Grieving lost dreams does not sound glamorous, this I know. I have to admit that when I decided to put this down as one of my ten steps in my 90-day Program, I hesitated a bit. I worried it would scare potential clients away and you know what? It might. And that’s okay. The work it takes to live an empowered life is not for the faint-hearted, yet everyone and anyone can do it.
It wasn’t until my marriage ended that I fully tapped into the grieving process. And it wasn’t just the loss of my marriage that needed to be grieved, there was a lifetime of events where I had felt a sense of loss. Once I learned how to grieve, yes, I had to learn about grief as it’s not taught in my family system, I finally felt alive! It sounds crazy, I know! But stay with me. When we have an idea of what life should look like and those ideas and pictures don’t come to fruition, the disappointment and grief, which is sometimes hidden, can create obstacles that keep us from moving into living an empowered life. Learning to feel loss and grief is the gateway to opening the heart, and an open heart is where you truly connect with yourself. In moments when I am tapped into the depths of my grief, I feel as though I’m touching the very soul essence of who I am.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying we must feel sad all of the time to live an empowered life. But we need to look at what’s keeping us back from reaching our true potential as humans. What is being tucked (or in my case shoved) away in hopes never to be seen or felt? What are we hiding and what are we hiding from? If we tuck grief away, it’s still there and will show up in different ways with how we respond to life. Being empowered doesn’t always mean living under rainbows and sunshine, it means being empowered as ALL of you. And as a human being, you have a gamut of emotions that deserve to be seen, heard and felt.
Loss of a job, loss of health, loss of a loved one, loss of the future we thought we’d have, loss of a spouse to divorce, loss of a pet, loss of childhood, loss of friendship. The list goes on and on. There are no limits to what loss and grieving is to a person.
This can be a scary subject, and for some, it might even be taboo to talk about, but loss happens, there’s no way around. It’s part of our human experience and if we allow ourselves to look grief in the face, say hello, invite it in, see it, feel it, we can start to feel alive, more than ever before.
Calgary Canada Life Coach Arianne Moore, worldwide Coaching for Women