Self Care Sunday

5 ways to practice healthy grief:

01. Awareness and Acknowledgment of your loss will permit you to embrace your emotions as they come, experience your grief and reach out to ask for help from people who love and support you.

02. Self-Validation that your experiences and feelings matter. You know your grief should be honored. Encourage your expression to grief in ways that are most comfortable for you, through words, tears, song, art, etc.

03. Compassion. While grieving, you need a sense of a compassionate presence. Take moments to actively bear witness to your own suffering and treat yourself with kindness, care and understanding.

04. Connection. Discovering ways to connect with your loved one, through memories, your life with them and your loss are all important ways in remembering while finding hope and meaning.

05. Self-Permission to grieve, to give outward expression to your internal anguish. Be comfortable in expressing your emotions and not hide from them. Your grief is a natural response to what you have lost.

Healthy grief requires balance. Balancing the time you spend directly working on your grief with the time you spend coping with your day to day life; balancing the amount of time you spend with others with the time you spend alone; balancing seeking help from others with caring for yourself. Healthy grieving is remembering your loved one while acknowledging the the importance of your loss.