Life is everchanging and fluid. Nothing ever stays the same and we are frequently challenged to let go of the old and accept the new. That doesn't mean it is easy to do.
Loss is one of those changes that challenges us. We lose someone we love when they move away or when they die.
We lose someone through a break-up or a divorce or we lose them to an addiction. We lose our job, or we lose our health, our home or our money. These events can invoke feelings of grief, sadness, anger or despair. It is the ending of something, but also the beginning of something else.
When loss happens, it is important to be honest with ourselves and allow ourselves to feel the full gamut of the emotions that are streaming through our heart and soul.
There is no way to shortcut the process, but we sometimes unconsciously prolong our suffering.
When we are faced with a traumatic event that brings unwanted change into our life, we can get stuck in an endless loop of self-pity if we spend too much time dwelling on what no longer exists.
The world has taught us to conflate our circumstance and our experience of life. In other words, the common belief is that our circumstance (trauma)
determines how we experience life. However, that is not really how life works.
Let's imagine that my spouse divorces me, finds another partner and they are traveling and enjoying life. I see their lives unfolding on social media while I am alone and struggling to make ends meet. It would be considered quite normal for me to feel anger, resentment, grief, sadness and jealousy. It would be considered normal by most people, but the truth is that
feeling those things is a choice.
In reality, what my husband and his new partner are doing, has absolutely nothing to do with me. My emotional response to what they are doing comes from what I believe about the situation. There are many responses that a person could have to this same scenario. A few examples...
- One person might be resentful, angry and jealous that her ex and his new partner are having so much fun.
- Someone
else might feel sadness and despair because money is tight and she thinks the division of assets was unfair.
- Still, someone else could feel all those emotions and yet her primary feeling is one of freedom from an unhappy marriage and happiness because now she has the opportunity to reimagine and reinvent her life.
In the last example, that person chose not to give another second of her precious life to living in the past or wishing for a better present.
Instead, she chose to focus her energy on recreating her life.
Neither happiness nor misery come from outside of us. Those emotions come from inside. When we lose a loved one, we feel great sadness and grief. When we are finished grieving, we are able to feel happier even though our loved one is still gone. This is a testament to how reslient we are when we allow it to happen.
Our experience of life ebbs and flows if we let it.
An unwelcome change today does not have to be a bad thing. Sometimes gifts come wrapped in ugly wrapping paper. If you are experiencing an unwanted change in your life, look for what the change will do for you instead of what you think it is doing to you. That is the secret to healing.
With loving support,
Linda
