The challenge for this week is to talk about personal loss. This brings up many confusing feelings as a counselor. The world has changed considerably since my formal training where we were taught to be blank slates and not give away information about ourselves. A few years ago, setting up my private practice I realized how much this has changed and being present and fully me is now the expectation. This has been a difficult shift so providing my story of recovery will be a big stretch.

I feel most comfortable offering up my divorce recovery story. I was married at the age of 16 and gave birth to my amazing son at the age of 17. I tell the story of how we were in love, young and neither had any idea how to be married. We both believed things would work out happily ever after. Thirteen months after the birth of my son I had my first strong-willed beautiful daughter. Two years after that we had our third child a sweet daughter. Three months after that we separated for the first time and fifteen months after that he left for the last time.

I am often asked how I listen to stories of sadness or other problems each day, my response is, ‘I love to see how resilient we are as human beings,’. I am always amazed at how our brains and bodies find ways to cope and overcome the challenges we face. Even though, these coping patterns may be unsustainable over time they kept us alive and moving. There is strength and room for celebration in this.

I want to start out by clearly stating there is no right or wrong way to grieve the loss of someone you love. The 5 stages of grief and loss we have held onto as a society since 1969 has been shown through multiple studies to be inaccurate. We don’t go through stages in a linear pattern coming to a place of peace and acceptance evermore. Grief is a much messier and individualized process. So again, I state there is NOT a wrong way to grieve.

So how do we provide ourselves compassion during loss? I am going to utilize the three pillars of self-compassion framework from Kristin Neff - mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness to answer this question.