Growing, grieving and grateful.

Brief thoughts on holding space and allowing ourselves to feel.

I firmly believe that there is room for both grief and growth. You can hold space for discomfort, loss and hurt and still embrace, honour and move towards abundance.

Growing means realizing that grief can be a powerful form of self care — we deserve space to fully experience our losses, and feel deeply in order for continued learning and evolution.

Grieving is self-care. Grieving is honest. Grieving is honouring our truth. To me, running from grief means running from ourselves. To be fully present, we must reclaim it, honour it, and let it be. Experiencing profound grief, when we surrender to it, can shape the way we see the world from that moment on.

And honestly, it’s not just the big losses that impact us, it’s the everyday ones too. The loss of feeling safe in a crowd in our post pandemic reality. The loss of ease and convenience in relationships, the loss of jobs and colleagues after an unexpected termination, or even the loss of people and places we used to love. Letting go of who we used to be sometimes means acknowledging the grief of letting go all that came with those lives we lived before.

I believe that re-imagining grief and re-inventing ways to honour that process is part of growing into a self that feels most true to you. Sometimes liberating honesty about an experience feels painful to acknowledge or say out loud. Especially if that experience is rooted in trauma, disconnection and invalidation. Grief and trauma are interlinked in ways that I’m still learning about — as a therapist and a human being.

So how do we show up in grief and growth?

My way of doing this is by encouraging myself to feel, practicing gratitude for the sharp pains of progress, the joys of inner healing and holding space for deep wounds of loss and sadness.

I show up grieving, growing and grateful when I don’t avoid the pain of loss due to fear of negative outcomes, hide from the uncertainties of the unknown, or turn away from the reality of my success and personal growth. Getting comfortable with myself and all that I feel requires that I tolerate the sensation of success, no matter how small a win. It requires that I challenge the limiting beliefs that hold me back, and let go of the versions of myself that I believed would never get to where I am today.

I’ve found a strange beauty in the knowledge that by truly facing my feelings — all of them — even the ones that prick at loss, grief, insecurity and inner growth, opens me up to the present moment. Being truly present with all of me allows me to step out of unnecessary comparisons, lean into my vulnerability and step into the connection that I deserve, even when life feels like it might be falling apart.

It’s unclear how long this process takes for each of us. As a therapist, I know all too well how variable the impact of complicated emotions can show up in our lives, our expectations and our hopes for the future. Maybe this finds you at a similar juncture in life. A crossroads of sadness, opportunity and discomfort. If it resonates, I hope you find solace and beauty at your own intersection of grief, gratitude and growth, whatever that looks like for you.

— Meg