Growing Through Grief by Katherine Rose
In my experience, looking at grief as a personal journey creates a perspective that allows you to grow from your experience instead of feeling shacked by your experience.
To make it through this journey, we must embrace the pain that we feel, be willing to change, and find new perspectives.
When we sit with our pain, we get insights into our wounds. Identifying the source of our wounds allows us to identify what we need so that we can heal.
Change is inevitable, and never is it more apparent than when your life has turned upside down because of a tragedy. The life you once knew is gone. You have been thrown into the liminal space. Your growth comes from figuring out what your new life will be like. What new set of rituals and routines will define your days? Is it possible that they can be even better than the rituals and routines from your old life? They will be different, for sure, but does this mean that they need to be “less than” your old life?
Death gives us a chance to sit and reflect. In fact, it forces new perspectives. The prisons of our minds can be our own worst enemies, yet when we are faced with immortality, we begin to consider all of the different possibilities that life and death might offer. This new perspective can be like a jail break, removing the fences that block us in and creating new paradigms by which to live.
There is no time constraint on this journey through pain, change, and perspective. Be patient. Allow yourself to dive in to it. At times, it will feel damn near impossible to walk through the pain but keep pushing. Take time. Surrender, and remind yourself that you are receiving what you need to grow.
If we can learn to leverage our grief with these three points in mind, we allow ourselves the freedom to grow. We allow the grief to take us to new places (both physical and mental) that we never existed.
When Jonny died, I resisted the growth. I tried to keep my old life around as long as possible—struggling to grasp on to anything and everything that was him. It didn’t serve me, though. It only made the journey of change harder. My life was not the same and trying to force myself to return to normal made me miserable. I missed opportunities to understand my pain and gain new perspectives.
Once I made the decision to open myself up to the pain, change, and new perspectives, the most magical things began to happen. I met my mentor and friend, Sean Stephenson, who helped to jump start my life again. I moved back to LA, and that week was offered a job. I’ve learned to sit with the pain and allow it to heal me. I’ve met people who have shown me new and different ways at look at life. I’ve found my purpose in life.
You see the most undesirable events in our lives can in fact be the best things to have happened to us. Don’t get me wrong, I would never wish anyone to have to go through grief. It’s painful and messy. However, if we are willing to go on a journey with it and listen to the pain, stay open to change, and willing to see things in a light, we may come out even stronger and better than we were before.
