Grief with compassion is love, grief with pity is victimhood

a process of opening one's energetic channels and allowing energy to flow; it's ok to grieve what you have gone through

I don’t know why this tear came while I was touching this tree I love so much, in Costa Rica. I know I had befriended it. The photographer offered to pause things. I said no. I knew at some point, I would want you to see.

For over ten years, I have been wondering about Grief.

All that information about how to feel your emotions. That’s all you need right?

Just feel them and then let the energy flow through.

Instant healing if you get the recipe right somehow.

If it’s not working maybe you try EFT tapping a bit?

Maybe if you are truly desperate, you hire someone to do EMDR with you?

Until finally you let go of techniques and acronyms and say OMG, I have been waiting 10 years and I still don’t understand the purpose of grief or why it is so STUCK in my throat?

That’s me.

So, as I was just sitting on the beach wondering about this (and I must admit that there was some asking for guidance in my wondering), I finally got a tiny sense of the purpose of grief.

For me, my sense of things comes in mostly images and feelings. Which is funny as here I am, trying to write about things with words.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

That would be Pity.

But if you have some compassion, that’s fine. It’s not always easy.

Pity doesn’t serve anyone.

It disempowers people.

I remember Sean, a teacher more than he knew for me, speaking about Pity with disgust. Sean sat in his wheelchair at just a little over three feet tall with a disease that caused his bones to break with a hard sneeze.

And Sean’s attitude:

“Don’t pity me.”

Me with Sean Stephenson, the first time I met him in person before I attended his speaker training. It is the only photo I have in my house. I am not sure why. Perhaps it is because photos feel like they take me into the past and I want to be in the present with the people I love. But this photo travels with me. It brings tears. Not tears of grief. Tears I have yet to fully understand. But it feels important. Even as it fades it reminds me somehow of my own journey and why I am here. But that is all beyond my mind’s understanding.

No one wants to be pitied. It puts them in a box.

So, I was sitting on the beach ready for a lesson.

I noticed the feeling of being there. Like I said, a lot for me is about feeling things.

I was on lava rock.

Today, the waves are 8-10 feet and they crashed against the hardened outcropping with a white frothy spray that looked like feathers dancing with the sky. But also like energy explosions, roaring with power.

A breeze caressed my skin. I was slightly sweaty and it felt good.

And I knew that twelve years ago, I would have sat in disbelief if you told me this would be my life now.

Twelve years ago, I was struggling with victim energy. I was learning to free myself from it and it was hard. If I told people what was happening with my family and my divorce, I would see their faces drop in disgust and often pity for me. They struggled to hold the energy of it all. And honestly, at times, so did I.

But the pity did not feel good. Often, I was sharing my story so they would understand why I wasn’t talking to my family. Why I had to leave. I don’t know why I was looking for understanding? I guess a part of me cared what people thought of me. Which is not surprising. I was recovering from codependency. Eventually, I would share my story to inspire people and give them hope. But most simply could not hold it. So I wrote my book.

The people who did listen to me back then and really took me and my situation in? The people who told me I could do it, I could get through it, and I was amazing? Those people empowered me.

There was no Pity.

They had been through enough on their own journey to meet me in mine. They knew it would empower me.

At the time, back then, I was in one of those classes that were teaching me about how emotions can get stuck in the body. I also had a coach teaching the same thing along with educating me on co-dependency.

I remember when I heard it was helpful to just grieve. “Go in the shower and turn it on high, then let yourself cry,” said John Barnes.

But that didn’t work for me. I couldn’t “just cry.” How do you do that? Sure I was in pain. But I couldn’t force tears to flow. I couldn’t control grief. I couldn’t feel things on purpose.

(I was just going to write, “can’t feel things on purpose,” which is now funny as I do it every morning, intentionally… I feel frequencies I want to embody every day, down at my little spot on the beach or by the stream. You can do this too. I have been writing about it. But I have not done this with grief. I still feel like I don’t want more of it.)

There were moments I would touch it back then though and when I did, I learned to allow it as best I could. I learned to honor it.

One person told me tears are an expression of the heart.

Was that true for Grief?

I walked a year ago in Costa Rica and felt tremendous grief for a few days, with no context for it. There was truly no discernible reason. I was walking back from a day I had enjoyed tremendously, at a waterfall. That is when Grief hit me. “Why? What is this coming from?” I asked myself at the time.

No answer came.

I had gotten through a lot of things. I was happy in Costa Rica. It just didn’t make sense.

I still don’t know.

Sometimes, I think I may be feeling collective energy. The world at times, is grieving. The planet grieves (and be careful now as that can easily cause you to start feeling pity…which is not healthy…She, GAI, probably doesn’t like pity anymore than the rest of us).

Let’s digress for a minute and talk more about Pity.

Pity does not see the power in someone. It sees a lack of power.

No one wants to be seen in that frequency. First of all, it is a lie. And they are already struggling. Now they have to fight against the pity frequency too.

You are not helping them when you do it.

And now here’s the clincher. You are not helping yourself, when you feel like a victim.

When you feel like a victim, you get caught in victim energy. And that resonates with the frequency of pity.

I feel you and I are here to go through hard things. Challenging things. That is how we grow.

You have been a victim. For sure. And it has been terrible. Those things you have gone through, they were really tough now weren’t they?

Sure, I can tell you to feel how you survived.

I can tell you that it wasn’t easy.

Those feel ok to say.

But if I look at you with pity….ugh. The energy gets slimy fast.

So, what does this have to do with my little lesson this morning on Grief?

I am asking myself the same thing as I sit here typing to you.

The lesson is new.

I am still integrating it.

Plus it came in images and feelings and I am here swirling with words.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

But I want you, and me, to understand what I am working with here.

Ok.

Here we go.

Grief.

Your heart is like a radio. It can play many frequencies. Grief is a frequency. When you feel it, gently, and offer compassion to yourself for all you have been through? Well, then we have an equation.

Here is the equation (I know, you weren’t expecting math mixed in here were you?):

Grief + Compassion = A Frequency of Love

Love has many frequencies.

It would be boring wouldn’t it, if it was only one thing?

I mean, I am sure it has an initial purity to it. Like the first note that plays in a symphony hall. Love is like that. That first note is beautiful. Then it becomes a symphony. It grows in complexity just like that equation and every combination adds more diverse and divine frequencies.

So, Grief coupled with Compassion, is a beautiful frequency in the symphony of God’s orchestra.

This brings me back to that Jesus on the Cross moment when he says: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

That is a Love Frequency. And I imagine, he was experiencing some grief. I don’t know that. It just fits well with the formula above and makes sense to me.

It only doesn’t make sense if we make Grief a BAD THING.

Here is where it goes awry.

Grief + Pity = DISEMPOWERING DISCORDANT ENERGY that sucks the music out of the room and feels icky.

I am trying to convey an energetic state with words here. That does it pretty well I think, although I am sure it would not pass any English composition class.

That’s ok.

I color outside the lines now.

So, when I apply this to my own life, things get interesting.

I used to not understand that everything in my life is happening for me.

That is one of my favorite quotes from Sean. His last words before passing:

“This is happening for me, not too me.”

The power of that statement is amazing when you embody the truth in the energy of it. It is the antidote to victim energy. It is what allows the symphony.

Now I feel that I actually chose the experiences I have been through.

On the beach this morning, I double checked. I know if I had made the other choice, to not say yes to marrying my ex-husband, life would have been much different. There is a possibility it might have been easier.

But what I felt was that, no, I did not make a “mistake”. My soul planned that. I intended to go through those things.

And now, look where it has gotten me?

I am pleased with where I am at now. I feel different. A lot different than I used to.

I have heard many recovered addicts say they would not change the past. It got them where they are now.

I would say the same thing.

So there is no need to grieve for anyone with pity.

They are here to learn and they are learning.

You can have compassion for them in this.

You can have compassion for yourself, for it is not always an easy process to watch the pain of others is it? Or to go through painful situations oneself?

And this brings me to where I am currently at with my exploration of grief.

I believe it has been stuck in my throat because I have not looked at myself, my past, and all I have been through with true compassion and said, “Yes Terra. I see you. It hasn’t been easy.”

Now how you read or hear those words, matters a lot. Those same words can be filled with compassion, or pity.

If you fill them with pity, you, or the one who receives them, will feel a high vibration of victim energy.

We may have come here to experience things that victimize us. That is real. But we can, eventually, see ourselves with love and view them as life experiences that in the end, grow our heart’s capacity to hold different frequencies of love.

And it IS NOT, FOR SURE, always easy.

It can be very, very difficult to see some people and experiences with compassion.

I don’t know if you even need to do that.

I think it may be enough to simply have compassion for yourself while also honoring where you are at now.

Where you are at now in your life can be empowering, even if it feels hard.

Where you are now, can be an exploration, that you can be interested in.

And where you are now might sometimes, be filled with Grief.

Can you put a compassionate hand on the Grief, wherever it is in your body? Can you feel that yes, this has been hard? Can you honor your life journey in that way, without blaming anyone?

Grief honors something.

Grief can be simple care.

Sometimes, that is just what we, or someone else, needs.

Let us hold our hands in prayer and allow ourselves to grieve. Even when we don’t know why.