The Courage To Grieve

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Hey Beloved, I'm Nakeia

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“We must be vulnerable enough to express what loss has done to us.”

I have been asked to talk about grief for years now, and I finally took some time to put my experience into words and share some insights I am learning on the journey.

This episode goes pretty deep, so if you are triggered by the subject, take a few deep breaths before diving in.

Grief & Grieving

When people think of grief, they typically think of a loved one passing. They may consider the pain of heartbreak. But we don’t talk enough about the grief of what could have been, the grief of failed plans, the grief of no longer being who we used to be, or the grief of change.

The anger, disappointment, frustration, and fear you are feeling right now in your life could be grief. So before we really dive into this conversation, let’s explore what grief is for a moment.

Grief

The deep sorrow you feel when you’ve lost someone or something, is grief. Grief is the feeling of sadness, anguish, pain, distress, longing, agony, heartache, and heartbreak. It is what you feel in your body. The thing that you can’t quite explain, but it’s there—lingering, throbbing. It’s there. It’s pain.

Grieving

To grieve or the process of grief is what you do with what you feel. So to grieve is to cry, to weep, to sob, to yell, to curse, to retreat, and to want to or actually give up. Those are typical responses to grief.

So when we talk about what grief is, we’re talking about what we feel. When we are talking about how we respond to loss or sorrow, we are talking about the process of grieving. That is, how we respond, or what we do with what we feel.

I have been in the process of grieving for years now. I’ve lost people and experienced grief before, but I think the struggle through grief this time around is the fact that it is compounded, I would say, by the loss of one person after the other after the other. I also grieve the impact of some things not working out in one season, and then not working out in the next season, and then feeling lost in another season. It’s compounded because it’s happening over and over and over again. That’s why my therapist has described what I have experienced in life as complex PTSD or CPTSD. When you hear about PTSD, often you hear about the study or research around people who have experienced it as a result of leaving the military and experiencing flashes or bodily responses to something that happened, and go right back to that particular moment.

Take a breath here. I want you to breathe deeply throughout this conversation because I am touching on things that are very, very tender.

If you have experienced PTSD and it is related to loss or grief, you may have dreams of the moment the person took their last, or you may have flashbacks of the moment your partner walked away. You may remember the phone call, the conversation that led to the end of something that you loved and didn’t want to end. The involuntary endings…

We don’t give enough attention to when we lose, not just people, but we lose our way of life. We lose hope of something panning out the way we planned. We lose the reality we once lived. And often when we experience the loss of someone, we also grieve the life that we shared with them.

I talk about how important my conversations with my grandmom were. I talked to her every single time I got into the car. That is how I went on my journeys into town. It takes me about forty minutes to do so, an hour plus in traffic. I would talk to her while driving to the grocery store, to pick up the kids, and waiting in the car rider lane. I grieve not just the loss of her physically, but the loss of the experience of having a good conversation with someone I loved.

That is grief.

We grieve people, we grieve opportunities, we grieve experiences, and ultimately, we grieve our past.

Ways People Struggle With Grief

I’ve seen people struggle with grief in two major ways.

1. They can’t move beyond how they feel.

So remember, grief is a feeling, and to grieve is a process. But they can’t even get into the process because they can’t get past what they feel. Loss cripples their ability to move beyond the moment it happened. They get stuck in old stories. They are resigning from active life. They refuse to move on. And they’re hypersensitive when anyone says anything about the future, about doing things differently. You may walk into their space, and it is identical to how it was when the person left. The home is still the same, the pictures are still up, their activities are still the same, their route is still the same. They can’t get past how they feel about the loss, the grief, the hit.

2. They avoid grief altogether.

So they are hyper vigilant. They’re always on the go. Go, go, go, do, do, do.

They may engage in numbing activities. So these are people who fall into alcoholism, drug use, overworking, going from relationship to relationship. They’re doing anything to avoid the process of grief.

They have something that I call replacement grief, where instead of actually dealing with what they feel, what they’ve lost, or what they’ve experienced, they replace the person or the thing with something or someone else, so they don’t have to deal. Instead of processing the loss of the marriage, they get right into another relationship, fall head over heels, and they are all about this new person, having never actually processed the loss of the first. Or they completely act out. They engage in behaviors that are sabotaging and toxic, so that everyone focuses on what they are doing or saying, not on the work they need to do on their hearts.

What Grief Requires Of Us

I’m talking about grieving the past today. There are some things from the past that we must grieve. Things like relationships, lifestyle, opportunities, plans, and even versions of ourselves we are no longer able to embody.

And we grieve things like illnesses. Some illnesses make us no longer the same versions of ourselves. Although grief and grieving are a natural and healthy part of our lived experience, it takes courage to actually grieve.

We must be brave enough to allow ourselves to feel.

We must be vulnerable enough to express what loss has done to us.

We must be open to new ways of existing without what or who we lost.

We must be bold enough to start over again.

And we must be strong enough to endure the pain without folding, or giving up completely.

Grief requires us to be brave, vulnerable, open, bold, and strong.

My Experience With Grief

In a previous episode, I shared that one of the blessings of the year has been grieving my grandmother. She has not been here with us on earth for six years now. And although there have been six years since the last time I saw her, heard her, held her, it was still difficult for me to sit with the reality that she was no longer here. And I’ve said this many times because grief is tricky. Death is tricky. I am actually not one of those people who don’t understand or who have not embraced the process of death and the reality of death. I see it as a part of our lived experience. We are born, and we die. I have never been sad because my grandmother aged out of life, essentially. She aged out. The quality of her life wasn’t good. She was ready to go. What I was sad about was the circumstances surrounding her death. And I was sad that I was not there for the months, weeks, and days leading up to the moment she took her last breath. I was able to spend just the last eighteen and a half hours with her, but if I had it my way, I would have spent every day with her until she was gone.

I understood that my grandmom was going to leave here. But I needed to develop the bravery, courage, vulnerability, openness, boldness, and strength to actually accept that all the experiences I still wanted us to have wouldn’t happen.

The Grace Of Grief

There is something about grief that I think we need to embrace.

Grieving helps us process painful emotions, adjust to a new reality, get clear on our values and beliefs, connect with ourselves and others, and cultivate acceptance and peace.

The process of grieving or the act and practice of grieving actually adds to our lives in those ways.

I got an email—several emails actually, where she said she noticed I don’t talk about the loss of your dad much. And I don’t because there are several reasons… But, I’ll be vulnerable, in this moment, to share that I still act as if my dad is just in New Jersey, living his life the way he had before he transitioned. My dad and I weren’t necessarily estranged, but I had decided to go no contact for my own peace, for my own emotional safety. I limited the time I spent with him and the conversations we had. So, we didn’t talk much. I talked to my grandmother every single day. I had an active relationship with her. So losing my dad didn’t disrupt my day-to-day life in the way it did when my grandmother left. So I act as if he’s just in New Jersey and I’m not talking to him, because I didn’t, and still don’t in a lot of ways, have the capacity to process the fact that he is also gone.

So I don’t talk about him because I haven’t worked through the loss of him.

*Listen to the full episode to hear more about my personal experience with grief.

Allowing myself to grieve has helped me process painful emotions, adjust to a new reality, get clear on my values and my beliefs, and connect with myself in ways that I haven’t in the past.

I am the most aligned, healed, whole, confident, bold version of myself that I have ever been in my entire life. I am clear on who I am and what I am here to do. I have learned to transmute loss into something useful. I often share that I wish pleasure were my only teacher, but pain has been a teacher, one of my greatest teachers. There are other ways to learn, but pain just so happened to be my testimony.

My Stages Of Grief

There’s a neurologist by the name of Dr. Schulman who says our brains interpret grief as PTSD or emotional trauma. The brain processes emotional trauma the same way it does stress. It perceives it as a threat to our survival. So we go straight into survival mode. Survival mode is activated when we experience any kind of loss. We immediately go into responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

What I’ve learned about grief, loss, and the process of grieving is that memories leave an imprint on our brains and our bodies. So although the person, the opportunity, the lifestyle, the version of ourselves no longer exist physically, the imprint exists within us. It’s still there.

So that is why sometimes when I’m backing out of the driveway, I can hear my grandmother’s voice. I can still feel what it’s like to be in her room, as she sat in her favorite chair and I sat at her feet.

That is what love does for us. That is what connection does for us. And that is what the memories continue to do for us long after the person is gone. So that means every time we think of that loss, fight or flight is triggered to protect us.

Brain fog can happen. Denial happens, avoidance happens, and our brains form new neural connections based on pain and grief. The pain and grief we feel. We must be courageous enough to go through the process of grieving.

I have uncovered 9 courageous ways to grieve:

Decide to heal. You have to decide to grieve and to heal—to allow yourself to go through that process. You have to activate the choice to grieve in the healthiest way possible. Because what I’ve learned the hard way is that if you don’t activate the choice, if you don’t activate your agency over your own body, your mind, and your spirit, grief will have its way with you. It will take you through there. It will take you through it. But if you allow grief to be your companion, then you get to decide how you convene with grief. You get to decide what it looks like for you. And I want you to go to the episode on How to Handle the Worst Season of Your Life because I shared the moment I chose to grieve and to heal.

Avoid timelines for grief. I know the breakup happened when you were 20 or 21, and here you are, 30 or 31, and you still aren’t over your ex. The reason you can’t get past the relationship with your ex is that you haven’t decided to heal. And also, healing takes time. You may want to rush through it, but what I’ve learned is that life goes on whether I want to sit and cry or not. Life goes on, whether we’re able to get through the moment or not.

I remember waking up the day after my grandmother transitioned, thinking, what do I do now? Decisions needed to be made. I had to get back to work. I had to get back to mothering. Life went on. And I thought to myself, we’re just gonna do this without her. And life said, “Yes.” I felt like I didn’t have time to grieve. I tried giving myself three months to process it all, cry, and pull myself together.

*Listen to the full episode to hear how that worked out for me.

So here we are, six years later, and it’s still this tender. It’s still this tender because there is no timeline. We have to avoid them. Remember, grief is a feeling, and feelings are involuntary. How we respond to the feelings, we can control, but what we feel, we cannot. So allow yourself to do what you need to do in the moment you’re in.

Make peace with your feelings. Feel however you need to feel. Angry, sad, in denial… I let myself think that my dad is in his barbershop in New Jersey. I let myself do it because I need the mental support necessary to sit with the truth that he is also gone. All of the hopes that I had for reconciling our relationship in the way that he wanted to, because I had made peace with how it was, but my dad missed me. And I don’t like the fact that he left this earth missing me. He knew I loved him, and I knew he loved me. But any hope of the type of relationship that we should have had or could have had, and I know should’ve and could have’s are not healthy, but that is just where I am with it. I had to release that. So denial. It works for me. I talk with my therapist. I am not crazy. This is okay. So don’t worry about me. Sometimes you have to just allow yourself to feel whatever you feel.

Listen to your body and respond in the healthiest way possible. So your body’s telling you that you are angry. It is not healthy to drown yourself or your anger in alcohol or drugs or sex or work or whatever. You may need to seek the help of a clinician or a support group. You may need to be around people. You may need to establish a new health regimen so you don’t go down this spiral of negativity and toxicity. Respond in the healthiest way possible. I want you to know this crying is healthy. Cussing is healthy. Yelling is healthy. You need to express yourself in the way that feels the most truthful, the most honest.

Journal. Journaling will be on every list. Every single list. I promise you, it will be on every single list of things you need to do to support your well-being. So grieving is no different. Journal.

Grief affirmations. Remember, what you say to yourself is so important. And when you don’t have the healthiest self-communication because of grief, because of depression, because of anxiety, because of loss, because of whatever, you need to create a list of words and phrases you can say, out loud, preferably. And do this practice on repeat so that you can rewire your brain. Remember, you go straight into fight or flight when you are at a loss. Your body is going to try to square off in whatever way it can with whatever it feels like is attacking you. And loss feels like an attack, crying feels like an attack, all of these things feel like an attack.

You soothe that when you use words that affirm health and well-being. So I would say things like, It is okay to grieve the loss of someone you love.

Because I was supposed to be the strong one, because everyone was looking to me for support, because I had clients that I still needed to see, because I was still somebody’s mama, I had to remind myself. I still have to remind myself that it is okay for me to do all those things, and be all those things, and also grieve.

It is okay to grieve someone you lost. It is okay to be sad about your grandmother not being here. It is okay to be in denial about the loss of your father. It is okay to want to sit in your room and do nothing.

Those are affirmations. We don’t always see those things that we are saying to ourselves as affirmations, but affirmations are confirmation. It is also an agreement. So we’re not resisting reality. We are not tussling with the truth. We are agreeing with what also is… So create grief affirmations. Say them out loud.

Reject your desire to retreat. Seek support instead. And I think that’s self-explanatory. Reject your desire to retreat and instead seek help.

Prioritize your well-being. So go straight into self-care. Get enough sleep, get enough movement, get good nutrition… Do whatever you need to do to support yourself physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally.

Habits for Healing. I have spent the last 2 years working my way through my own book. I went right back to my tried-and-true practices: Self-care, self-forgiveness, not taking things personally, setting boundaries, remembering who I am, and all of the other habits. There are people that I was very close to in my life that I had to put distance between us. I had to not speak to or go no contact with others for me to move safely through my process of grief. I had to forgive myself for what I consider to be not being a good daughter and granddaughter to my loved ones. I had to practice self-care. I had to not take them leaving this earth and leaving me here alone personally. I had to remind myself that I am capable, that I am strong, that I am the woman that my grandmother raised and my daddy cultivated. You know, I still call my dad daddy. I had to remind myself of who I was. So I went through my habits for healing.

Final Thoughts

The grief that accompanies healing comes from the realization that you are healing something you can never change. You are not crazy for still grieving. You are not weak because it still hurts. You are not a sorry individual because the grief is still tender. Six years later. Ten years later… You are a human being, living through the realization that life will forever be different.

The people you outgrow, relationships that never worked out the way you hoped, places you can never return to, people who leave your life but never your heart, you can’t change those things. So you have to learn to grieve them.

Grief isn’t a sign that you aren’t healing and growing. It’s proof that despite all the things that caused you to grieve, your heart is still intact.

We must be brave enough to allow ourselves to feel. We must be vulnerable enough to express what loss has done to us. We must be open to new ways of existing without what or who we lost. We must be bold enough to start over, and we must be strong enough to endure the pain without folding or giving up.

Until next time, beloved, I hope this helps.