“Johanna, I experience waves of grief. I often can’t seem to find the end of the tears. How can I get these to stop?”
My heart goes out to these friends in our community who are walking through a time of intense sadness.
It reminds me of the line from a favorite hymn about grief: “When sorrow like sea billows roll.”
The truth is, sometimes our souls do not feel well. Sometimes, it feels like our hearts are under attack—so much so that the words of grief cannot get out.
In a recent conversation, a friend had a breakthrough: “It’s like my grief is an infant who can’t find the words, so it just cries and cries.”
Loss can hit us in a place that is so deep so primal that it feels like we are starting at the beginning. We don’t understand it, and it makes us feel like the most helpless, vulnerable child.
When we come across a crying child, we reach out to it, hold it, and attend to it. We look to see what it needs. Isn’t that compassion?
When we cry uncontrollably, what is our response to ourselves more often than not?
“How am I going to get this to stop quickly? What will other people think of me? I just want this to go alway.”
Maybe this analogy seems dramatic. Perhaps that is my intention.
What I want us to see is how uncompassionate we tend to be with our own grief waves.
If we listen to our tears and emotion close enough, we can usually hear the words:
- “Will I ever feel whole again?”
- “I don’t know how to do all the things I used to do. I feel so lost?”
- ”Why God? Why did you do this to me?”
When the words are there, then you can sit in that place of frustration. When you can recognize what your heart is crying out, you can begin the first steps of truly taking care of it. You can attend to your grief and embody love and compassion.
Here are a few questions to get you started:
- What emotions are you experiencing that you wish you weren’t’?
- What could you do to attend to those emotions?
- If you have a grief journal, write about what your grief is trying to say to you today.