Self Care while Navigating Grief

It was four years ago... May 24th, 2018... my mom died. So, with the recent anniversary, I have been ruminating on my grief recovery path and missing her.

When you're grieving it's a terrible feeling, like drowning, like a lump in the throat that feels like an iron ball. Time stands still while the world is moving around you. But grief is an invitation into a deepening of soul awareness, into awareness of our interdependence. It's an opportunity.

Here are nine practices I have borrowed from someone in an anonymous online group to put the broken bones of your spirit in a cast, so they can stabilize and heal, at the speed of a seed growing.

1. Light a candle on the birthday of your loved one.
2. Beside the candle, read a poem aloud, that speaks to your feelings about them.
3. Listen to their favorite song on the anniversary of the day they died.
   
4. Observe a few moments of silence at any time they come to mind.
5. Say a prayer on their behalf. Speak your heart into the mystery.
6. Put a memento of their life out on display in your home.
7. Visit their grave and take your hat off as you approach, laying a flower down on it, speaking to them.
8. Make a donation in their name to a favorite cause of theirs.
9. Without overdoing it, tell stories about them, as a way of keeping their memory alive.

I do some of these things and it helps. 

This year it is more about the full heart-ed happy memories and the lessons that she gave me that I didn't realize at the time. I also feel immense gratitude and sadness for the lack of gratitude and patience I had with her when I was young. I apologized to her several times when she was still living and she forgave me. 

In her bottomless love for me, she gave me enough.