Relationship with Grief

South Africa is on a high, at the opening game of the 2010 World Cup Soccer our Bafana Bafana, ranked 83rd , drew 1 all against a team that is ranked 17th. This is a relationship, it is how our National Team is ranked in relation to the Mexican National Team What is your relationship to grief? Do you feel totally undermined by this world ranking emotion or do you see yourself as equal to it?

Grief is just an emotion, this may sound completely crass and uncaring, sadly or rather with relief, I say again that grief is just an emotion. Just like joy, hurt, anger, happiness, sadness, disappointment and all the rest that lay in the spectrum of our emotional range lying in wait to be released at the appropriate time. Saying it like that makes me feel like Pavlov’s dog, give me the right bell and I’ll react with the appropriate emotion. Are we in control of our emotions? Nope, we aren’t. They pop up like annoying little turret syndrome speech bubbles. Can we control how we relate to them, indeed, and that is where our mastery lies.

Pavlov’s dog could not control how he related to food, thank heaven’s I don’t know of any Fido’s, Fifi’s or Benji’s amongst our members. Relating to
grief means that you need to see yourself as equal to it, like you could see grief as a person and stare it dead in the eye, say “hi, I know exactly who
you are, I know precisely what your motive is and you can bring it . . . and I
will honour it, but I will do so as an equal” Grief has a right to a place in
your life as does all the good feelings, but as human beings we avoid
feeling anything painful, rightly so, its rather unpleasant to feel something
hurt, and that’s putting it mildly.

How to relate to grief as an equal, is quite a tough lesson to learn. What would it mean to you to not avoid feeling grief, not by default because you can’t help it, but by actually consciously giving yourself permission to feel that specific brand of pain? Imagine that you took ownership of the grief emotion? Imagine that it was no longer pushed to the outside of who you are, but allowed in to be integrated into who you are? Would this not give you some modicum of control, or at the very least the perception of control? I have a feeling that this might be a step towards empowerment, and once empowered you could possibly then channel your grief into something constructive, maybe even a legacy for your departed child . . . it’s a thought, and for some of you too alien to even consider.

So think of yourself as Bafana Bafana, with the entire nation of TCF supporting you, blowing our vuvuzela’s looking at Mexico, your grief, and saying I know that I’m 83rd on the log and you are 17th, but it doesn’t
matter because I am equal to you.

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