Hello lovelies!
How are you all doing this week? I’m feeling mixed emotions to be honest.
Yesterday was National Grief Day which is now sadly a subject very close to my heart. I lost my father suddenly in February of this year and my whole world was turned upside down.
My father was my hero and he meant the world to me. When my mother rang me with the news I could barely even stand on my legs; I slumped over the kitchen counter and sobbed so hard I couldn’t breathe.
I was his only child and he lived 250 miles from me. I wasn’t there when he passed and I felt like I’d failed him.
The myriad of emotions that come with grief is completely overwhelming and was unlike anything I had experienced before.
I lost my nan a few years ago and obviously, I was gutted and so sad but she was in the deep dark trenches of dementia and we were in some ways relieved to see her released from the prison of her mind.
She was 93 and had lived an incredible life.
My father was in his mid-seventies and had still not even fully retired.
He had, in my opinion, so much life left to live and I was furious and heartbroken that the spirit world had taken him for themselves.
Despite incredible support from my mother and her husband and my partner, the responsibility of being next of kin laid heavily on my shoulders for making the necessary arrangements.
I moved through the days making phone calls, filling in forms, making decisions about flowers, songs, clothes, coffins, and everything else in between.
I readied myself for the day of the funeral; shook people’s hands, listened to people’s stories about my dad, and hoped I had gotten the service right.
After poking at the buffet food for a few hours and smoking a few too many roll-ups it was time to return to my father’s house and begin the task of clearing his cottage.
I realised after everything was over and I had returned home from the long journey up North that I had managed to heal some of my old behaviour patterns.
On reflection, if I had lost my father 5 or 6 years ago things would have looked very different.
I would have gone out and got myself so drunk I would have forgotten my own name. I would have stayed up until the early hours of the morning and put off sleep in case I dreamt of him.
I would have stayed in bed all day with the covers pulled over my head, avoiding life, avoiding people, avoiding my grief, my feelings, my everything.
The start of change
During the two years I spent studying with Layla Martin to become a women’s empowerment coach, we spent an entire trimester going through all of the transformational tools ourselves before learning how to best use them with clients.
I learned how to sit with my feelings and not push them away. I learned that it is ok to be sad or angry or feel guilty. That emotions are our power.
Too many years of conditioning have taught women that we need to ‘man up’ and ‘stop being so sensitive’ but our emotions and feelings are the very things that make us amazing and are actually incredibly useful in all areas of our life including positions of power.
In essence, we need to feel all the feels and allow them to run through us. Allow each feeling and emotion to have its moment and not swallow it down or force a fake smile.
Like I mentioned last week, if we don’t allow energy to move through us, it gets stuck and can make us feel pretty pants.
No, it’s not much fun to spend six days in a row sobbing with snot pouring down your face or to be so angry that you scream into a pillow until you’re hoarse.
But the alternative is having to bury those feelings and the energy that needed to flow and then have it show up in your body a few weeks later as pain or weakness/burn out which is much worse.
It’s much easier in some ways to pretend that everything is fine than allow ourselves to be fully present with how we are feeling.
And grief and loss are such tricky life transitions to process as they are made up of so many emotions that can change in an instant.
Being present
I had to trust myself that I could make it through these emotions, that I could weather the storm. That I could rely on my felt sense to guide me through where in my body I was feeling the pain each day.
I went to bed early every night and spoke to my dad before falling asleep. I got up every day as usual and took care of my little boy.
I reached out to friends and family for support which is a huge deal for me. The old me would have gone incognito.
I noticed when my energy body felt almost too heavy to carry on and I held myself fully in those moments.
I poured my thoughts and feelings out to my partner instead of bottling them up and I laughed and cried my way through arranging my dad’s precious memorabilia throughout my house.
A month after the funeral, I found out I was pregnant and I realised that my father had given me a baby (so to speak).
He had been at my house for Christmas when I had my second miscarriage, it was the last time I had seen him and I knew at that moment when the pregnancy test turned positive that he was with me.
Pregnancy is an emotionally challenging time for me; I find the hormones wreak havoc with my energy body and I feel everything so much more deeply.
As a result, I have had to modify some of the ways that I use my energy. I set stricter boundaries around my bedtime (if I am not fully rested I am a monster!) and around how I use my time.
I steer clear of any energy drains; toxic people or environments and I become a little more selfish.
I’m growing a human life and I’m not willing to fall into that old pattern of neglecting my needs and putting myself last!
I’m wearing a t-shirt today that says ‘don’t feel bad about feeling’ and it’s so true. We live in a culture now where toxic positivity has become a thing.
Posts stating ‘positive vibes only’ and endless shots of people’s perfect lives are everywhere. It’s not possible or healthy, in my humble opinion to be positive all of the time.
In life, we are supposed to experience our full range of emotions healthily and safely. They all have their place.
Still healing old patterns
Before my training I would not allow myself to fully feel and process anger; it is something that I still have to work on even now; reminding myself that it’s ok to feel anger.
That I can feel anger and process it and come back to a place of centredness. That it is safe for me to be angry and I can trust myself to fully be present with that emotion.
Before I would have avoided it at all costs and instead chosen to be passive-aggressive and silently rage!
Anger has been the emotion that I have struggled with the most after losing my father. I don’t want to feel anger that he has gone but there are many days when I feel utterly furious that he has.
I am not angry with him, just with the unfairness of life. And that’s ok.
I know that every time I sit with my anger and acknowledge it, I am creating a new energy pattern, a new neuronal pathway that will one day feel entirely natural to me.
Well, that’s all from me for this week. I know this week’s blog was a little less upbeat but I hope it gave you some food for thought and that anyone who is going through grief and loss can find some comfort in my words.
Next week I’ll be writing about the importance of grounding and how we can draw on nature’s best to help us do that!
Let me know in the comments whether you have any behavioural patterns that you would like to change or heal. What emotions do you struggle to sit with?
Until next time, stay present and stay curious!
Much love
Lu x
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