Grief… feel
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Have you ever thought of grief? What is it? How do we know if we are grieving?
According to the Oxford dictionary, grief is the feeling of pain and sorrow of losing someone you love... whether it’s death or any kind of loss (in some cases, no return).
Grief hurts, and it will show differently from one person to another, and also can show for the same person differently in different situations.
Previously whenever I wanted to talk about grief I would only remember the day that my grandfather passed away and the pain that my heart and I carried which was very deep; I couldn’t talk for 2 days and only replied if it’s utterly necessary! However, as my growth journey is taking me further in life, I have come to learn that grief can be experienced in different situations and not only manifests in the loss of a person.
I have been for a while not myself, angry and frustrated, feeling sad and hurt, so like the responsible person I am; I called one of my coaches friends and booked myself an appointment, as I thought I need to work through my negative emotions, know just the triggers, clean and reset, and being the positive person I am; I have also wrote down some limiting believes that I believed they might be contributing to my unpleasant experiences & repetitive patterns with specific people. Funny that I thought it was going to be that simple! I wont share with you the details of the sessions, however I will share with you this, no body is responsible for the lack of boundaries that you have with yourself and the world outside of you, and you either choose to share them with the world, especially those who you love, or you will end up grieving. If they choose to respect your boundaries then that is great and if not then do yourself a favor and respect your own boundaries. I am an advocate for communication, and saying what you want, accept, and tolerate, however; some people especially the ones you love will make it very hard for you; that’s when communication fails miserably. And that is when you need to stand for yourself, if you value your own “self respect”.
Yes! I have been grieving myself respect for a while now, I did it unconsciously because I am a big believer of “unconditional love”, what everyone seems to misunderstand is unconditional love is not that whatever you do I will accept, it is I have the capacity to love you and send love your way, and show you love even if I walk away! I will continue to love you, and if you do not respect my boundaries and value the love that I have for you, I will take myself away from the equation. In simple words, its unconditional love not unconditional treatment. Although I have been communicating this to the people I love, they seem to take my kindness for weakness, and I portrait myself as a pushover, meaning that they can get around with it because I love them. But they Don’t! Even if I want to be patient, my inner self disagrees with me, and that is why I have been losing myself, because literally my inner being is telling me “we have gone so far now in our growth journey and healing that we will never accept lack of love, understanding & appreciation from anyone, especially the ones we love.”. So my definition of self respect is showing love in it’s highest form:
Compassion: acknowledging my needs and wants
Understanding & communication: feeling heard
Appreciations: feeling seen
Kindness: caring for my wellbeing
This is my definition of self respect, and because I am a person who shines even brighter through love, they are very interlocked together. And respect & love are unable to be separated, the moment the separation happens or any of these 4 is missing, I am not doing okay, my inner being tells me we are falling behind, these are the bare-minimum, we do not have these met we are unable to accept, tolerate, receive, give, function—> system is down, reset needs to be initiated. And we all understand that in some situations and with some people like family, removing yourself from the equation is not the right way to deal with things, so it becomes tricky to solve, messy, sometimes ugly and heavy… but there has to be a light 💡 at the end of the tunnel…no?!?! Right?!?
Yes we all deal with grief in different ways, we all suffer differently, but what matters is that you have to love yourself first when you are grieving, take your own hand, look at “what did I do that contributed to my own suffering”, be the cause and not the effect, learn from your own mistakes, misfortunes and suffering. Never allow yourself to be a victim. YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS!
