Most of us have an idea of what grief 'should' look like. We've adopted the idea that we must grieve first and then after a certain amount of time and after so many stages, that's when we will finally be able to let go and move on.
In this episode Karin will break down three myths of grief that society has adopted as 'the only way' to grieve. You will learn why continuing to believe these untruths is keeping you stuck in your healing process. You will learn what's possible for you, once you are able to dismantle these old belief systems about grief.
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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it show up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.
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Full Episode Transcript:
I'm Karin Nelson, and you're listening to Becoming You Again, episode number 111.
Welcome to Becoming You Again the podcast to help with your mental and emotional well being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the trauma of your divorce by reconnecting with yourself creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life, so your life will be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, Karin Nelson.
Hello, my lovely ladies, I am so happy that you are back listening to the podcast and I'm happy to be here recording for you. Today I wanted to jump right in to talking about three myths about grief. Now, I did an episode on grief. I don't know how many episodes ago but a while ago. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, go back and listen to it. It's a really great episode. It gives you a lot of information. And I may cover some of that. But I promise you that you will get something good out of today's episode as well. Because I think that grief is something that women are socialized to talk ourselves out of, or to tell ourselves that it's not okay to grieve, especially when we are going through something like a divorce. I want to talk about these three myths and really break them down for you so that you can become more aware of things that may be holding you back from really stepping into true healing from your divorce. All right, so the first myth that I want to talk about is that there are stages of grief, I know probably 99%, maybe even 100% of you listening to this podcast have heard about the stages of grief, right? Almost everyone has heard about them. And I think that they can be very helpful and useful. But oftentimes we use those stages against ourselves, we tell ourselves that if we are not going through the stages, number one in order, and number two, if we haven't hit them yet, if we haven't felt them yet, then something might be wrong with us. And I'm here to tell you, this is not true at all. That is a total myth. The five stages of grief are a concept that were created to help you understand the pathway that might occur. When you feel and experience grief in your life. They were not ever meant to be a pathway they were not ever meant to be end all be all this is how it is. They were meant to be a concept of what you may or may not experience. And I really want to hone in on that idea. Because I do not want you to get so attached to the idea that you have to go through those five stages of grief before you can start to move on from your life before you can start to heal after your divorce. Because it is just not true. Each one of us is an individual, each one of us is unique. And I really want you to understand that your grief process is going to look unique to you. You may go through the five stages of grief, you may not at all. Your grief may look like rage dancing in your living room for 10 days, and then you feel like you've moved on and you're ready to let go of the past. Your grief may look like feeling regret. But allowing yourself to accept the choices that you've made. Your grief may look like crying every day for two and a half years, then going on 10 dates and then meeting the next love of your life. Grief can look a million different ways. And there is no right way and there is no wrong way. There are not five stages, there are not 100 stages, there is not one stage, there is your grief process, and it can look and feel however you need it to. The next myth that I want to break down is that there is a hierarchy of grievable circumstances like some things are worse than other things to grieve. This is again, not true, but we tell ourselves that it's true. We tell ourselves that, Oh, it's okay to grieve that I am divorcing. Someone who cheated on me but it's not okay to grieve that I don't get to see my kids all the time. Or it's not okay to grieve that I have to lose half of my bank account. Or it's not okay to grieve what I thought my life was going to look like. There is no hierarchy to what it is okay to grieve to what we are allowed to grieve. The really beautiful thing about grief is that anytime your perception is not meeting what youth thought your reality was going to be. You always have permission to grieve. This means that you are allowed to grieve for anything, your favorite coffee shop goes out of business, you're allowed to grieve for that your dog passes away after having it for only 10 days, you're allowed to grieve for that. Your ex has been very compliant as a co parent up until now, and then all of a sudden, it seems like everything has been turned on its head. And he's showing up in a completely different way. You're allowed to grieve for that. Your bank account is half what it used to be, and you're struggling to make ends meet, you're allowed to grieve for that. Whatever it is, that is not meeting the perception of what you thought your life would look like of what you thought your reality would be in whatever way that looks. You have permission to grieve it. And it's okay for you to grieve it, it doesn't mean that you have to shut down your life, and then lock yourself in a closet and wear black like they used to do, you know, years and years ago when they would be in their period of mourning. That is not what grief has to look like for you. But it is okay to allow the emotions and give yourself permission to open up to the grief, whatever grief you might be feeling. There's a really great idea around grief. And it is the Lewis Tonkin grief model. And it's basically this idea if you can picture a glass jar with a ball in it and the ball is representative of grief, what we think grief is going to do over time is get smaller, and eventually dissipate and eventually disappear, like the ball in that jar is just going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. But if we can open our minds up to this idea of expanding ourselves to grief and giving ourselves permission to grieve, what's really happening is our jar that's holding that ball of grief is actually expanding, we are expanding ourselves and creating more space. And the more space we create for that grief, the more we allow ourselves to feel and connect with ourselves in a deeper way. And then the third myth that I really want you to think about when it comes to grief is that there is a beginning and an end. And this kind of goes back to the stages. But some of us often will think, Okay, I'm gonna go through my grief. And then at some point, after so much time has passed, whatever that arbitrary number is that we've decided on passes, then we'll be done with the grief. And we can move on with our lives because it started and then it's going to end. But as I just explained, what if instead of thinking that there's a beginning and an end, we just expand ourselves, to open up our space to open up the space inside of us to allow that grief, and let it be a part of us as we move through our lives. It doesn't mean we're always going to be feeling heaviness, it doesn't mean we're always going to be feeling sad or whatever idea you have attached to what grief looks like. But what it really does, is when we feel and experience grief, it's actually a reflection of our being alive, we expand our grief, and we expand and engage in the experience of living the full range of emotions, because grief isn't just sadness. And it isn't just anger. And it isn't just acceptance. And it isn't just one thing. It is so many emotions all tied into one and when we can open ourselves up to that we expand who we are, we reconnect to ourselves and our emotional lives. And we open up our wisdom of our world and our experience. Because the really interesting thing that occurs when we grieve something, whatever it is, that you might be grieving, there is almost an innocence lost when it comes to grief. And when that innocence is lost, what happens is we are given the gift of wisdom, because on the other side of innocence is wisdom is having our eyes opened is understanding. And so if we can open ourselves up to experiencing the grief and allowing it to be a part of our lives. That is when we are going to create a sense of wisdom and acceptance and greater love and deeper connection with ourselves than may have ever been possible before. Grief will ebb and flow. There is no timeline it looks different for every person, let it move through you. Let it ebb and flow. Let it be yours. All right, my friends. That is what I have for you today. Thank you for listening I will be back next week.
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai