Grieving With An Open Heart: Grief Incorporated

‘I am me, and that’s enough.’ This affirmation came up in me recently, and it is still vibrating through my whole system. Wow, what a simple and powerful statement!

Maybe you have followed my writings here and have seen me walking with my grieving process over the past months. Right now, I can look back at two years of active grieving with an open heart, and I am proud of myself for the way I ‘tackled’ it all.

There were (and still are) many shifts in me, and I am grateful for each and every one of them, as I see them all as growing aids. I walked with (metaphorical) crutches, I withered many emotional storms and through it all, my soulman was and is in my heart.

Right now, it feels like I am standing on that proverbial cliff, flapping my wings and testing the currents, preparing to fly into a new chapter of my life.

The new life is already blossoming, like the plants in spring… Tiny, fresh, fragile leaves and petals emerging, getting their strength from the bright, warm sun – just like me. The sun is such a great healer for me, and I am grateful for her warming my body, mind and soul.

I am carefully blossoming, with a lot of patience and much gentle self-love. So much life I lived, ALBEIT the physical loss of my soulman. As I have mentioned before – we always, always have a choice whether to keep moving or to freeze emotionally and physically.

I chose to continue to move forward, sometimes inching along; sometimes in a temporary freeze status. Mostly though, I managed to flow with it all, and it was astonishingly easy.

Using the term ‘incorporated’ together with ‘grief’ makes a lot of sense to me, as it is what has happened while I kept walking: I incorporated my grief experience into my already rainbow-coloured life.

By embedding and welcoming this new and unfamiliar part into my system, I have grown so much and have really kept my heart open.

From the day my soulman died, I knew I wanted to keep my heart open, so I could hear and feel him whenever I had the capacity to centre myself there (it is his heart too, always was).

What great teachers love and grief are, when they work hand in hand, and when we can allow them to teach us.

My sharp edges were softened by pain as I kept breathing through the physical loss and the spiritual enrichment. I have realized that I have never left my path – this experience is part of my path, and in denying it the space it deserves, I would be taking quite the detours.

My path has always supported me, and only through realizing this, can I trust even deeper than before. For me, there is no final goodbye – the same as there being no separation.

I am aware of this path being ever changing (as I AM the path), and that I might make various choices as I keep living and growing. The one thing that will always be there is love.

The love with and for my soulman will continue to deepen, and it is engraved in my ever-expanding heart. Do you realize how much room our truly loving hearts have? They are as big as the Universe, when we can accept this is so…

Life never sucked, and it still doesn’t, even though I had and have my moments of intense hissy fits.

There have been cheerleaders of all kinds and colours along the way, waving their pompoms lovingly and sometimes quite aggressively in my face, just so that I could notice the gifts and blessings in this beautiful mess.

I have met teachers and messengers offering great value in their lessons and gifts (especially the uncomfortable ones).

Sometimes, I need to dig hard to excavate the treasures that are buried deep down in my soul, only to realize how valuable the digging is, let alone the treasure that comes to light.

The strength that is part of me surprised me a lot, and also impressed me. By really focusing on myself rather than getting distracted by someone else offering ‘how-tos’ in my personal grieving, I seriously got to know the super hero my soul is.

And I connected with her, after my initial gawking J So getting to really know ourselves, and especially experiencing how strong we really are, is such a worthy event – no matter how seemingly bad and painful our expectation.

What gives me inner peace now and always has through this sometimes Hollywood-like experience is the deep, deep universal and unquestionable trust I have revealed to myself. Along the way, I doubted I ever had this.

Yet when I got the news of my soulman’s passing, all doubt and fear dissolved into nothingness immediately. And that in itself is magical.

So here I stand now, flapping those wings, comfortable (mostly) in the not knowing of what comes next, contemplating which direction to take when I lift off. The tiny voice in me that is afraid is acknowledged, and I hug her fiercely, telling her I love her and that all is well.

We always wanted to fly, and now is always a good time…

It’s time to shine out loud – for you and for me.

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Barbara Patterson – Conscious Awareness Teacher

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