This article is apart of the series on Foundations - you can click here to see the first post, including all the links to the other posts in this series.

Grief:

Uncomfortable.

Mysterious.

Challenging.

Humbling.

A Choice.

Vulnerable - oh, so vulnerable.

The way through.

Ladies - grief work is some of the absolute hardest work that we will ever {ever} do. I have yet to find someone that enjoys grieving. It is just that painful. And while it is natural and God-given to grieve - it can also become complicated because of how uncomfortable it is and how we can unknowingly work toward circumventing it to preserve said comfort.

In addition, grief is complex - it does NOT want to be put in a box. It needs to breathe, to move, to shake things up. To show us the way.

The Purpose of Grief

I can get behind doing hard things when I understand the purpose.

{Can I get an Amen?}

Grief fits into the hard things category and thus it's important for me to really conceptualize both its purpose and its importance.

The way I see it, grieving is our mind, heart, body and soul’s way of moving through pain. When we allow ourselves to grieve, we are humbling ourselves to God, recognizing our humanness and fragility and with faith, hoping that He will patch us back together stronger than we were before.

It is one of the most humbling practices we do. And I see it as an imperative to get to the other side and live in a place of peace, acceptance and redemption. To be BETTER because of the pain and grief. To be stronger. To be wiser. That is the goal.

What We Need To Grieve Well

In order to grieve well, there are many things that we need. I’m narrowing this list down so as not to overwhelm but curious what else you might add:

#1 - The support of others - The key in this support is to have women surrounding us that will validate us, see us, hear us, choose us. In the midst of our vulnerability. This is so incredibly powerful and healing.

This is also really hard for us to find when we are grieving something we can't readily share with just anyone. Keeping our grief to ourselves doesn't work. We need, we must share our grief with others in order to get through it.

#2 - The ability to Get. It. Out. - via talking, writing, screaming, crying. Truly, allowing ourselves to purge the emotions.

#3 - A lack of time constraints. Sometimes we put pressure on ourselves to “get over” the hurt and pain. Why the pressure? Remember that grief knows nothing of time and only of showing us when we have more pain to release and more healing to be had.

AND - oftentimes it’s he that puts pressure on us to just get over it. When we feel constraints from the one that has hurt us, this is not only incredibly disrespectful to our emotions, our hurt, our pain but also to our healing process. If your husband or x-husband is saying anything close to - "you just need to get over it" - hard pause. Red flag. Let’s talk.

#4 - Compassion for ourselves - recently I read that when we are critical of ourselves, we are putting ourselves into a “protective" response where our thinking brains go off line and the smoke alarms start to go off (think: fight, flight, freeze, appease). This will NOT help us grieve.

Recently when I was in the thick of grief, I threw myself onto the bed and I told myself, “Shelley, it’s so okay to hurt, you can do this, let yourself hurt.” This was the voice of self-compassion that I so needed to hear.

I give the ladies I work with via groups and 1:1 coaching a specific self-compassion exercise to use - I am happy to send it your way, just let me know.

#5 - Courage to step into the unknown of grief and hope that God will see me through - For myself, one of the things that really prevents me from digging deep into grief is because I become fearful that it might overtake me completely. And I won’t come back, or it will take me a long time to recover. Anyone else have this fear?

Lamentations 3:22-24 speaks to this:

The faithful love of the LORD keeps us from destruction.

Great is his faithfulness, his mercies begin afresh every morning.

I say to myself, “the LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him."

What I have learned is goodness, relief and calm does come. It's a process and while destruction happens overnight, healing takes longer. We learn to ride the wave.

And as I step into the grief, I have to remind myself to go courageously and know that God will meet me with compassion and mercy. He is my hope.

As always, I would love to hear from you. Are you in the thick of grief? Do you see purpose in it? What has helped you the most?

xo - Shelley