I am not good at celebrating my wins, but I’m starting to feel hypocritical asking my clients to celebrate if I don’t do this for myself.
Announcement: This week, I began my first week of my counseling masters!!!
[Insert some serious celebration]
Most moms (especially single moms) will tell you celebration minimized around the time of their first child. The focus is wonderfully on the little one, and it almost feels silly to celebrate our personal wins when the monumental growth of the child seems much more worthy of the fanfare.
Here’s the truth:
Who needs celebration more than moms?!
This lesson has been driven home as I’ve continued walking a path with my grieving clients.
So often, the process feels like one step forward and two steps back. At times, it can feel grueling to speak about the same challenges from different perspectives from month-to-month and only see moderate progress.
However, in that moderate progress, we can miss a huge opportunity: Celebration!
Grief has a tendency of sucking away all the joy if you let it.
What is celebration if not a means of grandiose joy? What is grandiose joy if not a way to stake a claim in your life—a boundary that grief is not welcome to cross?
We may judge that we are not worthy of celebration, but there’s an important key element here:
Wins are successes, and successes create forward momentum.
Taking time to celebrate those wins is absolutely imperative.
One of my favorite things I ever heard from a counselor is this: “Johanna, you’re finally making decisions from a place of freedom instead of a place of trauma.”
I even sigh deeply when I write that. What better to celebrate than freedom? I’m reminded of this passage from Psalm 124:
Indeed, the snare has been broken,
And we have escaped.
Our help is in the name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
For a grief client, this means making decisions as the person who chooses life over grief. This can look like social activity after a year of solitude. This can be a release from a negative thought pattern. This can even be finalizing an administrative burden due to the major loss. These milestones can quickly pass by and, with it, a missed opportunity.
Answer this for yourself today:
What do you need to pause and celebrate today?
Where are you seeing freedom in your life today that you didn’t see yesterday?
How are you going to celebrate?