beloved sister, this opens up the tears. But from your lovely video, I need to start with the shallow water. Or by sitting on the park bench in our beautiful pocket park, if I don’t feel ready I can just acknowledge this, let it sit beside me. Then slowly, slowly over time I want to be able to name these feelings, be with them and understand why they make me so heart broken. Many thanks for Video 2, it was beautiful.🌸🥰❤️🙏
After a stroke almost 6 years ago. I try to focus on what I am feeling but don’t know what I am feeling. I have always felt this to be very difficult. For years i have practiced although sporadically, meditation. I feel disheartened and feel that it works for other people but not for me. Thank you Tara for these free videos. Iwon’t give up with the hope that somewhere within me some change is going on.🙏🙏
Ann – I hear you. My advice, if you choose to take it – feel free not to – Is to notice any somatic queues as be with them – you do not have to name them to begine with – or at all – sometimes it is a coldness in your legs, or a tension across your forehead or round the back of your head. Just noticing these is the start of rebuilding your comms between feelings and thinking. Sending love and light and hope this helps. Apologies if it feels reductive
Loved inviting grief as a friend sitting beside the grieving person on a favorite park bench! Connecting with the aliveness of nature, flowing water and animals breaks the trance of loneliness and separation.
Beth Rooks, Student, Santa Fe, NM, USA says
Fear of the pain. Even though I know that it won’t last forever, I still fear it will overtake me.
Dinah McMahon, Another Field, Winchester, VA, USA says
Confusion and resistance remain, but accepting even these is a step toward self-healing. Thank you, Tara.
Karen Cocco, Psychology, Cedar Knolls, NJ, USA says
I think the sharing related to ‘titrating’ in the grief and pain was really useful. I know my clients dealing with grief would be able to tolerate this approach much easier than directly talking about the pain they are experiencing with the loss of their loved ones.
J R, Other, New Salem, MA, USA says
What’s been hard for me is when it feels endless– like falling into a black hole, or a void. Do I want to be in that feeling forever? There needs to be at least some sense that I can be a phoenix, and not just stuck.
Audrey Kuppenbender, Other, ANTIOCH, CA, USA says
In being with my grief what has been difficult and surprising is the amount of fear that has presented itself. Fear in so many aspects, not just being alone but fear that I would die and not live the gift my husband gave me. He choose to stop dialysis because he felt he was a burden and that life held no hope for him. His choice although I understand and honor it, left me with so many questions and unresolved feelings and fear was the first to show up in a big way. I also realized how unsafe I felt how my need for safety showed up in the things I did and tried to control. If I could only show him that life is a gift would want to live. Looking at my fear, how unsafe I have felt (in my whole life), not denying the hurt in my heart and the triggers of unworthiness and I am not enough are painful and difficult. Grief has felt like a Pandora’s box has been opened as I walk through this new life. In Choosing to Love, the bad “othering” is how I treat myself.
Donna Hildebrand, Other, Philadelphia, PA, USA says
The “self help”/personal growth profession suggests the importance of community. I am supported by a greater power when i turn toward grief in solitude and prefer being alone to genuinely feel that support. community is difficult
Amy Zicafoose, Social Work, Jackson , MI, USA says
I jave experienced difficulties turning toward losses in fear of overwhelming sadness that I want to avoid at times. other times turning gthe mind toward my experiences came esier–and experiencing sadness and allowing to take me to places I need to explore helps me move on–it depends on the losses and how quickly they come that makes grieving complex for me and many of my clients. I am hoping g to discover more strategies to help embrace the depth of losses without what I call “setting up camp” in a swamp of sadness.
Meredith Cleaves, Teacher, Novato, CA, USA says
I’ve been afraid I’d be alone for eternity, and I am recently growing in the ability to feel sadness and sorrow with acceptance and gentleness rather than deriding and shaming myself.
Beth Nutter, Other, Elgin, IL, USA says
The tears. The heaviness of the emptiness. Closed off. But with all of that I felt closest to my mom. After the tears the lightness comes and I temporarily feel more open to life again. I smile with the memories I relived.
Winona Fetherolf, Counseling, Albuquerque, NM, USA says
The loss I confronted was the fact that my adult son lives with his family in Finland. I have visited multiple times, but now I will not be traveling there again for many reasons. It is a loss that I have not fully connected with – yes, too painful. My grandson will only know me from video calls and I am so grateful for that technology. But . . . I am aging and I will navigate these last years without their physical presence.
To sit beside this pain was very helpful in beginning to allow it. I am grateful that ny Buddhist practice has brought me to the refuge of sangha.
Anthony Allen, Another Field, Beaverton, OR, USA says
Dear Tara, you often speak about the importance of turning toward grief rather than avoiding it. I seem to struggle with something a little different.
I don’t fear turning towards my grief. I’ve spent considerable time sitting with it and allowing myself to feel the sadness, regret, shame and attachment that arise. Yet the grief returns with tremendous intensity, bringing emotional storms that feel overwhelming despite my willingness to turn toward it.
I’m beginning to wonder whether my repeated efforts to understand, accept and eventually release the grief may themselves contain a subtle form of striving.
How do we distinguish genuinely turning toward grief from repeatedly working on it in the hope that it will finally let go?
Charles Terry, Other, Langley, WA, USA says
My loss is “ambiguous”–my wife and best friend of 60 years has dementia and is both here and not here. It is hard to connect with the grief at times, hard to understand and hold this strange situation.
Avril says
I am too frightened to feel the pain of his loss. I am numb. I can not cope with the enormity of the grief i feel.
jacaranda says
I am afraid the sadness will Destry me, it paralyses me. I feel that I will never be able to be happy again. It helps to be with it and it helps to put a hand on my heart.
Hana says
I have fear of feelig such strong emotion as pain and sadness. I don’t want to be flooded by them.
Donni Kennedy says
Feeling swamped by fear Panic. Dread.
Last night I felt myself heading there again and I tried the Hawaiian prayer: “I’m sorry, Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” It was the first sentence, “I’m sorry”, that brought the tears. I thought I must be saying sorry to the part of me I’d hurt that morning by letting the panic run roughshod over me. Then I revisited my triumphs of the day and noticed I was feeling better. Then I brought forth memories of places and people whom I’ve loved, who’ve taught me peace, among them, you, Tara. And thinking of Tara I remembered a recent short guided meditation of Tara’s in which she said that the field that holds all this is tender. That word “tender” held healing. Broader and deeper—those words I brought in—bringing attention to sounds from outside my head, my house, this street. I noticed how the good feelings beginning to wash through me literally, physically, were washing the panic out of me. And I don’t remember ever before experiencing so clearly that physical exchange of sensations—from wrenching to okay, pleasant, even. And then I fell asleep, a miracle in itself this week.
Janet T, Another Field, flat Rock , AL, USA says
Thank you for sharing this. I’d forgotten about the Hawaiian saying, called I believe ha aponopono. Hadn’t occurred to me that we can say it to ourselves. I was swamped with fear last night too, and will try this tonight. So glad you got restful sleep!
Carol says
I do turn towards the feelings of loss. I can feel the feelings that come up. I can sense strongly at times the connection the bond we shared. it’s bitter sweet. But there is a part of me that is still learning that it’s true, my beloved is not coming back and then feeling the pain of the sorrow.
Renée Morris says
What difficult is the pain—emotional rawness. I am acknowledging it and allowing it to be present. That feels healing ❤️🩹
Linda Marshall says
Thank you Tara for addressing grief and loss with care and compassion. I needed to hear this message now.
Nell says
Thank you very much Tara for your sharing of this. I felt connected and moved with what you said and for the first time resonated with the word mindfulness. When I have heard and read about it before it has not clicked with me. I think I find it a bit cold and mechanical. I loved your tone and pace – I feel I have heard some gold dust this morning. Thank you.
Is there any chance of a transcript?
nanette greene says
I have been practicing mindfulness for almost 30 years. I have weathered many significant losses, but I lost my daughter 8 months ago – this loss is unbearable at times. But, the practice is here for me and I am so grateful. I am truly facing this pain moment to moment and I am gently and genuinely honoring the feelings. Abby is right with me as I practice. For now, i hold her as she holds me. Thank you, Tara. I love you and how you are offering this supportive and healing wisdom 🙏🏾💙💜💜🙏🏾
Nicky says
Fear of and actual overwhelm, and the additional feeling of isolation in your pain.
I have always found Kritsten Neff’s shared humanity element of Mindful Self Compassion very difficult. I find myself caught in victim mindset and this also stops me turning to painful feelings as I don’t like being caught in victim mindset but I also can’t help it. Intellectually I understand we all experience pain and loss, it is part of life and being human, but I can’t seem to be able to feel that yet.
Offering your suffering to a higher being asking for help with it helps a lot, and not having to do it all in one go sitting next to it rather than in it. There is a reason feelings have been buried, wading in slowly is an empowering notion.
Susan says
In facing the loss the pain begins again and I’m afraid that I will once again fall into that deep, dark pit of despair that I’ve worked so hard and long to climb out of.
Steve says
I’m 77 and am realizing that l have trouble accepting the inevitable loss of my facilties and ability to support my wife and adult children. Thanks!
Kathy says
I lost my 50 year old son in2025. It has been hard. It was a clean relationship and he had often told us we were the best parents and he loves us. I feel like I can be with him and love and tears are ok. Then I have no relationship with my sister since I basically had to or chose to leave it to her. I feel betrayed and not safe with her and don’t feel like I am part of my birth family. I need to be more compassionate with myself. Thanks for your ideas.
Barbara says
Concern that I will never feel that happy again and will come to the end of my life without knowing how everyone else recovered
Linda Elarde says
I’m overwhelmed by my thoughts and emotions lately…too much coming in too fast. I’m leaning in and allowing the “guesthouse” to fill, while inviting presence. But I feel my body wants to move. I try to allow this impulse for action while walking and doing tasks to honor both needs. it is a lot of space to hold.
Julie says
Very helpful Thank you
Julie says
I am still scared to face my grief fully after 42 years. I dip in and out because of the fear that I will see my son and then loose him again.
Kim says
The initial pain of grief, to an event, in my body is so intense that I find myself in my knees in physical distress.
L says
knees is a good place to pray
Allyson says
I appreciate Tara’s words but labeling a pet’s death as minor is offensive. Nonhumans are the only beings who actually love unconditionally and grieving my beloved Heather is as heavy and heartbreaking as losing a human being.
Please be more sensitive to the fact that many of us have stronger bonds with beings other than human beings. Dogs especially are unconditionally loving and understanding; they are loyal companions who are there for you.
I do appreciate Tara’s meditations, advice and podcasts. Thank you
L says
totally agree. in fact that short sentence put me off listening to the rest.
Diane says
Lost my husband of 58 years three months ago and I am now just starting to sob uncontrollably. I have lost the rudder of my boat. The constant keeping busy is no longer working. I don’t want to be strong and have a poker face anymore. He needed constant care for his last two years and help for five before that. I am worn out and I loved him deeply. In the end I couldn’t express my feelings as I was numb.
Rita says
It’s hard to turn to loss because the feelings of sadness, loneliness,& vulnerability are sometimes so overwhelming that I feel too small to hold them. Facing loss also makes me face my own mortality which is unsettling & kind of scary if I’m being real about it.
Maria de Mena says
As a mindfulness facilitator, I always invite to gently open the heart to all feelings, using the body as an anchor. But I don’t feel ready to accompany someone who is facing deep grief. I need more specific tools.
Judith says
First New Year gathering of the family without my mother. Now I feel the strong emotion of left alone in the world. When my father died 6 years ago I didn’t have the time to grief because I was busy caring for my mother. Now I feel it doubled.
Claudia says
Loss triggers my childhood fears of abandonment.
For a long time I met loss with shutting down and distracting
Now as I am learning to inquire into my emotions I am more able to allow them to be there and to be felt.
Shelagh says
Thank you Tara 🙏🏻
Turning towards loss fills me with fear, even though my intellect tells me I will survive it.
All losses throughout my 64 years reflect back on the trauma of my mother drowning in the sea while saving my life when I was 12.
When loss goes hand in hand with trauma, and when that loss and trauma happens in childhood, the fear of dealing with loss brings a different dimension.
Through Tara’s teachings and generous heart, I have however come to believe that I can ‘be’ in a different way by opening my heart. For example, take off my armour, be softer and kinder to others and myself, and open the barriers to creativity and lightness.
Veronica Relea says
Turning toward loss is difficult for me because one loss often opens into many others: being left, not being chosen, losing my place, realizing how much something mattered. My instinct is often to make meaning quickly, to understand or fix, rather than simply let myself grieve.
What supports me is presence: being in nature, being with people I trust, writing, beauty, music, and increasingly my own body. I’m learning that I can turn toward what hurts without abandoning myself inside it.
Anna says
What is difficult with feeling the loss is the sorrow of not being able to be with the person I lost in a more whole way. I at the time she was living could be anoyed with her helplesness. Knowing that helplesness is a feeling I want to learn to contain and accept better. What helpd is always for me -to see my feeling in a bigger picture. Knowing also that pain is a universal feeling we all go through.
Marianne Mullen says
I am replying to Rosy Fox. I am feeling that you are a very strong lady and anything but a professional mourner. You would seem to have had more than your fair share of losses and disappointments in this life. It is said “God” doesn’t give us more than we can handle but that can be hard to acknowledge or remember when we are in deep and or what feels like agonising emotional pain. As someone who in the past has continually powered through I got to a point when I could do it no more. I am still on that healing journey though the pain can and does surface at times. When it comes to the likes of dementia the loss is real and hard to take at times. Our loved one is still with us, in my case my mother specially when she could remember my siblings but not myself. A game she had seemed to play when she was well, playing favourites. The strength I learned was I feel because and throughout my childhood. It is said that in times of stress we revert to old behaviours that have worked for us in the past. Thus our very strength later works against us. I celebrate you and the lady you are and I wish you much love and grace in your healing journey. Sometimes it is said that we need to see ourselves with compassion and feel seen by others as well. I see you and so celebrate you for all you love and care you have given to so many. Many blessings Marianne
Rosy Fox says
I’m so bad about oversharing!
Father died at age 3.
My 23/ yr old brother died my junior year of high school.
Tremendous unresolved family grief there. We loved him so much.
My husband says I’m a professional mourner.
That when someone dies I dig up all my loved ones and grieve for them all over again.
Took care of mom through cancer and dementia. I felt that I pregrieved her loss. It was almost a relief.
Then I began to lose older siblings. I missed one brothers funeral bc I was across the country dealing with my son, his recent loss and relapse into drug use. Reminiscent of my 23 year old brother’s struggle.
I had spent a lot of time with that brother caring for his daughter who died at age 39 from a glioblastoma. So w didn’t feel guilty missing the funeral. Leading one brother to say, “ You will do anything for someone while they are alive. After they die you don’t have much use for them!”
That brother died during Covid. There was a video memorial then a proper one later the next year. Then my oldest brother succumbed to Covid. We had lost his adult son the year prior.
Those last losses affected me tremendously. I realized by going to support group meetings about my sons substance use that I wasn’t ready to feel the pain of death again so soon.
I didn’t follow advice to detach with love.
I didn’t want to spend the last years of my sons life being estranged from him. Did what I could live with although that wasn’t what was best for him.
I enabled him and his wife( with mental health issues)to move in so he could finish an internship. The dysfunctional situation went on for 5 years with moments of progress. Last year we made it impossible for him not to get help. He went to rehab. While there I finished cancer treatment and his father was diagnosed and began his treatment.
We had 5 sober months with our son. No job but sober. Then we found him OD’ed in the bathroom in May. Wife took a bottle of pills the next day. Went to hospital, sober living and I don’t know where she is now.
I have been frozen in suspended animation.
I have had no funeral. No memorial as of yet. Nor have I posted an obituary. I feel that I made my peace and hugged him goodbye years ago while going to al-anon meetings.
I told him then I would always love him no matter what.
I’m getting by. Feeling guilty about no celebration of life yet. Starting in the shallow end of the grief pool resonated so much with me. I know I have to do some work that won’t swallow me whole.
Thanks for this series.
Grief and loss is messy isn’t it?
L says
my thoughts…. its spectacularly cruel to sat youre a professional mourner. its not as if you chose to be surrounded by loss (unless youre actually a serial murderer which i dont think you are).
I have no idea how tou have kept standing throughout all of these losses.
Elizabeth says
Working on my art work, getting lost in creating for hours and feeling Joy and delight.
Walking in nature, where I feel totally at ease and accepted by the elements, the trees, plants, animals. I remember we are one.
Heidi says
I can certainly relate to the sense of not ‘feeling safe enough to feel my feelings’ after bereavement. Turning towards the emptiness associated with the loss is frightening. I have found personally and within my work with client that loss also forces us to look at the wider context around what space has been left and how to fill that space, that in itself has felt scary to me following grief. It takes a lot individually and for clients to sit with the vulnerability in order to find that acceptance, strength and belief that life can continue in other ways.
Joanne says
When I’m not well supported by wisdom/contemplative practice I experience sadness as nearly intolerable, and feel very real seeming embodied reactions of escape and distraction.
Linda Lou says
I find it difficult to accept myself for not crying very much. I’m just feeling numb and like I’ve been punched in the gut. I really miss my Shelby Rose Dog.
Tina Shearer says
The sadness ,feeling of loneliness,craving physical touch
My faith helps, love of my children
Anne says
I found it difficult to accept that this person was no longer part of my life, that I could not talk to her.
Steve L says
From video 2 when I turn to the tragic loss of my beloved sister, this opens up the tears. But from your lovely video, I need to start with the shallow water. Or by sitting on the park bench in our beautiful pocket park, if I don’t feel ready I can just acknowledge this, let it sit beside me. Then slowly, slowly over time I want to be able to name these feelings, be with them and understand why they make me so heart broken. Many thanks for Video 2, it was beautiful.🌸🥰❤️🙏
Dimitra says
The harshness I experienced as a child makes it difficult for me to give in to pain, because doing so requires allowing oneself to be tender.
Ann cook says
After a stroke almost 6 years ago. I try to focus on what I am feeling but don’t know what I am feeling. I have always felt this to be very difficult. For years i have practiced although sporadically, meditation. I feel disheartened and feel that it works for other people but not for me. Thank you Tara for these free videos. Iwon’t give up with the hope that somewhere within me some change is going on.🙏🙏
Georgie Wheeler says
Ann – I hear you. My advice, if you choose to take it – feel free not to – Is to notice any somatic queues as be with them – you do not have to name them to begine with – or at all – sometimes it is a coldness in your legs, or a tension across your forehead or round the back of your head. Just noticing these is the start of rebuilding your comms between feelings and thinking. Sending love and light and hope this helps. Apologies if it feels reductive
Oddna says
When does the loss end?
Smita says
Loved inviting grief as a friend sitting beside the grieving person on a favorite park bench! Connecting with the aliveness of nature, flowing water and animals breaks the trance of loneliness and separation.