Finding Joy in Grief: A Radical and Mindful Approach to Grieving | Sky Jarrett | TEDxMargueriteLake

everything that we love we lose the universe of Love impermanence tells us that and so grief and loss are an essential part of The Human Experience it's an inevitable form of suffering that every single one of us has or at some point in our lives will face and yet so many of us shy away from it and are oftentimes unprepared so let's talk about how to prepare for the inevitability of loss the great technad Han once said if we can learn to suffer we will suffer much less what if I told you that there's a formula for how to suffer less I'm going to give you that formula and I'll also share a few lessons about what it means to find the joy amidst or grief I remember the day that I heard of my mom's cancer diagnosis I literally collapsed I felt weak physically emotionally and also mentally and I remember asking how will I possibly find the strength to pull through this it had only been six months that my father had passed now if you've lost a parent then you know that losing a parent is one of the most difficult forms of loss that anyone will have to endure and I've had this interesting experience of losing my father quite unexpectedly no chance for Preparation no final goodbyes no final I love yous and then this very contrasting view of what I've come to learn is anticipatory grief the anticipation that one day she will eventually take her final breath so I remember sitting with her one day in the doctor's office and hearing the words stage four lung cancer with metastases to the brain the spine and the adrenal gland seven brain tumors I don't think I heard much else of what he said it's one of those moments where you see the person's mouth moving you can hear their voice but you're not actually hearing the words that are coming out of their mouth and so I held her hand worried for how scared she must be knowing how scared I was and I took a deep breath preparing myself for what I knew would be some of the most difficult days of my life our mother's brain surgery was the day before Florida shut down for the pandemic and the tumors on her brain actually left her paralyzed on the left side of her body it was quite gut-wrenching to see this vibrant strong and independent life of the party now in a wheelchair disabled and unable to help herself in ways that anyone who knows her knows that she struggled to Fathom as her new reality and so this added a new layer to my already complex grief because even before she died I started grieving the version of her that I had come to know as my mother and so there I am a self-proclaimed suitcase entrepreneur traveling the world bouncing from City to City doing the most incredible and remarkable transformational work partnering with some of the world's top Fortune 500 companies and then suddenly grounded in Florida losing my sense of freedom and not being able to leave being forced to face this new reality of a life that quite frankly I was not loving the free spirit in me felt completely grounded so I want you to imagine four women with incredibly strong personalities including my six-year-old niece Noah all coming together Under One Roof supporting our mother through the final days of her life and trying to survive a pandemic while also supporting my niece who was now being homeschooled my sister rain and I building this brand new business and then becoming Caregivers for our mother who was dying the hardest part of this for me is something that I'm sure you can relate to which was feeling completely out of control wanting to leave and not being able to wanting to find a solution that would fix this that would save her life and not being able to and for my fellow caregivers who understand the mixed bag of emotions the physical exhaustion of not being able to sleep at night worrying and the terror of wondering how is this going to end and struggling to actually come to terms with the reality that our mother is dying the frustration and the anger and the resentment the hurt and the sadness and then the guilt of feeling all of those things because at the end of the day it's the person I love more than life itself so when our mother passed friends and family members would tell us oh just stay busy it'll get better with time this too shall pass you know those words of comfort that your dear friends and loved ones try to tell you to console you and I smiled and nodded in absolute disagreement because I don't believe that grief will just somehow go away when you stay busy nor do I believe that it gets better with time grief gets better with work and when left unprocessed it has this sneaky way of seeping into different areas of Our Lives creating damage and harming the relationships with the people that we hold there and so while unprocessed grief might actually be quite difficult to pinpoint especially in ourselves I'm going to give you some things that you might be able to recognize it's this increased irritability and intolerance that can start to create conflicts in your relationships it's disengaging in work and losing interest in the things that you actually used to enjoy or quite the opposite we sometimes go extra hard in work using that busyness as a distraction from the pain we can also start to feel this kind of Shame feeling like how am I not over this loss yet and we can avoid sharing our loss and sharing our story because we're so afraid of reliving the experience sometimes we actually start to blame other people for the things that are going wrong in our lives and that happens because we're avoiding taking responsibility for our own experience of our grief and then we have this really interesting way where we start to isolate ourselves we somehow start to feel different from other people and we don't feel the sense of belonging in the social groups that we actually used to enjoy spending time with because they don't understand they haven't lost a mother they haven't lost a spouse they haven't lost a child or a sibling and so this isolation can start to create divisiveness in our relationships now after losing my 36 year old cousin a best friend a dad my mom but also my marriage losing my career and at some point losing my sense of self and the identity of the person that I came to knew myself to be I've become a student of grief and what I want to share with you are some of the lessons that I've been learning along the way so lesson number one is a shift in your mindset if you change your mindset you will change the way that we grieve now there's five mindset shifts some of these might seem unorthodox and quite different than how Society will dictate but it's these shifts that have allowed me to find the possibility of joy in grief so here goes mindset shift number one is the recognition that we don't only experience grief when we lose someone that we love understand that you can experience grief from any form of lust losing a job losing a relationship a dream left unfulfilled it's going into retirement or taking a leave and then losing that sense of passion and purpose that you have in your work mindset number two is that joy and grace is possible despite the grief so you don't have to feel guilty for feeling that Joy it does not mean that you love them or miss them any less mindset shift number three is the recognition that grief is a full body experience there's a reason why you're so tired while you might be having short-term memory loss while you start having these Phantom aches and pains and tightness and tension in the body while you lose the stamina that you're so accustomed to I learned that my grief likes to express itself through movement which was not surprising because we know that our emotions are actually energy in motion and so it wasn't uncommon to find me on Sunrise Beach here in South Florida I got my airpods in my ears classical music playing and me on the shoreline doing pirouettes and leaping into the air doing twists and turns as if I was somehow classically trained ballerina which for the record I am not and so I became this hysterical entertainment for the morning time joggers who must have been thinking what is wrong with that lady but it worked mindset number four is realizing that you don't have to be ashamed for your grief nor do you have to apologize for it regardless of how long it has been grief is a heart Journey that is best traveled in community there's something really powerful and very liberating being in community with people who are also on the journey and being able to share your story with people who actually care to listen mindset number five is realizing that grief actually does not have an expiration date it's not a problem to be solved it's not something for you to just get over it's something that we learn to carry for the rest of our lives so expect and accept that it will come in waves and as John cabotzin says while we can't stop the waves we can certainly learn to surf mindful grieving has become a surfboard for us which brings me to lesson number two applying the gifts of mindfulness to the way that you grieve so you can think of mindful grieving as a conscious or I like to think of it as a more liberating approach to the way that we grieve it's being intentional about paying attention to our grief that allows us to get the insights of mindful awareness with the expansiveness of compassion and coupling those things to how we grieve one of the most powerful mindfulness principles that we have applied to mindful grieving is the suffering formula now if you remember nothing else from this talk I want you to remember this suffering equals pain times resistance we have to realize that the heartache that the sadness that the pain of the loss will likely always be there but the degree to which we suffer is number one a choice and number two is determined by the extent to which we resist that pain resistance is an amplifier of suffering acceptance is the antidote to suffering it's that switch that we can flip that transforms the darkness of grief into the possibility of joy and now I'm not suggesting that acceptance is apathy or that it somehow means that you have moved on acceptance is seeing things for what they are and then facing that reality with courage I had to come to terms with the reality that my mother was dying and once I did that acceptance allowed me to experience her in those final moments of her life with more joy with more grace and with more kindness and so I want you to think of grief as a teaspoon of salt in a cup of water that's gonna be rather salty and not very nice but in a pond it loses its power we have the power to become the pond which brings me to lesson number three which is to create a roadmap for your grief it's accepting that our grief will likely be a lifelong journey so where will your pit stops be for those handled with care days when you're hit with an unexpected brief wave what will be your systems of Refuge the people the places the spaces of safety and support where you can go to allow yourself to feel the grief to be with the grief and allow yourself to move through the experience of your grief not around but to actually move through it having these healthy systems of Refuge is what will allow you to turn the dial down on that amplifier of resistance by allowing yourself to actually feel the feelings of that grief that so many of us avoid feeling it's so easy to lose our connection with the people that we love because it's so hard to feel the grief of that loss but we have to remember that the more we love the harder we grieve and so it's going to be important that you create rituals of change that allow you to actually unlock the gifts of grief one of the biggest unlocks for us was realizing that we did not have to lose our relationship with our parents just because they died and we've been able to create these rituals of change like celebrating their birthdays celebrating the anniversary of their passing and treating these days as holy days that has allowed us to keep them alive in our hearts and to keep them present in our lives as a mindfulness instructor and a mindfulness practitioner I've come to see the gifts of grief blossom in my life now if we go back to that day when I heard of my mother's cancer diagnosis remembering feeling the agony of self-doubt questioning if I had the strength to pull through this and then actually seeing myself throughout the journey usually in moments of meditation where I would come into the practice with a pain and hurt at like level 10 out of 10. but then allowing myself to sit with that grief to feel the feelings of my grief using the breath as an instrument to build capacity so that I could actually breathe through the discomfort of what I was experiencing and then to witness my own resourcefulness as I would offer self-compassion I would often hold myself and hug myself and I remember one time in particular thinking my gosh you are powerful I believe that self-trust is a core premise of resilience that the mere belief that you do in fact have what it takes to pull through something will allow you to pull through it and so for my fellow voyagers on the Journey of grief I will end with this know that when you give yourself the permission to grieve honorably intentionally to tenderly and mindfully work your way through the discomfort and difficulties of your grief you will come to experience the depths of love and compassion not only for other people but also for yourself and you will come to know the undeniable truth that you are powerful Beyond Your Wildest imagination and I want you to remember these four things number one it is possible to find joy and grace despite the pain of grief number two that your breath is always with you number three to become the pond and number four you do not have to let them go just because they have passed thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 28,719

Keywords: Death, English, Grief, Happiness, Life, Life Hack, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:52658]

Id: TUiT0cpBPK8

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2023