Clean Grief

😢☺️
I love clean grief.
I love feeling sad about Jason being gone.
I love feeling angry that’s he’s gone.
I love feeling alone.
I love the tears.
I love remembering.
It’s leaves me feeling cleansed. Empty and full at the same time. 
I have grown to love it even though it’s hard.

But I’ve been stuck in something different over the last four months.
Messier. Muddier. Foggier.
I slapped the label “grief” onto it and suffered. 
It’s just a new kind of grief, I thought. I different type of grief, I wrote.

Then my coach and my sis offered me two variations of this idea.
Maybe there was more than grief going on here. Maybe I was layering on other emotions. Emotions that don’t feel so clean. Emotions that aren’t as helpful to me as grief is.

I opened my mind to this idea.
I opened my heart.
It rang true a little bit. But I wasn’t exactly sure how.
I removed my label called “grief” and started picking through the thoughts and feelings underneath it.

I feel sad about Jason not being here. But there was more in there.
I felt disloyal because I am building a self-help business without him.
I felt insecure because maybe I wasn’t doing it right.
I felt judgment because maybe I shouldn’t be successful with him gone.
I felt guilty because maybe I shouldn’t like my life if he isn’t in it.

Those feelings layered onto my grief.
Messed with it.
Dirtied it up.
Like when you walk into a lake and stir up the dirt. The water gets cloudy. Murky. 

I felt confused and lonely and small.
Guilty, insecure and disloyal.
Along with the sad.
Dirty grief.
That’s what I was feeling.

Since this realization, I’ve been looking at each feeling and deciding how useful it is to me.
I’ve been letting go of thoughts that felt true but really aren’t.
Sifting.
Letting the dirt settle.
Letting it go.

Two days later I felt some grief.
It came on quickly.
I’m used to that.
I cried tears.
But it felt different.
Like before. Clean.
Unsullied by judgment and guilt.

I leaned my head back in relief.
Yes! There it is again!
Clean grief!
I’ve been waiting for you for four months, friend. 
Welcome back.
I love you.💙✊🏻