Photo Credit: Kim Mahair
After years of doing deep counseling, coaching and personal transformation work - my own and with clients - I’ve come to believe that what often stands between you and your next level is deep grief. Unprocessed deep grief, that is.
If you’ve worked on your mindset, reframed limiting beliefs, taken actions, and developed positive habits, but you’re still struggling, then you’re likely holding onto deep, frozen-in-time grief.
I’m not talking about the more “obvious” grief that comes from the death of someone you love, a breakup or the end of a career. It may be related to any of those, but it doesn’t have to be.
Deep grief is a byproduct of the human experience. It comes from the inevitable, accumulated hurts and wounds – big and small – we feel when we live long enough. The invisible but felt scars of emotional cuts, scrapes, and bruises over the course of our lives.
It often goes unnoticed. It gets stored, stuck and pushed deep beneath the surface where we don’t recognize it, rarely talk about it and try like hell to distract ourselves from it.
But if you want to grow – grow up, heal, move forward, make progress, change your life, and/or realize a dream – then paying attention, going in and befriending that long lost but not forgotten pain is the way.
Yes, it’s heavy. Yes, it’s uncomfortable and painstaking and can feel never-ending. But so is not facing it. And so are the ways you’re avoiding it, the relationships you’re damaging by staying away from it, and the precious years you’re losing working so hard to get around it.
You can keep doing that for sure. You get to choose how deep you want to go in your healing, with your life and in love. You can stop anytime.
But if you want to feel deeply cared for and seen, to love fully, to do meaningful work, and to make an impact with your beautiful life, then please do yourself - and us - a favor and face your deep grief.
I swear it won’t hurt forever. On the other side, your heart will be more open, you’ll feel lighter and more confident, you’ll have more fun, give less fucks, and your relationships will improve 1000%.
My one request is this - don’t go it alone. Deep grief work is not meant to be a solo journey. Yes, it’s profoundly personal and needs privacy and solitude, but grief is only fully healed through intimate connection and sacred community.
That’s why I do what I do. My work is to be in relationship with my clients to bear witness to their deepest grief so they can honor it, heal it and make space for their deepest joy and love as well.
Here for you,
Buck
