Honoring and Working with Grief

Photo by Emily at Fieldstone Gardens

Grief, just the word is so difficult to talk about. We hold so much anxiety around death, our society plagues death as a terrible loss. But grief is just the fear that we don’t longer have any control, that we will be nothing. Because truthfully, all we all want is, to be heard, to be loved, and to be remembered.

So my question today is this, what is your relationship with grief?

I’m going to share parts of my journey and I hope this helps.

One year apart, I lost the most beautiful and supportive people in my life, my grandparents. I remember thinking as a child, how could I possibly ever live or function without them? My grandparents were my rock, my safety net, my heart.

Following my grandfather’s death, I cried, as everyone does. I did what I thought was grieving, going through the emotions: anger, guilt, depression, acceptance. I felt like that was a societal tutorial on how to grieve, and a way to minimize the strong feelings I had of fear.

I was terrified. Watching your beloved grandfather that had been the biggest staple in your life become so fragile and slip away to leave his earth body, that was an experience that absolutely traumatized me.

We know death traumatizes people right? But do we ever really dig deeper than that?

Does death create trauma for us because of what we value? Does it create a fear of the unknown because a society we are taught to be so interconnected with everyone else we lose touch with what we feel inside?

For me, it’s the fear of just not existing. I live to exist, I want others to know I exist. Ah, there it is. The shadow work rearing its ugly head at me again.

I want to be known, which means I want to be heard. I felt heard by my grandparents, who would listen to me now? Would the world hear me in the same compassionate light they did?

Would the world understand how hard life is to navigate through sometimes? Would my friends and family hold the same space for me?

I realized how important connection to others is and was, but what I am really realizing is that I have to hold that inner dialogue with myself. I am dependent on validation from others, because my child-like voice on the inside was and is sometimes, so afraid.

So, I grew and I’m growing one step at a time. I felt like I was in another spiritual lull, until we lost our beloved Luna in a freak way, due to Lyme Nephritis.

Oof, and there’s that guilt coming in, there’s the narrative I am telling myself that I wont have her there when I need her most. But, did I hold that space for her? Sure, I loved her every day, but was that enough?

There was a period of time I was so dis-regulated ( because of stressors due to C- PTSD) that I actually attempted to re-home Luna, because my environment wasn’t sufficient for me or her, and she was high stress, which in turn, really, really overwhelmed me.

This brought me back to the time that I had to re-home my beloved rescue dog, because he was “too” much for my partner at the time, and I valued human affection and felt entrapped by a toxic relationship, and “chose” that route over the needs of my dog. (That pup is in an incredible home now.) But that didn’t take away the feeling of “I’m abandoning him.”

That spirialed me into a place where I felt useless, guilty, burdened, horrible. How could I preach positive reinforcement and other ethical horsemanship tools when I have had these thoughts and done these things? How could I say all this healing jargon if I have been a that person?

That is exactly why I should share this. People do grow, they can heal, and you can move past your shadows.

Can you see how one traumatic event brings up all this noise?

Healing isn’t surface level. It is not mantras and inspirational videos (although at times are super helpful), healing is doing the uncomfortable work. The rage work. The grief work. The ancestral work. The ego work. When you make progress and your heart starts to open and heal,

I promise you wont regret pushing through closer to the other side.

And I know, you’re probably saying, what the heck does this have to do with horsemanship?

The simple answer is, everything.