Divorcing Grief From Productivity

Hi there.

My name is Grace,

And I'm a dance movement therapist and embodied grief guide.

And I work with people to help them connect to their bodies to process grief.

And today I want to talk about a pattern that I see a lot in my clients and in the culture at large,

Which is this pattern of connecting productivity to grief.

So,

I think it's pretty common to have this feeling or this inner dialogue that sounds something like,

If I'm not doing something that I'm not processing my grief,

Then I'm not doing anything for my grief.

Or if I'm not being productive,

Then I'm not worthy of healing.

Or if it's been,

You know,

Such and such amount of months,

And I'm still broken hearted,

Then something must be wrong with me.

And I just want to name that all of this is a really common response to grief,

But it's not one that we have to buy into.

Yeah,

It really comes from this overarching belief that comes from capitalism,

Which is that my value,

Our value as people is linked up into how much we produce.

And this becomes really,

Really harmful when it comes to everything but but especially for grief because grief by nature is a nonlinear process.

So there is no productivity there is no forward motion in grief.

There's only the spiraling cyclical nature of your own unfolding process.

And that is going to be different for everyone that's going to happen on different time waves and different patterns,

That's going to feel different.

And while I do believe that we need to process our grief intentionally.

I don't believe that this involves doing a lot.

I don't believe this involves joining all of the programs,

All of the groups,

Reading all of the things necessarily,

Unless that really feels aligned with your intuition.

Really what grief needs is rest and time and space to be what it is to allow it to move to allow it to process in the body,

Non verbally,

Along with verbally.

And this culture has a really hard time with it depending on what culture you come from I'm coming from the US,

Similar cultures act similarly to,

To this real difficulty with nonlinearity,

Right,

This real challenge,

Holding complexity holding multiple realities,

Holding pain that isn't,

You know,

A bug bite or a broken limb.

I just want to remind you that your grief is sacred,

And that you are sacred as a person.

You are worthy,

Just because you are just because you're born,

And you don't have to do anything or prove anything,

Or be anybody different to have a grieving experience.

And I just want to share a couple ways that I can see this play out,

And some ways that I encourage you to interrupt this.

So one of the ways that I see most commonly is the practice of pushing through pain,

Pushing through grief,

When it comes up,

Right,

Stuffing it down,

Ignoring it,

Not giving it the time and the space it needs.

And so sometimes we have to do that,

Right,

We're not always in situations or places or with people that we want to,

You know,

Unload our grief on or with or around.

And sometimes that process is necessary.

But it has to be followed by an intentional process of attending to the grief.

I often compare grief to,

Like a crying baby,

Or a small child.

And when a child or a baby is crying.

The thing to do is not to try to logic with the being,

Right,

Not to try to logic it out of pain.

The thing to do is to comfort it,

To nurture it,

To be with it.

Let it know that it's seen and heard and felt and understood.

And only from there can the baby or the child feel better,

Feel held,

Feel seen,

And change and move forward.

It's the exact same thing with grief.

And if we constantly push through it,

And try to stuff down the sensations that yes are painful but are natural,

Then the grief never gets a chance to get unstuck to process to move through.

There's a difference between letting the grief run the show all the time,

And creating the intentionality around it to let it process as it needs to.

So,

If you if you know that this is a pattern of yours,

I just want to honor you,

Give you a lot of compassion,

Hoping you can give compassion to yourself.

And I just invite you to get curious about what that pattern is about what pain you're trying to avoid,

And to get the support that you need in order to be with your pain as it is,

As authentically as you can.

Sometimes this means letting yourself go to the bathroom to cry during work.

Sometimes this means stuffing it down in the moment,

And then going home and lighting a candle and letting yourself move as you need to,

As you feel the tension rising.

The body really knows how to do this your body really knows how to do this,

But it does need the time and the space to remember.

So,

The first way that I see this happening is in stuffing it down pushing through it.

The second way is,

I think there's a really common pattern of keeping grief to ourselves.

Right,

So this is related to the first thing I just said about getting support.

But when we feel that our grief is too much,

Then we often think that it's our burden to shoulder.

And again if you live in an individualistic culture,

Like the US,

This is going to be more common.

Right.

There's so much garbage that we hear about just kind of suffering through it alone I can't show anybody my grief.

Garbage meaning like this is the messaging,

But this is also a very real and felt experience.

And I just want to acknowledge that if you feel this way,

If you feel that you can't show your grief to anyone else.

I just want to remind you that your grief is sacred and your grief is a human experience.

And it's so,

So necessary to share it with someone with other people even if it's just one other person that can really be with you,

As you are authentically in that grief.

So the first way,

Just to recap that I see this playing out is and pushing through it stuffing it down.

Second way is in holding our grief on our own.

Yeah.

And the third way is in just doing the most right like how many people have you seen who,

Like right after a loss just dive into activities.

Some of this is necessary.

Again,

There's a balance right.

And I use the word balance lightly because I don't actually believe balance is a place you can arrive at,

But there is some sense of duality right.

The thing to do with fresh grief,

Early on in the process is to slow down,

Is to not do very much at all.

This is,

This allows the body to surrender to process.

And there are many people that don't get to do that,

Or that haven't got a chance to do that.

And I just want to encourage you to give your body the space to just be as much as you can.

Because the beautiful thing about our emotions is that in our,

In all of our experiences is that they do live in the body.

And so it'll be there.

As long as you are alive until you process it until you move it intentionally.

So,

I say that to say it's not too late and it's never too late.

It is incredibly important to have that balance.

This is based on the dual process model of grief,

Which basically states that you need both grief time and not grief time.

You need time that is intentionally about your grief.

So your grief rituals your grief groups,

Talking about your person or whoever,

Or whatever you're grieving.

And you also need time where you live life where you do the dishes where you see friends where you go to the movies where you smell the flowers.

Right.

It's not to say that grief is not a part of your life now in all the ways,

But it is to say that we need both.

Yeah.

So I'll just end this talk with a reminder that you are not alone,

That you are worthy,

Just because you are.

And that your body really knows how to do this when given the time and the space to remember it really knows how to carry it really knows how to process grief.

So,

Yes.

I hope this was helpful for you.

I hope it resonated,

I would love to hear a review of what you took from this talk.

And I'm just sending you lots of love as you continue on in your journey.

Take care.