It’s healing to grieve for ourselves.

Read that again.

Much of our suffering is unmetabolized pain. We have not learned how to grieve properly, but grief is the way back to ourselves and what matters most. It is what makes space for our souls to inhabit our bodies again.

Grief is a part of our human existence. It is not merely with us when there is death; it is in the constant change and letting go that occurs in this life.

Grief is love. We do not do grieve for things we do not love.

Grief is healing. It is the movement of loving energy that keeps the heart open to life.

When we learn how to be with ourselves, our hearts, and our wounding, we can finally be free of the ties that bind us. So much of our suffering is a result of all this stuck, unmetabolized, emotional pain. It turns into things like depression, anxiety, self-loathing, addiction, and even eating disorders.

We are disconnected from a culture that honors grief as a healthy human process. This is why many of us do not let go of our pain properly.

My most significant healing experiences were grieving for my little girl. I grieved over what she survived and went through. I grieved for the parts of me that were addicted to alcohol and pulled into recreating trauma.

Honoring my grief has released me from negative energy.

Grief liberates trauma out of the nervous system so that we can be here and not continue to live in that energy—so we can quit repeating our toxic patterns.

Grief is for what was lost, and that is real. It can even be for what we never had. Grief is for all that has happened to us—all we have survived.

Our culture and new age spiritual movements are infused with patriarchal agenda. Grief and trauma are denied, shamed, suppressed, controlled, and pathologized. This is why so many have cut themselves off and perpetuate the cycle.

Victims are shamed. No one wants to be a victim while we live in a world that perpetuates abuse and gaslighting as a way to avoid addressing emotional crises.

Trauma is shamed. Women who have been abused are forever cursed, and it keeps us from being whole. We are maintaining this split as long as we do not acknowledge what must be grieved in the world and in our hearts.

We keep blaming it on our minds. We have to stop making our emotions wrong or labeling them as triggers (positive or negative), and naming other people’s feelings without first understanding them.

To feel something in response to life is not the same as being triggered or projecting.

This is the core wound of the patriarchy—denying our humanity, and a disconnection from the earthly feminine principle.

Our bodies and emotions are tuning forks, guiding us to well-being. Our humanity is our earth.

We have been led to believe that naming our trauma or expressing our negative emotions makes us unworthy of love. My response is no! That is so wrong. We become victims of our trauma and stay in trauma loops when we cannot be with it—when we cannot grieve and be held in a loving space.

We can’t forgive anyone, the past, or ourselves, without grieving and honoring what was.

Grief is an energy that can set us free and keep our hearts open to all the ups and downs of life. It is our aliveness pulsing us deeper into the mysteries of love. We are all in need of more love, not less.