I suppose turning toward the unfelt pain sometimes makes me nervous for what might come up and how that might impact my ability to show up for my young kids. I know it’s important to feel feelings and I do try to be honest with my kids about grief so we can all process it in a healthy way… it’s just that often it feels as if so much needs to get done that if I were to really let my pain out, I might stare out the window for the rest of the day. I suppose this speaks a bit to the false refuges from last week. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem like it will fit in a tidy way for the time I have for it. It feels important for me to stay on a healthy track of being involved in life. I suppose it’s all a balance and regular check-ins with myself let me know when I’m truly avoiding something important or just managing my new life as a single parent with healthy/practical boundaries.
Carrie Moore, Another Field, Pewaukee, WI, USAsays
I very much appreciate the soft and gentle approach Tara recommends. As a Euthanasia Veterinarian myself, I deal with grieving people every day and it is always interesting to see how much people avoid the act of humane euthanasia for their pet to avoid their grief and how different genders and ages of clients handle those moments. For me personally, having had a lot of trauma in my life, it is very obvious how much I have had to compartmentalize my feelings in order to function in daily life as a response to my own overwhelming grief. Hard to break through the armor…
What’s difficult about turning toward loss for me is my fear of losing control of myself in all of it. The goofy thing about that is, I lose control anyway, in the presence of emotions that overwhelm me. At this point, the overwhelming emotions are anger – I suppose because my loss of my mom only happened last week. But the anger and my verbal abilities to voice things have given me so much guilt that now on top of grieving the loss of my mom, I am saddled with guilt for things I said afterward. I also wonder (or know, actually) that the things I’ve said are true….
Nicky Robins, Another Field, Spokane Valley, WA, USAsays
This was such a powerful clip, message, and practice. To connect with grief so quickly is a gift when it has felt untouchable for so long. Acknowledging the benefits of making space for grief, in relation rather than with resistance and discomfort. Thank you for sharing this wisdom. ✨
Bottomless pit of tears and panic. Fear of looking at the person, pictures of them. 15 years and I can’t look, too many tears. Rumination about my misstep in setting up a picture or frame of their last days. Dealing with siblings, people who were dying and their feelings. Did I protect them enough?
Valerie Wright, Psychology, Lake Forest, CA, USAsays
I like the “let the feelings sit beside you” and attend when you can approach, idea. It allows them to get the feelings outside themselves…which is the first step. It allows them to discontinue “stuffing” the feelings, but also allows them to approach in their own due time…
I do these types of meditations, leaning into the pain and the loss, frequently. There’s always more. Brief respites of ease within occur, but then the pain, loss, grief, anger, sadness, and/or aloneness comes back full force. I’ve grown able to feel an inner presence of love and acceptance that is present for me, to varying degrees. But the deep, deep pain always returns and feels unending.
Thank you for the language of “this belongs” – sometimes I am not sure how to help my clients understand that integrating the emotions is necessary and freeing work. The idea of “this belongs” helps set the stage that “this is my experience and it’s good that I have it.”
Alina Sansevich, Another Field, College Station, TX, USAsays
When I started turning towards my hurt feelings and childhood trauma, I did not have any support, I could not share this with anyone or find comfort in being with someone loving and understanding, so I faced it alone. Being so isolated was the worst, I felt life had left me stranded.
Friends and family are so helpful for me while I grieve the loss of my husband. Connecting with people I haven’t spoken to for 20 years offered a unique kind of support in that they remembered to old me and could appreciate this limited current version of myself.
Mediation also helps but I need music or guidance to keep me present.
I have done this like of unblending from my grief through my IFS training. Still, I seems clear to me that I need to continue to do this and sit longer/more with these feelings with tenderness and honor.
Turning toward the loss I felt inner sensations and a resonance of deep love despite the pain. I felt the love we shared become part of me to keep like a special treasure. Thank you.
Joy Harper, Another Field, Los Angeles, CA, USAsays
Thank you for sharing and giving us such a deep inside look, into those who are more avoidant, and detached from their feelings. I was allowed to express my feelings, as a child, so it’s been harder for me to relate to those who don’t feel safe to be vulnerable.
However, when loved ones and clients experience loss, and trauma, and feel safe with me, I comfort them as if I’m speaking to their inner child. I affirm them, and hold space for them, with compassion, love, and non judgment. It’s important for us to feel accepted, and to just be what we are, and where we are, without seeking to fix anything, in moments where relief, peace, and strength are needed.
However, once they’re clear and I’m clear about what they’re feeling, at the right time, I direct them to the truth of this human experience, and that it’s a soul’s journey. More of who we are, lives inside of us than externally, and if we can give ourselves the affection, attention, validation, and affirmation that we rely on, from our loved ones, we can begin to feel less dependent on the other. We can celebrate our ancestors and the unseen aspect of life.
Non attachment, and rewiring our brain to focus on what we have vs what we don’t have, along with gratitude, and reminiscing on good memories, are also helpful concepts, and practices, to help us refocus. When we refocus in a direction that helps us to take control of our minds, it’s empowering. I find, in times of grief, it’s really important to keep living life, and moving our energy through us, like children. Even if it hasn’t been safe, to express vulnerable feelings, it’s important to reparent ourselves, and give ourselves what we didn’t have. It’s important to tell ourselves loving words, so that we can cry, or learn how to cry again, in the midst of it all, even in falling apart. We can get back up and dust ourselves off, just as children do, with practice.
I don’t know what my life would be without them and I know the divine is there for me. the message to me was, “I know they love you but you can’t be with them anymore” about the separation from my parents. Thank you very much Tara I will never be able to express how valuable this 4 part video is. I’ve never known how to grieve, and my constant overwhelm of emotions my whole life has always kept me in constant distress, instability, and hard to hold down a job.
The feeling your feelings never clicked to me u til I understood that it was literally a felt sensation in your body that I’ve been intellectualizing those feelings and trying to ruminate myself to some sort of relief that never came.
when I turn towards loss I find feelings I would rather not feel: self-doubt, anger, sadness. I understand that feeling these unpleasant feelings is part of the work of grief.I have experienced grief in a spiral way, meaning that I feel the grief over and over again as if I am traversing a spiral, again and again but slightly different.Making art helps, the unspoken expression gives me an opportunity to be with the feelings and somehwat transform them into something else.
I find it is layered in its presence not flat. Some of my struggle is in the newly opened space from it.. it being the individual no longer in their Earthly form or my idea of what was to be.
What am I to do with it now?
I realize my feelings are still there, the loss and what “it meant” still matters. If I understand correctly, my feelings are energy, conscious energy and doesn’t matter come consciousness?
So I ask myself “How do I continue with the gift of this relationship in an energetic form? This is my struggle leaning into the loss of form/ matter not knowing how to stay connected and celebrate this new version of the relationship.
Ugh I hope that made sense.
Christa Lester, Health Education, Perrysburg, OH, USAsays
I focus on Gratitude instead of loss. I acknowledge that we deeply experience sorrow because being physically present with a loved one who has passed away is no longer possible.
However, we certainly can practice Gratitude each day for the life we had with our loved one.
We can cherish them by continuing to do all the things they loved to do.
And we can meditate to stay connected to their energy, since everything in the Universe is energy.
My young son passed away 3 years ago. I have had profoundly astonishing experiences that leave absolutely no doubt that I am still connected to my amazing son by our energy.
When we are immersed in what is lost, we totally miss what remains, We miss the opportunity to strengthen the love that is forever with us. And we miss the opportunity to celebrate the essence of our beautiful loved one, and hold them forever in
our hearts.
So elated you are here to assist this much needed shift in humanity, given the status quo of social standards that get humanity to this point of massive despair leading them to self destruction, instead of a blissful life lived in this short avatar journey. I have dealt with what I thought was loss being raised in a catholic environment beginning at the age of 3 years old. My story is long and very profound, but I was gifted to go through these experience with the eyes of a child connected to the heart intrinsically, which lead me to spirituality and the practice of meditation beginning at the ripe age of 11 years old. I know I am a leader, but I am more humble than I need to prove anything in this realm. I feel your presence as if you were here, do you feel mine? “For those who love with their heart, instead of their outer eyes, there is no such thing as goodbyes.” We are multidimensional beings, and some are here to show the path back to the evolutionary learnings we are here to embrace and become who we are in the eyes of the universe. Earth is also being prevented to continue its own evolution as intended. The loss of the material dimension, as you speak, is the consequences of our collective prohibited learning passed down for far too long. This regress in our inherited evolutionary path is the grief you speak in itself, because our life force within speaks to us about our blockages inhibiting us from becoming our best versions. So when someone transitions not having lived their life path, it causes waves of sadness and regrets, which is released on their last breath as a form of legacy for the ones they feel they left “behind.” These low vibrational energies become the new reality to focus on, and further impede higher awareness of the totality within us connected with everything, ONENESS. Transitions is what occurs when a sentient being lives this reality with fullness within them, and communicated clearly to their community they have no regrets, sorrows, or purposes undone. Humans must find a way back to their born compassion towards all living beings, including self first, so transitions are as blissful and loving as births, and both are the most courageous moments of our earthly experience, in order to each the summit awaiting with infinite light, love and wisdom in our oneness. I hope this message reaches YOU in totality of self. We already know each other in our oneness. In gratitude for your services to all life trying to find their way back to divinity.
Nikola Taylor, Counseling, Charlotte , NC, USAsays
I often find my clients braver than I am about turning toward loss. Sometimes I’m simply in awe of them for even seeking counseling to face the losses. I come from a family that has been taught to look forward, not backward and it does not leave space for grief. It takes intentionality and a letting go to even allow myself the space and time to wade into that water. Tara, I like your description of sitting on a bench with the loss and not having to take it all in at once, just knowing it is there with you somehow is a good first step for me. I appreciate this teaching so much.
I also like the description Tara shared of allowing the loss, sadness and confusion of grief to sit beside us on the bench. it is a good first step to allowing the feelings to be closer, allowing a space for them. Thank you Tara for that simple suggestion that can lead to such healing.
Patty Stephens, Other, Saint Augustine , FL, USAsays
What I find difficult about turning towards loss is I’m afraid of the feelings of guilt, shame, sadness that will arise. Will I be strong enough to allow it. Will I like who I’ll eventually become without this influence
Michelle O, Marriage/Family Therapy, Arroyo grande, CA, USAsays
Thank you Tara for this wonderful mindset and message. Your voice calms me every time. I struggle with grief like it’s a gut punch- lots of anticipatory grief as I stand on the precipice of losing both of my parents – and both of my 16 y/o cats. All enormous stalwarts in my life . I distract and redirect myself to the present but it’s heavy and it is coming. I continue to practice this mindset and find a way to endure when I am on the other side of loss. Thank you for your wisdom and guidance.
I also have appreciated reading others’ posts to help me know how they have managed. Thank you all.
Blessings and namaste,
Michelle
Accepting it as reality. Grasping and wishing for something that I cannot have. Not being able to articulate the magnitude of the feelings of the loss to myself or friends.
This was helpful for me to realize that the source of my blocked emotions wasn’t what I thought it was. I was focusing on the loss of my mother which I am sad about, but really it was something else. Giving my experience a name of blocked emotions helped me to welcome my feelings and acknowledge them and care for them. Though I haven’t had a complete opening to my blocked emotions, I see some light through the cracks. Thank you.
Thank you for this. I needed to find that place underneath the sadness I feel around my Mother passing away 4 years ago. In listening I connected with a sense of being adrift somehow. This helped me come back to a calm feeling of trust and peace. A picture came to me of being on a raft floating. And then a part of me pulling the raft back, a reclaiming of the lost part. It ended with a vision of me sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean. I can sit with grief and also with the part that has been adrift.
Helene Chin, Social Work, Hicksville , NY, USAsays
Thank You Tara! I love your voice.. it soothes and calms me.. this was very helpful to me personally as I just lost my mom and I miss her dearly.. doing the meditation allowed me to feel my sadness and to stay with it as I have been doing a lot of distraction to deal with my sadness and mourning .
this clip will also be helpful to me professionally as I have some clients who are stuck with their past trauma ..
Learning to feel my own losses. I am always choosing Avoidant Attachment people to love since it’s familiar – the intermittent reinforcement is painful, yet compelling because of my learned acceptance and training of my nervous system. I am doing Somatic Exercising and learning to be compassionate and caring for myself- not just put on Earth to be here for others and ignore my own needs.
My son died 4 years ago. It changed my life profoundly. I was with him in the ER when he passed. It was sudden and unexpected. I think about him almost daily still. He was my firstborn and only son. I sat with him while not knowing what was ahead. It was shocking. At times, I feel like I am drowning in the pain. It does pass. I often use this experience with clients experiencing overwhelming grief.
When turning toward grief it can feel overwhelming but you have given us two valuable tools to manage this:
1) “this belongs” and 2) “sit next to me and I will get to you when I can”
These seem like great first steps to start unraveling the deep hurt beneath the busyness and buried pain.
The feeling of being alone and unloved. Anger at having been”fired” from my job as a parent, daughter, wife , sister, friend. A loss of direction. All ties into my abandonment triggers. I desire to grieve alone and unseen.
The feeling of being alone and unloved. Anger at having been”fired” from my job as a parent, daughter, wife , sister, friend. A loss of direction. All ties into my abandonment triggers. I desire to grieve alone and unseen.
I noticed that when my shock absorbers of my nervous system are overwhelmed and I feel very unsafe, I can’t deal with loss as well. In other words when I have experienced many losses without a time or ability to grieve while I feel safe, I turn to other coping skills. And, I have learned through the years to return to the emotions when my internal and external resources become available again – my shock absorbers are new and allow me to feel safe.
The challenge by big emotions for me is that I can’t control them. The deep rooted sense of control is something that I struggle with in letting go. I’m learning to be okay with not being okay.
The difficulty in turning toward loss ,that I see for clients siphons down to the simple fact that if you turn toward it, acknowledge it, it is moving you to acceptance. Some can not, or do not know how, or ever want to accept the loss or change. My personal lesson was, after acceptance it lead me to surrender, the peace of letting go and eventually joy.
What’s difficult about touching loss?
Immediately what comes to me with some tears is that there was no one to hold me…so alone…and it seemed that no one could be with me…no one could hold…love me in my painfulness of so many losses…like it didn’t matter to “them”…
What I find most difficult in facing loss is the layers from multiple losses, from childhood to now. Each layer informs the next. But perhaps they are more like waves, all arising from the ocean of loss. Through this exercise, I was able to shift my awareness from layer-upon-layer, which seems very solid, to waves. Here’s this wave, then, here’s another. The layered view feels heavy and overwhelming, the wave view provides a moment of spaciousness.
I feel that I cannot “give in” to my sadness and grief because it would be letting my family down at a time when they need me to strong the most. If I let myself explore my feelings, I won’t be there to help them. That I needed to be strong in order to be there for them and to help them to be strong as well. A strange journey indeed….
Believing we lose something that was never ours has kept us from evolving from this heavy 3rd dimension. There is no winning or losing in our true existence. Why is it a loss when death is equally given to all life? Why such denial of who WE are, and are here to create in our short journey of enlightenment? The pursuit of death while alive is the cause of our own demise and regress. Let be, let go, let flow with time and space of now. WE are here to live and let live, and when our time for our last breath of life takes place, love from within and all that have been love in our lives is the spark of infinity, and the ones still alive must sip slowly from the fruit of love lived. Nothing is ours, but everything is within US collectively in the ways that matters in the universe.
Peggy Tileston, Another Field, Philadelphia, PA, USAsays
Thank you for these videos. When turning towards loss (mine or clients’), it can be difficult to resist the urge to disconnect from life – turn away, numb out, isolate, “circle the wagons”, “go to ground”. Implicit in there is a distrust of my ability and that of others to handle the power of the thoughts and feelings that arise. (Cue attachment types 🙂 But, Ahh…. “go to ground”, as the Buddha did when overwhelmed? As many animals do when wounded? As in the myths of a necessary descent into the darkness? As in Ki-Aikido when practitioners go WITH the current of opposing energy? I’ve learned that reframing “going to ground” as a healing practice of deeply (re)connecting with Nature in her roles as nonjudgmental container and guide has been incredibly helpful for the journey through loss and grief. That in combination with awareness and compassion practices often leads me/us back into life..when we’re ready.
Maria Rivera, Social Work, West New York, NJ, USAsays
As a mental health professional, I have helped many people and continue to do so today. But I am the one now who needs help to rise, because falling is not what I want.
I need to manage my emotions more effectively so that I can support myself and, in turn, help others navigate their challenging lives.
But the grief of the losses left me feeling so alone that I do not know what to do sometimes with myself.
I joined Banyan, but I haven’t followed through. I know that this is the only way, and that’s through compassion and loving ourselves. But maybe I’m not making any sense….I will continue with the next session.
I suppose turning toward the unfelt pain sometimes makes me nervous for what might come up and how that might impact my ability to show up for my young kids. I know it’s important to feel feelings and I do try to be honest with my kids about grief so we can all process it in a healthy way… it’s just that often it feels as if so much needs to get done that if I were to really let my pain out, I might stare out the window for the rest of the day. I suppose this speaks a bit to the false refuges from last week. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem like it will fit in a tidy way for the time I have for it. It feels important for me to stay on a healthy track of being involved in life. I suppose it’s all a balance and regular check-ins with myself let me know when I’m truly avoiding something important or just managing my new life as a single parent with healthy/practical boundaries.
I very much appreciate the soft and gentle approach Tara recommends. As a Euthanasia Veterinarian myself, I deal with grieving people every day and it is always interesting to see how much people avoid the act of humane euthanasia for their pet to avoid their grief and how different genders and ages of clients handle those moments. For me personally, having had a lot of trauma in my life, it is very obvious how much I have had to compartmentalize my feelings in order to function in daily life as a response to my own overwhelming grief. Hard to break through the armor…
Thank you for giving us something we can actually do! Picture where, sit next to your grief, allow the earth and sky to hold you. This belongs.
I find it difficult because I fear if I turn towards it the tears won’t stop. But thank you for this because the tears are necessary to get through.
Thank you for sharing your gift of knowledge and spirit.
What’s difficult about turning toward loss for me is my fear of losing control of myself in all of it. The goofy thing about that is, I lose control anyway, in the presence of emotions that overwhelm me. At this point, the overwhelming emotions are anger – I suppose because my loss of my mom only happened last week. But the anger and my verbal abilities to voice things have given me so much guilt that now on top of grieving the loss of my mom, I am saddled with guilt for things I said afterward. I also wonder (or know, actually) that the things I’ve said are true….
This was such a powerful clip, message, and practice. To connect with grief so quickly is a gift when it has felt untouchable for so long. Acknowledging the benefits of making space for grief, in relation rather than with resistance and discomfort. Thank you for sharing this wisdom. ✨
Bottomless pit of tears and panic. Fear of looking at the person, pictures of them. 15 years and I can’t look, too many tears. Rumination about my misstep in setting up a picture or frame of their last days. Dealing with siblings, people who were dying and their feelings. Did I protect them enough?
I like the “let the feelings sit beside you” and attend when you can approach, idea. It allows them to get the feelings outside themselves…which is the first step. It allows them to discontinue “stuffing” the feelings, but also allows them to approach in their own due time…
I do these types of meditations, leaning into the pain and the loss, frequently. There’s always more. Brief respites of ease within occur, but then the pain, loss, grief, anger, sadness, and/or aloneness comes back full force. I’ve grown able to feel an inner presence of love and acceptance that is present for me, to varying degrees. But the deep, deep pain always returns and feels unending.
Yes Mary. I completely feel this. Brief respites , but the deep pain returns. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you for the language of “this belongs” – sometimes I am not sure how to help my clients understand that integrating the emotions is necessary and freeing work. The idea of “this belongs” helps set the stage that “this is my experience and it’s good that I have it.”
When I started turning towards my hurt feelings and childhood trauma, I did not have any support, I could not share this with anyone or find comfort in being with someone loving and understanding, so I faced it alone. Being so isolated was the worst, I felt life had left me stranded.
Friends and family are so helpful for me while I grieve the loss of my husband. Connecting with people I haven’t spoken to for 20 years offered a unique kind of support in that they remembered to old me and could appreciate this limited current version of myself.
Mediation also helps but I need music or guidance to keep me present.
I have done this like of unblending from my grief through my IFS training. Still, I seems clear to me that I need to continue to do this and sit longer/more with these feelings with tenderness and honor.
Turning toward the loss I felt inner sensations and a resonance of deep love despite the pain. I felt the love we shared become part of me to keep like a special treasure. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing and giving us such a deep inside look, into those who are more avoidant, and detached from their feelings. I was allowed to express my feelings, as a child, so it’s been harder for me to relate to those who don’t feel safe to be vulnerable.
However, when loved ones and clients experience loss, and trauma, and feel safe with me, I comfort them as if I’m speaking to their inner child. I affirm them, and hold space for them, with compassion, love, and non judgment. It’s important for us to feel accepted, and to just be what we are, and where we are, without seeking to fix anything, in moments where relief, peace, and strength are needed.
However, once they’re clear and I’m clear about what they’re feeling, at the right time, I direct them to the truth of this human experience, and that it’s a soul’s journey. More of who we are, lives inside of us than externally, and if we can give ourselves the affection, attention, validation, and affirmation that we rely on, from our loved ones, we can begin to feel less dependent on the other. We can celebrate our ancestors and the unseen aspect of life.
Non attachment, and rewiring our brain to focus on what we have vs what we don’t have, along with gratitude, and reminiscing on good memories, are also helpful concepts, and practices, to help us refocus. When we refocus in a direction that helps us to take control of our minds, it’s empowering. I find, in times of grief, it’s really important to keep living life, and moving our energy through us, like children. Even if it hasn’t been safe, to express vulnerable feelings, it’s important to reparent ourselves, and give ourselves what we didn’t have. It’s important to tell ourselves loving words, so that we can cry, or learn how to cry again, in the midst of it all, even in falling apart. We can get back up and dust ourselves off, just as children do, with practice.
I don’t know what my life would be without them and I know the divine is there for me. the message to me was, “I know they love you but you can’t be with them anymore” about the separation from my parents. Thank you very much Tara I will never be able to express how valuable this 4 part video is. I’ve never known how to grieve, and my constant overwhelm of emotions my whole life has always kept me in constant distress, instability, and hard to hold down a job.
The feeling your feelings never clicked to me u til I understood that it was literally a felt sensation in your body that I’ve been intellectualizing those feelings and trying to ruminate myself to some sort of relief that never came.
a”felt sense” is a bodily felt awareness, discovered by Gendlin PhD
See The book Focusing for this helpful approach
when I turn towards loss I find feelings I would rather not feel: self-doubt, anger, sadness. I understand that feeling these unpleasant feelings is part of the work of grief.I have experienced grief in a spiral way, meaning that I feel the grief over and over again as if I am traversing a spiral, again and again but slightly different.Making art helps, the unspoken expression gives me an opportunity to be with the feelings and somehwat transform them into something else.
I find it is layered in its presence not flat. Some of my struggle is in the newly opened space from it.. it being the individual no longer in their Earthly form or my idea of what was to be.
What am I to do with it now?
I realize my feelings are still there, the loss and what “it meant” still matters. If I understand correctly, my feelings are energy, conscious energy and doesn’t matter come consciousness?
So I ask myself “How do I continue with the gift of this relationship in an energetic form? This is my struggle leaning into the loss of form/ matter not knowing how to stay connected and celebrate this new version of the relationship.
Ugh I hope that made sense.
I focus on Gratitude instead of loss. I acknowledge that we deeply experience sorrow because being physically present with a loved one who has passed away is no longer possible.
However, we certainly can practice Gratitude each day for the life we had with our loved one.
We can cherish them by continuing to do all the things they loved to do.
And we can meditate to stay connected to their energy, since everything in the Universe is energy.
My young son passed away 3 years ago. I have had profoundly astonishing experiences that leave absolutely no doubt that I am still connected to my amazing son by our energy.
When we are immersed in what is lost, we totally miss what remains, We miss the opportunity to strengthen the love that is forever with us. And we miss the opportunity to celebrate the essence of our beautiful loved one, and hold them forever in
our hearts.
It’s too painful to think of the future without him.
So elated you are here to assist this much needed shift in humanity, given the status quo of social standards that get humanity to this point of massive despair leading them to self destruction, instead of a blissful life lived in this short avatar journey. I have dealt with what I thought was loss being raised in a catholic environment beginning at the age of 3 years old. My story is long and very profound, but I was gifted to go through these experience with the eyes of a child connected to the heart intrinsically, which lead me to spirituality and the practice of meditation beginning at the ripe age of 11 years old. I know I am a leader, but I am more humble than I need to prove anything in this realm. I feel your presence as if you were here, do you feel mine? “For those who love with their heart, instead of their outer eyes, there is no such thing as goodbyes.” We are multidimensional beings, and some are here to show the path back to the evolutionary learnings we are here to embrace and become who we are in the eyes of the universe. Earth is also being prevented to continue its own evolution as intended. The loss of the material dimension, as you speak, is the consequences of our collective prohibited learning passed down for far too long. This regress in our inherited evolutionary path is the grief you speak in itself, because our life force within speaks to us about our blockages inhibiting us from becoming our best versions. So when someone transitions not having lived their life path, it causes waves of sadness and regrets, which is released on their last breath as a form of legacy for the ones they feel they left “behind.” These low vibrational energies become the new reality to focus on, and further impede higher awareness of the totality within us connected with everything, ONENESS. Transitions is what occurs when a sentient being lives this reality with fullness within them, and communicated clearly to their community they have no regrets, sorrows, or purposes undone. Humans must find a way back to their born compassion towards all living beings, including self first, so transitions are as blissful and loving as births, and both are the most courageous moments of our earthly experience, in order to each the summit awaiting with infinite light, love and wisdom in our oneness. I hope this message reaches YOU in totality of self. We already know each other in our oneness. In gratitude for your services to all life trying to find their way back to divinity.
I often find my clients braver than I am about turning toward loss. Sometimes I’m simply in awe of them for even seeking counseling to face the losses. I come from a family that has been taught to look forward, not backward and it does not leave space for grief. It takes intentionality and a letting go to even allow myself the space and time to wade into that water. Tara, I like your description of sitting on a bench with the loss and not having to take it all in at once, just knowing it is there with you somehow is a good first step for me. I appreciate this teaching so much.
I also like the description Tara shared of allowing the loss, sadness and confusion of grief to sit beside us on the bench. it is a good first step to allowing the feelings to be closer, allowing a space for them. Thank you Tara for that simple suggestion that can lead to such healing.
What I find difficult about turning towards loss is I’m afraid of the feelings of guilt, shame, sadness that will arise. Will I be strong enough to allow it. Will I like who I’ll eventually become without this influence
Thank you Tara for this wonderful mindset and message. Your voice calms me every time. I struggle with grief like it’s a gut punch- lots of anticipatory grief as I stand on the precipice of losing both of my parents – and both of my 16 y/o cats. All enormous stalwarts in my life . I distract and redirect myself to the present but it’s heavy and it is coming. I continue to practice this mindset and find a way to endure when I am on the other side of loss. Thank you for your wisdom and guidance.
I also have appreciated reading others’ posts to help me know how they have managed. Thank you all.
Blessings and namaste,
Michelle
Accepting it as reality. Grasping and wishing for something that I cannot have. Not being able to articulate the magnitude of the feelings of the loss to myself or friends.
This was helpful for me to realize that the source of my blocked emotions wasn’t what I thought it was. I was focusing on the loss of my mother which I am sad about, but really it was something else. Giving my experience a name of blocked emotions helped me to welcome my feelings and acknowledge them and care for them. Though I haven’t had a complete opening to my blocked emotions, I see some light through the cracks. Thank you.
Thank you for this. I needed to find that place underneath the sadness I feel around my Mother passing away 4 years ago. In listening I connected with a sense of being adrift somehow. This helped me come back to a calm feeling of trust and peace. A picture came to me of being on a raft floating. And then a part of me pulling the raft back, a reclaiming of the lost part. It ended with a vision of me sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean. I can sit with grief and also with the part that has been adrift.
Beautifully said I loved your comment thank you.
Thank You Tara! I love your voice.. it soothes and calms me.. this was very helpful to me personally as I just lost my mom and I miss her dearly.. doing the meditation allowed me to feel my sadness and to stay with it as I have been doing a lot of distraction to deal with my sadness and mourning .
this clip will also be helpful to me professionally as I have some clients who are stuck with their past trauma ..
Learning to feel my own losses. I am always choosing Avoidant Attachment people to love since it’s familiar – the intermittent reinforcement is painful, yet compelling because of my learned acceptance and training of my nervous system. I am doing Somatic Exercising and learning to be compassionate and caring for myself- not just put on Earth to be here for others and ignore my own needs.
My son died 4 years ago. It changed my life profoundly. I was with him in the ER when he passed. It was sudden and unexpected. I think about him almost daily still. He was my firstborn and only son. I sat with him while not knowing what was ahead. It was shocking. At times, I feel like I am drowning in the pain. It does pass. I often use this experience with clients experiencing overwhelming grief.
When turning toward grief it can feel overwhelming but you have given us two valuable tools to manage this:
1) “this belongs” and 2) “sit next to me and I will get to you when I can”
These seem like great first steps to start unraveling the deep hurt beneath the busyness and buried pain.
The feeling of being alone and unloved. Anger at having been”fired” from my job as a parent, daughter, wife , sister, friend. A loss of direction. All ties into my abandonment triggers. I desire to grieve alone and unseen.
The feeling of being alone and unloved. Anger at having been”fired” from my job as a parent, daughter, wife , sister, friend. A loss of direction. All ties into my abandonment triggers. I desire to grieve alone and unseen.
Thank you Tara, very timely! Lynaia
I noticed that when my shock absorbers of my nervous system are overwhelmed and I feel very unsafe, I can’t deal with loss as well. In other words when I have experienced many losses without a time or ability to grieve while I feel safe, I turn to other coping skills. And, I have learned through the years to return to the emotions when my internal and external resources become available again – my shock absorbers are new and allow me to feel safe.
If it’s too overwhelming, place feelings beside on a park bench,Thank you!
The challenge by big emotions for me is that I can’t control them. The deep rooted sense of control is something that I struggle with in letting go. I’m learning to be okay with not being okay.
The difficulty in turning toward loss ,that I see for clients siphons down to the simple fact that if you turn toward it, acknowledge it, it is moving you to acceptance. Some can not, or do not know how, or ever want to accept the loss or change. My personal lesson was, after acceptance it lead me to surrender, the peace of letting go and eventually joy.
What’s difficult about touching loss?
Immediately what comes to me with some tears is that there was no one to hold me…so alone…and it seemed that no one could be with me…no one could hold…love me in my painfulness of so many losses…like it didn’t matter to “them”…
What I find most difficult in facing loss is the layers from multiple losses, from childhood to now. Each layer informs the next. But perhaps they are more like waves, all arising from the ocean of loss. Through this exercise, I was able to shift my awareness from layer-upon-layer, which seems very solid, to waves. Here’s this wave, then, here’s another. The layered view feels heavy and overwhelming, the wave view provides a moment of spaciousness.
I feel that I cannot “give in” to my sadness and grief because it would be letting my family down at a time when they need me to strong the most. If I let myself explore my feelings, I won’t be there to help them. That I needed to be strong in order to be there for them and to help them to be strong as well. A strange journey indeed….
Turning toward loss feels scary. Fearful I’ll feel the feelings “too” deeply and not be able to move beyond that.
Believing we lose something that was never ours has kept us from evolving from this heavy 3rd dimension. There is no winning or losing in our true existence. Why is it a loss when death is equally given to all life? Why such denial of who WE are, and are here to create in our short journey of enlightenment? The pursuit of death while alive is the cause of our own demise and regress. Let be, let go, let flow with time and space of now. WE are here to live and let live, and when our time for our last breath of life takes place, love from within and all that have been love in our lives is the spark of infinity, and the ones still alive must sip slowly from the fruit of love lived. Nothing is ours, but everything is within US collectively in the ways that matters in the universe.
waves of grief, alternating with periods when I am okay.
Thank you for these videos. When turning towards loss (mine or clients’), it can be difficult to resist the urge to disconnect from life – turn away, numb out, isolate, “circle the wagons”, “go to ground”. Implicit in there is a distrust of my ability and that of others to handle the power of the thoughts and feelings that arise. (Cue attachment types 🙂 But, Ahh…. “go to ground”, as the Buddha did when overwhelmed? As many animals do when wounded? As in the myths of a necessary descent into the darkness? As in Ki-Aikido when practitioners go WITH the current of opposing energy? I’ve learned that reframing “going to ground” as a healing practice of deeply (re)connecting with Nature in her roles as nonjudgmental container and guide has been incredibly helpful for the journey through loss and grief. That in combination with awareness and compassion practices often leads me/us back into life..when we’re ready.
As a mental health professional, I have helped many people and continue to do so today. But I am the one now who needs help to rise, because falling is not what I want.
I need to manage my emotions more effectively so that I can support myself and, in turn, help others navigate their challenging lives.
But the grief of the losses left me feeling so alone that I do not know what to do sometimes with myself.
I joined Banyan, but I haven’t followed through. I know that this is the only way, and that’s through compassion and loving ourselves. But maybe I’m not making any sense….I will continue with the next session.
Nikola
You’re making a ton of sense. Keep on the self-healing journey.