Grief
In Traditional Chinese Medicine the Lungs are associated with grief.
Grief that remains unresolved and becomes chronic can create disharmony in the lungs, weakening the lung qi. This in turn can interfere with the lung's function of circulating qi around the body.
There is so much grief being processed right now in the world, after the fires that burned the lungs of the planet in Australia, now a virus has come to infect our human lungs.
Grief involves five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance—and recently added a sixth: finding meaning. We address by naming what grieves us, process by expressing our feelings, resolve by letting go and integrate by accepting.
Grief is irreversible. We cannot cancel or change it, yet we try. We have to be kind to ourselves in our grief, letting it take the lead, not forcing it.
Grief is composed of three feelings:
Sadness that something was lost
Anger that it was taken away
Fear that it will never be replaced
These three feelings can be experienced simultaneously or in any order.
Grieving helps us deal with the implacable truths of impermanence, loss, betrayal and suffering. Grief work grants us the access to our deepest feelings and to our healthy vulnerability.
Whatever it is that we have lost, healing is possible when we stay present and process the emotions that comes with loss. Grief work leads to our letting go of resentment and therefore to forgiveness, it is itself an act of love for others.
Loss can be anything, a person we love, a job, an identity we have created, an attachment to certain ideas or perhaps a dream for the future.
Losing something can make you feel like you have lost a part of you, something that was part of who you were and this can lead to questions like: “Who am I?” and “How can I lose a part of me?” and “Was it even me in the first place?”
Is it possible to lose yourself, your true Self? Or did we just lose the idea and the dream of how we wanted our lives to be. Because who we truly are, our true Self is still there, despite the external changes.
Perhaps true healing from loss is the realisation that whatever we have lost are merely extensions of our identity and solace can be found in knowing that we can never lose anything fundamental to our true nature.
Could the lesson from grief be; to not attain but rather to deduct, peeling away all the layers of protection, coping mechanisms and adaptations? Finally surrendering to what is and daring to show our perfect imperfections with all the vulnerability that comes with being human.
And amidst the compassion, grace, humility and gratitude that comes with being true to our selves we can appreciate grief as our teacher rather than something to avoid.
“The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly,
and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it,
to the sanctity of it,
you can’t get off your knees for a long time,
you’re driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss…”
– Dean Koontz