Navigating Grief: My Journey After Losing My Dad
Grief isn’t something I bring into the therapy room (or any room) often, which is ironic as there’s not much I feel resistant to explore with my psychotherapist (I just want to take this opportunity to express gratitude to her for creating such a safe space). My experience with grief has been silent, tender, something that I find difficult to express through words, and often times I feel that it doesn’t need to be expressed with words. It’s held in my heart with reverence, it’s a crushing aching pain throughout my chest which makes it hard to breathe sometimes, it’s something that feels deeply personal and private. So why am I writing about it now? I guess it felt like the right time to give voice to my feelings, to open myself up to being vulnerable for those who may stumble upon this experiencing something similar, to say that you’re not alone.
There are many different types of grief – heartbreak, the end of a phase of life, the loss of a job, a change in health, life transitions and grieving an aspect of ourselves, the loss of a loved one – for me it was the loss of my dad. It’s coming up the three years this December and I miss him every single day. It was unexpected, it cracked me open completely, it was a total crumbling. It feels hard to admit, perhaps out of fear that my experience will be judged, but within all that pain was the glimmer of rebuilding a life which felt more aligned, a deeper understanding that time is precious and I no longer wanted to live my life based on ‘should’ or other people’s expectations, it exposed personal patterns and conditioning that I wasn’t open to exploring before (and wasn’t conscious of), this was the catalyst for me going to Bali to train as a yoga teacher, and the beginning of the journey to reclaiming my authentic self. It’s weird that something so horrendous and life shattering can also hold what I’ve come to understand as gifts or medicine. There was life/me before the loss of my dad, and life/me after the loss of my dad – looking back it’s like night and day – and I wish that he was physically here to see the version of me that I am in this moment.
I also want to honour that for those of you reading this when the grief is so fresh, you don’t need to look for the gifts, I don’t want to spiritually bypass, there’s no two ways about it – losing someone you love and who is so important to you is sh*t, it’s arguably the worst thing that can happen in life, and if someone told me I could reverse time and have my dad back and that he would live a long and healthy life, I would take that deal in a heartbeat. I feel that I’m sharing this to also give space for the experience of hope – in those on your knees moments, where it feels like your life is burning down around you and it’s in complete ruins, where maybe you feel like a shell of yourself – there are glimmers, tiny pockets of hope that offer us a moment to breathe. Over time these can extend, we experience longer moments to breathe, and we may notice that our grief has slightly shifted in some way.
I also wanted to share some things I’ve learned through the experience of grief:
Life is not black and white, it’s full of nuance, grey, and colour.
It’s possible to simultaneously be able to hold the duality of grief and joy (and other ‘opposite’ emotions).
Grief is not something that needs to be processed (if we don’t want to), it’s an ever-unfolding experience that is complex and layered, it’s ok to hold it privately if that’s what feels right for you.
When grief cracked me open it also invited a softening.
Time truly is something that we can’t get back.
We never have as much time with loved ones or in this body as we think. Life is for living, connection, making mistakes and trying again, being present in the small moments, and telling people we love them every chance we get.
Regrets are a part of life, we all have things we wish we did differently and that’s ok.
Being my authentic self honours my dad, I’m living my life for me, while carrying the best parts of him and his lessons with me.
My dad was warmth, and light, and humour – he taught me that it’s so important to laugh, to be open to joy, and I will always remember his dad jokes.
We’re never ready to say goodbye to someone we love.
There’s often this bitter-sweet feeling that can surround grief.
Big life events will often expose further layers of grief – it often involves joy and grief existing in the same breath, it can feel like an unwelcome reminder of the confronting reality of the pain and loss. It’s ok to wish things were different and that they were physically here, it also reminds us how much we loved them, how much they meant to us, and the lasting impact they’ve had on our life.
The seemingly small moments also tend to prod at the grief – those times when you’re sitting on the sofa and it seems to hit you out of nowhere, or when you wish that you could call them to hear their voice, or you see something in the street that reminds you of them.
Time definitely does not heal all wounds (insert middle finger here), but it can transform our relationship with our grief.
Your grief is yours, there’s no right or wrong way to be with your grief, whether you feel it or don’t want to feel it, whether you crumble or remain standing, whether you take space to be with it or distract yourself, know that you are not alone in your experience and however you choose to hold your grief – it is completely valid.
I know this won’t be the last time that I grieve in this lifetime or that I experience such a momentous loss, but the brutal truth is we cannot live without experiencing loss – to do so would be to shut ourselves off from experiencing life to its fullest, to form a protective bubble that keeps us isolated from everything and everyone. I guess you could say pick your poison, the medicine being that when we experience such profound loss, we know we have loved so deeply, and many times that love changed our life, and will be forever held in our hearts and memory.
