I recently lost my aunt very unexpectedly and at a fairly young age and I was devastated. I had lost someone that I had known my whole life and, for the first time, I experienced someone dying who I felt I wasn’t done with yet. I found myself in a type of grief I had never experienced before and it was a rude awakening for me. I began to retreat into myself, I wanted to just sleep and not leave my house and I couldn’t mentally handle all my responsibilities from before. I needed Self-Love to get me through, I just didn’t know how.
So I began searching and meditation and journaling, trying to receive some sort of insight into how to care for myself and love myself through this process. I was actually looking for a way that would magically make me feel better. Spoiler alert: It didn’t come. There isn’t one.
But I did find what I did need to do. I found I needed to be patient and compassionate for myself. I needed to give myself the time to grieve and the time to heal. I had placed expectations on myself to continue on with my life as if nothing had happened. Those expectations included my job, my writing, my volunteer work, my parenting. And instead of healing, those expectations were hurting my mental and emotional health. I decided I was allowed to grieve in any way I needed to and I was going to be patient with myself while I grieved. That was hard.
Grieving in a loving and compassionate way for yourself is hard. It is hard to let friends down, it is hard to let work slide and it is hard to not feel guilty when our culture is based on “doing”. But I reminded myself every time that it was okay, that I was okay and I had given myself permission to do this.
My Aunties with my Mom and me.
It is slowly getting easier but there are times it is still hard for me to not “do” things. As long as I have patience and self-compassion, I find the grief is not overwhelming. I can breathe and sometimes even smile, remembering my time with an amazing woman in my life who loved me as me. I honour her by honouring me. With love, my grieving is navigatable and I see the sun shining and know everything is alright.
Lot’s of Love,
Charissa
