Can grief make you a better person?
Loss, love and learning to navigate the waves
Welcome to In Order to Bloom, a space where we’re unpacking the trials, tribulations and wins of being a twenty-something trying to adult. Be sure to comment and share if you love reading, it really helps a lot.
The process of letting go
I was in a yoga class a couple of months ago that focuses on using breathwork and movement to switch off the noise and help you reconnect with your body and mind. It’s a slow, restorative flow by name, but ultimately feels like being in a room which embodies a warm hug.
When you live and work in a city like London which does live up to its reputation of being overwhelming and intensely fast-paced, finding solace in the form of a basement yoga studio that acts like a cocoon for your nervous system is vital. I’ve found it to be one of the only activities I do where I totally zone out and switch off, connecting with nothing but how my body is moving and feeling.
It’s quite an emotive form of exercise, too. They say we hold a lot of our trauma and pent-up emotion in our hips, and for the non yoga-goers you’ll probably roll your eyes or scoff at that, but it’s supposedly true. So with that in mind, it’s not uncommon to feel overwhelmed with those feelings when you get into poses that stretch and alleviate those tense and locked-up joints.
In this class, I was managing well. No triggers or intrusive thoughts, no trauma erupting stretches impacting my practice. I made it to the final stage of relaxation, where the lights went off and the teacher told us to take 5 minutes to breathe deeply and reconnect with the body to finish the sequence of movements.
But this method was new for me. She told us to take a deep inhale and then hold it in our chest, puffed like pigeons all lined up in rows. Upon holding our breath in, we were instructed to clench our fists, our toes, and our jaw, and tense up every element of our body. She counted down from five, and as she reached one, told us to exhale and let it all go.
At that moment, the only thing that entered my mind was my Nan. I saw her on the terrace she used to sit in the sun on, and she waved to me.
“I miss you lovely girl”, she called.
In my mind, I told her I missed her too. In reality, I gasped and was holding back a sob as the silent tears rolled down my face and onto the mat. I felt every wave of negativity leave me yet felt this overwhelming sense of sadness and loss all over again. All I could do was take a breath and pray the girl next to me had completely ignored my very public display of emotion and wouldn’t make any eye contact in the changing room.
Learning the new normal
The thing about grief is, it sneaks up on you when you least expect it. Ultimately, life must move on. You must pick yourself up somehow and go back to work, be sociable and nurture the relationships you undoubtedly neglected throughout the process of mourning the loss of your loved one.
I always assumed that once I managed that, it would be a case of simply making less room for the grief to live in me. I’d not allow it so much mental and physical space, and I’d be able to put it in a box in the back of my mind and move on.
The reality is, that I’m still yet to fully process it. It’ll be a year in September since it happened and I struggle to get my head around the fact I won’t see her when I go home this summer. I won’t be able to tell her all the wonderful and dreadful things that have happened to me since we last saw each other. I won’t sit and tell her about the boy I went on a date with, or show her the article I last wrote. She won’t be there to tell me she always knew I’d make it work, or squeeze me so hard she could wind me as she reached up to hug me tighter than any woman that small should be capable of doing.
Even writing that felt like a swift jab to the side of my body. My ribs hurt and my body feels heavy and stone-like when I think about those moments for too long. It’s as if even my bones feel the tension and heaviness of missing her some days. Not every day, not every time, but sometimes.
I consider myself quite a spiritual person at my core. I don’t believe in god, and I have prayed to whoever was listening only once in my life. But I envy those with faith to carry them through this part. Because as much as a part of me is assured that she is somewhere watching over me, seeing my life unfold as she always wished it to, that lack of physical connection with her has been the hardest thing to accept. And there is no getting around it, so I must go through it.
Acceptance and patience
There’s a lot to be said for who you choose to surround yourself with through these stages. I am very blessed with a group of friends who wholeheartedly just get it without explanation. They understand if something makes me sad and I choose to cope with it through humour, or if I simply don’t want to talk about it. There’s no time frame being put on me to get over it or move past these feelings. If anything, they remind me regularly that how I feel is ok and to not put so much pressure on myself. That in itself is a very real, very important factor in coming to the point of acceptance.
This stage has to be reached through opening up, I’ve discovered the hard way. Up until February this year, I hadn’t let go. I don’t mean to let go of the fact that it happened, I mean I hadn’t let the wall of “I’m fine!” fall down and just let myself feel the heartbreak. Then, like with any emotion left unaddressed and bottled up, it came to the surface of its own accord. I found myself sobbing on a park bench one Saturday afternoon feeling overwhelmingly alone, sad and frankly quite scared at the intensity of the feeling that I couldn’t control these emotions. This dull, underlying ache I had felt in losing her was no longer numbing, it was gut-wrenching and the only way to get rid of it was to let it out and feel it.
I get that for some people, the thought or experience of losing a grandparent is not this intense. I don’t envy them per se, because to have deeply loved and lost is a privilege, but I do understand how one may read this and feel it all to look and sound very alien.
Writing it out is the only way I know how to articulate it. The words simply fail me, because how do you explain this? To me, it feels like I have lost a key component of my DNA. It feels as if something that makes me, me, is now just a memory and not something I can feel anymore. It’s as if she made this little part of me, sculpted it, carved it out, popped it into my heart as the final cog in the mechanism to make it work, and then took it with her when she had to leave. I guess the easiest way to explain it is that my spark feels dulled some days. But slowly, with patience, I’m working on getting it back.
Embracing the parts of her I cherish most is my way of keeping her close. I’ll think of how she would tackle a situation, the advice she would give or simply keep in mind that kindness and being pure of heart were what made her my favourite person. Embodying those things, and remaining mindful of how I can put them into practice for myself, is what helps right now. Because if I can learn to shine with even a tiny fraction of the light she had, and make others feel as safe and wonderful as she did, then perhaps this grief won’t be so heavy to carry. Because being her legacy might just be the biggest honour I’ll get to have. And that’s not something to be sad about.
Thank you for reading In Order to Bloom this week. I hope it offers you some escape and peace of mind today.
I’d love to know what else you’d like to hear my thoughts on, or any topics you’d like me to unpack - be it dating, friendships or something in the news - so please get in touch with any suggestions by leaving a comment for me!
