Unpack and feel lighter for your healing journey ahead
Learning to carry love instead of burden: a grief counselor's perspective on healing.
When People Hear That I'm a Grief Counselor
They all have a similar reaction. I usually hear, "Wow, that's so heavy."
I disagree with this.
Yes, the emotion of grief can make us feel heavy if we don't know what to do with it in the future.
One of the biggest reasons grief feels so heavy is because it starts out as a form of love with nowhere to go.
Over time, if we carry it around like a heavy burden, though, it will continue to weigh us down.
So, what if we start to think about grief differently?
What if, instead, we think of it as learning to let go of the grief while carrying the love for the person we lost?
What if we challenge the notion that grief and loss are so heavy that we can't carry them?
What if we start thinking about it like packing for a future trip?
- We only want to carry the best things with us.
- We only want things that make us feel good to come on the journey.
- We can choose to carry the love we have for our loved ones, and the love they gave us, with us.
If we do this, we realize we are not simply moving on. We are learning to lessen the burden of carrying heavy grief with us.
Can You Imagine What That Might Feel Like?
Close your eyes and picture them.
Picture them floating in your mind and in your heart.
Picture them in a happy memory or in a place they enjoyed being, or somewhere you enjoyed being together.
Let these memories fill you with love, peace, and warmth.
This doesn't feel heavy.
This doesn't feel burdensome.
This feels like honoring them in a way that lets you carry them lovingly, fondly, and warmly.
This is not a weight to carry.
Your body feels freer, lighter, stronger. It endured something that once felt impossibly heavy.
Much like a backpack full of things we don't need, we can recognize that we don't have to bring everything with us on our future journey.
The backpack is no longer weighing us down.
It feels freeing.
So, actually, being a grief counselor is just the opposite of holding something heavy.
It's about helping others learn that they no longer have to feel weighed down by grief.
It's about helping people discover that they can release some of the weight while carrying forward the love.
