Grief and Healing | Matt Kahn

(Golden Age of Gaia)

(via email)

This past weekend, I embraced a quiet, reflective, and inward Mother’s Day, honoring both my Mom and Dad, how pivotal of a role they played in my life, and how blessed I am to have active connections with them from the other side. Even though I receive regular visits from them, and they are delighted to share with me all the wisdom they are learning in the afterlife — I still miss them. In fact, I will say, no matter how connected you are to the other side or how much more communication you hope to receive, you can miss loved ones the same.

While there may be an aspect of self that suggests, “If only I was more connected, I’d feel their presence more and miss them much less,” such an innocent notion acts as evidence of bargaining — one of the five stages of grief. No matter where you are in any grief cycle, whether in denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance, each stage is here to be honored and never dismissed or overly rationalized in any way.

One of the easiest ways to over rationalize stages of grief is to blame yourself. Maybe thoughts arise such as, “If I was more connected, high vibe, psychically-attuned, less in my ego, and more in my heart, I’d grieve less intensely.”

What if, one of the purposes of grief is to help you accept that while waves of grief may ebb and flow, you will always miss those who have passed?

What if that is what is here to be accepted? What if you didn’t try to find a way out of missing or even resenting others, should it ever arise in your experience, but honored how deep of an experience you are navigating?

What if the purpose of grief is to unearth an acceptance that it’s okay to grieve, it’s okay to miss others, it’s okay to feel lonely, it’s okay to feel displaced, imbalanced, or out of sorts?

What if in the acceptance of it all, grief becomes an unsuspecting companion escorting you through the duration of your journey and back into direct connection with those you love?

What if anytime you miss someone you love, it is life’s way of reminding you that you are now one step closer to an inevitable reunion? What if whether you miss someone who has passed or not, each breath moves you another step closer to those you love who cheer you on from the other side?

Whether a relative, a beloved, a friend, a teacher, or a pet, can you honor the important roles others play in your life by allowing grief to be sacred and ceremonial instead of perceived as in the way of a more preferable experience?

While the missing of my parents doesn’t instigate suffering for me, there isn’t a day where I don’t think of them or feel their presence. All the while, I honor the fact that no amount of visions in dream time or visitations in my waking state is meant to make grief go away.

It does get easier to face and less painful to sense, which occurs not by how many signs those who have passed send to you, but how okay you learn to be with feelings coming and going along their own trajectory of expansion.

All for Love,

Matt