Reinvesting
This week’s Healing Reflection invites you to come NEAR your grief and move toward healing.
Acknowledging the pain of different grief is an important step to processing loss. Past articles discussed how repressing the pain can lead to delayed grief reactions. This can look like angry outbursts, uncontrollable tears, or strong emotions when least expected. Sometimes unprocessed grief can manifest in physical symptoms– upset stomach, headaches, or other somatic symptoms.
We’ve been talking about tasks or stages to explore grief and loss only as a guide to help you understand your experience. Grief should not be expected to occur in an orderly fashion. You may move through these grief stages or processes randomly and experience them multiple times.
The past articles have looked at clinical psychologist’s Therese Rando Six “R” Model of focusing on bereavement, anticipatory grief, and traumatic loss. The Six “R” Model includes Recognizing, Reacting, Remembering, Relinquishing, Readjusting, and Reinvesting.
We’ve gone over 5 of the 6 “R” Model of Recognizing, Reacting, Remembering, Relinquishing, and Readjusting. Recognizing involves acknowledging the death and beginning to make meaning of the event. Reacting refers to how you react to the separation or loss and experience the pain and find ways to express your feelings. This includes ways to mourn secondary losses. Remembering is re-feeling your experiences and memories of the person, not just remembering. Relinquishing attachments and assumptions involves reworking attachments to the deceased and the old assumptive world. Readjusting to a new world without forgetting the old one includes developing a new identity and revising the assumptive world. Now let’s look at Reinvesting, this involves reinvesting in new activities and new relationships, this means reconnecting to the world in novel ways.
Prompt: Pause and prepare a cup of tea as you listen to the rest of this podcast.
Set an intention to sit with a delicious hot cup of tea and be in the moment.
Notice the smell as you inhale and slowly exhale.
NOTICE
What comes to mind when you think of reinvesting in your new world? Your new relationships? And what are the novel ways you can reconnect with your new world?
EMOTIONS
Does reinvesting feel negative or positive to you? How are you feeling? What word best describes your emotions? Imagine your emotions are a shape and color or colors. What shape or color(s) best represents your feelings? Take a deep breath in and slowly exhale. Imagine how that color changes as you let your shoulders relax and allow the tension to release from your body.
ACTION
Today’s activity is to identify three things you are grateful for. Take a moment and reflect on the changes you have experienced. Even if you have mixed emotions, can you sit with the gratitude and let go of any negative feelings as you pay attention to what you are thankful for today?
REFLECT
What does reinvesting mean to you? How does understanding the various experiences in grief and loss help you understand and validate your personal experience?
Note: The audio's background music ("Dewdrops") is provided by: https://www.purple-planet.com. Images provided by Canva.