Grief and Letting Go

I came home the other day and found my favorite coffee mug shattered on the floor. I loved this mug because it was handmade in Alaska. It had beautiful artwork of a sun on one side and the moon on the other. It was heavy, well crafted, and carried a lot of memories from a place I love, Alaska. Later that same day I realized I left my water bottle in the backseat of a rental car. It was also tied to my time in Alaska and had been with me for years and traveled many places with me. Alaska was my home and where I had planned to live for the rest of my life. But life had other plans, and I had to move away before I was ready to. Losing these two sentimental items got me thinking about the spiritual lesson of letting go. What does this have to do with healing? Everything. If we can’t let go, we can’t heal. When we hold on to certain emotions such as sadness, bitterness, resentment, anger, or grief, it can show up in our physical bodies through different signs and symptoms such as autoimmune conditions, hormone imbalances, heart problems, etc. In order to heal mind, body, and soul, it’s paramount to learn the art of letting go.

Our physical health can be a result of emotional pain. As a nurse, I’ve seen this in the lives of so many patients. But I never had gone through this personally until 2022. The last two years have been about letting go of the life I had, the way I thought it was supposed to be, and accepting the life I now have. I have had to learn how to navigate through the grief process and learn the art of letting go in order to heal my mind, body, and spirit. I’m happy to say I am no longer stuck in a place where I feel like I’m in a dark tunnel without seeing any light ahead. I finally feel like I am on the other side of my grief, at least for today. And today is what matters most. Grief is not linear, and we can and do bounce back and forth. We can be moving along fine and then something brings us right back to the center of our grief. My favorite Alaska mug being broken seemed to be asking me, “What are you going to do with this? Is this going to bring you back into the spiral of despair?” I surprised myself by simply cleaning up the mess, shaking my head at my naughty cats and deciding to use it as a measure of growth in learning the art of letting go.

Sometimes grief isn’t about losing a person, it can be about losing a job, a home, a pet, a lifestyle, health, etc. Grief shows up in many ways and I learned that we can’t compare our grief to someone else’s. In the midst of grief, we can feel isolated, lost, and as if we are navigating life without a map in unfamiliar territory. I couldn’t connect with anyone as my grief wasn’t about losing a person, it was a myriad of things that no one seemed to understand, and I didn't understand it either so couldn’t talk about it. I didn’t feel like I was entitled to feeling the grief I felt. I worked so many years as a hospice nurse that I thought grief was only justified with the loss of a person. The stages of grief according to Elizabeth Kubler Ross are denial, bargaining, anger, sadness, and acceptance. Not in that order necessarily, and you don’t go through each stage of grief in a nice straight line. The goal is to eventually move into acceptance and remain there.

There were so many nights over the last two years where I wanted to run away. Literally pack my bags and leave, this was denial, although I had physically moved, my mind and heart were still in Alaska. I was not able to accept my new reality. My mind fought it, and my physical body did as well. Looking back, I see now it was the bargaining stage of grief. On a soul level, I didn’t feel like I could stay, but on a physical level, I could not go back. I had an image of what grief was for me. I felt like I was in a mud pit deep in the earth, and all around me it was dark. Above the pit, I could see the sun and light, but I was so far down the pit with no way to get out as it was mud on both sides. I cried every day. Every single day for a year. I also couldn’t parent the way I needed, and I couldn’t connect with anyone. I went through all the steps of living, but I truly felt like I was a shell of a person. Simple tasks seemed daunting. Looking back, I see this was depression. I could not connect with any of my friends or family. It felt like everyone was living their life while I was stuck in some sort of purgatory. My grief was obscure, and I was alone in my grief. I didn’t feel justified to grieve despite the number of losses I was suffering from. My health deteriorated due to being in a constant state of emotional turmoil, I lost my dog and cat within two weeks of each other, I had to move from a home I loved and had a lot of memories in, leaving behind my son, my friends, a job I enjoyed, and having to start completely over again. Grief felt like an island I was on alone.

During this time, I prayed, meditated, practiced yoga, and walked around a lake daily. I journaled, I cried, I raged. And the grief carried on. It felt never ending. My prayers felt unanswered, even in my faith I felt abandoned. My physical health suffered due to the emotional pain I was carrying that I was struggling to surrender to and let go of.

We bought a house and sold our Alaska home. I bawled for hours the day we closed as I knew that it meant Alaska was in the rear-view mirror and I couldn’t keep dwelling there. But still, I wasn’t ready for acceptance. So, I continued to resist and live in this in-between place of mourning the past and not quite accepting the present. I did not want to let go. I just wanted life to go back to what it was. I was in between sadness and acceptance, and no longer in denial or bargaining. Slowly though, I started to have days where I felt some peace. I noticed things I liked about our new house such as the trees, and the sense of peace about the place we lived. My stuff from Alaska arrived and I was able to put my old belongings in my new home. Combining the past with the present helped me arrive at acceptance.

Below is what I learned about grief and letting go:

1. You can’t rush the grieving process. When you have to let go of something that was meaningful, it takes time to heal. It can take a lot of time; it can’t be forced.

2. It’s personal. No one will quite understand the journey except you. You’re the only traveler on your journey. You have side by side travelers at times, but it’s just you from beginning to end.

3. All grief matters. What is a significant loss to you matters even if it may seem insignificant to others.

4. Grief changes you. I can’t say for better or worse. But I like to think for the better. I now have deep empathy for anyone who is suffering.

5. Grief gets better with time. This one seems so cliche to me. Because when I was in the thick of it, I didn’t think it would ever get better. I couldn’t step outside of the grief itself to see any path ahead.

6. Put one foot in front of the other. Don’t give up, even if you cannot see the light, keep going. Find one small thing that you can be grateful about and build from that.

7. Acknowledge and allow the feelings to pass through. The only way to let go is to accept and allow all the feelings that arrive. Give permission to cry and mourn over the loss. There is an emotional release with crying. It’s okay to acknowledge and allow for feelings of anger, sadness, hurt, and sadness over whatever it is that was lost.

8. Grab tools from your Spiritual toolbox. Take the time out to process what you are going through. I read so many books on letting go, and spent hours in prayer, meditation, journaling, and walking in nature. I’m sure therapy may have been helpful, and I do know it’s helped many people. For me, all the tools I used were essential to healing.

Letting go is a daily act and a lifelong practice. Knowing that change is a part of life and being able to accept rather than resist will help keep the body, mind and soul open for healing. We have to process our grief to be able to let go and heal. It’s when we hold on and resist the changes that are happening that we start to experience dis-ease.