The experts tell us that we never get over a major bereavement. We just learn to live the best we can with it.
To live well with bereavement, we need to consciously and continuously choose to live on the positive Green
Platform in a manner that’s always emotionally honest.
Grief happens in instalments. Just when we think we’re over it, and we’re ‘better,’ thenalong comes another ‘grief instalment.’ Had the relationship not been so good, the grieving wouldn’t be so bad. Our deep grief is a signpost pointing to a deep and lasting love connecting us to our loved one.
The stages of grief are shock, anger, guilt, denial, depression and then a new acceptance.
Having said that everyone’s grief is personal, and everyone’s grief is unique and special to him or her. However, the pain you are going through is not what will determine your future. Your future will be determined by who you are and who you become as you go through your pain.
You have the power deep inside to let suffering and pain make you a bitter person or a better person, a victim or a victor. Suffering can disform you or transform you. Disfigure you or transfigure you. Always a choice.
The bottom line for us all is that suffering happens … the hard times, the tragedies, the losses, the bereavements …and if we don’t transform them, we’ll transmit them and assure as God made little apples we’ll transmit and pass on our untransformed suffering … the misery, the woe, and the sludge to the very people who don’t deserve it … our closest family members.
Suffering? It’s that simple. If we don’t transform it, we’ll transmit it. We transform suffering with purpose, meaning and
gratitude.
The steps again are fairly straightforward. The key is to have a Green Platform Recovery Routine.
1. Emotional Honesty The acceptance. The “it is as it is.” We cannot argue with reality, or we will lose, but onl100% of the time. We feel the feeling fully. We cry the tears. There is no healing without a real feeling. We are emotionally honest.
2. The White Space In this space we choose our response. The “Control the Controllables” bit. What is itthat we can control? Then the choice to control that. We have the power to choose our response. The last and the greatest of the humanfreedoms … to choose our response in anygiven set of circumstances.
3. The Power to Choose “In the final analysis, the question is not why bad things happen to good people, but how we respond when such things happen.” Harold Kushner.
(A) We Can Choose The Red Platform. Many times, this choice appears in our lives as an unconscious automatic reaction. It’s the negative reactive platform of despair, the home of the victims, the whingers, thewhiners, the moaners, the energy vampiresand the “poor me” people. The “I can’t help how I feel” people. Always looking backward, blaming, complaining, moaning and bewailing.
(B) Or We Can Choose The Green PlatformHere we have the 10 most powerful words inthe English language: “If it is to be, it is up tome.” We are not merely a bunch of predictablereflexes being triggered into predictable
outcomes by people and events and situations. We always have a choice. The Green Platform is the positive and proactive platform of peace, joy, happiness, creativity, innovation, trust, hope, mindfulness, calmness, daily exercise, meditation, compassion, care, justice, unconditional love,and “do it now” action. It’s where we find joy in our own life and where we always choose actions that bring joy to others.
4. The Outcome Our quality of life will ultimately depend on which platform we decide to choose. Green Platform: Love, hope, joy, lessons, gifts and inner peace. Red Platform: Misery, sadness, sludge and despair.A great question here is, “what would ourloved one who is in heaven want us to pass onand transmit to others?”
After a year would they want to see us mopingaround and blaming them for our misery, orwould they be saying to us,
“You’re alive. You have the gift of life. If youtruly love me, get up, get out and make adifference in other people’s lives.
I want you to be happy. The only way you willbe truly happy is to make other people’s lives a bit better and happier.”
Surely that’s what love would say. That’s whatgreatness would say. That’s what wisdomwould say. That’s what our loved one would say.
- Nine Dublin parks awarded green flags
- Violent death in Offaly: gardaí appeal to public NOT to share horrific images on social media
- Guinness Storehouse No 1 tourist attraction in Europe – ahead of Buckingham Palace and Eiffel Tower!
- Minister launches the Substation at Dublin Port
- Freestyle fun as world record tumbles at Ballymun United
