I have accumulated many books on the topic of grief. One of my newest books is a book of prayers. The title is Prayers of Honoring Grief written by Pixie Lighthorse. Pixie is very intuitive to the inner struggles of grief. Today I read the prayer, Honoring Loss of Control. Let me quote and share four sentences from this prayer.
· “Thank you for this exhausting day of pure chaos.”
· “May I seek to loosen my stranglehold on what I cannot ultimately keep together, so that deeper understanding of what is at work can flow in.”
· “Let there be a return to wholeness that offers more than can be found in a tight, anxious cluster.”
· “Help me cope with unpredictable circumstances and environments, knowing that I will find the tools to buffer my hyper-responsiveness.”
Grief is chaotic and exhausting. It is painful, uncomfortable and stressful. Grief is terrifying and lonely. Grief is just plain hard.
The feelings of grief range from high to low on the scale of energy and low on the scale of unpleasantness. For example, furious is a high energy feeling and hopeless is a low energy feeling. Both of these feelings are on the low end of the pleasantness scale. The feelings of grief are hard to live with because our society wants to likes the feelings that are on the high pleasantness end of the scale. It is exhausting to fake “feeling fine” when grief is full of low energy and low pleasantness feelings and emotions.
Living in grief asks us to loosen the grip of control. We do not need to control our emotions and feelings. We don’t need to control the physical manifestations of grief. We don’t need to manipulate our grief to fit our preconceived notion as to what it should be like. We don’t need to conform to societal expectations. We don’t need to control our grief in ways that are actually avoiding our grief. Let feelings and emotions be what they are. Feel them.
While we are screaming NO, grief is screaming YES.
Living grief is what Pixie is praying for. Loosening the stranglehold becomes easier when we realize that we cannot hold our grief together anyway. Grief is chaotic and messy. There is no rhyme or reason to it. Grief cannot be controlled; it eventually gets its way. When we choose to live grief rather than control it, we begin to see and feel a shift occur. When the desire to control changes to a desire to experience, we feel a release from exhausting expectations. A desire to control leads us to believe in an expected outcome. Whereas a desire to experience leads to open possibilities. We begin to observe our grief while living it instead of judging it and manipulating it. Being free from the exhausting expectations put upon us by ourselves, our family and our society allows us to live our grief in a way that serves us instead of harms us. We feel a little encouragement and empowerment when we are free to BE in our grief. This might be the “return to wholeness” that Pixie is praying for.
“Let me fall apart when I need to, and make room for others to splinter into smithereens, too. Let there be a return to wholeness that offers more than can be found in a tight, anxious cluster.” (Honoring Loss of Control, Pixie Lighthorse) For this is living with Grief in Life.
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