In my experience, grief is not something we “get over” by following pre-prescribed stages, but something we may be asked to tend to throughout our lives. It is very individual and takes a unique expression for each person.
The timeline for this voyage is not given by the psychiatric community, nor by insurance panels or teachers of spirituality, but written in the stars. To pathologize the experience of grief is a work against nature.
The grieving process may not have an endpoint, a goal line, or state of completion in which we come to some final resolution, where we “finish” and land in some untouchable place, free from falling apart and breaking into pieces yet again.
While some forms of spirituality and healing have this fantasied end state as a targeted objective, the heart is endless and grief may be a companion for the duration of a life.
For me it is not so much a process as a non-linear, unfolding partner. It moves not by way of straight line, but by that of circle and spiral.
Art by Hans Braxmeier
My most recent book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available
The next book, A Healing Space: Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come
The next event is The Healing Shame Retreat: Spiritual Awakening and Transforming the Core Wound of Unworthiness, April 24-29, 2019 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with co-facilitator Jeff Foster
