SELF-GRIEVING; The Healing Step that you Didn’t Know you Needed

TAKE THE TIME TO GRIEVE
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Grieving is so healthy and important when letting go or coming to acceptance of anything. Often, grief is associated with death and death alone.
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But one of the most valuable lessons I EVER learned was that grief happens in many forms and WANTS to happen emotionally within us yet we are so quick to shut the emotions down because it isn’t ‘supposed’ to feel that way.
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We can, and in my opinion need, to grieve the loss of our past, old identities, friendships, and anything which we have chosen to move on from or let go of.
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Sometimes we attach so much to an idea, persona, relationship, or plan that when we KNOW we don’t want it, relate to it, benefit, or associate with it anymore our ego tells us that we NEED to and a battle ensues between head and heart.
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More often than not, our soul knows exactly what we need but our ego can convince us that we are wrong. I was a volleyball player from age 7-18. I never imagined I would quit. I never thought I’d stop playing. Until one day, I realized I didn’t want it anymore. I CHANGED, MY VISION CHANGED, MY GOALS CHANGED. And I had to be okay with this but it was SO hard because for SOO many years I associated myself with everything volleyball. Every decision I made was to either get better at, be recruited for, or in accordance to my calendar with volleyball.
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So, when I realized it wasn’t for me anymore, and I had different dreams, I had thoughts like; my parents will be so upset after investing in club, I can’t let the team down at the college that I committed to play for, everyone will no longer see me as a top athlete or player. I literally had my identity DEEPLY rooted in volleyball that even though I KNEW I had to let it go, I cried, got angry, denied myself, accepted it, fought over it, and had NUMEROUS nights just literally GRIEVING this. I didn’t know that this was even possible to grieve it.
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But in reality, it was a part of me that had ‘died’ or was ‘about to die’. Just like when I no longer wanted to be self-loathing or hateful of my body. Just like when I no longer wanted an unhealthy obsessive relationship with food. Just like I no longer wanted to date guys who treated me poorly. And just like I had to let go of many friendships, beliefs, and actions that no longer served me.
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There are many different philosophies within psychology in regard to how one identifies their ‘Self’. There’s also no right or wrong way. It’s how we accept, love, and grow with our tendencies/choices. We have to recognize where we are anchoring in our identity. And then we have to be kind and loving to ourself when this shifts or changes.
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What helps? For me, and the clients I work with, we get into deep self-awareness over our, what I call, “core soul codes” to identify exactly what we value most and want to fulfill most in our life. This allows us to ebb and flow with life while always reconnecting to our soul which then takes us away from ego and reminds us that it is OKAY to want change, it is OKAY to demand change, and it is definitely OKAY to make change happen.
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If you are struggling to move into our out of a chapter, identity, story, belief, relationship or any other life opportunity for that matter, then I recommend you check in with yourself on how rooted your identity is within this, and what will happen if you DON’T let it go. It will be painful if you do and if you don’t. But when you do give yourself what you need, you grieve and find freedom. When you don’t, you feel resentful, out of alignment, and disconnected from yourSOUL.
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You are going to be amazing, you ARE amazing. Allow yourself to be everything you desire and do only what makes you feel most ALIVE. You’ll be okay, in fact, you already are okay. Let go, trust, and grieve if you need to.

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