Isn’t one loss enough?
Sacred grief: explore a new dimension to loss.
And about the opposite of loss too, the recovery of something vital.
I am writing to you about
Coming to see a Coach or Therapist
When you’re are sad and grieving,
Lost somehow,
And long to find your way home.
So I am writing about loss,
And its opposite: recovery.
When you are my client
And you tell me why you came to see me,
I count the losses
When I listen to your story.
There are losses in life, clearly visible:
Like the death of a loved one,
A job that disappeared,
A place called home,
Far away from where you live,
The end of a relationship or friendship.
These ‘biggies’,
The losses that are plain to see,
Are a part of a bigger picture.
It is no wonder
That we are knocked off-centre
When faced with grief,
Because the main loss
Often comes with so many
Secondary losses...
“Loss is like spiders:
When you see one,
You know they rarely visit solo.”
I ask my clients
To make a list
Of what they’ve lost.
They write about a death, break-up
Or redundancy.
They describe feeling in a void
Between the old - that no longer exists,
And the new - that is not yet known.
It often takes my help to realise
There are many secondary losses that hurt too.
Those subsequent domino-effect losses:
When we lose someone we love
A parent, child, friend, pet or partner
To cancer, suicide, a car crash.
Or a death that happened decades ago
That now found its momentum
To receive the time and space
To be experienced,
As if for the very first time.
When someone we love dies
We lose them, the person.
Their friendship, their companionship.
The sounding board in our life, gone.
We also lose our future
With them in it.
The dreams that never came true.
We lose life as we knew it.
Our joy in activities we used to like.
We might lose others around us,
Who are grieving too.
Like, if your father dies
You might lose your mother too.
Not to death,
But to depression, alcohol or grief.
Physically present, yet emotionally gone.
When we develop anxiety or depression,
We lose our mental health.
We might lose our faith.
Our innocence.
When we lose a relationship
Same thing applies,
We lose that person’s companionship.
But also that imagined wedding,
A pregnant belly.
The house we live in.
The family unit we created together.
We lose some of our trust,
That next time it will work out.
We lose a bit of believing in our own lovability
Thinking “is something wrong with me”?
We lose bits of our self-esteem.
The loss of a commitment we made
When we said yes to marrying him or her.
The loss of a shared history, family holidays,
We lose friends who choose ‘the other side’.
When we lose a job
We lose our confidence too.
Our colleagues,
A part of our social life.
A sense of safety
That comes with a regular pay-check.
Our identity perhaps.
It might mean a house move.
We lose the image
Of how we pictured our career would unfold.
We lose opportunities.
In life, so many losses:
Our health,
Our youth.
Each moment,
We lose the moment
That came before.
A constant letting go.
Yet the worst loss of all?
Which always comes up eventually
When I sit with my clients
And their list of losses:
The loss of ourselves.
Of who we used to be,
Of who we thought we are.
Our care-free, joyous, spontaneous Self.
And in its place
This confused, tired, lost version,
A shadow of who we used to be.
Losing ourselves…
I know you know what I mean
I know you recognise
What I am talking about:
Missing the ‘old’ me.
Did it happen to you in the past?
And you reinvented yourself?
Is it happening again,
At an older, wiser age,
Yet unsettling nevertheless?
An invitation from the universe,
But for what, exactly?
My clients often wish
To find themselves again:
The old me that we lost.
But we can’t go back to the past,
Reclaim something that no longer exists.
That old you is no longer.
But what we can do
Is remember that part of you.
To bring him/her back into the room,
Metaphorically speaking.
Their qualities, dreams, ways of being,
Beliefs about self, other and the world.
I ask my clients to draw their old me.
Write about it, sculpture it.
Make photographs of things
That symbolise that part of you.
We make Vision Boards,
Or simply talk about
Who they were before the big loss.
To know yourself again.
Not in order to become ‘like back then’.
But to re-integrate it all
Into who you are now.
A new you.
With grief
With loss
With vulnerability.
Yet with wisdom too.
With resilience,
Hope and self-belief.
Gratitude, for all of it.
A thankfulness arises,
Realising loss is part of life.
A knowing, deep and vast
That grief is sacred.
That there is beauty in pain
Gain in loss
Compassion in sadness
Love in pain.
The recovery of something vital:
Your own wide open heart.
Somehow
It is worth the ride,
Because it made you different somehow,
Forever changed.
A new you.
A vivid understanding
Of your fragility.
Clearer about what matters in life.
More aware.
More present.
Gentler, softer, kinder
To yourself and to others.
To me, that is grace.
To grief our losses
Is a sacred gift to ourselves,
And everyone we’ll ever encounter.
A coming home to who we are.
Free Discovery call
Did that resonate, and would you like to talk things through with me?
“That’s very beautiful Karin! Thank you. ”
