Loss and grief
We don’t really lose anything. What we believe we have lost will be what we still have, what we have given away or what we didn’t have to begin with.
The grief we experience following a perceived loss is nature’s way of guiding us through our denial, bargaining, anger and depression to the acceptance of the truth. When we face, accept and understand the true nature of the perceived loss, we no longer need to grieve.
While the loss is perceived, time should always be allowed for grief. It is an important natural process that must be followed through to its conclusion to avoid becoming stuck in one of the stages of denial, anger or depression, which would adversely affect our long-term physical, emotional and mental health. Our need to cry should not be avoided, it’s nature’s unique way of sedating us to make us more comfortable and rested throughout the process.
The perceived loss could be anything from an opportunity or money to a house or a loved one. The accompanying discomfort or pain many people feel generally aligns with the common belief that something or someone has been taken from them.
This comes from believing that what we have in our lives is what we own and that what we do or don’t have is due to misfortune or fate. What we all have in our lives is what we want and need that we have manifested according to what we believe. While we have the use of natural and material things, they can never be owned and the people we have in our lives have the right to their own beliefs and choices, which is something we cannot judge or control.
Recently, a family’s house that was built near a forest, burned in a bushfire. They believed they had lost their home and through their grief and anger, they blamed everyone around them including the firefighters and the government for not stopping the fire, but apparently, it didn’t make them feel any better. It may be that nature needed to burn the ground for regeneration where they chose to build and unfortunately the house was in the way of an important natural process. Another perception of this scenario is that a house is not really our home; many indigenous societies believe their fire is their home, but our real home is who we are wherever we are, which is never lost.
Sometimes what we believe we have lost will be what we have given away. A person might be in a relationship where the condition of the relationship is to constantly appease the other person, then when they stop appeasing them, the other person leaves. They may believe they have lost the other person’s love, but what they believe they have lost is a false perception that they have given away. People that receive money and yet never seem to have any, which may be due to believing they don’t deserve it, aren’t aware they are subconsciously giving it away. Then others believe they have lost opportunities but have been unaware of their fear of taking them up and giving them away.
Often what we believe we have lost will be an illusion of what we believe we had. A woman feeling devasted when her perceived happy marriage came to an end and the grief, that followed it, realised afterwards that the marriage had been an unhappy and destructive union, so what she believed she had lost was something she didn’t have to begin with.
Maternal grief can be a painful process, but from it, we learn that we don’t own our children; they come into the world through us and live their own life.
During the most difficult time in an unhealthy relationship, a woman gave birth to a stillborn child. She believed her child was being taken from her, and she was being punished in some way. Years later, she remembered being particularly stressed about bringing a child into the world that she was struggling to survive in at the time, and perhaps that was the reason they parted. She later gave birth to another baby when her situation and beliefs had changed, who happily came into the world with a beautiful soul of his own and what seemed to be the soul of his deceased sibling. She has since been able to forgive herself for not being able to provide the right environment for her stillborn child due to the false beliefs she had at the time and to respect his choice to physically only be in the world for a few moments. She values the time she had with him, thinks of him often and loves and cherishes his spirit, which will always be with her.
The people that leave us aren’t the people we have lost but the people we have had the valuable gift of spending time with.
The more we value and respect what we realistically do have in our lives, the more it will enhance the life we have.