Good Grief!

Let's face it, I think the entire country, maybe even the entire world, is grieving right now.  We've all suffered losses:  loss of lifestyle, loss of faith, loss of jobs, loss of loved ones, the list goes on and on.  And the only wrong way to do grief is not to do it at all.  This episode addresses some of the things that might happen while grieving, and some ways to move successfully through the process.

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Titled Good Grief!

Welcome to Fearlessly Feral Living!  This is the reverend Karen Linsley broadcasting to you from the Woogie Ranch, out here in the back 40 of northwestern Nevada, where I’m a half hour away from the nearest gas station and grocery store!  This is episode #7, season 2!  Why season 2?  To be honest, I wasn’t going to do seasons with this podcast.  I was just going to go for it.  But things happen.  My last podcast was in July. About months ago.  There’s a reason for that.  My husband died on August 30 of this year. I got started on the podcast, got six episodes published, and he got sicker and sicker.  All of a sudden I found myself with a husband in home hospice, needing 24/7 care.  Then he died and there I was, a grieving widow.  Things like podcasting took a back seat for a while.  I actually went on a sabbatical from all my ministry work.  But here I am, back at it, and very happy to be back.  And of course, grief is prominent in my consciousness right now and, I think it is prominent in the consciousness of the general population as well.  So, I though a podcast on grief might be just the ticket for all of us.   The official title of this episode is Good Grief!  As in GOOD grief!  Or good GRIEF! 

Because let’s face it.  I imagine most of us have something to grieve about.   
 
And I’ll be honest here, I’ve hemmed and hawed and second guessed myself about whether or not to publish this podcast.  Hell, I’ve even second guessed myself about whether to even prepare it!  Guess what?  Indecisiveness is a nice little side benefit in the process of grieving, and I will address that in a minute.  A hint:  with all shadows, there is a light side as well.  But before I get into that, let’s talk about why I think this is an excellent time to do a podcast on grief.

HELLO!  Can you say 2020?  I bet there isn’t a one of you who can say they have not experienced a loss this year.  Loss of lifestyle, loss of faith, loss of loved ones, loss of job.  You name it, the losses are there. 

And then there’s me.  I lost my husband back in august.  Which means, at the time of this recording, it’s been about 3 months.  He didn’t die of COVID but to cancer.  Which he got diagnosed with the day after our wedding almost 3 years ago.  So we spent the entirety of our very short marriage dealing with a life threatening illness.   

Yep, I think a podcast episode on grieving might be indicated here.

One more thing:  I want to throw in some disclaimers.  I dared to mention a while back on Facebook that I was contemplating doing a podcast and...GASP!....even a workshop on grief!  OH MY GOD!  You should have been there to witness the pushback!  Folks who said no one was going to tell them how to grieve.  Folks who tried to be gentle about and say it was a personal thing.  Folks who said there was no right or wrong way to do grief.  Wow.  Ok, here’s the deal:  none of that is what this podcast is about.  I’m not, nor would I ever, suggest to anyone how to grieve.  I’m only sharing my experience and what I have learned about it in the hopes it might help if one chooses to utilize it.  Ok?  Ok.  But the truth is I’ve successfully dealt with losses throughout my lifetime.  In fact, I became so good at dealing with loss that at one point I had to examine my own consciousness and beliefs around loss and decide whether I wanted to continue to believe that I could only succeed if I began with a loss.  But that’s a topic for another podcast.   I’ve also been blessed to have been able to work with people both one on one and in groups around successful recovery from losses of all types.  And I have that tiny little thing called a Masters Degree, which both gave me a splendid education in matters such as grief work, and also a ministerial license.  And it turns out matters of faith have much to do with the grieving process.  So I’m going to ask you to just keep an open mind here.  None of what I am about to say is meant to discount any of your experiences in any way. 

So I’m  going to talk about grief, and how to deal with it, and then I’m gonna talk about some other stuff, and hopefully by the end of the podcast you’ll be thinking enough about some of this stuff that it will motivate you to move into the beautiful openings that are created by loss of any type. Because what on earth can the losses be all about if we don’t move into the openings created by them?  That is how grief gets good folks.

And I say this with full knowledge that grief has no schedule, and certainly does not live up to any kind of formula that anyone has presented to us.  Even Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who came up with those almost infamous stages of grief in 1969, also said later she regretted that her stages of grief had been misunderstood.  She didn’t come up with those stages for survivors, she came up with them as a result of working with dying people. The stages are for the dying.  Not the living.  And in case you are not familiar with them, here they are:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  If you are still here, breathing air and occupying physical space, then these stages are not for you.  If you are in hospice, check ‘em out, they might apply.

So let’s explore grief from a different point of view shall we?

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, there is no wrong or right way to do grief.  Except that the only wrong way is not to do it at all.  And by doing it, I mean experiencing the full range of feelings.  The anger and the peace.  The sadness and the laughter.  The loss of faith, and the faith.  The frustration and the acceptance.  The indecisiveness. The absent mindedness. The full roller coaster ride of emotions.  The one way to do grief improperly is to not allow yourself to fully feel all the feelings that come up.

And here are a couple of clues that will tell you haven’t fully grieved:  you are stuck.  In other words, you are still reliving the loss.  Still wanting to go back to life the way it was before the loss.  Romancing the way life was before the loss.  You have a lack of forgiveness about the loss.  You are not moving forward.  You can’t allow the loss to move on.  You haven’t moved into the openings, you might not even have been able to think about openings, a new way of being, new ways of showing up in the world.  And notice never have I suggested that you forget about the loss, or get closure.  UGG.  There is no such thing.  Loss is about acknowledgment, fully feeling the feelings and expressing them in appropriate ways, and then moving into the gifts and the openings created by the loss.

And no, I am not in any way shape or form implying that you will ever GET OVER whatever the loss is.  I’m just presenting a way to live easier with it.  A way to live successfully through the grief, not to hide the grief.

After all, the point of this podcast is to be able to live fearlessly feral and we can’t do that if we are actively grieving a loss. 

So here’s what I went through in the time leading up to my husband’s transition, and since then.  I share this only because I think it might help some of my listeners out there, maybe even you.  I have a feeling you might be able to identify with some of this stuff.

Before I do, I also want to share this:  I’ve done some research into grief.  It seems that contrary to popular opinion, there is no such thing as a stage of grief. Not for us living folks anyway.  Again, those stages first proposed by Elizabeth Kubler Ross?  For the dying.  Grief just is.  There is nothing to get over, no closure.  There is, instead, stuff to look at and move through.

So, again, you may have lost a loved one due to divorce or death.  You may have lost possessions.  You may have lost a career or job.  You may have lost a lifestyle.  You may have lost faith.  You may have lost hope.  Or you may have experienced more than one or all of these losses.  I do not know that the nature of the loss matters.  What matters is what happens after the loss, and what we do with what happens.

Because we have to do something.  If we don’t address it, we risk staying in grief mode, and that isn’t pretty.  It is possible to feel better.  And even better than that, it is possible to move into what I like to call the next greatest level of existence. 

Ok, all the disclaimers are done now.  Whew!  I hope you heard them.  Onward:  Here’s what I experienced in the months up to and after the death of my husband:

Anger, relief, absent mindedness, extreme tiredness but inability to sleep at night, and the roller coaster ride and indecisiveness.  I’ll take each one separately.

And before I do that, I just want to add one more thing:  in new thought we like to say that we turn away from conditions.  In the case of grief, we might translate that as moving on, looking on the bright side, turning towards the light.  Yeah, ok.  When it is time.  But really, consider that turning away from conditions does not mean ignoring them or stuffing them or pretending they aren’t happening.  Consider that it might instead mean not allowing those conditions to have power over us.  We still have to feel the feelings.  Go ahead, feel them.  It’s ok.  Here’s what I’m talking about.

Anger:  you are, or have been, or will be, angry.  It’s ok.  Not only is it ok, it is normal.  And contrary to what we are told by some faith traditions and some spiritual teachings, anger is ok.  What is not ok is acting out that anger in inappropriate ways. What is not ok is telling ourselves we shouldn’t be angry.  Bullshit.  That’s spiritual bypass of the worse kind.  It doesn’t matter what you are angry at.  It doesn’t matter why you angry.  What matters is that you acknowledge it, don’t judge yourself harshly because of it, and allow it to move through you.  Find appropriate ways to express it.  I cry, yell, do something physical that elevates my heart rate, write it all down in a big fat hissy fit huff then burn the pages.  I even watch shoot em ups on the tv and imagine that the bad guys are the object of my anger, and watch them go up in smoke.  Yes, anger is part of loss and part of grief.  It’s ok to be angry.  It isn’t ok to deny it.  It isn’t ok to kill someone behind it.  But it is ok to be angry.

Relief:  we are told by society we aren’t supposed to feel relief when they go.  Nonsense.  If a guy is so sick he can’t do any of the things that make life worth living, and his quality of life is not only really bad but really, there IS NO quality, then wouldn’t it, couldn’t it, even shouldn’t it be a relief that he goes?  I remember feeling relief as the dominant emotion when my mom died.  She was so sick and so miserable for such a long time.  But I didn’t tell anyone I felt relieved, because I thought we weren’t supposed to feel that.  Your feelings are valid.  It is ok to feel them.

Somewhere in all this mess is compassion.  I began to feel compassion for my husband and what he went through, and then I began to feel compassion for myself, so I could stop judging myself for my feelings.

Absent mindedness.  I’ve dubbed this one widow’s brain.  I’m having some fun with this one.  Yes, I find my fun in weird places. Other folks who’ve done the grieving process have told me this one is a biggie.  Forgetful, spacey, those of us who are actively grieving are very familiar with those things.  What I know about myself is that I get absent minded whenever I’m processing anything.  I learned about that when I first got into recovery and was doing my first inventory.  Two words:  klutzy and absent minded.  It was quite humorous actually, looking back on it. There is nothing to be done about this except write everything down and try to be careful.  Particularly if you are still working.  And try to see the humor in it.  I’ve asked my friends:  um, what did we talk about?  And they know me well enough to know that I don’t ask the question because I didn’t pay attention when we were having the conversation.  They laugh and give me a reminder or two and I’m good to go. If we can’t laugh at this kind of stuff, we can cry at it.  Either way is fine.  But the absent mindedness is real.  Don’t harshly judge yourself for it.  Just write everything down, and refer to your list a lot.  And try not to fall down the stairs or run into a door.  All of which I’ve done.  Stone cold sober.  Did I say funny?  Yeah, it really is.

Disruption in sleep patterns:  the truth is I began to experience this before my husband died.  I would wake up in the middle of the night, totally done with sleep.  Again, don’t judge it.  Do the best you can with this one.  Take catnaps if you can, and remember, no one ever died from lack of sleep.

Let’s talk about that indecisiveness I mentioned earlier. You might not even be able to decide what you want for dinner.  It’s ok.  It’s ok not to eat if you can’t decide.  Definitely don’t try to make any big deal decisions while you are actively grieving.  Wait a bit.  If you are actively doing this thing called grieving, when you emerge you will not be the same person you were going into it, so wait a bit to make those decisions, because they might not fit the new you.

And then there is the roller coaster ride.  This is the ups and downs of emotions, literally crying one moment and laughing the next.  Sleeping for 15 hours in a day, then not sleeping for two days.  Eating ravenously, then no appetite at all.  Joy one hour, sadness the next.  If I wasn’t careful I could get motion sickness from the roller coaster ride.  I learned to honor it by....you guessed it:  leaning into it.  As much as I could given work.  If I needed to cry I let myself do so.  And If I couldn’t cry because I was on my way to officiate a wedding, I had a chat with myself and gave myself permission to cry later, and I did.  In the car.  On the way home.  And don’t try to figure out why you are crying.  Just let it be.  Allow the tears.  Don’t question it.  Asking why is a waste of energy.  Why is irrelevant.  Just allow whatever emotions that come up.  Fighting them makes them stronger.  What you resist persists.  Just go with it.  I also took to telling my friends, if we set an appointment for something social, it was subject to rescheduling if, on the day of said appointment I was having a down day.  The only things not subject to reschedule were work things, and I said no to as much work related stuff as I could get away with financially.  It is ok to say no, it is ok to reschedule if needed.  Be gentle with yourself.

Honestly, in a perfect world, we would all be able to go on sabbatical for a few months after a huge loss.  Just give ourselves time to experience all those emotions, sleep when it comes and not sleep when it doesn’t.  I’ve been lucky.  I got to go on partial sabbatical, and I am declaring right now that there is such a thing.  There’s a reason why this is the first podcast in five months.  I took a grief sabbatical.  Do what you can within the realities of your life.  Yep, I cancelled a lot of stuff.  I am grateful I have friends that understand and accept that.  If you are still working a monday through Friday 9-5, do the best you can with getting enough quiet time during your off times to honor your feelings. 

Write about it.  I returned to a spiritual practice that I don’t always do, except when it is indicated by the events in my life.  It is called morning pages.  A style of writing invented by Julia Cameron and revealed in her book The Artist’s way.  It is also sometimes called Stream of consciousness writing.  Write, in longhand, 3 pages of whatever.  It doesn’t have to be legible, you aren’t going to go back and revisit it.  It doesn’t have to be grammatically correct.  It doesn’t have to make sense.  It’s just about getting the emotions out of you and onto the paper.  When you do this you clear the way.  A clear path makes for an easier grieving process.  And a clear path opens the channels for that new consciousness I’ve been speaking to throughout this process.

Last but not least, let’s talk about faith.  In my work with people, I hear a lot of anger at god.  I happen to think that is misdirected anger.  In reality, god is the one thing that can carry us through this thing called grieving.  It is the one thing that can give us comfort.  It is the one thing that can allow us to open up to new ways of living and being after a loss.  God is the most important fact of our lives, but it isn’t to blame for the loss.  The reality is there is nothing and no one to blame.  It just is.  In the grief process, which I believe inherently contains a channel to open up to new and wonderful things in our lives, god plays a very important role. It gives us strength, power, feelings of peace and yes, even, eventually, feelings of joy and being ok.

Here’s how to put the good into grief: take the time, make the time, to become aware that you are grieving.  This worldwide pandemic thing we’ve got going on?  It’s a huge loss for everyone.  Really.  The entire world.  Lifestyles have changed.  I don’t think they will ever get back to what passed for normal before.  The good part is that we get to create a new normal.  In your awareness, do not judge yourself.  View yourself with compassion.  Be gentle with yourself.  Consider that in all loss there is simultaneously an opening for something new to be born, and consider that you are at choice as to what you want that to be.  One last thing:  allow and avail yourself of the gifts that others are offering.  Reach out.  Talk with folks.  Ask for help.  And when it comes, receive it with gratitude. 

That’s what I have on grief for you.  I hope you gained some benefit from this episode.  Allow, accept, be gentle.  Experience it all, fully and deeply.  Think about god a lot. Find things to be grateful for.  This too shall pass and in its place will be something new and wonderful.  I guarantee it.

Outro:

I thank you for listening, and I know that it is no accident that you are here.  I affirm your greatest good!  I affirm your inherent divinity, and that that divinity shows up in your life as wisdom, prosperity, peace and unconditional love.  I know that you are the place where God shows up in this world.  I love you, and I support you.

Fearlessly Feral Living is sponsored by Center for Spiritual Living Carson City Nevada, a teaching chapter. 

Our MISSION is to provide a strong and unshakeable inner foundation that works for long term successful living.
Our PURPOSE is activating inner self awareness to live unlimited lives.
Our VISION is a world in which everyone lives Fearlessly Feral.

If you wish to contribute financially to support this mission, you can go to www.cslcc.org and click on the donate button. 

Alternatively, you can go to https://www.patreon.com/Fearlesslyferal?fan_landing=true and become a member!

We also have a private Facebook group called Fearlessly Feral Living where we discuss podcast topics and other things too!  You can join by going here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/255310015873757/?ref=share

I’d love to hear from you!  You can reach me at karen@karenlinsleycom

Until next time, I am knowing fearlessly feral living for you and for me.
































https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/supersurvivors/201707/why-the-five-stages-grief-are-wrong


Grief:  personal for all.  It has now been 8 weeks since my husband made his transition.  My personal experience was that it took me two days, maybe three, to cry.  That’s me.  Because of some very old defense mechanisms, I go numb when shit happens.  Can’t feel.  I’ve made progress in that area.  Now I know when I’m numb.  And it doesn’t take as long to move out of the numbness.  Once I was able to cry and feel again, I felt it.  I reveled in it.  I rolled around in it like a pig rolls in mud.  I allowed all those feelings to come.  I expressed my anger.  To anyone who would listen and probably a few who didn’t want to listen, they just got stuck in the presence of one of my tirades.  I cried.  And cried. I spent the sleepless nights staring at the night sky, reading and just generally not sleeping.  I cancelled everything except work related stuff that could not be cancelled.  And warned my friends that if I scheduled a lunch date, for example, I might cancel it if that roller coaster chose that day to take a dive.  Because it was a roller coaster ride. Up and down.  Up and down.  I’m surprised I didn’t get sea sick.  But I took a deep dive into grief.  And it is my belief that today, two months after he left, because I allowed the feelings, the roller coaster ride is not as subject to the extreme lows it once was.  I still don’t feel like taking on a lot of stuff yet.  In fact, I’m very aware that I am now riding that edge between taking time alone and isolation, resting and depression, feeling the feelings and self pity.  I’ve told my prayer partners to call me on it if I go over the edge.  That’s my person experience with grief.  We are all different.  I don’t, and won’t post photos of my dead husband on my facebook wall.  I’ve changed my marital status to widowed.  To me, it seems like part of the grieving process means letting them go.  They’ve moved on.  I should too.  I am not interested in hanging on to a relationship that simply is no longer possible.  I miss him sometimes.  But the simple truth is that he is gone and I am still here and I have a responsibility to live a good life.  That’s my personal experience with grief.

The purpose of this episode is not to define the grieving process for you, or to give you a magic formula that will work in all cases of loss.  The purpose of this podcast is the same no matter what the topic of each episode is:  to live fearlessly feral.  Wild and free.  To experience unbounded joyful living.  So when the shit hits the fan, it is not about ignoring it, going into spiritual bypass behind it or denying it.  None of that works.  Bad stuff is going to happen.  It is a guarantee.  It is part of life.  I believe our purpose in life is to get the gift.  To dig through all that horse shit to find the pony.  Because that pony is there.

I’m referring to a story about two twin boys:  A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other wastheir looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it
was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed
the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one
was an eternal optimist, the other a doom & gloom pessimist.

Just to see what would happen, on the twins' birthday their
father loaded the pessimist's room with every imaginable toy and
game. The optimist's room he loaded with horse manure.

That night the father passed by the pessimist's room and found
him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly.

"Why are you crying?" the father asked.

"Because my friends will be jealous, I'll have to read all these
instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I'll
constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get
broken," answered the pessimist twin.

Passing the optimist twin's room, the father found him dancing
for joy in the pile of manure. "What are you so happy about?" he
asked.

To which his optimist twin replied, "There's got to be a pony in
here somewhere!"

And here is where we get to the heart of the matter.  The Science of Mind teaching that is the foundation for this podcast.  We are what we think.  And what we think creates.  If you are thinking, you are creating. 


















This is a podcast about living fearlessly feral.  Wild and free.  No matter what. 

a podcast devoted to successful creative living.  Successful living begins from within us and moves outward.  Change your thinking and change your life.

Unbounded joyful living

Our MISSION is to provide a strong and unshakeable inner foundation that works for long term successful living.
Our PURPOSE is activating inner self awareness to live unlimited lives.
Our VISION is a world in which everyone lives wild and free.


I believe that every single thing that happens in our lives is ultimately for our greatest good.  Every single thing.  No exceptions. 


Things happen through us, not to us.
The kicker with that is that we have to allow it.  We have to stop focusing our attention outward and asking why.  We have to stop living in the past and thinking about how much of a hole is there because whatever it is we lost is gone.  Instead, we have to allow grief to have its way with us.
Let that sink in a bit.
We have to allow the rage.  I think the key to this is not to allow inappropriate behavior behind the rage.  Allow it, process it.  We allow it by acknowledging it is there.  We don’t stuff it, deny it, bury it in layers of shame and shouldn’ts.  It HAS to be.  What doesn’t have to be is harming ourselves or others behind it.  One of these days I’ll do a podcast about how our thoughts are not the boss of us.  This anger stuff, it has to occur.  And there are healthy ways to allow this.  I do physical stuff.  Hard physical stuff.  I moved furniture by myself and dug in the garden and got myself all out of breath and red in the face with physical activity.  I’ve cleaned his stuff out of the house, yelling and cursing at him every step of the way.  I’m sure you can think of ways to allow anger and rage to do what it needs to do.  I’ve heard screaming into a pillow helps.  The point here is, when we’ve experienced a loss, we must allow whatever feelings that come up to be. 
If we don’t, they will make us sick.  It is a proven fact that hanging onto negative emotions will make us physically ill.  Stress makes us ill.  Maybe one of these days I’ll do a podcast on that too.
But I’m going to stick with grief here.  
There are lots of things that happen when we grieve.  Google it and you’ll get things like 

1. Crying
2. Headaches
3. Difficulty Sleeping
4. Questioning the Purpose of Life
5. Questioning Your Spiritual Beliefs (e.g., your belief in God)
6. Feelings of Detachment
7. Isolation from Friends and Family
8. Abnormal Behavior
9. Worry
10. Anxiety
11. Frustration
12. Guilt
13. Fatigue
14. Anger
15. Loss of Appetite
16. Aches and Pains
17. Stress

Here’s the kicker with this stuff, it is all normal stuff. This stuff is SUPPOSED to happen when we have a loss!  Why on earth do we continue to try and medicate it, stuff it, bury it, ignore it or deny it?  

Here’s a key to living fearlessly feral:  allow this shit to just be for a while, and it will eventually go away.  Don’t do crazy things behind it, don’t get into trouble venting your rage on the road.  Do not allow this stuff to dictate your behavior.  But do allow it to be.

When my husband died, I was numb for a few days.  That’s normal for me.  When loss occurs, I shut down.  I used to shut down for years.  It was a coping mechanism that kept me alive in the early years of my life.  something happens, I shut down and do what needs doing in order to survive.  this time was no different.  He died, I called hospice, I called Neptune, I sat and waited for them to come, I helped when they came.  When they left, I cleaned up the mess.  I didn’t judge my numbness, my shut down ness.  I know this about myself.  I knew it would pass.  I allowed it.  

A few days later, the tears began to come.  I allowed them.  I cried whenever the urge struck me.  One exception to that:  if I was going to work.  I am still working.  I do life affirming things like perform weddings.  I wasn’t going to show up to a couple’s wedding with cry face.  That is not within my value system.  I showed up, smiled, dived into the life affirming process that weddings are, and did my job.  

Then I cried on the way home, and came home and slept.  If I could.

Cuz here’s another thing:  I couldn’t sleep.  Yep, part of the process.  I didn’t medicate it.  When I got sober I couldn’t sleep either.  Some crusty old nurse in the treatment center I was in told me no one ever died from lack of sleep.  Today I know we can get downright crazy from lack of sleep, and today I know she was less than compassionate.  She may have just been tired of dealing with a bunch of whiny drunks. Who knows.  But I’ve always remembered that.  I allowed it.  I got up and read.  I got up and went to sleep in the recliner.  I got up and slept in the spare bedroom.  Or I stayed in my own bed and read.  Sometimes I journaled.  Sometimes I just laid there and listened to the cat purr.  I didn’t medicate it and I didn’t fight it.  I just allowed it.  

And for weeks, I found myself napping every day because I wasn’t sleeping at night.  It’s ok.  It really is.  Now, if you work a monday through Friday 9-5 you may not be able to do this.  Figure out some other way to allow it.  Because if you fight it it will persist.  Guaranteed.

I felt the stress.  Oh my god did I feel the stress. My massage therapist didn’t say anything, the good ones don’t.  But yeah, there was a lot of tension everywhere in my body.  I acknowledged that tension, and got more massages.

This is a just a little bit of the things I’ve experienced when a loss has occurred.  If you’ve had a loss, you’ve experienced them too.  If you haven’t allowed the grief process to occur, do yourself a favor.  Allow it.  It isn’t too late.  You aren’t doing yourself any favors by stuffing it. Do what you have to do to allow it.

I want instead to move to some things that really have helped me in this process.  In addition to the allowing.   

1.  Compassion.  It is essential to have compassion for oneself.  Not judgement.  Not shaming.  Not any of that other stuff that goes on.  Just compassion showing up as unconditional love of self.
2. Help.  It is also essential to ask for and accept help when it is offered.  Let them bring the food!  Let them come and help with whatever needs doing!  Ask for what you need.  This might be easier said than done.  There is a whole societal cultural thing that to ask for help somehow signifies weakness.  Ugg.  Don't get me started on that.  It is actually the opposite:  not asking for and accepting help actually makes us weak.  Another podcast topic.  The other thing that happens is we don’t know what to ask for.  I experienced this.  I am grateful i have healthy friends who know this about me.  They don’t ask.  They just show up with casseroles.  Another friend created an opening for me to do the ask.  She just kept asking questions and talking with me until I realized that what I really needed and wanted was babysitters.  Floyd could no longer be left alone, and I had to go to work.  I asked.  She was there the next day, and said it was an honor to sit with him in his last days.  She also cleaned up the blood off the carpet because I told her I guessed I was going to have to rip up all the carpeting because I had no idea how to clean that up.  She cleaned it.  Ask for and accept help.  You deserve it.
3. Do ritual. Whatever your ritual of choice is, do it.  If it is a memorial service, do it.  If it is a wake, do it.  If it is a celebration of life, do it.  If you haven’t experienced the death of someone but instead experienced a big loss like a foreclosure on your house, or a job loss, have someone do a transition ritual for you.  All those religious things like memorials?  Those are actually rituals all dressed up for church.  They can be quite powerful if you...wait for it.....allow it.  Yes, more allowing.  I’m a ritual nut.  I create rituals for everything.  Floyd wanted nothing:  no service, no party, no celebration.  All he wanted was for me to scatter (not bury) his ashes on our property.  He got that.  But I did what I needed to do for me:  I created a ritual for the scattering.  And realized I wanted some of my peeps with me to actually do the thing.  And then I realized I wanted said peeps to share the experience with me.  So I invited some peeps over.  These people weren’t close to Floyd. No one was close to him.  He wasn’t that kind of guy.  They were there for me.  And I knew that scattering of ashes was a release.  And i know that when we release, there is a void, and i know that we are at choice as to what we want to fill that void with, so I created a ritual that included both release and embrace, and they joined with me.  And something shifted within me.  Because ritual is powerful like that.  I felt at peace.  I felt relaxed. After we did the ritual, we sat down and had potluck.  My peeps and potluck.  Miracles right there. We feasted.  Did you know that breaking bread together is another type of ritual?  It is why I like potlucks so much. While you all are simply eating, for me it goes so much deeper. We are engaging in a powerful ritual that creates relationships and heals people when we eat together.  So if you are at a potluck with me and I seem a bit distant, it’s just because I’m acknowledging the power in the process.  After we ate, we sat and talked and laughed.  I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, and i realized I was a bit out of practice.  Do the rituals, whatever they are.  By the way, since that ritual, I’ve been sleeping again.  
4. Spend more time in solitude and quiet.  We are a society that places great importance on doing. After experiencing a loss, it is essential to spend time in solitude and quiet.  Essential.  As much as you can given work realities.  For me, I stopped making commitments to everything except for what was necessary to work, because I still need to pay my bills.  We need this solitude and quiet.  This is sacred time.  Not only do we need it, but we deserve it.  And if you are addicted to doing, acknowledge that this is going to be uncomfortable.  Very much so.  Consider that this might be an opening into a new way of living that serves you better than constant action.  Or you could just be in solitude temporarily.  But you never know until you try.
5. Do spiritual stuff.  If you are religious, do what your religion recommends.  I don’t consider myself religious.  But god, that energy force that supports me in all ways, is the most important thing in my life.  As such, it is important to me to connect with that force daily.  Hourly if needed. I found, in these early days of grieving, that my usual ways of connecting weren’t working.  I had to utilize some of the other ways that I am familiar with.  Whatever it takes for you, do it.  
6. Give yourself time
7. Don’t make any big decisions 

Living fearlessly feral means allowing.  It means living life with compassion and unconditional love for ourselves and others.  It means that when loss occurs, we continue to be and do that. 

I don’t know that we ever ‘get over’ a loss.  I do know that it is possible to successfully process the loss, release the pain and accept the good.  I believe that allowing the grieving process to happen facilitates this.

If you have had a loss,  i am affirming for you allowing.  I am affirming for you grace and ease as you navigate the choppy waters of grief.  I am affirming for you movement and an emerging of a new you, one that lives fearlessly feral.