JOURNAL N°7
The Grief Within
Since the existence of life, the grief within has been one of humanity biggest blocks. Grief comes in many shapes, forms and circumstances within humans and animals alike. Grief is not only associated with mourning a death of a beloved. But also in the way we move through life, aware or unconscious about our experiences and how we process grief.
There is a deeper mechanism on how grief can manifest within and create an unbalanced lifestyle. This is a deep and complex subject. My deepest desire is not to create fear but to bring awareness to the importance of feeling our emotions.
I have the deepest respect and compassion for meeting people where they are. We are all unique in our own very special ways. There is no right or wrong way to process your emotions. What works for one person may not necessarily work for another. What is important is to recognize how you process, and what you need so you have the space to feel into your emotions without being judged or criticized. Including how we process grief, and understanding the meaning behind the meaning of grief.
Let us embrace grief as part of growth within our own existence and how we engage with the world. When we allow ourselves to truly feel it, grief becomes a teacher. It shows us where we have been holding on, where we have been hiding, where we have not yet given ourselves permission to simply be human. To embrace grief is not to live in it forever, it is to honor it as part of the journey, to let it move through us rather than around us, so it can transform into something we grow from rather than something we carry forever in silence.
Most people think they know what grief is. However, what they know is only the visible part. This is the part that comes with a funeral, flowers, and people checking in for a few weeks. Then, life moves on. What almost no one talks about is the grief that lives within that loss. How it may show up for them and what needs to be honored during that process.
The Many Versions of Grief
How grief shows up in a mother who thought she was being the best mother she knew how to be. A mother who did not want to follow her mother’s patterns and all those before her but somehow did in unexpected ways. To then discover she was repeating unhealthy patterns and now that grief lives within. A mother who possibly has spent twenty years being everything to everyone, who has given her body, her time, her thoughts, her entire sense of self to her children, her partner, her work, her family, until one day she looks at her own life and cannot find herself in it anywhere.
What about the grief that a caregiver carries, the one no one speaks of. Not only the caregiver of an aging parent, but the partner caring for someone who is sick, the parent raising a child with special needs, the daughter who became her mother’s nurse, the friend who shows up again and again for someone who cannot show up for themselves. Caregivers give endlessly, often without anyone asking if they are okay, without anyone wondering what it costs them to keep showing up. The world rarely sees their grief. It mistakes their love for strength, and their exhaustion for devotion.
The same grief lives in someone whose success does not align with who they are or their purpose. They give from an unfilled space, exhausting their essence.
Now we move into the grief of staying in an unhealthy relationship. A relationship that asks for more than one receives. Or perhaps a relationship that no longer brings joy instead pain, sadness and resentment. Then comes the grief with a divorce, the one the partners carry, and even more, the one the children carry. A child does not always have the words for what they are losing. The family as they knew it, the home that once felt whole, the quiet sense of safety that comes from believing your parents will always be together. Children grieve too and often in silence. Their emotions sometimes manifest in behaviors because the adults around them are too consumed by their own grief to notice.
None of these griefs present with a written death certificate. It shows up as exhaustion that sleep cannot fix, as resentment that guilt won’t let them name, as the quiet question of who someone even is underneath all the roles they play.
Because in society there is no name for this kind of loss, no ritual, no permission to mourn it, people carry it in silence for years, sometimes for a lifetime, mistaking it for simply being tired, simply being responsible, simply doing what the world expects of them, when really it is grief, the grief of having disappeared inside their own life while everyone around them kept calling them by name.
This is why I followed my heart to France. I carried this grief within for decades, until exhaustion brought me to my knees. I definitely have made mistakes along the way, as a mother, lover, friend and as a human. What I have learned is that I no longer need to carry the weight of them as punishment. Every day, I am learning that I have permission to experience joy beyond the grief I learned to carry for a lifetime. I followed my heart to France because I believed in my own worth, in my ability to shift my mindset, to choose differently, to set myself free and explore life, to become a better version of myself, today and every day forward.
Wherever you are in your own grief, whatever shape it has taken in your life, receive this. You have full permission to feel it, and to set it free. To live the life your soul is desiring you to experience and embody. You cannot take back the words, the actions, the thoughts or the pain you may have caused. But moving forward, you have the ability to make conscious choices, to choose what makes you happy, and to live your life free and liberated. You forgive yourself for your ignorance, and you move forward with grace and tenderness, becoming the best version of yourself. Not only for you, but for those around you, those after you, and for humanity.
Until we meet again, may this bring a smile to your heart.
With love from France,
Jubetsy
