Layers of Loss, Love, Grief & Three Important Questions.

Grief is complicated, complex and a highly personal process unique for each individual. Asking yourself important questions can support you in developing your own approach to loss and grief in your own life.

Every loss is an opportunity to learn more about our selves and who we authentically are.

My mentor and greatest teacher, Elisabeth Kubler Ross said this:"It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.”

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975). In other words, every loss is an opportunity to learn more about our selves and who we authentically are in our most golden state. If we are to do this process well, it must include a physical, emotional and psychological healing process.

Whenever we have an event in our life that is painful it leaves an emotional and sometimes physical scarring. In a sense, every loss leaves scar tissue. When we fight and get into a tug of war about a situation, frustrated and angry that it shouldn’t have happened, we thicken the scar tissue.

Focusing on the event and not the light and love in our lives is to focus on the scar and not the healing. When we release and allow a situation without judgement to be what it is and shine light on the scar we release that layer of loss. That empowers us with spiritual muscles of clarity, understanding and deeper love for self and others.

I believe grief is there to softly and gracefully release our scars and physically and metaphorically build new cells, new hope and new life. It is hard to overcome our human need to judge, question and resent what happens in our lives that produces deep loss. Yet it is an essential process in recreating our lives and choosing to truly live.

I have long been teased by my husband about my “ Team Katie". a group of highly skilled people from a variety of specialties who have helped me cope with the years of impact of infertility and pregnancy losses. In addition to allopathic medical practitioners, I have at different times received support from shamans, Reiki practitioners and hypnotherapists. All have helped me energetically and spiritually address various physical changes that have occurred.

I had knee surgery last fall for a meniscus tear and discovered that it was directly related to scar tissue built up over time from the multiple surgeries related to trying to get pregnant, pregnancy losses and a hysterectomy that resulted in two more surgeries. Each surgery represented another loss and more scar tissue. By working with a structural integration therapist and a hypnotherapist, I was able to reveal the message and meaning I had attached to these surgeries. Detaching from the negative thoughts released my physical pain and led me to better understand the false sense of myself that I have been carrying around.

My “Team Katie” approach to ongoing loss and physical change gave me a deeper sense of healing. When I work with others recovering from suicide related loss, serious illness or mental illness, there is deep scarring in each instance. By encouraging them to “dig” into their layers of self destructive messaging, we reveal the light within that needs to shine on their scars. If there is a physical component, I encourage release of their scars and through their honest process of releasing their emotions as they grieve. They also learn a greater sense of who they are and who they want to be, the essence of their true golden selves.

The first step to healing our scars is to ask ourselves the following questions:

1. If you were to wake up tomorrow and three things were better in your life, what would change?

2. To make these changes, who do you need to help me to create the physical, emotional and spiritual? Who do you need on your team?

3. What might prevent your success in creating these changes?

These three questions can reveal so much and can be applied in so many