The Role of Grief in Understanding Our Values

Grief is rarely talked about or admired as a useful emotion to get to know what we deeply care about. We are encouraged to pretend we simply don’t experience grief. It is bred out of us, generation after generation.

When we are faced with disappointment in our lives, our hearts ache. This is the sadness or angst we feel when something we value disappears. It opens up a rawness that seems so vast. Though as an adult, we have developed (or are beginning to develop) capacities to see that our grief or anxiety is not the whole story. Over time we learn to discover that there is immense ground revealing itself within our frustration or defeat. We learn practices, coping skills, grounding techniques, and supportive exercises to both acknowledge the truth of our loving heart and tend to our safety, comfort, and strength.

Recognizing and Embracing Fragmented Parts

As we come to do personal work and become aware of our earliest experiences, most of us recognize young, fragmented parts of us. These are the losses that have gone un-grieved. They are the experiences we didn’t know we could even feel sad or rage about. They are the losses that we are still waiting to get permission to have. It is in coming to meet these experiences where we develop understanding and tenderness toward ourselves. We do deserve such notice.

We have a heart that knows how to break open. Not only does it know how to break open and empty, but it can fill up with its own nourishment; our own tenderness. This is the birth of self-compassion. We become the beloved by opening up to let love in.

The Power of Listening and Support

We are not taught about how listening to our aggrieved interior parts and being truthful can soothe and release burdens we have carried a very long time. We are not taught of the power and aliveness that is released in our courage, in our saying yes to our experience. We are also not taught that we can ask for support, that chosen people will be gentle with us, and that the world is hungry for this tenderness and permission too.

Grief gets such a bad rap. What is not known about grief is the way that it frees us. It clears out and makes space. It brings movement and relief to our held pain. It can finally be relieved of its duty, in continually having to nag us for attention, so we can feel better.

The Transformation Through Grief

Most people think if we open the gates of grief we will be forever buried within its grasp, yet, in an opposite perspective, we may find we have more control over the energy of it since we are finally in conversation with it. Over time, an upswell of movement, clarity, and direction may return.

We speak of grief like it is some other person, some ugly stranger that is invading our space. However, that grief is also a part of us. It misses us and is missed by us. In the end, we inevitably discover that all difficult feelings arise and disappear. Unmet sorrow, when invited to visit, may stay for a bit, and after its reunion, is content to go on its way. As a result, we are returned to being back in connection to all parts of us. We may find a contentedness in this truth-telling.

Embracing the Sacred Ground

Surely, meeting our sorrow is not something we are taught to welcome, but we may be surprised at the love and shifts that emerge as a result. Greater capacity to feel union, eros, spontaneity, and intimacy arise from meeting this sacred ground.