I provide a mobile Reiki service and had a client last Saturday afternoon. All morning I was either close to tears or was weeping. I couldn't explain why I felt so desolate or despairing. With Christmas approaching, I had been feeling sad, but this felt different.
It wasn't until I was on my way to my client's place I realised I might be picking up on her energy. Once I had acknowledged this, the dark cloud of grief lifted a little.
During the session, my client mentioned her best friend of over 50 years had recently passed away and she was struggling with accepting she was gone.
I said it was early days and she was expecting an awful lot of herself to be ready to accept her friends passing so soon.
She told me that in the weeks leading up to her friend's passing, she had visited her all the time. She had visited her in hospital during her last hours and even been to see her friend at the funeral directors the day before the funeral and couldn't understand why she still felt so devastated and lost without her.
'So, you tried to cheat yourself out of feeling grief or loss, but approaching your friend's death in a logical way?' I asked.
My client looked at me, surprised at the way I had defined what she had done and realised that was exactly what she had attempted to do.
I told her grief doesn't follow logic, it can't be reasoned with. It is an emotional state of being and we have to work through whatever feelings and pain we have as a result.
In a society where grief is a taboo subject, where we are expected to show we are coping well rather than showing how we truly feel, some of us try to escape the torture and suffering grief entails. Unfortunately there is no escape clause or get out of jail free card. There is only grief, acknowledging our loss and then acceptance.
This all takes time, and for each of us its different. Acknowledging our loss and the pain of losing someone is honoring the relationship we had with this person and honoring the person left behind.
Don't try to avoid or evade your grief. Wallow in it. Allow yourself to 'be' in it for as long as it takes.
love and respect
Cherie xx
It wasn't until I was on my way to my client's place I realised I might be picking up on her energy. Once I had acknowledged this, the dark cloud of grief lifted a little.
During the session, my client mentioned her best friend of over 50 years had recently passed away and she was struggling with accepting she was gone.
I said it was early days and she was expecting an awful lot of herself to be ready to accept her friends passing so soon.
She told me that in the weeks leading up to her friend's passing, she had visited her all the time. She had visited her in hospital during her last hours and even been to see her friend at the funeral directors the day before the funeral and couldn't understand why she still felt so devastated and lost without her.
'So, you tried to cheat yourself out of feeling grief or loss, but approaching your friend's death in a logical way?' I asked.
My client looked at me, surprised at the way I had defined what she had done and realised that was exactly what she had attempted to do.
I told her grief doesn't follow logic, it can't be reasoned with. It is an emotional state of being and we have to work through whatever feelings and pain we have as a result.
In a society where grief is a taboo subject, where we are expected to show we are coping well rather than showing how we truly feel, some of us try to escape the torture and suffering grief entails. Unfortunately there is no escape clause or get out of jail free card. There is only grief, acknowledging our loss and then acceptance.
This all takes time, and for each of us its different. Acknowledging our loss and the pain of losing someone is honoring the relationship we had with this person and honoring the person left behind.
Don't try to avoid or evade your grief. Wallow in it. Allow yourself to 'be' in it for as long as it takes.
love and respect
Cherie xx
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