Thank you Tara for your love and light. I’ve had many losses in life but am currently experiencing the loss of what my only child used to be. He’s 58 now and his personality has changed a great deal. He was in a major car accident about 20 years ago, and although he has never mentioned it and may not even know, I suspect there may have been some brain trauma. He is still there if I need him and says he loves me, but he is very disconnected from his heart.
My tools to deal with this loss is to remember under his pain and anger, he is still my sweet loving little boy on my lap hugging me. I also bring my mom, who has passed, to me with her unconditional love. She inspires me to give him the same.
My spirituality and relationship with God has been at the essence of my resilience. A connection to community such as my family or longstanding best friends. When I want to isolate and disconnect is when i know i need my community the most. I have noticed when i’m disconnected from my spirituality I become a refuge and am disconnected to my people even if they are right with me. So turning towards the loving kindness of God allows me to recognize the loving kindness of others more fully.
I can see I have a long journey ahead multiplying the exhaustion of the grief journey. Thank-you for being there. Please send your reflections or any tangible words to help. Thank you.
Some things that help me:
When I slow my self down enough I can hear that still soft voice comforting and guiding me on. Thank you Creator ❤️📿 for giving me insight to slow down.
My gratitude for the friends and family that remain with me. For the brothers and sisters on a spiritual path showing up and helping me grow in understanding and faith. Especially those now without Earthly forms.
My dog Lola who shows me how important sharing walks, snacks, and belly rubs are on a daily basis.
My access to teachings online such as yours Mrs Tara, and several others along similar healing paths as I find my way through.
I gotta say Lego sets have also been therapeutic
Thank you, Tara. These gifts from you have touched my heart, helped me move past the anger, even the rage from the loss of betrayal, to uncover the underlying grief and sadness. While these can feel bottomless, as though there’s no end to the pain, I also sense the healing light of Love that I know has never left me. My deepest gratitude to you.
My parents are gone and I have one sibling, 7 yrs older so we weren’t close through most of our years however, after our mom passed we did begin forging a closer relationship. The past 5 yrs have been difficult for me and I have had to face many challenges. I am lucky to have a couple deep friendships and we have shored each other up through loss, grief, depression, health issues, and more. Through it all, I still felt there was a belonging I missed. Recently, I began deeper meditation and mindfulness practice, and reading on spirituality. It is helping and I do feel a new opening.
Anticipating the unexpected but suddenly likely loss of a beloved dog, in the midst of other changes in my life, these teachings themselves, arriving just now, help me feel supported. As does the morning light pouring through still green leaves in my backyard. And I will carry this renewed awareness of what supports us to my grieving clients.
Thank you for this timeless wisdom. Finding a way to connect with the larger, sacred world in a way that helps us carry grief is a way of moving through the strong, sad emotion, rather than just enduring or denying the pain.
Words of wisdom from friends and strangers in my life. Reflections on others who are grieving and giving them grace for thoughtless actions. We all are initially at our worst in the first moments of grief. It is not just my grief at work. the combination of the community and our own reactions are at play together.
My mom passed away in 2022, and I spiraled into a sense of oblivion, lost and immensely, longing for my mom. The grief was so profound on so many levels, impossible to put into words, and I didn’t feel I would ever recover. Barely, able to move, speak or think and in such despair, I would listen to spiritual meditations, prayer even Gregorian chants, trying to hang on to something that was bigger and greater than my pain. Even though, the grief is still with me, like Tara said, the Love, Light and connectedness to a higher, greater Good pierced through my pain in the stillness of my practices and graced me with the capacity to survive the depths of what I endured with greater serenity and surrender. I don’t impose spiritual practices on my grief clients as a therapist; however, I do conduct and suggest mindfulness meditation practices, in the hopes they too will recognize their own sense of connectedness and belonging. Thank you, Tara, for this 3- part series on grief! So validating and helpful!
Linda Willow, Psychotherapy, Creswell, OR, USAsays
Thank you Tara. In my 20’s-30’s my grief was dealing with never having fit in, trauma of childhood bullying, divorce, loneliness. Despairing with long-term depression, I finally got courage to do therapy and explore community via 12-step and other groups, even volunteering. Found myself doing my own guided meditation with intuitive imagery of being held by a warm, caring male entity (I’d been raised by a single mom and Catholic, and despite my newer feminist attitudes, yearned for paternal/masculine loving energy). All these years later, I’ve been a successful therapist, married 22 years, now studying Tibetan Buddhism. I realize that the creative openness, trust in greater belonging (as you describe here) helped me through, It also got me through the traumatic death of my beloved brother in my 40’s. Now dealing with aging /illness as we grow older, husband and I work with loss of abilities; your examples are poignant. So glad I was able to trust in this greater belonging during earlier losses and hopefully, through what is still to come.
Nikola Taylor, Social Work, Charlotte, NC, USAsays
Nature has always been there. Loved ones have sometimes been there – when I’ve had the courage to reach out and be vulnerable. My pets have been there. Books have been there. Podcasts such as Tara Brach’s have been so of the most helpful things. I am so grateful to Tara. I can’t even express how much she has influenced me personally and as an LCSW working in bereavement.
I have no support turning to people unable to act with any caring any compassion I am a very expressive being practice of mindfulness but am geographically isolated persons I’ve reached out to have U-turned blind eye & deaf ear to my suffering
I have no support turning to people unable to act with any caring any compassion I am a very expressive being practice of mindfulness but am geographically isolated persons I’ve reached out to have U-turned blind eye & deaf ear to my suffering
Feeling like I am one with all of the universe and nature helps me ground and be in my whole body. No more dissociating/detaching from my feelings and sensations.
barbi pecenco, Marriage/Family Therapy, Costa Mesa, CA, USAsays
Thank you, Tara for all of your wisdom. For my first 50 years, I didn’t really know what to believe in, but for my last 50, I would really like to embrace the idea and the felt sense of something greater than myself. I look forward to hearing more about This course! I’ve gone back and listen to your interview interviews with Dan Harris on 10% happier and they are just so meaningful. I loved how you both handled yourself in the last interview when he apologized for hurting your feelings and your acceptance of his apology. It was really beautiful.
As both a Grief + Loss counselor and hospice nurse for 35 years, I’ve experienced that the biggest barrier to healing loss is failing to identify the loss, as opposed to the event which created the loss.
Someone may say, “my dog died” – but is that the dog tied in the backyard that Isaw once a day when I carried a bowl of food & water to it, or was it my best friend and confidant, my only experience with giving and receiving unconditional love?
Someone says, “my father died” – did I lose a provider, protector, mentor and cheerleader or a rapist, molester, terrifier & tormentor.
We must identify the specific loss(es) in order to heal them, & most people don’t.
I lost my son and husband. Walks in the woods, meditation, and poetry are helpful. I’m still sad and grieving but experiencing deep grief caused me to developed a personal spiritual belief system.
Lori Muttersbach, Supervisor, NEW YORK, NY, USAsays
I recently lost my beloved cat (a”she was 20 years old) and when you suggested imagining her with me, in my arms, it was very valuable to me, she felt almost palpable, differently present. That was really useful for me. Thank you.
Love and Compassion for myself and the deep and caring friendships that I have collected throughout my life have helped nurture me through my losses including a current one that leaves me with deep sadness yet deep awareness.
I look forward to receiving your reflection mentioned in this final part of the series.
Thank you, Tara, this was most needed!
When I opened to a sense of support from the Universe, from Divine, a river of sadness emerged and flowed, tears welled up. I felt a porous state of peace and tenderness. I felt safe, known, and cared for by my Divine support and by my Higher Self. I experienced connectedness that is always there, and that is palpable when I open to it. Tara provided warmth, safety, and kindness with her voice and presence. Thank you.
I typically sit with my own loss without seeking community with others. Tara’s wise and tender teachings have helped me to say, “This, too, belongs.” Impermanence leaves the space for hope and acceptance. I hope to share Tara’s wisdom on grief with my neighbor, whose husband recently fell and passed away.
With much gratitude.
Lailey Jenkins, Social Work, Bainbridge Island, WA, USAsays
I think of myself as being emotionally savvy and I am but I I have been avoiding dealing with the tsunami of losses that I have experienced recently. This practice helped me see the path and recognize what I have been doing is dipping my toe in the feeling end of the pool. Not going further. I think this is because change is constant and impermanence is real and the losses keep on coming.
Stillness, silence, mindfulness of my strength within has helped me to feel held in hard times…even my own loving touch as I hug and hold myself has helped me.
I notice that my connection to something larger comes about when I roll up my sleeves to pitch in. Washing a friends dishes, cooking a meal for a neighbor home from the hospital, or even filling the hummingbird feeder. I seem to need a nudge to notice more than my self, my pain. Once my gaze lifts, I can often look beyond my abyss-experience to a more expansive view.
In the past, I believed in God as I was raised to. Then difficult family changes happened and my belief was torn from me. I have leaned on others as they allowed. Now, learning to lean on myself in a new way. I enjoy Nature and find it soothing. I know the sky and the stars are always there. The feeling of belonging is difficult for me. I wonder if I know how….
Thank you Tara for your videos and all you do.
Tara, you are an absolute angel. I have such deep thanks and deep appreciation for your teachings and your Spirit. For me, my grief is a deep black hole that sucks out all the life and light in the universe. At the same time, I realize that the Source of all includes the black hole, but it is still a dilemma. Luckily, I am able to connect with the deep Unbounded Love that is underneath all the pain and sorrow.
IT has been The Saving Grace.
I’ve used various prayer practices and meditation practices which significantly help! This can be solitary or with community. I also felt such comfort and support from being in natural settings and spending time with my canine friend (I am currently house sitting with him).Feeling held is a blessing
I’ve used various prayer practices and meditation practices which significantly help! This can be solitary or with community. I also felt such comfort and support from being in natural settings and spending time with my canine friend (I am currently house sitting with him,)
Judith Levy, Psychology, HASTINGS ON HUDSON, NY, USAsays
Wonderful. As usual. Especially Tara’s eyes that know pain, and the wise and deeply loving smile nonetheless, reflecting her embrace of the inevitability of pain. Thank you.
The loss of love in humanity is the real loss of life on earth, which is preventing us from evolving, as well as, the life of our Mother Earth who has its path of evolution as well affected by our collective consciousness. Love is the medicine, the light, the path to our own better selves. Love supports all aspects of life, and the bliss we can experience, especially when our time for our last breath of life happens and fills the air with joy, not sadness, for a life lived with intention, service, and compassion is to be celebrated, not grief originated from our insecurities, due to our lack of connection to WE.
For me, it’s my belief that I am connected to and held by something larger than me. That something is full of love and wants me to live in my best and highest good.
Thank you Tara for your love and light. I’ve had many losses in life but am currently experiencing the loss of what my only child used to be. He’s 58 now and his personality has changed a great deal. He was in a major car accident about 20 years ago, and although he has never mentioned it and may not even know, I suspect there may have been some brain trauma. He is still there if I need him and says he loves me, but he is very disconnected from his heart.
My tools to deal with this loss is to remember under his pain and anger, he is still my sweet loving little boy on my lap hugging me. I also bring my mom, who has passed, to me with her unconditional love. She inspires me to give him the same.
I am finding strength in love that helps me release the grief and embrace life
My spirituality and relationship with God has been at the essence of my resilience. A connection to community such as my family or longstanding best friends. When I want to isolate and disconnect is when i know i need my community the most. I have noticed when i’m disconnected from my spirituality I become a refuge and am disconnected to my people even if they are right with me. So turning towards the loving kindness of God allows me to recognize the loving kindness of others more fully.
This is something I need to think more about and tap into more deeply. Thank you.
My relationship with God. And his loving embrace.
Your recent video reminds me of my connection to others and to my larger Self within the universe as I live with metastatic stage 4 cancer.
I can see I have a long journey ahead multiplying the exhaustion of the grief journey. Thank-you for being there. Please send your reflections or any tangible words to help. Thank you.
Some things that help me:
When I slow my self down enough I can hear that still soft voice comforting and guiding me on. Thank you Creator ❤️📿 for giving me insight to slow down.
My gratitude for the friends and family that remain with me. For the brothers and sisters on a spiritual path showing up and helping me grow in understanding and faith. Especially those now without Earthly forms.
My dog Lola who shows me how important sharing walks, snacks, and belly rubs are on a daily basis.
My access to teachings online such as yours Mrs Tara, and several others along similar healing paths as I find my way through.
I gotta say Lego sets have also been therapeutic
Thank you, Tara. These gifts from you have touched my heart, helped me move past the anger, even the rage from the loss of betrayal, to uncover the underlying grief and sadness. While these can feel bottomless, as though there’s no end to the pain, I also sense the healing light of Love that I know has never left me. My deepest gratitude to you.
My parents are gone and I have one sibling, 7 yrs older so we weren’t close through most of our years however, after our mom passed we did begin forging a closer relationship. The past 5 yrs have been difficult for me and I have had to face many challenges. I am lucky to have a couple deep friendships and we have shored each other up through loss, grief, depression, health issues, and more. Through it all, I still felt there was a belonging I missed. Recently, I began deeper meditation and mindfulness practice, and reading on spirituality. It is helping and I do feel a new opening.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
Anticipating the unexpected but suddenly likely loss of a beloved dog, in the midst of other changes in my life, these teachings themselves, arriving just now, help me feel supported. As does the morning light pouring through still green leaves in my backyard. And I will carry this renewed awareness of what supports us to my grieving clients.
My dad passed 20 years ago and I still struggle with his death
I as well. But if its all welcome, this belongs.
Thank you for this timeless wisdom. Finding a way to connect with the larger, sacred world in a way that helps us carry grief is a way of moving through the strong, sad emotion, rather than just enduring or denying the pain.
Feeling the love we shared.
Speaking with a dear friend who always positive and shows me a pathway to healing.
Words of wisdom from friends and strangers in my life. Reflections on others who are grieving and giving them grace for thoughtless actions. We all are initially at our worst in the first moments of grief. It is not just my grief at work. the combination of the community and our own reactions are at play together.
My mom passed away in 2022, and I spiraled into a sense of oblivion, lost and immensely, longing for my mom. The grief was so profound on so many levels, impossible to put into words, and I didn’t feel I would ever recover. Barely, able to move, speak or think and in such despair, I would listen to spiritual meditations, prayer even Gregorian chants, trying to hang on to something that was bigger and greater than my pain. Even though, the grief is still with me, like Tara said, the Love, Light and connectedness to a higher, greater Good pierced through my pain in the stillness of my practices and graced me with the capacity to survive the depths of what I endured with greater serenity and surrender. I don’t impose spiritual practices on my grief clients as a therapist; however, I do conduct and suggest mindfulness meditation practices, in the hopes they too will recognize their own sense of connectedness and belonging. Thank you, Tara, for this 3- part series on grief! So validating and helpful!
Thank you Tara. In my 20’s-30’s my grief was dealing with never having fit in, trauma of childhood bullying, divorce, loneliness. Despairing with long-term depression, I finally got courage to do therapy and explore community via 12-step and other groups, even volunteering. Found myself doing my own guided meditation with intuitive imagery of being held by a warm, caring male entity (I’d been raised by a single mom and Catholic, and despite my newer feminist attitudes, yearned for paternal/masculine loving energy). All these years later, I’ve been a successful therapist, married 22 years, now studying Tibetan Buddhism. I realize that the creative openness, trust in greater belonging (as you describe here) helped me through, It also got me through the traumatic death of my beloved brother in my 40’s. Now dealing with aging /illness as we grow older, husband and I work with loss of abilities; your examples are poignant. So glad I was able to trust in this greater belonging during earlier losses and hopefully, through what is still to come.
This is helpful. Thank you.
Nature has always been there. Loved ones have sometimes been there – when I’ve had the courage to reach out and be vulnerable. My pets have been there. Books have been there. Podcasts such as Tara Brach’s have been so of the most helpful things. I am so grateful to Tara. I can’t even express how much she has influenced me personally and as an LCSW working in bereavement.
Thank you
I have no support turning to people unable to act with any caring any compassion I am a very expressive being practice of mindfulness but am geographically isolated persons I’ve reached out to have U-turned blind eye & deaf ear to my suffering
I have no support turning to people unable to act with any caring any compassion I am a very expressive being practice of mindfulness but am geographically isolated persons I’ve reached out to have U-turned blind eye & deaf ear to my suffering
Feeling like I am one with all of the universe and nature helps me ground and be in my whole body. No more dissociating/detaching from my feelings and sensations.
The ocean the continuous waves ever present ever changing
Thank you, Tara for all of your wisdom. For my first 50 years, I didn’t really know what to believe in, but for my last 50, I would really like to embrace the idea and the felt sense of something greater than myself. I look forward to hearing more about This course! I’ve gone back and listen to your interview interviews with Dan Harris on 10% happier and they are just so meaningful. I loved how you both handled yourself in the last interview when he apologized for hurting your feelings and your acceptance of his apology. It was really beautiful.
As both a Grief + Loss counselor and hospice nurse for 35 years, I’ve experienced that the biggest barrier to healing loss is failing to identify the loss, as opposed to the event which created the loss.
Someone may say, “my dog died” – but is that the dog tied in the backyard that Isaw once a day when I carried a bowl of food & water to it, or was it my best friend and confidant, my only experience with giving and receiving unconditional love?
Someone says, “my father died” – did I lose a provider, protector, mentor and cheerleader or a rapist, molester, terrifier & tormentor.
We must identify the specific loss(es) in order to heal them, & most people don’t.
I lost my son and husband. Walks in the woods, meditation, and poetry are helpful. I’m still sad and grieving but experiencing deep grief caused me to developed a personal spiritual belief system.
I recently lost my beloved cat (a”she was 20 years old) and when you suggested imagining her with me, in my arms, it was very valuable to me, she felt almost palpable, differently present. That was really useful for me. Thank you.
Love and Compassion for myself and the deep and caring friendships that I have collected throughout my life have helped nurture me through my losses including a current one that leaves me with deep sadness yet deep awareness.
I look forward to receiving your reflection mentioned in this final part of the series.
Thank you, Tara, this was most needed!
When I opened to a sense of support from the Universe, from Divine, a river of sadness emerged and flowed, tears welled up. I felt a porous state of peace and tenderness. I felt safe, known, and cared for by my Divine support and by my Higher Self. I experienced connectedness that is always there, and that is palpable when I open to it. Tara provided warmth, safety, and kindness with her voice and presence. Thank you.
I typically sit with my own loss without seeking community with others. Tara’s wise and tender teachings have helped me to say, “This, too, belongs.” Impermanence leaves the space for hope and acceptance. I hope to share Tara’s wisdom on grief with my neighbor, whose husband recently fell and passed away.
With much gratitude.
I think of myself as being emotionally savvy and I am but I I have been avoiding dealing with the tsunami of losses that I have experienced recently. This practice helped me see the path and recognize what I have been doing is dipping my toe in the feeling end of the pool. Not going further. I think this is because change is constant and impermanence is real and the losses keep on coming.
Stillness, silence, mindfulness of my strength within has helped me to feel held in hard times…even my own loving touch as I hug and hold myself has helped me.
Lovely to be reminded to connect to the larger sense of belonging! Thank you,
Nature…
I’m lucky to have strong sense of love and acceptance in my family that holds me in hard times.
I would like a copy of that reflection please.
I notice that my connection to something larger comes about when I roll up my sleeves to pitch in. Washing a friends dishes, cooking a meal for a neighbor home from the hospital, or even filling the hummingbird feeder. I seem to need a nudge to notice more than my self, my pain. Once my gaze lifts, I can often look beyond my abyss-experience to a more expansive view.
In the past, I believed in God as I was raised to. Then difficult family changes happened and my belief was torn from me. I have leaned on others as they allowed. Now, learning to lean on myself in a new way. I enjoy Nature and find it soothing. I know the sky and the stars are always there. The feeling of belonging is difficult for me. I wonder if I know how….
Thank you Tara for your videos and all you do.
Thanks Tara for your teachings and guidance for the inner life. Appreciate the support on the journey of life.
Tara, you are an absolute angel. I have such deep thanks and deep appreciation for your teachings and your Spirit. For me, my grief is a deep black hole that sucks out all the life and light in the universe. At the same time, I realize that the Source of all includes the black hole, but it is still a dilemma. Luckily, I am able to connect with the deep Unbounded Love that is underneath all the pain and sorrow.
IT has been The Saving Grace.
I’ve used various prayer practices and meditation practices which significantly help! This can be solitary or with community. I also felt such comfort and support from being in natural settings and spending time with my canine friend (I am currently house sitting with him).Feeling held is a blessing
I’ve used various prayer practices and meditation practices which significantly help! This can be solitary or with community. I also felt such comfort and support from being in natural settings and spending time with my canine friend (I am currently house sitting with him,)
Wonderful. As usual. Especially Tara’s eyes that know pain, and the wise and deeply loving smile nonetheless, reflecting her embrace of the inevitability of pain. Thank you.
I lost my innocence in Vietnam. I have contact with it now and my heart feels less burdened.
As I focus the intensity of the pain increases.
The loss of love in humanity is the real loss of life on earth, which is preventing us from evolving, as well as, the life of our Mother Earth who has its path of evolution as well affected by our collective consciousness. Love is the medicine, the light, the path to our own better selves. Love supports all aspects of life, and the bliss we can experience, especially when our time for our last breath of life happens and fills the air with joy, not sadness, for a life lived with intention, service, and compassion is to be celebrated, not grief originated from our insecurities, due to our lack of connection to WE.
For me, it’s my belief that I am connected to and held by something larger than me. That something is full of love and wants me to live in my best and highest good.
Speechless. Unable to create a comment. Would appreciate your copy of reflections or any tangible words to help. Thank you.
I would like a copy of that reflection if possible. Thank you . 🙂