“Nooo”, I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Noooooooo”, I held it out longer. Like I was singing for an audience of 10 million people who needed to hear it in the back of the room. I placed my head between my knees and grabbed for the car’s dashboard. Thank God my husband was driving. The nurse’s words echoed in my mind, after ending the call.
“Can you come back, your Dad is declining fast. There is a chance he won’t make it”.
I had been at the hospital earlier in the day, and Dad wasn’t himself. He was yawning a lot and was very ornery with everyone including medical staff and some family friends who had stopped by to visit with him. I chalked it up to it just being one of those days with him at the hospital. He’d noticed, good and bad days at this point since I visited every day of those last weeks of his life.
But after I got that call, there was nothing that I could do to hold the scream that followed. The kids were in the back seat of the car and it scared them. I still hate that part but I couldn’t help it. It was a release of the grief that had been ensuing for months since the dreadful terminal diagnosis.
Sometimes when grief knocks, it lets itself in…
I was crying and the kids started crying. The onset of this upcoming loss, the anticipatory grief weighed too heavy and was too much to bear. So, the grief came out audibly in a scream. Have you been there?
You see, grief is messy. And in the deep throws of grief, you simply don’t know what you will get. Sometimes you don’t know how you will respond. It could be a shout, a scream, a whimper, tears streaming down your face, etc. But let me tell you, it is okay to let the grief go, to let it out. It is necessary to let it out. Hence, the importance of making space for grief in our lives, to tend to the grief, so that it does not over take us.
Some common ways of releasing grief are by journaling, exercising, and talking to trusted friends and/or a counselor or therapist. Today, I wanted to provide a few unique options to release grief.
3 Alternative Ways to Release Grief
1. Release Grief with A Collage
Most often we don’t have the language to express our grief. It’s one of the reasons I love reading the Psalms and Lamentations. Because the verses give language to pain and suffering, it gives words that we may experience but can’t express. This grief collage gives you an opportunity to express your grief with or without words.
Create a collage using old magazines, newspapers, photographs, and other materials that resonate with your feelings of grief. Arrange and glue these items onto a piece of cardboard or paper to visually represent your emotions, memories, and experiences related to loss. The act of cutting, arranging, and creating can be therapeutic, allowing you to externalize your grief in a tangible and symbolic form.
2. Release Grief with Memorial Planting
I remember the first time I received a memorial plant. It was a beautiful plant in memory of my sister Sharon but I couldn’t plant it. I didn’t have the capacity to take care of it and I couldn’t bear the thought of the plant dying. Yet, now I’ve found plants to be therapeutic for me.
So, here’s what you can do for memorial planting. Find a quiet outdoor space or even a pot indoors and plant a memorial garden or pot with flowers, herbs, or plants in honor of your loved one. As you dig, plant, water, and care for the garden, you can channel your grief into nurturing new life and growth. Watching the plants flourish over time can symbolize the resilience of life amidst loss, offering a sense of comfort and connection to nature.
3. Release Grief through Letter Writing
I recently saw a celebrity who wrote a letter to his deceased wife every day since she died. In the comments of that post, many people thought this was excessive. I thought, they probably have never lost anyone. I usually don’t leave comments on things like that but I wanted to raise grief awareness that what he was doing is normal. And that it is called continuing bonds, it is as a way of coping with the loss. The act of letter writing is a healing practice because it is another way to release grief.
To get started with this practice, write a letter to your loved one who has passed away, expressing your thoughts, feelings, and memories. Pour out your heart onto paper, sharing everything you wish you could say to them. You can also write letters to yourself, offering words of encouragement, forgiveness, or understanding. Writing allows you to communicate with your loved one in a meaningful way and can provide a sense of closure, acceptance, and healing.
So there are several ways to release grief, I’ve provided several here as well as some great resources below with more. Let me know which one works for you.
Sitting with you,
Natasha ❤️
Resources for Releasing Grief
Each book includes exercises to help process and release grief.
