Dealing with loss
Thinking about death makes you value life more. ―Julia Samuel
👥 Serves: 1 Person
🎚 Difficulty: Hard
⏳ Total time: As much as you need
🥣 Ingredients: Your beloved ones to talk to, patience, kindness, self-compassion
💪 Nutritional values: Empathy, Compassion, Understanding, Acknowledgment, Love
Dealing with loss
📝 Description
A series of insights into how to cope with loss.
Death has been part of our daily life for centuries, but nowadays it happens mostly far away from our homes and it seems removed from our daily lives. Until the day when we experience the death of a loved one and we are left without any words or any idea on what to do. Julia Samuel explains that “death – and the mourning process after the death of a loved one – is the ultimate loss of control” (Flow Magazine, issue 29, pp. 49-51). The following recipe has been inspired by Julia Samuel’s contribution to issue 29 of Flow Magazine and it shares some insights into how to cope with loss, especially when it is most difficult.
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Important: We shared this recipe as part of our blog post “Wellbeing in the time of COVID-19” because it’s a needed process to heal from the loss of a loved one. Naturally, take all needed precautions: for instance, even if it’s difficult, avoid close contact and physical touch with other people (step 3); remember to always keep at least 1 metre distance.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Feeling the pain
After the loss of a beloved one, allow yourself to experience and feel the pain. Numbing it with different strategies such as over-working, drinking alcohol, over-eating, etc. will not help you deal with the pain. And not enabling yourself to feel the pain will eventually prevent you from experiencing joy too.
Step 2 – Working on the pain
Take the time you need; be it a week, a month, a year, or even more. Try to accept what has happened slowly. Be compassionate towards yourself and make sure you do enough physical exercise to better support your emotional wellbeing.
Step 3 – Surrounding yourself with love
During the grief, it is important to surround yourself with people that love you and who can support you.
Step 4 – Expressing your grief
It also helps to find ways to express your grief. This might mean talking about it, lighting a candle every day, dedicating a prayer to the person you lost. Try to find an activity that refers to the bond that you will always have with the person you lost.
Step 5 – Repeating
Repeat steps 1-4 until you need it.
Step 6 – Remembering
When someone we love leaves us, we think we won’t survive the loss. But we do survive, if we make space for mourning and take time to heal. Mourning someone can be a messy process, there is no moment when you are officially done. Setbacks also might happen: you are doing well for months and then one day something happens that triggers the pain again. When you have loved someone dearly, the pain of their loss will never quite leave you, but you can learn how to deal with it.
Step 7 – Listening
If you know a person who has lost someone… listen, listen, listen. Listening is the most powerful gift you can give them to support them in their mourning. If you don’t know what to say, it’s okay! Just acknowledge it and everything will be easier.