Someone you love has passed or you know someone who has lost someone.
This is something we all experience in our lifetime, whether it be our parents,
friends, spouses, or perhaps children. The initial shock, numbness, the pain
that sometimes envelopes the core of your being, extended grief can be
unbearable. This is a delicate topic and difficult for me to discuss. You give
me a broken anything else and I am there to help, but for the most part in the
past I have tended to shy away from people I know who have experienced loss,
not because I am uncomfortable with death and dying, but have been
uncomfortable with knowing a way to console when they are hurting in such a
manner. I would watch my mother provide words like "time heals all wounds" or "they are in heaven watching over you", " it takes two years to get over someone’s passing" to people after someone they loved left the Earth in physical form. None of these words ever resonated with me and I think perhaps did more harm than good when she said them. Mom stopped saying that to people after my father died, as I believed she felt that it no longer resonated as her truth.
As a more universal believer in life and consciousness, where life is a continuous cycle and there are agreements, is it better to say “this is the agreement that your souls made collectively for the experience before you came?”, or that there is a parallel universe where you are experiencing an extended lifetime together? How about life is an Illusion or a game? Perhaps I would get a little laugh if I explained that it is just a dream and we are like Neo in athe Matrix. All joking aside, I am at a loss for thosepearls of wisdom for consolation.
Regardless of whether your beliefs include a religion that teaches of heaven and hell, only 1 lifetime, God and self as separate OR life as the fluffy dream experience, OR life on a planet seeded by aliens, words are of little consolation to someone who is grieving.
The conclusion I have come up with was so simple and required a change in a belief I was holding. Perhaps the best way is to just be there for them, to listen, hold their hand and not say anything. Sometimes your presence and not words is all that’s needed to console. This holds true for any sort of loss.
So now I am present and I just shut up!
LeeZa Donatella
leezadonatella.com
leezadonatella.com