Letting Go of Grief and attachments that are not useful

Grief - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grief

Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the ...

Grief (disambiguation) - Griefer - The Grief Recovery Institute - Grief counseling

 

I have noticed that Grief is a form of anger. It is sort of like, "How dare you steal away someone I love and care about!" It can be extreme and debilitate a person. What is important about grief is that it teaches us who we really care about and how much they mean to us and how important they were in our lives. Often these people cannot be replaced, they supported us emotionally and sometimes financially as well. So, our emotional stability and even financial stability might be affected when they pass away.

 

However, it is important to have some control over all this and to not just be a victim that goes down permanently under grief especially if we have children or brothers and sisters or parents that need us desperately to stay functional.

 

For example, the first time I experienced grief was when I was 8 years old and my 16 year old male cousin in Seattle (my uncle's only son) died at age 16 in a car accident in which he was driving the car. I remember sitting in my bedroom in Glendale on Belmont street in California and feeling about as raw and as vulnerable as I had ever remembered feeling up to then in my life. 

 

The next time I felt this kind of grief was when my father's parents died one by one within a few years of each other. However, I was in my 20s then and my parents went to Seattle for each of their memorials from California. I had my own life then and so I sort of expected their passing because they were both in their 80s. At that time in the 1970s most people died in their 60s or 70s. So, when someone made it to 80 you expected them to go any moment in those days.

  

But, what I really wanted to get at is in trying to find ways of dealing constructively with grief. I suppose you could take an amnesiac and forget that the person died. But then that seems kind of counter productive because then you would also forget all the good experiences you had with that person that enriched your life.

So, I was thinking about this and I came up with a way to recondition your subconscious and it goes something like this: "I am letting go of my grief and other attachments that are no longer useful to my survival here on earth." I was thinking about repeating this in your mind as a way to begin to let go of grief that is debilitating your life.

Remember, there are all kinds of grief that might be useful to let go of. IF it's not productive each of us has to find their own way forward into survival and life. The alternative is to quickly or slowly fade out mentally, physically and to die from our grief.

One of the kinds of grief people experience isn't about the death of a person. It can also be about the death of the era when they were young. Though nostalgia might be fun, on an every day level one must often let go of the past in order to embrace the present and future. So, this is something for each of us to consider as well. I have an XM satellite pickup in my truck so if I want to I can listen to any decade of music I want to since the 1940s. When I first got it I found I listened a lot to the 50s, 60s and 70s which was my childhood and young adulthood songs. Then I found at a certain point that it was kind of creepy for me to keep listening to this all the time. I realized I had to move into the present after a few weeks in the past remembering old times. However, I still once in a while listen to old songs and they take me back to old times.

So, maybe one of many ways to stay in the present and future is to use this statement as a mantra:  "I am letting go of my grief and other attachments that are no longer useful to my survival here on earth."