I’ve been through the torture of the stages of grief. I will admit that there were times the pain felt good. Hurting seemed to make up for the fact that I was alive and my 39 year old daughter was not. Grief defies the logic of love.

Something happened that helped me understand  that we must acknowledge thoughts, feelings and beliefs. But, if we join in with or add to them, we go down a rabbit hole of misery. Science has shown us that thoughts and feelings pass within 90 seconds, unless we add on to them. Most of us have developed the unfortunate habit of believing that  transitory feelings and thoughts are truth. Habits can be broken, not through struggle, but through the awareness that we are hurting ourselves. 

A New Paradigm for Grief is a free introductory group. You will see how I work with grief and may find relief from pain at our very first meeting. I find it soothing to remember that feelings and thoughts are not Truth. If they were, they would be called facts.

When we gather, we check in and give each other a different message around grief. The new message is this: You can live bigger as the representative of your person who is no longer here in form. My grief resilience groups are radically different from traditional support grief groups. We are present for each other’s pain, but we do not consider the stages of grief a death sentence for ourselves. We believe that we are meant to have all our feelings and that joy is not a luxury.  

I am living in a more outgoing way than I was when my daughter Melissa was alive. I never dreamed of being a writer. After Melissa passed on, it became clear that I was the vehicle to communicate her message. It has become my pleasure to be her voice, as well as my own. Maybe your person loved to garden and when you get out there in the dirt, you feel your connection. Who knows what your expression will be as you represent yourself in your fullest capacity. Life gives us the prompts for what is next. It is not difficult to live in the flow of life – what is hard is cycling through the stages of grief. Our person can still live with us in closeness, without us psychologically suffering.  

I have found more creativity and zest for life, even after the unimaginable happened. Relief from suffering is available NOW. Click below for an invitation for next month’s gathering on Zoom. Together, let’s find joy in life.

(If you are ready to dive in now to a new grief trajectory, I suggest you check out my 6 week series From Grief to Aliveness.)