Grieving: A Life Skill

“Grieving is the way that loss can heal. Yet many people do not know how to grieve and heal their losses. This makes it hard to find the courage to participate fully in life. At some deep level, it may make us unwilling to be openhearted or present, to become attached or intimate. We trust our bodies to heal because of the gift of a billion years of evolution. But how might you live if you did not know that your body could heal? Would you ride your bike, drive a car, use a knife to cut up your dinner? Or would you never get off the couch? Many people have become emotional couch potatoes because they do not know they can heal their hearts.

Unless we learn to grieve, we may need to live life at a distance in order to protect ourselves from pain. We may not be able to risk having anything that really matters to us or allow ourselves to be touched, to be intimate, to care or be cared about. Untouched, we will suffer anyway. We just will not be transformed by our suffering. Grieving may be one of the most fundamental of life skills. It is the way the heart can heal from loss and go on to love again and grow wise.”
-Rachel Remen