The most profound self-care tip while grieving the death of a loved one

The experience of loss is ever present in our every day lives. Much of the loss we experience involves little to no emotional interaction so it goes fairly unnoticed.

But then there are those losses that impact the very nature of our understanding of life i.e. losing our childhood, our innocence, a way of living, moving countries, divorce and losing a loved one to death.

With each experience of loss, you would expect to develop more resilience, yes?

But the truth is that resilience is not what loss is here to teach.

Loss is present to remind us to:

• have patience and develop tender loving care in looking after your heart
• adopt a graceful approach towards the natural unfolding of life
• have a willingness to surrender to your vulnerability and sensitivity, and
• to be respectable of death in its most divine form

When you lose a loved one to death, you are encouraged to deeply honour the unique blend of life experiences, understanding and karma between you and your loved one. How special it is to acknowledge this blend — one that has never existed and will never exist, with anyone else, except between you and your beloved. And that this energy will continue to remain alive in your heart even without the physical presence of your loved one.

To truly understand this required an insurmountable amount of faith in your reason for existing.

And with loss, comes grief.

Grief is undefinable by emotional standards.

There aren’t enough words to fully express the nature and extend to which grief stretches our emotional capacity to experience pain and love, all at the same time. To me, this is an integral part of our spiritual growth.

And, how do you support this stretching so that it does not turn into ripping apart?

SELF-CARE.

Now, this may sound counter-intuitive to the topic of this article, but the current nature of self-care is overrated (just bear with me for a moment).

This positive, eat healthily, spend time in nature, get support, meditate, express your emotions, be vulnerable, speak your mind, the list goes on.

Honestly, all of the above are extremely valid self-care tips and effective in their own right. I have, myself tried, tested and approve most of them. And dare I say, even created one myself.

But all self-care techniques remain ungrounded if the key driving factor is missing.

Practising moment to moment masterful presence to the sensitivity of your emotions.

How are you to recognise and implement any of the self-care strategies if you are not in touch with your deepest emotional needs?

Emotions are like the ocean and your body is the container for these emotions.

When you experience loss, it is much like a tsunami, an upheaval of your emotional state.

An impact on your body as powerful as this means that your emotions retreat back to their core primal state, no matter how intelligent the analytical mind may be.

And if you are not in touch with how to navigate through the rainbow of emotions held within your body at varying intensities, it is only natural to run away, suppress or pretend that they do not exist.

There is no judgement here, as the awareness is that we are all part of the very same ocean of emotions, just being held within different bodies.

So, when you practice moment to moment masterful presence to the sensitivity of your emotions, you:

• acknowledge its presence
• become aware of what you are in need of, instead of the checklist that advises what you should need
• provide a space for your primal emotions to breathe and just be
• allow your emotions to guide you through the healing process
• grow into accessing the range of emotions that you are here today, alive to feel

As you breathe in and out with presence, you create a space within and around for all your emotions to move through rather than be locked in thereby eliminating the need to project, fix, turn away or freeze.

In this way, you become so much more in tune, vibrant and soulful in your ability to care for yourself and those around you.

My wish for you

May self-care be less to do with following checklists and a way to honour your core emotional needs, as they arise, in the moment, trusting the flow of your own heartbeat.