Weeding the Garden
Written by: Kirsten Frey; Transitions Life Coaching
Back in the spring, I began to seed the garden of helping others move beyond grief and loss so they could heal their hearts and step fully alive and free into their lives.
It has been slow and steady progress.
Grief and loss are a difficult discussion for most people because we’ve never been given the tools to share our feelings and discover what was incomplete for us in the losses we’ve experienced. Instead, we learned to be strong, grieve alone, and stay busy.
I compare this to when we look at our backyard garden and see the weeds beginning to grow but we don’t want to deal with them. So we ignore them. And they continue to grow. When we look at the garden we can see them growing, we know they are there, and yet we can’t bring ourselves to the work of cleaning them up. There is always something else we’d rather put our attention on. After a while, these weeds begin to impede the other plants and flowers from flourishing and diminish the beauty of our garden. Unresolved grief is like those weeds in our garden. They need to be removed by the root when they first rise up before the root systems grow deep and anchor themselves into the earth.
The greatest joy for me in this journey is shifting the view that people have about grief. Grief is another emotion in the grand spectrum of emotions. We are meant to feel it, move through it and beyond it, just like we do with happiness, anger, contentment, frustration, and bliss. It is a passage, not a place to stay. If it remains painful, it’s almost always because of one or more of the following:
- Things we wish we’d said or done differently, better, or more
- Unrealized hopes, dreams and expectations we had for the relationship
- Unexpressed communication of an emotional nature
The only reason we have difficulty is because we’ve never been given the tools to discover and complete what was left incomplete for us in a loss. I’ve hosted information evenings, and the discussion that takes place afterwards is thoughtful and enlightening. Opening the dialogue and shifting people’s perspectives on grief is exciting and feels like the beginning of something big.
The work of grief recovery is simple, but it isn’t easy. The people I have worked with awe me with their openness, honesty and willingness to pull their weeds. The harvest? Healing, freedom, and peace.
This growing season has also shown me that I still have a few weeds of my own to pull in when it comes to expanding my work. The weeds of hesitancy, resistance, and fear have kept me playing it safe and small. It’s time to put on my gardening gloves and clear them out so there is space for all the beautiful flowers I want to grow. Healing, transformation, possibilities and financial freedom so that I can share the abundance of my garden with everyone.
