7 Ways to Heal After Loss
Living with grief, learning from it, understanding how to be with it instead of fighting it
My new book How to Love Better will be available this Tuesday! It is temporarily 33% off on Amazon. This is a preorder sale, after the release the sale will likely change.
“Get ready to underline and highlight so many pages of this beautiful book.” - Adriene Mishler
“How to Love Better isn’t just a book about relationships—it’s a guide to life.” - Vex King
“How to Love Better is destined to change your life.”—Lena Waithe
If you already preordered, make sure to get your free companion workbook about handling breakups, addressing your past, recovering from heartbreak, and understanding what you want in a relationship — it is only available until Tuesday.
Join my ask me anything special event so we can go over my new book together!
7 Ways to Heal After Loss
Our universe has a powerful characteristic of ever-present change. This is visible in every layer of existence. No matter where you look, impermanence is an inescapable law. Within this river of change you can see that movement makes it possible for there to be a flow of creation and destruction, beginnings and endings – everything that arises eventually passes away.
This truth is one of the most challenging parts of being a human being. This law of impermanence makes it so that birth and death are an undeniable aspect of existence. Loss is inevitable. The bonds you develop with those you are closest to, no matter how precious, are ultimately temporary. Even if a bond lasts a lifetime, it will eventually come upon the chapter of death.
Life is inherently relational, meaning that the bonds you form deeply shape your identity and energize you to continue facing the ups and downs you come across. We thrive in small groups, and when one of our essential group members is gone, we feel that loss tremendously.
Grief can feel like gravity has increased the weight on your bones making everything more difficult or like a dense fog has descended that makes things feel unfamiliar.
No longer having the opportunity to turn to someone you can be fully vulnerable with, someone you trust and love, hurts. Losing someone you love sometimes feels like you have lost a part of yourself. It can make you feel disconnected from others and from yourself.
Living with grief, learning from it, understanding how to be with it instead of fighting it is an aspect of life that is full of lessons.
The following are 7 ways to work with grief when it arises:
Embody their best qualities. Part of the sadness you feel when you lose someone you love is because their qualities and energy go with them. They had a specific way that they shined upon those they encountered. One of the best ways to remember and honor someone’s life is to embody their best characteristics. Remember the kindness and joy they were able to give you and pass that forward to the world. It is possible to keep their great qualities alive through your own choices and behaviors. Use their life as a point of inspiration for how you would like to show up in the world.
Grief does not have a time limit. Don’t try to be efficient with your grief. Just like healing, moving through grief can be a messy process. An important thing to understand is that you can grieve for years while still living a full and enjoyable life. Letting go is not a quick process, feeling sadness is totally normal, the heaviness of loss can sit in your heart for a long time. The sadness may come up over and over again, sometimes triggered by something small, let it arise and pass away. Let yourself experience grief in an organic manner. Losing someone essential to your life is not an easy thing to overcome.
Gratitude for the opportunity to have known them. Our world is vast and the number of human beings in this moment and in history is tremendous. The fact that you even had the opportunity to cross paths with someone who had such a positive impact on your life is much bigger than winning the lottery. A lot of your mental energy may be focused on the loss but try to make space for gratitude that you were able to spend formative time with someone so special. You easily could have missed each other, instead you had a brilliant moment of time when you were able to overlap and deeply impact each other’s lives.
Life is beautiful, even after loss. The loss can feel all consuming. Rightfully so, because losing someone important deeply alters your life and mindset. When working with grief, we have to allow ourselves to feel what’s real within us, but we also have to balance our viewpoint by remembering that joy can still exist. The world continues, life continues and if we can bring ourselves back to the present moment, there may be sadness there, but if you look at reality without judgment, there can also be laughter and immense amounts of gratitude. There are still many delightful experiences for us to encounter when we are ready. Reconnecting with yourself and what brings you purpose and joy will support you tremendously in this time.
Be with your emotions. Letting go and moving forward is difficult if you are suppressing your emotions or avoiding them altogether. Ignoring sadness just makes it bigger and can cause it to create dense and unproductive behavior patterns. Even when it is hard, the only way to really move forward is to be with what is true within you. Finding the subtle space where you can feel the heaviness without making it bigger than it already is will help your healing process. Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting, it just means that you can remember your loved one without feeling the same level of intensity as the initial loss. The grief will change over time.
Remember that they would want you to thrive. It is easy to get caught up in a storm of emotions, making it bigger and all consuming. The mind is always looking for something to attach itself to and grief is an easy target. Feeling the grief is important but it is also important to remember that the one you lost wants to see you happy, they want you to thrive, they want you to feel the joy of achieving your goals. Building a beautiful life for yourself is a great way to commemorate the one you lost.
Gratitude for what you still have. Even though the loss is great, don’t forget to take a good look at your surroundings and acknowledge how much you still have. There are great people you can confide in, there is water to drink, food to eat, there are still countless experiences that can help you grow and elevate your happiness. Grief can turn the mind into a microscope that only focuses on loss, make sure you intentionally widen your perspective so you can see that you still have a vibrant and luminous life in front of you.
Read more about this topic in my new book How to Love Better. 33% off (preorder sale). I hope my new book serves you well!
Audiobook:
I just finished recording the audiobook of How to Love Better! To make it special, my wife was kind enough to join me for a conversation that is only available at the end of the audiobook. Because a lot of the lessons in this book come from the experiences in our relationship, it felt important for my wife to join me for the first time and for us to speak about what we learned together. We go deeper into personal stories that I share in the book and I asked her about the most important things she has learned from meditating more than 13,000 hours. I feel really grateful that she decided to share her wisdom.
You can preorder the audiobook by clicking here.
Last Tickets Available for the Tour
All events are very close to selling out! See you soon!
Boston March 10th - In conversation with Kristen Holmes, Principal Scientist at WHOOP. Click here for tickets.
New York City March 11th - In conversation with Lindsey Simcik, host of the Almost 30 podcast. Click here for tickets.
San Francisco March 14th - In conversation with Jillian Turecki, New York Times bestselling author of It Begins With You. Click here for tickets.
Boulder March 18th - In conversation with Nicole Behnam, host of Beyond the Interview. Click here for tickets.
Austin March 20th - In conversation with Adriene Mishler, founder of Yoga with Adriene. Click here for tickets.
London March 29th - In conversation with Poppy Jamie, founder of Cuddle Sleep Health. Click here for tickets.
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I preordered the book months ago. Just preordered the audible version as well.
Super excited to read AND hear it!!