LITTLE STEPS BRING BIG CHANGE.
Start your healing today…two minutes at a time.
Grief is a long journey but you can heal two minutes at a time. Our weekly videos provide you with simple, doable activities that will help you heal your grieving heart at your own pace. From energy healing to eastern and western religion, these videos pull knowledge from a multitude of sources to provide you with unique healing tools to help you along your grief path.
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The ripple effect of grief
How does grief affect us? I mean, really affect us? Have you sat and thought about how much change grief creates and how we can all be touched, and perhaps even blessed, by it?
What does grief ultimately do for us?
It helps us appreciate the precious moments we are given, instead of wasting them away. It helps us cherish the people in our lives that we love, not take them for granted. It helps us not to worry so much about the little details that don’t really matter anyway, it helps us let go. To let go of the grudges, the small stuff and the unfulfilling roles and relationships that suck up time and effort in those minutes that we want to make count the most. But it doesn’t end with us, the grievers, letting go.
It’s called the ripple effect.
We are affected by a loss and we change our perspective, and then we interact with friends and our perspective rubs off on them and then their perspective and attitude shifts and rubs off on their circle. You get it. But we really have no idea how many ripples we create with just one experience. How many people will you touch with your grief ripple?
This week, a friend of mine had this very experience. A friend of hers lost her daughter to cancer. It was absolutely heartbreaking. My friend was so sad and after crying all day decided she was going to let go of all that was holding her back. She was no longer going to “sweat the small stuff” because life was too short. Life is meant to be cherished and purposefully lived. So she went to a school volunteer meeting and brought this new attitude with her. Guess what happened? She changed the entire room. We all know what that tired room looks like, a circle of the same 10 people sitting around the table exhausted by doing the work of 500. My friend never told the story of her loss but just brought her attitude shift of focusing on what matters and on what makes a difference. After sharing her perspective, everyone in her meeting left feeling the same way as her-lifted, enlightened, inspired. They all agreed she was right. They needed to let go of the stress and focus on the purposeful and meaningful parts of how they helped and how they lived. Ripple effect.
We can all do what my friend did. What does your ripple effect look like? Who have you touched? What kind of ripple are you creating? Who will you touch?
In one single word or just a few words added down below, let’s create our own ripple. How are you going to let your grief change your life? How will it change others’ lives? What’s your ripple effect?
More meaningful relationships, less worry, more gratitude, greater peace, slowing down? Who will you share it with today?
Forward this onto your friends to create an even bigger ripple effect.
We can’t wait to see how you’ve passed along your perspective and healing.
Sending you big love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
What if we’re meant to have a bleeding heart?
This morning on Facebook, I was greeted by a multitude of very sad posts. Many deaths, attempted deaths, losses and from a wide variety of people in my life- old friends, new friends, work associates. I typically try to at least comment on a post no matter who it is or how much time I have because I think so many people are too scared to address pain. I figure that if I can at least start or contribute to the support, I’ve done my part.
But the sheer volume of posts really triggered me this morning. I tossed my phone on the counter and walked away and said in my head, “Erin, stop having such a bleeding heart.” I walked away, feeling like I just didn’t have it in me to support all those people. Where did I draw the line? I was tired. I didn’t feel like I could possibly have enough in me to help. So, I did what any adult would do…I took a time out and thought more about that ol’ bleeding heart of mine.
And then it hit me…”Isn’t that precisely what our heart is supposed to do? Isn’t our heart supposed to feel alive and bleed for others? If we can’t connect to someone else’s pain, how can we ever expect to connect to our own pain? If we can’t connect to our own pain, we’ll never be able to heal it.
Our job is to connect. Our job is to heal. Our job is to love…others and ourselves.
My Sunday school teachings from so long ago keep ringing in my head today…the devil divides and our God heals.
Are your actions dividing you from people or healing the people around you?
Are you so worried about having a bleeding heart that you’re not helping heal the people around you?
Captivated by this bleeding heart phrase today, I actually looked up the definition to see what I was working with and here’s what I found:
1) A person considered to be dangerously softhearted
2) Any number of plants that have heart-shaped flowers
And then I thought…maybe we’re supposed to be more like those heart-shaped flowers that God made for us. We can nurture and blossom our own hearts just like those heart-shaped plants.
Boundaries are incredibly important, but I think we can all admit that we could all push our support boundaries a little bit more. We could take that two minutes to send a card, the 20 seconds to post on Facebook or 10 minutes to call someone and support them through their hard time.
We can’t worry that we’ve got a bleeding heart. We can’t be too busy. We can’t be so disconnected. When we disconnect from others’ pain, we disconnect from our own pain and we will never heal anything without connecting to our hurt and heart first. So take a moment today to send that card, email or text to someone who needs the love from your beautiful, compassionate, healing, loving heart.
We can’t wait to hear what you did to help someone this week? Did you send a card or a text? Share with us and inspire others to reach out too.
Sending you big love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
The power of silent eyes
So often when we’re grieving, we never feel heard. I mean really feel heard. We don’t feel understood. We don’t feel like anyone could possibly understand how much we hurt or how lost we feel. This leaves us feeling very isolated and very, very alone.
What if we could do something that would make us feel connected and understood? What if it only took 2 minutes? Sounds pretty good, right?
Well this week, we are going to do a partner healing and really heal that part in our heart that is aching to connect and to be heard and understood.
Ask a friend or family member who might also be struggling with something to partner with you on this healing exercise.
And let’s face it; we’re all struggling with something.
Sit across from each other and decide who will talk first and who will listen first. Set your timer for 2 minutes. When the talker begins to talk for their 2 full minutes, the listener’s job is to remain completely silent.
No sounds, no words, nothing.
The listener needs to let their eyes do their talking and empathizing. Our eyes are our gateways to our souls and, I assure you, are completely qualified for this task. You will be shocked how heard and understood you will feel just through eye communication. I think we botch what we’re hoping to say so often when we’re trying to empathize with our words. We want so badly to say the right thing that most of the time, the wrong thing comes out of our mouth. This exercise eliminates that pressure. Talk with your eyes and seal your lips.
Then switch. It is much easier and more motivating for the second listener to listen with silent eyes because they will have already experienced this amazing listening. The second listener won’t feel as uncomfortable or nervous about remaining so silent. The second talker still gets to be surprised by the healing power of the listener’s silent eyes.
I can’t wait to hear how this goes for you this week! If you don’t have someone near you who you can partner up with, post it in the comments down below and say you’re looking for a partner. My guess is that someone in our community will live close enough that you could meet up at a coffee shop for this exercise. That’s just the way God works. You can also repost this message on your own Facebook page and put the request of “Who wants to be my partner for this exercise?” I bet you will receive more response than you expect.
Share, share, share your stories this week! We can’t wait to hear from you and your stories about your silent eyes partner healing!
Sending you big love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Could there actually be something called “grief brain”?
Do you keep misplacing things?
Or forget what you’re saying?
Do you often feel nervous or anxious?
It could be that you have grief brain. Our bodies become so overtaken by emotion and grief that it is hard to maintain our schedules or remember simple things. This happens in our bodies because our adrenals feel the stress of our emotions. Unfortunately, our adrenals can’t translate the type of stress we are encountering and can’t differentiate between a tiger running you down as you fear for your life or feeling panicked that your to-do list is too long or that you feel overwhelmed by the many new responsibilities you have now that your loved one has left. This applies whether your loved one died or has just left your life. Your body feels the stress from all the ways grief shows up in your life.
But you do not have to be a victim to grief brain.
There is something very powerful and empowering that you can do for yourself to help you feel clearer, calmer and more peaceful.
The antidote to grief brain is energy grounding.
Grounding is the process of connecting ourselves to earth, either physically or spiritually. And since we’re all made up of energy, it’s important that we take care of the very energy that helps us keep moving.
By grounding our energy, we are able to think more clearly, speak more concisely and feel more powerful and better all the way around.
We can ground ourselves a few different ways.
We can garden without shoes or go for a barefoot walk on the grass, on the beach or in the dirt.
We can eat root vegetables, including sweet potatoes, carrots, and beets.
This is your true homework for the week though. This meditation is amazing and will help you feel lighter, clearer and more peaceful right now. You do not have to go outside and you do not need to purchase vegetables so you can do this right here, right now for the next 2 minutes. No excuse!
Stand up tall with your toes spread out as far as they will go with your hands at your side. In yoga, this is called Tadasana, Mountain Pose. Envision yourself growing tree roots out of the bottoms of your feet and attaching them to the center of the earth. Allow whatever is no longer serving you, your heartache, your grief, your frustrations to flow out of those roots and into the center of the earth. Allow God and the earth to transmute those struggles into strength for you.
Sometimes when we are grieving, our feelings are so intense. We wish someone would just take them. We feel like pushing those struggles right out of us. Well, now here is your chance to hand them off. It actually feels incredibly empowering to feel like we have somewhere to push them out and to get them out of us. So once you’ve connected your roots to the center of the earth, visualize pushing those emotions all the way completely out of you through those tree roots and watch them make their way into the center of the earth. Once those struggles are out, notice what happens. You will begin to feel lighter, clearer, a little more healed. Then you can picture those transformed struggles making their way from the center of the earth back up to you as love, filling those spaces you created with love and strength.
One of my very first blogs was on grounding and healing our root chakra and I go into great detail on the many different ways we can ground our energy. It is definitely worth the read, if you’re interested. I’m going to streamline this week’s blog to focus mainly on this powerful meditation.
For those of you who live in the local Bay area, I am hosting a grounding meditation on Sunday, March 6th at 6pm in Belmont. It’s going to be an amazing healing class where we dive into what might be keeping us from being grounded as well as complete a powerful grounding meditation together. I hope you’ll join us. Here’s the link to attend.
We can’t wait to hear how this exercise worked for you this week! Did you feel lighter? Did you feel like you were able to offload some of your pain or stress? Please share your experience and inspire others here to heal and ground too.
Sending you big love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
It’s not about the chicks…
This week, my grief expert experience broadened to include chick grief. Yes, you read that correctly…chick grief. I didn’t realize I needed to add this to my repertoire but, like all things grief, it turned out to have very little to do with the actual chicks.
This fall, my children joined 4-H. They are true animal lovers and, as a result of our chosen project, are raising baby chicks for a few months. What I did not anticipate was this project becoming a lesson in so much more than farm maintenance and responsibility for a pet. Yesterday, 2 of our 4 chicks died- 1 unexpectedly and 1 a bit more expected as she had appeared sickly from the start. As you can imagine, my daughters fell in love with these sweet little peeps upon first meeting. So when 2 of them died, my daughters were very sad. However, my youngest daughter, 9, could not stop crying. She cried for an hour in the morning and for several hours after school. In the morning I found myself conflicted. The grief expert in me wanted to let her mourn while the mom in me didn’t want her late for school. I allowed her to mourn and then reminded her that the ones that were still alive were depending on her to keep them alive. They needed her to change their water and food and clean up after them. It was this life, this remaining love that motivated her to move from sadness to action. Knowing that she needed to care for the final 2 chicks helped her get going that morning.
Always in search of the teachable moment, I got to thinking about how this applies to all of us here. Our loved ones and dependents, which show up in the form of family, friends, pets or plants, help move us back into our life. They need us. They need our love. They need our help and it turns out, we need them too. Our caring for something outside of ourselves us motivates our hearts to heal a little faster so we can support the life that depends on us.
The parallel lessons did not end here though, amazingly enough. One of her teachers at school asked her if she was feeling OK because she wasn’t acting like her normal bubbly self. I asked her if she told the teacher about the chicks. She said she didn’t tell her teacher about the loss of these chicks because she’d only known them for a few days. She felt ashamed of her grief. I told her it doesn’t matter if you know someone for 3 days or 3 years, your heart is your heart and you have a right to your own grief.
Just like we are connected, our grief is all connected too.
While we have these catalysts in our lives, in this instance the chicks, it’s rarely about what has set us off. In my daughter’s case, I feel like part of her mourning was about the chicks, but I think a great part of it combined all of the losses we’ve encountered over the last few years. My daughter was 1 when my mom died and I think there was so much unprocessed emotion in her heart that needed to be purged. If I didn’t allow her to purge and release those emotions, they would remain stuck in her heart…and that’s just not healthy for anyone. That is why I encouraged her and supported her and just held her as she cried and cried. I wanted her to release that feeling of sorrow and never feel ashamed about it.
How many of us here find ourselves feeling ashamed about our emotions? Ashamed we’ve been grieving too long? Too short? Not enough? Brene’ Brown is so amazing with her research on shame. Here is one of my favorite quotes,
“Empathy is connection; it’s a ladder out of the shame hole.”
We don’t just need empathy from others; we need to provide that very empathy to ourselves. We need to accept and understand that we are worthy of having our feelings. They are ours to own and share. Another favorite Brene’ Brown quote of mine is,” If we share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame cannot survive.”
Shame cannot survive.
Can you imagine the speed at which your heart might heal if you eliminate this soul drowning emotion? Allow yourself to feel every emotion over your small grieves too.
Because it’s not all about the chicks.
We temper our own catalyst reaction, shaming ourselves into feeling like we shouldn’t feel this way or that way. We feel like we don’t have a right to feel this intense feeling because it’s not a “big enough” event, and that’s simply not true.
Both sides of the equation don’t have to add up.
Next time you find yourself in this position remind yourself, “It’s not about the chicks.” It’s about everything that has come before the chicks that still needs to purge from your heart. It’s the healing that hasn’t made its way to the surface because it’s been held down by the weight of past losses, disappointments and sorrow.
This week, take time to reflect and write down the connections to what is hurting your heart today. Be sure to put pen to paper. There is something so releasing that happens when you get out of your head and begin to write it out on paper. It somehow detaches you from the hurt and helps you get to the core of your emotions.
At the top of your list, write your catalyst event or name and underneath your catalyst event, begin to list all of the other events or people that are surfacing as a result of this catalyst event. All of these emotions are connected and they are all trying to surface to heal. Take two minutes. Set a timer. Be brave. This is hard work, but this is worthy work. Your heart will thank you for it.
What were your “chicks” this week? What connections to past hurts did you find while writing? We look forward to hearing your story. You may just inspire someone else to be brave enough to seek out their connections too.
Sending you big brave love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Healing the bridges between us
I hosted a meditation this week to help heal the challenging relationships we might have in our lives. It got me thinking. For some of us here, we may be struggling with having lost our loved one to death when our relationship with them wasn’t healed. Maybe we were in an argument. Maybe we hadn’t spoken to them in years. Maybe we wish we could have a redo of the very last conversation we had with them. Anyone? I know I have one of those! We can still very much grieve a person and be mad at them at the same time. But it can feel a little confusing right? Am I sad? Am I mad? What am I feeling? That is grief in a nutshell. We feel all things combined and feel them with an exclamation point!
However, we can heal that relationship even if our loved one has passed away.
Why would we do that, you ask?
Forgiveness heals your heart. It helps you. It improves your health, your heart and your life. Forgiveness is powerful and you can heal the relationship from your side only and it helps you both.
Maybe you’re not ready to forgive and forget, and that’s OK.
I invite you to listen to the meditation in this week’s video and actively participate and just see what happens. Use it as an experiment. I promise, it’s a worthy experiment.
We use many different tools on this site for healing and this week we are going to bring in the trifecta of Archangels to help us through this amazing meditation. I hosted this very meditation with a group earlier in the week and I cannot begin to tell you the amount of relationship healing that has blossomed from these participants completing the meditation. It has been so amazing.
In the video, we will call upon Archangel Michael to protect us and our hearts from harm, Archangel Raphael to help heal our hearts and Archangel Raguel to help harmonize the relationships we are struggling with at this time. Archangels are messengers of God and we can call upon them to help us when we just can’t seem to get there ourselves. I think this works for a couple of reasons. First, by asking for these Archangels to help, we detach from the situation. Detaching alone allows us to let go and let God in. Secondly, as I mentioned just two sentences prior, Archangels are messengers of God. Archangel Michael is written about in the Bible, Torah and even in the Qur’an. These Archangels help us do God’s work and help us heal all that is still undone. SO let’s let the angels do the work we just can’t seem to get done ourselves. All of us have relationships that could use some divine assistance, don’t we? Let’s use them this week and begin to bring some healing, some forgiveness and more love than you’ve ever known to your heart. Because by clearing these relationships, we heal our own hearts and will reap the benefits both emotionally and physically.
Please join us for this beautiful bridge clearing meditation:
Invite Archangel Michael, Archangel Raphael and Archangel Raguel to make a circle around you, helping you to feel safe and secure. Begin to surrender. When you feel ready, begin to build a bridge across to your loved one. Once completed, take a look at it. What does it look like? Is it mossy, tattered, made of wood, stone, high, low? The condition of this bridge provides a really strong message to you about the current state of that relationship. Starting at your heart, ask those three Archangels to clean the bridge between you and your loved one. Envision this cleaning in whatever way makes sense to you- vacuuming, mopping, dusting, sprinkling angel dust. Allow them to clean that bridge all the way until it reaches your loved one’s heart. What does that bridge look like now? Is it pearly white and clean? Did it break and disappear? This too, is very helpful information for you about the status of this relationship in your life.
When you’ve completed this exercise with one person, complete it with two or more other people. Notice how the bridges look different from the other bridges. Notice the change and see how that correlates to your relationship with them in real life.
Once you are done clearing your bridges, pull all of that beautiful angel love back into your heart and envision all three angels placing their hands upon your heart as you absorb their love and healing. Begin to feel the forgiveness, compassion; love and healing multiply in your own heart.
When you are done, thank all three Archangels for their healing, clearing and love.
Now comes the best part, watch what happens in the days to come. If your loved one is alive, did something healing happen between the two of you? If your loved one has passed away, did you receive an angel sign? Here’s my past article on the Top 5 Angel Signs we receive from our loved ones. Once something happens, post it here. We can’t wait to celebrate in your relationship healing. Your sharing may inspire someone else to do their meditation too. Again, I can’t begin to tell you the amazing stories I’ve received from this meditation from the local group this week and I hope the same healing happens for you too!
Please share your stories down below. Inspire someone here to heal and forgive too!
Sending you big love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Can we laugh and grieve at the same time?
Can we laugh and grieve at the same time?
That’s a tricky question, isn’t it? Grief has us wrapped up in so many emotions, we almost feel guilty laughing and allowing our souls any sort of relief. Grief can sometimes even cause laughter because it’s our bodies way of releasing stress and emotion. My brother and I laughed our way through one of our planning meetings for our other brother’s funeral. At that point, it was our third funeral to plan together in a short period of time and, I think it was the only way our bodies, and our hearts, could handle the gravity of the situation.
But what if that laughter was the very thing we needed in order to welcome more healing?
Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases our immune cells. It releases endorphins that provide us with a sense of well-being and pain relief. What better way to give ourselves a break from our grief and pain than to find a way to laugh?
It might not just be a choice, it might actually be necessary. A great mentor of mine continues to preach to me that even though I speak on grief and all the ways grief shows up in our lives, I must make room for a little appropriate humor in my talk. Research shows that if people don’t laugh, they can’t make room for absorbing more of the true healing message. They aren’t able to hear what you have to say because they have reached their capacity for hearing more, if they aren’t given a break.
And since my talk is 60 minutes of grief healing help, I want to make sure I deliver it in a way that is going to be the most healing for everyone there. Sometimes, a good “Amen” will do the trick…
But I think this idea rings true whether we’re listening to a talk on grief or actively healing and processing our grief in our own personal life. We have to let ourselves have a break. We need to let go of the guilt we might feel over laughing and accept and know that it’s just our heart’s way of making room for more healing to occur. They say, “laughter is the best medicine.” I think that is true in moderation. I don’t know one grieving person that would want to laugh all the time, but this week we can try it for just 2 minutes.
Find a Youtube clip, a Facebook video, a home movie your favorite book, comic strip or television show and give yourself permission to laugh for 2 minutes and see how that feels. Tell yourself it’s OK to laugh right now. Use it as a prescription for healing this week and see what happens. Once you find that clip, please share it below.
We can’t wait to hear how this helped you this week. Share your funny video with us down below so we can laugh along with you. Share how this helped you clear some space or if it was really hard to do. We’re here to support you.
Sending you big love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Interested in booking Erin as a speaker at your next women’s church group, grief group or event? Contact us HERE.
2 minute healing challenge: Absorbing God’s healing love
I gave the most heartfelt talk this week for a women’s church group on all the ways grief shows up in our life and on how God uses that very grief to bring us closer to him to prepare us and ready us for our larger divine purpose here. It was so amazing. And while grief shows up in so many different ways in our life, the same thing remains true.
We must take the time we need to honor and heal our hearts and find a way to actually let the love in.
That healing time can look so different for people. For some, it may be attending a grief group. For others, it could be journaling, or listening to music or talking with a friend. But at the core of all of these activities, is a pausing as we allow God’s healing presence, grace and love to fill our hearts and bodies so they can be healed.
It’s imperative that we take that time to heal because our emotions will make us physically sick if we don’t take time to heal them. Brene’ Brown was recently on Super Soul Sunday discussing emotional stockpiling and she said, ” Our bodies keep track and they always win.”
The truth is, we just can’t keep holding onto all of our emotions. The results will surface somehow, someway. Louise Hay has an amazing book and phone app called, Heal Your Body A-Z: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Way to Overcome Them
So how can we make the most of this beautiful love that God is sending down to us to heal? We take our 2 minutes this week and absorb it.
Place your feet flat on the floor and picture tree roots growing out the bottoms of your feet. Picture a tube connecting the top of your head to heaven. Then, picture God pouring down beautiful golden glitter water full of love down this tube that fills you all up, head to toe. Allow it to begin to soften your heart, heal the broken parts you haven’t even been able to talk about yet. You see, you don’t have to tell God about those parts. He knows what hurts. He knows what you’re struggling with right now. You just have to let him in.
This week is all about the let in. Let the warmth in. Let the love in. Let the healing in and let the healing begin. Two minutes is all it takes.
When I had an entire room of women do this exercise, the room shifted. You could feel the love and healing going on all around you. It was amazing!! I want the same thing for you too this week. Give yourself 2 minutes. Right now. Don’t go and do something else. Don’t put it off. Give yourself these 2 minutes right now. Your heart will thank you for it. Set your timer right now and begin…and then share your experience with all of us.
We can’t wait to hear how this visualization works for you! Did you begin to feel a little more healed? A little tingly? A little warmer? A little more filled?
Share your experience with us so you can help inspire others to take their 2 minutes too and then share this exercise with all of your loved ones so they can take their two minute healing challenge too.
Sending you big love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Fear or love- which will you choose?
Fear or Love? Which will you choose?
So often on our grief journey, we encounter people who are too afraid to approach our pain. Their schedules suddenly get too full to have lunch with us. They stop calling. They stop helping, and it is so hard to handle. We are the mirror and reflection for them of something that can happen to them in an instant in their life, and it petrifies them.
But where does that leave us? Do we get bitter and mad that these people in our lives are choosing fear over love? Or will we take a moment to recognize that it’s actually not personal?
Isn’t that a crazy thought? Our grief, which is so personal to us that we feel it in our bones and in our gut, isn’t personal to them at all. It’s their fear that is keeping them away from you. It’s about them and their fears. It’s not about you.
They’re scared to see what real grief might look like. They’re afraid to say the wrong thing to you. They’re afraid they might make you cry even more.
The problem is that no one should live in fear. “A Course in Miracles” teaches us that there are only two true emotions- love or fear.
Which will you choose as the recipient? Which will you choose as the giver?
Whatever role you play,
Let love show up everywhere.
You might say the wrong thing. Say it anyway. Don’t let fear win.
People feel our loving intentions more than they hear the actual words we say.
So use this as an experiment this week.
After all, today is National Hug Day.
Use this holiday as an excuse to visit your grieving friend just to deliver your hug. Use it as the “excuse” to show up. Truth be told though, you don’t really need an excuse. Your love and intention of support is an amazing gift all unto itself.
If you are the one grieving, use this as a dose of courage to help you reach out to those you miss the most. Be reassured, it’s not personal. Their distance is not about you. Reach out. Allow yourself to connect to someone that has fallen out of your life that you truly miss. Let love do its thing in your heart too.
Bitterness and resentment can make us feel even more isolated, sad and depressed. Allow your love to heal your own heart just by reaching out and connecting. Whether you are the one grieving or the loved one of someone who is grieving, choose love today, not fear.
We can’t wait to hear all the ways you chose love this week or the ways someone showed you love. Share this article with your loved ones so they can begin to choose love too. You never know who might be feeling isolated or alone because those around them haven’t conquered their fears yet. Help give them a dose of courage too.
Sending you big love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
The 2 minute healing challenge
So often when we are grieving, we are triggered by the simplest thing, at the simplest time. The smell of coffee, flowers in a store, a television commercial. When these moments hit us, we find ourselves grieving hard. It doesn’t matter if your loved one passed away 6 months ago or 20 years ago. In that moment, it hurts and it hurts bad. It’s bound to happen to every single one of us, if it hasn’t happened already.
But what should we do when this happens?
It can be so intense that we may feel inclined to wipe away our tears and pretend we’re fine, especially if it’s been awhile since our loved ones have died. This is one way to handle it. But pretending we’re fine won’t bring us much healing. It is easier for the moment, yes. But for a lifetime? No.
If we can be brave enough to let those tears out, to face that hurt, to allow that pain to penetrate our hearts for just a little bit, it will do the work that grief needs to do in our hearts and begin to release the hurt so we can begin to heal. We can start to find a new version of normal, a new way to be. It is absolutely true that this can feel scary and hard and incredibly painful. So what do we do when we get hit with emotion out of nowhere?
We take the 2 minute healing challenge.
When that moment hits you, pull out your phone or your nearest egg timer and let yourself feel all those emotions and feel it BIG for two minutes. Set the timer and let yourself go for two full minutes. You might be surprised how much healing you get done in 2 minutes. Allowing yourself these two minutes of the full expression of your grief will let you process, release, detach and heal. This two minute challenge eliminates the “I don’t have time for this right now” excuse. It eliminates watching the clock for when you need to leave. It eliminates you carrying whatever you are going to release into tomorrow.
Because if we don’t take those two minutes to truly feel that grief and allow it to process through our heart, it will just bleed into the next day and the next day and the next day until we realize that we have a lifetime of grief and little healing.
Yes, it’s scary. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, you can do it.
You can do anything for 2 minutes and facing your grief and that hurt is no different. Be brave for 2 minutes. Be sad for 2 minutes. Be with your heart for 2 minutes. It will thank you for it!
I can’t wait to hear all about your 2 minute healing challenges this week. How did it work for you? What triggered you? Where were you? We are here to support you and want to hear your story.
Sending you big love!
Love and Blessings,
Erin