The Art of Grieving

Hi everyone! I hope the holiday season is starting out smoothly for you. This can be a busy time of year. For some, it's complete joy while, for some, it may be filled with moments of grieving and being overwhelmed.

I haven't posted many personal blog posts over the past few months. School has taken up a lot of my time and energy lately. Also, we all seem to go through times of spending time inwards and allowing things to grow and settle inwardly instead of expressing things outwardly (and this is the perfect time of year to do that). The cold and darker months of the year call to us to spend more time cuddled inwardly while, sadly, our world still demands of us to be on-the-go constantly (our world truly is in trauma).

November was a difficult month for my husband and me. I was finishing a class in school so there was much to do. Also, my husband's beautiful mom passed away on her birthday (a perfect full-circle moment for such a beautiful person).

My husband and I have been together for 23 years. Over these 23 years, we've learned a lot about each other. We're both slow, inward processors and yet we still process in different ways. When we learned to step back and observe each other with wonderment, we learned more about each other and this allows us to be there for each other in a new way.

Grieving is so personal and not something that can be done in one way - there is no right or wrong way to grieve. (If someone ever tells you that you are grieving wrong or that you HAVE to do something in a particular way (especially demanding that you have to forgive), please question what they are saying to you.)

After my mother-in-law died, we came together as we grieved in our own ways. Our beautiful friends asked me how he was doing and what they could do - they also asked how I was doing and what I needed. Our friends were there for me as I needed them to be and they were there for my husband in the way he needed.

My husband wasn't talking very much about his mom and I feared that he wasn't processing all of this. I realized that that was my fear and I decided to let my fear set within me instead of forcing it outward onto him. Instead of trying to "fix" something for him that didn't need fixing, I just let him be. What I ended up realizing was that he was processing and was talking about his mom... just not in the way that I would have or the way the world would tell him to.

Being an amazing musician, my husband was writing more and more music during this time. He was getting up during the night to write or play music and during his breaks at work he was writing and playing music - every moment he could find, he was playing or writing music. That's when it hit me... he was talking about his mom and he was processing. When I stepped back and listened, I could hear him talk about her even when there weren't words... just music.

When it comes to those we care about, we want to help them. Sometimes helping someone is more about sitting with them as they express in their own way. If I had tried to "fix" this for him, I would not have been with him in his grieving.

As we go through this busy season, people are going through more than what we probably know - it's not magical for everyone. If we allow ourselves to just sit with the person we care about, we can be there with them in a magical and transformative way as they say to us in (sometimes) unspoken words all that they want to say.