You might be grieving a lot of loss and changes in your life but are avoiding a core big loss.
Grieving does not feel good. Furthermore, Holidays are a time of celebration when people are generally excited and happy. This makes it hard to grieve. This can make grieving a loved one harder. A strategy for coping with grief during the holidays is to take it head-on. This is easier to do when you have the tools and a defined process to help guide you.
Read on for insights into coping with grief during the Holidays and celebrations.
Grief Defined
Grief is a conflict of emotions. The loss of a father, in my case, means feeling sad that he is gone, glad that he is no longer in pain and a lot of guilt for not spending more time with him.
The grieving process needs to examine the highs and lows of the relationship and address them, no matter how old the emotions are. The key to a grief recovery process to make it powerful is emotional truth and completeness. Using this key trait allows you to create new wisdom and believe a new perspective. Formalizing grieving in this way creates a map to navigate emotional completeness easily.
Once complete, you’ll have a level of resolve that is relaxed and confident. Below are some of the insights that came from my process of coping with grief this Father’s Day.
Guilt in grieving
With the loss of a father, my biggest hurdle was discomfort. This discomfort was anxiety. Anxiety is worry about the future you are creating or imaging out of the negative experiences of your past. This kept me from sitting down and starting a simple grieving process.
The anxiety felt like a subtle apprehension about confronting something that I knew was going to be unpleasant. What I think made this particular grief process so unpleasant was the confusion of being angry at him, feeling guilty for not spending more time with him, and knowing I could never address any of those items with him. More simple there was a lot of complex emotions without a clear path to resolve.
This causes an unknown in even the belief that grieving and achieving resolve is possible. More anxiety kicks in and the emotions are avoided.
Grieving Someone Who was Always There
My dad had been there my whole life, someone who remembered things about me that I never knew. The conflict of believing lies my mother told me about him not wanting me created a distrust of him. The realizations that came with moving back home as an adult allowed for sympathy as I could see his challenges with a new perspective. This was a big change in a lifelong relationship.
Even bigger was uncovering court papers while cleaning out his home. He had gone to court over custody and child support. My mom filed for child support, which was something she had told me she never did. This discovery exposed the level of lies my mother had told me. In this same conversation, she also told me that my dad didn’t want me because I was a girl.
Emotional Truth
I was very young when this all happened, but the guilt I felt for not trusting my dad because of my mothers lies was very real. I felt guilty for believing the wrong parent and not fully trusting my dad. It feels like I let my mom win.
This emotional truth is the grieving process, feeling and expressing the emotions as they relate to the memory. In this case, emotional truth is the tool for resolving the conflict. Allowing the cruel truth of the situation instead of suppressing the uncomfortable ones is the gateway to complete resolve.
This is where you want to go and is why a lot of my content advocates 110% honest, even if you have to call it hating fully, get started with the truth.
What it looks like in this case, I hate my mother for telling me this lie and the truth is she did win. I lost trust in my father wanting me and I lost a deeper relationship with him because of it. It hurts and makes me feel sad and it would be weirder if it didn’t bother me. So I acknowledge the wrong of my mother, express the hate, the hurt, and the anger at never being able to change that aspect of my relationship with my dad.
Grief Recovery
In this way I’m starting grief recovery. I starts with the first memory of the relationship and work through the highs and lows. All the significant moments with a father can add up to a lot.
To be complete start at the beginning and review with honesty.
Grieving completely catalogs the highs and the lows of the relationship and then works on acceptance and processing of those events using acts of apologizing, forgiving, or acknowledging. These three acts allow you to process emotional truth. If the relationship was extremely abusive or complex start with processing the three most joyous and painful memories. Then apologize, forgive, or simply acknowledge that the situation was how it was.
Honesty is key and applies to yourself. You are going to get complete resolve and not have to do this exercise again. Identify the role you had in the situation. 110% honesty means looking at a situation and owning your part of getting there, staying there, or leaving there.
Example: I was eight, I do not place any blame on an eight year old in this situation but children are not dumb and neither was I. I need to acknowledge I wish I had told someone and that they would have helped me. I need to forgive myself, even at 8 for not speaking up and getting help. Continue with whatever the truth looks like for you.
Should the adults have made a special opportunity to let you speak up. Did family members fail by not making you feel like you could talk to them. This is not for anyone else, this is for you. What is your emotional truth that needs to be expressed?
Grieving on Father’s Day
Certain holidays and celebrations can be hard. My dad was born around Christmas and died before our Christmas vacation we had been planning. I spent my break cleaning out his house and moving things into mine. Making funeral plans, writing obituaries, and trying to find the lawyer with the will (I never did). Christmas kind of sucks sometimes. Every Sunday without a phone call also kind of sucks.
So on Fathers Day I set aside pushing to be happy and upbeat and honored that things were sucky. I took the weekend to grieve instead.
With the example of grieving a dad, I felt angry that, as a child, I never told him what my mother had said to me. As an adult, I realized how much trust was lost than I had as a kid. I was young, like 5 or 7 years old.
Does it make sense? Is it accurate for me to be angry that I did not speak up and say anything at a young age? It doesn’t matter; the truth is that I feel angry now that I didn’t say something.
That is the emotional truth of the situation, and I own that I didn’t tell anyone what she was doing. This allows me to move on to the parents’ role of being approachable. I didn’t feel comfortable telling people, so I didn’t. I need to acknowledge that as a parent, emotional conversation was not approached, so I didn’t. The third piece was that my mother should not have acted as she did. She took something scared that was not hers to take.
As I work the process, I journal from one thought to the next about accepting that I didn’t speak up, that the environment to speak up wasn’t cultivated, and acknowledging the injustice of the initial lie. And as I do, I cry a lot. I grieve. It is still very unfair.
This was an example of one low memory take from it what works for you to be complete. Next you will move on to a good memory.
Continuing the Grief Recovery
My dad always came to my sporting events. I remember feeling loved and hearing him cheering for me. Sports was a place he felt comfortable and a place he knew how to communicate. He cheered and was the only fan to stand up and clap when I was cheerleading, and my teammates loved it. I smiled and shook my head.
This was a very dad moment.
That’s a Dad’s role—a parent who puts aside pride to look goofy and ensures their children feel loved no matter what. And it works. This was how he communicated love—not in direct conversations but in actions—the action of showing up and cheering loudly. I forgive not talking about the emotions. The acknowledgment is that he showed up consistently and showed love, and the forgiveness is not for realizing it sooner and saying thank you.
It is your emotions of the memory. There might be just acknowledging or there might be all three acknowledge, forgiveness, and apologize. The grieving exercise works out of completeness and an emotional truth. So if you are apologizing you probably also need to forgive yourself. Tap into what the emotional truth is for you, start with the strongest one, and feel from there. That’s where the grieving is. Forgive, apologize, and acknowledge until there’s nothing left with that memory. Honor the moments that you missed and the ones that were a gift.
This is the grief recovery process and what navigating conflicting emotions can look like. Grieving to completeness is not hard, it might be uncomfortable, but that discomfort is temporary.
More Guilt – Grieving on Father’s Day
He called every Sunday, and I needed that. I had two rules in life: I answer the phone whenever Dad or Grandma calls. Work or otherwise, I answer these calls. They were my important people. When I had my phone and saw the call, I held to this rule, but sometimes I still missed the call. These voicemails are a heartbreaking blessing. Their voices say hello, it’s me, I love you, I’ll talk to you later. I sob every time, knowing that will never happen again.
I let it hurt because it would be weirder if it didn’t.
It hurts because it was something worth losing.
I grieve, I apologize for not taking those calls, and I acknowledge that these were acts of love that I will miss.
A Grief Ritual
It is this new understanding that allows us to move on.
Grief recovery becomes a ritual process when you can get to a point of honest completeness to update your belief. At the end of the grieving process you will add a statement of closure a new belief surrounding your loss. Adding this step after the grief recovery method provides a mantra with a level of clarity and calmness to it. Sometimes, I create three or four closure statements this brainstorming allows me to reach a closure statement that feels complete, true, and fair.
The closure statement takes the form of Just because…… doesn’t mean. It addresses the truth of understanding the behavior and a personal belief.
My closure statement example:
“Just because the closeness of our relationship was affected by the lies of my mother and a lack of addressing emotions doesn’t mean that there was not a lot of love in the relationship.”
Completing the process as a grief ritual provides something so emotionally true and simple.
It honors the complexities of life and provides a tool, a mantra, to say to yourself to help remember the whole relationship. This is what moving past grief looks like. A new level of acceptance with injustice, guilt, and loss. A way to navigate the unfinished conversations that can never happen.
Using Closure Statements, Grief Mantras, and Neuroscience to Heal
The mantras created out of the grief ritual are a cognitive awareness tool. You can use neuroscience to develop new, healthier thought habits. You can do this confidently after complete grieving and creating your new mantra, this is inner alchemy. Alchemizing a change in yourself to calmness and strength that started with hurt, little faith, and struggling. This is a healthy way of getting to the heart of what you wanted in the first place, not to let them die in vain, to not live in misery and hurt, and to honor them with living your best life.
As I worked through my grief ritual, I was reminded of a memory and a decision I made when I was young. “Hi, Mom” signs on TV always annoyed me, and I vowed that if that were me, my sign would say “Hi, Dad.”
I never got to TV, but I did write Hi Dad while traveling worldwide. I’d write Hi Dad on the Pacific Northwest sand or The Jersey Shore of the Atlantic. I was hardly ever home, so I didn’t come back or call for many reasons. Instead, I would write “Hi Dad” and take my picture with it. It was my own little personal post cared. Inspired by all the people on TV and the typical “Hi Mom” sign. I vowed that if I were ever on TV I would hold a “Hi Dad” sign.
A Father’s Day Poem From a Daughter – Coping with Grief on Father’s Day
Today, those opportunities are gone, so I decided to capture this in a poem. I grieved more as I did it, capturing all the things that reminded me of him—the things about me that reminded me of him—the truth and love he showed that exposed a spiritual lie.
This is where grieving completely allows you to go. A place of truth, completeness, and fairness. With an emotional process, ancient knowledge (mantra), and art clarity and healing occur.
I am forever grateful to a teacher (Onami) who demanded a way to resolve trauma and made it her life’s mission to figure it out. I’m also thankful to the pioneers (John and Russell) who said life can be painful, but here’s a way to navigate the complexities. They developed a way of navigating traumatic emotions and the results is a really complete grieving process. This is holistic healing and growth, and this is exactly what I needed and wanted. I am grateful.
Remembering Dad
If you’re a loved one today, I know how that feels. The next holiday celebration, or Father’s Day doesn’t have to be painful. Take these examples and apply them to your own story and resolve your own grief.
If you never had a dad or had an abusive Dad, I get that too. That’s Mother’s Day for me. You are right to feel this way, and you are not alone.
Finally, if you’re spending time with loved ones today or people who stepped up and filled in as family, Happy Holidays. You’ve got something very special.
Resources
There will also be teachings coming available for healing trauma, spirituality, and some of the science involved. To stay up to date on those offerings and insights, follow us on socials or join the Agora (our email list).
There are also additional resources in the bookstore for various resources on healing and grieving.
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