Creating & Holding Space For Grief & Loss

In Western culture, there is an unspoken, societal, and cultural approach to understanding and processing grief and loss. On Day 1, we are going to explore this approach and how it has often kept us from truly sitting with our emotionality. Likewise, we’re going to reflect on the societal “rush hour” of getting through grief, and how this approach and similar practices have left us incomplete and unwitnessed in our own healing.

On Day 2, we’re going to use the creative power of word clouds and journaling to begin to extract the mental and emotional vocabulary associated with the word grief. While we may all experience grief, the manner in which we do is unique and individualized. Having your own definition of grief to lean onto is just as powerful, and this exercise will allow us to track our own meaning and assign a definition that feels right.

The more we push grief away, the stronger we feel it. Grief comes with a host of emotions: sadness, anger, resentment, guilt, shame, fear, etc. We can either choose to ignore these emotions and see them as something to fix and overcome, or we can choose to walk the path of darkness and extract the wisdom that sits within each emotion. This is how we make space for grief: by walking into our own pain with a lantern. On Day 3, we’ll discuss why this journey is worth taking.

It is said that all emotions branch out from two main roots: love and fear. While love is the effortless, unconditional expression that brings us joy and peace, fear is simply the shadow side of this same coin. Therefore, on Day 4, we’re going to explore this concept of light and dark as it relates to love and fear. Additionally, we will explore the benefit of welcoming the heavier emotions associated with grief, and how this practice can bring us closer to our own authenticity.

On Day 5, we’re going to explore how grief and the emotionality around it get trapped and lodged as stagnant and dense energy in our physical body. We will use meditation to ground and tune into our energy, and we will also use gentle and simple somatic (physical) movements to help move this energy through and out.

Grief is love with nowhere to go. On Day 6, we’re going to channel all of the deep, raw love in our heart into a writing exercise. The intention behind this writing exercise is to express our emotionality onto paper and outside of our body and energy. This way, we’re not holding all of our emotions, and we’re better able to gain perspective, clarity, and gratitude for the words which are now doing the holding for us.

On Day 7, we’re going to switch gears and reflect on how we are supported (or not) in our grieving process. We’re going to evaluate our social and family circles to learn where we can pull back our energy, so that we are filling our own cups first. Boundaries are often the least talked about challenge in grief, and we can often get caught up in “saving mode,” trying to help everyone else but ourselves. We’ll visit some practices that we can implement to protect our space, energy, resources, and time.

On Day 8, we begin to tenderly touch the vulnerability of our loss. Whether we have lost a person, a job, a pet, an opportunity, or even some part of ourselves; we will now begin to connect with our loss. Through Metta meditation and letter-writing, we will take everything we’ve learned about grief up until now, and energetically connect to our loss. We will also discuss creating altars to honor our loss and grief, as well as creating sacred time to share stories of our loss.

Now that we know what our grief is, how it feels, and how to make space for it, it’s time to let it flow. So much of what grief entails is the overflowing love that we have for someone or something we lost. Now that we know what that love is, it’s time to share it. On Day 9, we’ll explore some unique, sweet, and heartfelt ways to share our love, even in grief.

Congratulations on making it to Day 10. On this final day of our course, we’ll reflect on our journey; touch back on recognizing our grief and how making space for it has changed our mindset. We will also explore the idea of a “new normal,” and living life after loss. The intention behind our last day together is to empower you to live the kind of life that aligns with the magnitude of love that you have in your own heart.