Leaving and Grieving
Leaving comes in many different life events, circumstances, and experiences. Often we are caught off guard and life suddenly changes. Other times we have time to prepare ourselves but are we really ever completely ready for change? Are we never affected by leaving something or someone behind? Does being left behind ourselves never alter us?
It is easy to emotionally and physically shut down when we have an experience of leaving or being left. While leaving may sometimes be the most difficult thing we can experience there is much life to be found throughout the process.
If we will allow our hearts to remain open there is life to be found in the grieving of leaving. Feel it. Embrace every ounce of emotion or physiological sensation your body has to express. The richness of being alive lies not in joy alone but in every emotion gifted to us by the Creator. To grieve through life’s leaving means something mattered to you. Someone mattered. You matter. Just as life deserves to be celebrated death deserves to be grieved.
Leaving scars us. Scars serve us well because they remind us that we truly lived. Also scar tissue is tougher than skin and so it is more difficult to wound us the same way twice. There is strength to be found; strength we could never have known had we not dared to fully experience living between leaving.
Written by Thaddeus Heffner, LMFT – February 20th, 2015
Leaving comes in many different life events, circumstances, and experiences. Often we are caught off guard and life suddenly changes. Other times we have time to prepare ourselves but are we really ever completely ready for change? Are we never affected by leaving something or someone behind? Does being left behind ourselves never alter us?
It is easy to emotionally and physically shut down when we have an experience of leaving or being left. While leaving may sometimes be the most difficult thing we can experience there is much life to be found throughout the process.
If we will allow our hearts to remain open there is life to be found in the grieving of leaving. Feel it. Embrace every ounce of emotion or physiological sensation your body has to express. The richness of being alive lies not in joy alone but in every emotion gifted to us by the Creator. To grieve through life’s leaving means something mattered to you. Someone mattered. You matter. Just as life deserves to be celebrated death deserves to be grieved.
Leaving scars us. Scars serve us well because they remind us that we truly lived. Also scar tissue is tougher than skin and so it is more difficult to wound us the same way twice. There is strength to be found; strength we could never have known had we not dared to fully experience living between leaving.
Written by Thaddeus Heffner, LMFT – February 20th, 2015
