In part one of this message/idea I shared that I’d spent a tiny bit of energy desensitizing myself. Numbing out to protect myself and to stave off the fear that if I engaged in one of the most powerful emotions we can experience it would be the end of me-grief. This process was, for the most part, not happening in my conscious mind. This program was being run below the surface.
Grief is actually a special component of love. Alike to connection and love being the same thing but at different places in a spectrum of that specific energy. It is part of love. Grief is love.
For me, and I’m convinced others too, avoiding grief is what limits acceptance of it and the ability to let it go. I think it actually kind of constipates us emotionally and spiritually and our lives are dull, causing many to pursue ways to fill that hole that’s created.
So the Sunday before last we euthanized our sixteen year old dog. She’d been in pain for quite some time and we were giving her medication to manage the pain but it was having other negative effects on her organs so it was about keeping her comfortable but for only so long.
Choosing when to end the life of a person is unthinkable. That same choice in a pet is supposedly humane but I had lots of doubts. There were bargains in my mind about her “bouncing back”, thinking she was going to recover for one more surge of running through our atrium with her hair flowing behind her.
If you’ve done this before you know what happens. They put a port/catheter in the animal and then they inject them to “put them to sleep”… forever. In today’s society we’re not often exposed to or taught about death and the termination of the lives of people and beings that are important to us.
Something that I’ve been doing a lot of work on has been to observe myself, my mind, and the different parts of me that show up to the party in real time. When my little dogs body went limp in my arms immediately after she was injected I could feel the well of pain, sadness, resistance, love, and doubt. I could also feel my mind trying to escape what was going on, my mind believing that I needed to be protected from the pain of grief.
I kept letting go. I let the sensations, emotions, thoughts, and resistance cycle through me but intentionally coming back to the love and the grief as the extension of love.
Over the last several years I’ve done tons of work to “resensitize” myself, to gain back a connection to emotions so I could feel. I guess I need those in order to connect with myself and then with others too. I want that. I’ve stopped believing that I don’t want or need anyone else in my life. I’m grateful for this.
Thanks for your time, have a great day!