Life really is a bit of a roller coaster ride, isn’t it? There’s birth, death, marriage, divorce, new opportunities, being fired, working with people you respect, working with people you can’t stand, radiant health, chronic illness, feeling appreciated and loved, feeling rejected and abandoned….and that’s just a few examples of the twists and turns we all experience.
This past year I’ve experienced a new chapter in my life journey – the death of my beloved dad in September 2018. Although on an intellectual level, I knew his congestive heart failure condition, which continued to progress, would likely claim him sooner than later. Yet that realization didn’t in any way blunt the pain of his loss or the grief I feel on a daily basis. I am blessed to have loving, positive relationships with both my parents, so when he passed I felt like an energetic cornerstone in my being had been knocked out from under me.
I do believe that life throws us these curve balls not to challenge us, but to change us. Now that I’m several months along in this grief walk, I feel I can start to articulate some of the choices that have helped along the way. I realize these choices are useful in any period of intense transition. Grieving the loss of a dream – a long and happy marriage, your health, a job you loved – can be just as painful and challenging as grieving the loss of a loved one.
Choice 1 – Give Yourself Permission to Manage Your Bandwidth
When you’re going through change, either at home or at work, it’s OK to let things go. Big changes create big stress, and it’s not going to help if you beat yourself up for not being as “productive” as you might like to be. Processing change, dealing with grief, envisioning a future on the other side of this change is all tough, demanding emotional inner work. Imagine the caterpillar in its cocoon telling itself to “Get a grip and buck up”, “Will people think less of you if you’re upset?” or “Just get over yourself and be a butterfly already!” Yet that is what many of us do when we’re going through a change that leaves us feeling in flight, fight, or freeze mode.
Give yourself permission to manage your bandwidth. See what you can say no to, or put on hold, so you can create the space and energy to navigate this challenge. Stop judging your worth by your “to do” list. Give yourself permission to be choosey about who and what you give your time to, because time to heal is your most precious resource.
Choice 2 – Be Prepared to Recalibrate Yourself, a lot!
Expect your emotional weather system to change rapidly from day to day, and sometimes even from moment to moment. Special occasions, hearing a song, seeing someone on LinkedIn with the promotion you were passed over for, finding an old photo – these are just some of the triggers that can change a sunny disposition into a monsoon of tears.
Stay humble. Grief, in particular, seems to be a tangled and circuitous path. When NASA landed a rocketship on the moon, it took thousands of recalibrations to their original trajectory to get them on the right landing coordinates. Know what you can control and be prepared to surrender what you can’t. Be prepared to recalibrate yourself often so you can navigate the emotional turbulence of change.
Choice 3 – Lead Yourself with Compassion
Going through change of any kind requires a change of who you know yourself to be. A change in identity will bring up every emotion you’ve got. When my dad passed, I expected to be sad. Really sad. What I didn’t expect to be quite so potent was the anger, the fear, the confusion and the deep ache of loss. Whether it’s through journaling, meditation, exercise, or talking to trusted friends, find a healthy way to express your full range of emotions instead of bottling them up or managing over them. As best as you’re able to. When you feel up to it. What might have been hard to articulate one week might become clearer the next. In naming it, you increase your awareness and can be more intentional and at choice around your responses and decisions.
Above all, be compassionate and sweet with yourself. Lead yourself from an intention of compassion. Lift your head up from your own situation and look around you – at your friends, your colleagues, your community, the world. I have been struck this past year by how many people in my world have also been through incredibly difficult losses and transitions. Opening my heart and offering compassion to them has helped me do the same for my own experience. Through that connection, I have felt less alone. In panning back from my own grief and being witness to the grief of others, I’ve been buoyed by the courage, resilience, and vulnerability I’ve seen. The more I’m willing to appreciate these qualities “out there” in others, the reservoirs of those qualities are replenished within me as well.
After all, we’re all in this together, aren’t we?
I’d love to hear what choices you’ve made when going through times of transition!
