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 why and the “how to” on listening to our hearts.
Grief is so long and so arduous and constantly surprises us at our most unsuspecting moments. I’ve often thought to myself, as I’m sure so many of us here have too, how can I speed this process up?
Well, your heart is going to be your grief’s pace setter and it is going to set the speed that is right for you. Your heart knows what is best for you. This is so important that it’s worth repeating again:
Your heart knows what is best for you.
It will set the pace. It will hurt when it is time. It will heal when it is time. It’s our job to listen and follow its directions.
This simple line doesn’t just apply to grief from losing a loved one; it reaches across all aspects of our life. As we discussed a few weeks ago, grief shows up in our life in many different ways. Our hearts, alone, know how to heal our grief from relationships, friendships, family or daily interactions. We must trust our own hearts and begin to listen, honor and respect them through the process. Grief healing begins with loving our own heart, and self, first.
Grief is the ultimate self-love boot camp.
Our difficult journey is only made longer when we don’t care for our own hearts. So much of our journey is about learning to care for our hearts in the same, or even better, way than the loved ones we are grieving. It’s one of the most significant lessons on our healing journey.
We will never find a more nourishing, healing, or intimate love than self-love. Once we begin to give it. So this week, we are going to pay extra attention to our hearts and see how much we can honor and activate them for our own healing.
We must give our hearts the time, love and energy they need to heal our hurt. Those sweet little hearts need lots and lots and lots of love to heal. We learn through self-love that we don’t need to look outward for that healing or for that love. When we fill ourselves with our own self-love, we become stronger, more resilient and more independent. We learn that love will melt away our pain and that we can do this for ourselves. We don’t have to depend on our loved one, or anyone else for that matter, to fill our hearts with love.
When will you know when it’s time to do something? Only your heart can tell you when it is time and it will, once you begin listening.
Here’s a great exercise to help you determine if something will be good for you:
Get quiet and close your eyes.
Take three deep breaths and think about your questions. Should I go to the movies? Should I see this friend? Will this help me? Etc.
Then pay attention where you might feel pressure or tingling in your body.
If it is at your heart or above, that is your heart’s way of telling you “yes” and if it is below your heart, it is your heart’s way of telling you “no.”
It’s a great way for us to tune into our own hearts, the one who knows us best, and to follow its directions.
A major part of self-love is doing things that will help build us back up and to help us feel stronger. When you aren’t sure if something is good for you to participate in, take a moment and ask your very own heart.
I can’t wait to hear how this works for you this week. I can’t wait to hear how you are depending on your own hearts and following its directions. What kind of self-love are you giving yourself this week? How did this exercise work for you? Share with us down below and inspire others. We look forward to hearing from you.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Does being in your home feel exhausting, depressing or heavy? This one easy trick can help!
Has the energy in your home felt heavy lately? Does being in your home make you feel more sad or depressed? Do you feel “stuck” in your chores? Unmotivated to get anything done?
Well if so, you are not alone!
I felt that way this week too. The energy in my home felt so heavy that I felt like I’d never get ahead of the laundry, dishes, paperwork or unpacking. Just sitting in my home felt heavy, sad and depressing because so much was piled up. We’re trying so hard to get our life back to normal after all of this construction, but it’s been so hard and lately I’ve just lost my motivation. I’m so tired from the constant effort that this week, I felt like giving up. I was too tired, too exhausted and, quite simply, had too far to go to put things back in place.
I needed help. So I reached out to my dear friend, Gina Rossi, who is an amazing Feng Shui Practitioner and she suggested I use frankincense and myrrh in my home. She recommended I diffuse it as well as put it on my lightbulbs so it could burn off in the heat. I can’t even begin to tell you how much this simple step helped to invigorate me, heal my space and ultimately help heal my heart. I was able to get through the majority of my house tasks and felt great all day long.
It was so helpful that it inspired me to write this week’s blog on these healing essential oils. So I began to research a bit more, which I always do before writing, and look what I found out! I was floored! Everything came full circle when I found out the history behind these essential oils that I know and love.
Here’s what I do know about frankincense and myrrh:
I use them in my healing practice all the time. I love them. I know them to be the perfect complement, the perfect healing pair. One heals our mother issues, the other heals our father issues and together they bring perfect balance to our bodies and emotions.
But here is what I did not know:
In early Chinese medicine books, Frankincense was called fanhunxiang which means “calling back the soul” and was used for mourning the dead. Myrrh is called moyao which means bitter. These oils are both used to treat and heal traumatic injury.
I’m just not sure there is anything more traumatic or more bitter than grief. Wouldn’t you agree?
It just makes this pair of oils even more fantastic together. I could not believe the history I found and that these two oils are perfect grief healing oils! If you want to read more on the history itself, here is the link to the article.
Reading this history brought this whole overwhelm experience full circle for me and brought some great awareness to what is going on with my “stuff.” I realized that I’m not just tired from going through boxes and unpacking. I’m also tired because I have been forced to grieve the items of my deceased loved ones. All of these forgotten, hidden treasures have been resurfacing now that they are no longer tucked away in my closets. Bottom line: I must face these items in order to get my house back to base line and now I am grateful I have some help with moving forward.
In a way, it’s a beautiful blessing. I’m really standing by the “Love it or Leave It” principle and am truly releasing what does not bring me joy. I will bless other people’s lives with my loved ones’ items. But I’m not gonna lie. I needed the help to get moving and to keep moving. I diffused my frankincense and myrrh oils. I saged my house with dried white sage. I opened all the windows and I prayed and asked for help. And boy did I get it. Bountiful, beautiful, get-her-done energy came flying my way so I could get my house in order so our everyday life could run smoother. I’m so grateful for this shift in my house and for my house getting put back together. We still have a little ways to go but I felt like I completed a week’s worth of work in one single day, thanks to my frankincense and myrrh. Grateful!
Because I realized old stuff is heavy- no matter what it is. Old clothes, old tasks, old chores, old habits, old thoughts. The longer we think about something, the heavier it gets and the harder it is to change it.
So do what you can to help support yourself to make that change. If you can change your energy around it, you will find that it will be easier to change that “old” anything. Your life will thank you for it.
If you’d like to learn more about these essential oils, you can click here: Doterra Oils
I can’t wait to hear how your house energy is this week. Did you try the essential oils? Did you try saging? What have you done to help change the feeling in your house to make it lighter and brighter? Please share your tips with all of us!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Our angels are always watching over us!
The past few weeks have been really intense and filled with lots and lots and lots of work- both manual and mental labor. I met with one of my spiritual advisors on Monday and she told me to stop and spend some good quality time with my family. Drop the many pressures for a little while and really be present with my family. After dinner this week, we decided to go on a family walk and you will never believe what we saw directly above us during our family time together.
The angels decided to join us for our family walk too. Even my husband was amazed by this beautiful cloud angel. He said, ” Wow! You can even see her face!” It was absolutely breathtaking. I took this as a huge sign that I was exactly where I needed to be and doing exactly what I needed to do. Instead of sending my kids off with their dad so I could catch up on work and dishes, I did what the angels had advised me to do. I took time to slow down and replenish.
A few weeks ago, we talked about how our angels leave us signs to let us know they are around us. However, I did not address clouds. Our angels absolutely leave us messages in the clouds. Have you ever seen a symbol that represented something special between you and your loved one who has passed away? Have you ever seen clouds that look like wings? All of these symbols are messages from our loved ones letting us know they love us and they are watching over us.
The next time you see a cloud from them be sure to give huge gratitude for their gift. Take it in and feel their love. They are always around us. We just have to look up.
I would love to hear about all of the beautiful cloud images you have seen from your loved ones. If you took a picture, please post it. I would love to see us fill this post up with our angels’ love. Share your story and help someone else feel inspired today. I can’t wait to hear your stories and see your pictures.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Do you wake up at 3 a.m. every night? What is your body telling you?
Do you wake up every night between 3-5 a.m.? You are not alone. Many grieving people do. But do you know why?
Grief energy resides in our lungs. It’s why we can’t seem to catch a full breath or feel like a weight is on our chest. It’s why we find ourselves sighing all the time after losing a loved one. It’s not just because we’re sad. Our sadness actually creates energy that settles on our lungs. This heavy energy causes sighing, a heaviness on our chest, asthma or an increase in respiratory infections. Have you experienced any of these? Chinese Medicine refers to it as an energy blockage in the lung channel.
Although this grief energy resides in our lungs, our bodies naturally heal themselves. Every night between 3-5am, our lungs release that heavy energy in an attempt to clear and heal them. This release and energy blockage causes us to wake up.
This doesn’t just apply for our lungs and grief. Each organ in our body heals itself during a two hour span during our 24 hour day. What time of night are you waking up? When are you feeling sleepy or a little nauseous during the day? Begin to pay attention and a whole new world of information will be made available to you about what’s going on inside your body. It will tell you, if you listen.
Aren’t our bodies so awesome? They tell us everything we need to know. I truly love the human body- physically, emotionally, spiritually. It all works together. Our emotions can make us feel amazing and they can also make us very sick if we do not take the time to heal them and purge those emotions out of our bodies. That is why I am so grateful to see all of you here each week, showing up, working and doing what you can to heal.
Grief can only be healed through action. It’s OK to wait until you’re ready to heal. You’ll know when it’s time. But when you are ready, you’ll need to love yourself enough to begin to take those steps towards healing. Two minutes at a time is just enough. Keep showing up. Keep healing. Your body will thank you for it. Our emotions can make us very sick. Our stories can make us very sick. I see this all the time in my energy healing practice. I find the life situations that hurt us the most are the same ones that create the biggest blockages in our energy. It is these very blockages that make us sick. We must heal our hearts to heal our bodies.
Here’s a link to a great Chinese Body Clock that tells you what organ is healing at which time. It also details the emotion that affects the organ. It will help you heal your heart so you can help heal your body too.
I can’t wait to hear what your bodies are working on this week. Have you been waking up at 3am? Have you been waking up at a different time? What emotions are you working on to heal your body? Share with us so we can help you heal too.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
You can only give from overflow
I’m “over” it this week!
I’m overtired, overworked and overwhelmed.
We have lived out of our house for three weeks while doing mold renovation, unearthed our entire backyard to put a French drain in to prevent future mold, and are being presented with all new work circumstances. To say the least, it has put some serious strain on every aspect of my life.
But my point of oversharing the craziness of the month is to point out how we can have our own set of “overs” in our own lives, whether or not we are grieving.
But when we are grieving, everything seems to be an “over”, doesn’t it?
Overtired, Overworked, Overwhelmed. You name it.
When we are grieving:
We can be overtired because we can’t sleep at night, especially between 3-5am when our lungs are trying to heal and release the grief energy that is residing there. (More on this next week!)
We can feel overworked either from the new tasks we’ve acquired since the loss of our loved one or from managing all of the details that must be tended to before and after all of the memorial services.
Life itself can overwork us some days. With the amount of stress we are putting on our bodies from processing our grief, it does not take much to make us feel overwhelmed. Our adrenals are working overtime to process all of this grief stress. That is why we find that sometimes, the most simple task can send us over the overwhelm edge.
But there is something we can do that will help us with ALL of these “overs”.
We can take time, fill ourselves up and remember the most important over word in our vocabulary: Overflow
“We can only give from overflow.”
–Jenn August – Amazing Certified Business Success Coach
What does that mean exactly? We can only give from overflow. It means that if you have nothing to give because you’re giving all you’ve got to heal your broken heart, it’s OK to take the day off. Take the week off. Take the time you need to fill your energy supply back up before you give again. Do what fills you: a walk in nature, a dance class, coffee with a friend, meditation. Do what fills your soul so that you can replace your heavy “overs” with overflow BEFORE you give more of your energy away. Once you are overflowing with energy, you aren’t giving from a place that is going to take away from you. If you give from an empty place, you will find that it is much easier to slip into depression or sadness. Since part of our grief journey is moving through our sadness and depression, let’s do something to support our healing. Decide today to honor your heart and only give from overflow.
Loving and knowing this mantra, I use it and preach it all the time. (Thank you Jenn August!! Soo grateful for you!)
So this week when I hit maximum overwhelm status, I stopped in the middle of my very hectic day, during the middle of my very hectic week and popped into the Zen Center for a quick 20 minute solo meditation. I just stopped and filled, for only 20 minutes though because that was all the available time I had..but guess what…that was all the time I needed. I was filled after those 20 minutes.
It was all I needed to set me straight for the rest of the day. I felt filled and I was all of a sudden, in a matter of minutes, giving from overflow. I was nicer to my kids, my husband, my friends. It changed everything about my overwhelming week.
So if you are finding your week to be completely overwhelming too, stop and find your fill. Do what makes you overflow again. You might not get to overflow on your first attempt and that is OK too. It gives you that much more reason to stop and fill again. But decide today for yourself, that you are only giving from a place of overflow.
What did you do to fill yourself up this week? What are you doing to reach your overflow? I can’t wait to hear what you’ve decided to do. Share with all of us so we can be inspired too!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
The power of our words
Have you ever thought about the words you say to others?
Or more importantly the words you say to yourself?
If you think your words don’t matter, it’s time to think again.
Dr. Emote conducted a science experiment where he spoke words to water molecules and subsequently documented what happened to these molecules as they crystallized. The results were astonishing!
When positive words were spoken to the water molecules, they turned into beautiful crystals. When negative words were spoken to the water molecules, the water turned dark and ugly upon crystallizing.
Why should this experiment matter to us?
Our bodies are made up of approximately 60% water. So the words we speak to our bodies and to other bodies are incredibly important.
We have to ask ourselves, what are we building with our words?
But how can we possibly say something nice when our grieving hearts are broken?
When we are grieving, it is hard to always say the right thing to others, or to ourselves. Some days, we don’t want to say anything nice at all. We have days of sheer sadness, depression, hopelessness, anger or loneliness. The words that come out of our mouths naturally mirror our emotions.
But given what we’ve just learned from this amazing experiment, what should we do?
We can pause and realize that we don’t need to say wordS. We don’t need to put that much pressure on ourselves. We need to say A word. One. Just pick one. We’re going to pick one positive word for the day, repeat it in our heads and watch what happens to how we feel. Do you feel brighter? Maybe a little less heavy? And before you say something not nice to someone else, say that one word in your head and see how that changes your heart, or really how it changes the water in your heart. Saying one word takes no time at all but can create a healing ripple effect in your body and in your cells.
This exercise isn’t asking you to forget your grief, or your loved one. It is helping to uplift the water in your body. It’s helping a dark day feel a little bit lighter and maybe a little less sad. Because it’s not just the words we speak to others that turn to crystals or gunk.
Our thoughts, the words we speak to ourselves, make the greatest difference in our lives.
How are you treating the water in your body this week? Here is the link to the amazing video showing the results of this amazing experiment. I really encourage you to watch it. It speaks louder than all of my words this week!
What word are you using today? What word are you going to focus on to create beautiful crystallized water in and around your body?
Love and Blessings,
Erin
What’s your heart song?
There are days that are just messy. There are some weeks that are just messy. This is one of those weeks for me.
But what I’m finding is that…
We can use that messiness to our advantage.
We can take all that messiness and use it to heal parts of our hearts we didn’t even realize needed healing. It’s usually these precise messy moments that do the very best job of cracking us open and getting us into the prime place to cry, purge and heal.
What if we had a tool that could help maximize that healing during our vulnerable times or help us connect to what needs to be healed during our less messy times?
Music is one of the most powerful grief healing tools we could ever use on our broken little hearts. The right song will stop us in our tracks and turn us to tears..no matter where we are…the grocery story, the library, work or home.
But rather than letting it “hit us” when we don’t want to turn into a puddle of tears, what if we took three minutes this week and did some therapeutic heart song crying?
What’s your heart song?
There is always a song for our loved one that we’re grieving. Maybe it’s their favorite song, maybe it’s just a few words from the song that touches us, maybe it’s a made up song, but we know when we hear it that it’s their song. Our heart song connects us to our loved ones and all we hold in our hearts for them- the love, the laugher, the grief, the sadness and the joy. Our heart song touches it all.
I attended a beautiful funeral today of a dear family friend. Mid-way through the ceremony, the musician played “Ava Maria”. There was not a dry eye in the house. I realized in that moment how quickly we all started to cry upon hearing this song, yet we often find it so hard to connect to our wounds that need to be released and healed in this very same way. Everyone began to cry but held back or hid their tears because we were in a public place. It inspired everything about this week’s activity.
This week, we’re going to empower ourselves to use this powerful music tool to our advantage this week. We are going to carve out a safe space for ourselves, set our healing intention, put on our heart song and cry, remember and release. Give yourself permission to let go for three minutes and then watch what happens next. You may just find yourself to be more content, more at peace and hopefully a little more healed than before you dedicated three minutes to your healing.
Let your heart song help heal your heart.
What song did you choose? Share the title of your heart song and your memory or what you healed down below in the comments. You may just inspire someone else’s healing with your song. Take the three minutes for you, for your heart and for your loved one.
I can’t wait to hear all of the beautiful music we make together this week.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
How can we help bring our angels into our dreams?
Have you ever wished and asked for a loved one to come and visit you in your dream only to be visited by someone else or by no one at all?
We beg our loved ones to visit and then end up with nothing. It can feel incredibly disheartening, sad and frustrating.
What if there was a way to improve your chances on getting your loved one to show up in your dreams?
This week, we are going to talk about how our loved ones come and visit us in our dreams and how they follow a divinely organized process.
Our loved ones’ energies live in our hearts while they are here on earth and continue to live in that same space after they transition. When our loved ones come and visit us in our dreams, a sacred space is created that allows us to connect with them and to feel as though we have seen them, heard them or even hugged them. Often times, this experience is so intense that we will begin to cry upon awakening and after sharing our dream. Part of our weeping is because we miss them, but it more because that divine experience is so intense that our human body can hardly handle it. We are truly weeping from our deepest soul level.
When my Dad passed away, he came to me in my dreams all the time. He still needed to bring closure to many things in his life and so he visited many of us, often. My mom, on other hand, has yet to visit in a dream and it’s been 8 years since she has passed away. But there was one particular dream a few months ago that was really upsetting. I had a dream about my brother (who has also passed away) and just as he was about to walk away in the dream, I saw a glimpse of my mom over his shoulder. She was hiding behind him. In my dream I said, “Wait, come back! Come back!” I was so sad when I woke up. How could she be so close and not let me know she was there? Why would she hide from me and not give me that long awaited hug I crave everyday? I didn’t understand it. So, I went on a quest to learn more. I needed to find out why this happened. What I found out was so fascinating that I had to share it with you.
Our loved ones and the angels who watch over us have divine knowledge and understand that there is absolute divine order to everything, including our healing. We must heal a certain part of our heart before we are able to access another part. Our loved ones know what we need, and in which order, and try to help us heal accordingly. This made perfect sense for me that I needed to heal the wounds between me and my brother before I was able to see my mom. To be honest, I wasn’t very happy about it because I WANT to see my mom and haven’t felt very motivated to heal those sibling wounds. But now that I understand this angel healing concept, I am super motivated to heal whatever I need to in order to see her in a dream. I clearly need to do some more work because I still haven’t had the chance to hug her yet, but I’ll keep you posted!
Your loved one is there trying to help you heal in divine order and timing too, whether or not they’ve been front and center in your dreams. What relationship might you need to heal before getting to see your loved one? What can you heal or make amends on in order to get that much-awaited visit from your loved one? Take some time this week and see if there might be that one area of your life that might be standing in the way between you and your loved one’s visit.
I can’t wait to hear what experiences you have this week. Share your dreams or your frustration with lack of dreams with us. What are you going to work on healing so you can get a visit from your loved one? Share with us so we can hold you accountable for your healing. We want to support you in healing your heart and connecting with your loved ones.
Love and Blessings,
Erin
The Journal and Burn
Here are three grief facts about me:
1) I’ve attended more grief groups than I can tally.
2) I’ve become a certified Minister of Consolation through the Archdiocese of San Francisco
3) I’ve logged more personal grief hours than I ever imagined possible for one human being.
But whether I was attending the grief group, leading the grief group or walking my own private journey, this one consistent fact has remained true.
We must tell our story over and over and over again in order to heal our broken hearts.
You simply must find a way to get your story out of your heart. It’s a way to clear the hurt and pain. It’s a way to move from disbelief to belief, so we can one day begin again.
And it’s OK if it begins with tears.
During my first grief meeting after the loss of my mom, all I did was cry. I couldn’t speak. When it was my turn to talk, I just cried and shook my head. The leaders said, “It’s OK, maybe next time.” But what I did next made it possible for me to speak the following week. I completed my grief group workbook. I wrote out my feelings. I couldn’t quite yet utter the words, but I could begin to detach from the pain through writing. I journaled. I cried. And I began to process and heal my wounds.
It is great to confide our story in our loved ones. There is something so healing about a true compassionate listener as we talked about last week. Chances are though, we may reach a time where they are too busy or don’t want to listen anymore. Or, maybe we start to feel uncomfortable telling the same story over and over again.
But if that story is still hurting your heart, it needs to come out until it doesn’t hurt to tell it anymore.
So what do we do then? We pick up our pens and start writing our story out. We begin to detach from the pain through writing. The more we write, the more we detach. This is actually my own assignment this week. I have been a terrible journaler. I think it stems from me finding all of my mom’s journals when I had to clear out her house after she passed away. I’m desperately afraid to have someone read my “stuff.” But as I was told by my amazing healer this week, Dan Bellini, that is no excuse.
“You journal so you become unattached to your pain and experience.” ~Dan Bellini
So I’m putting my excuses away this week. I intend to go about journaling in the safest way I can for me. I intend to complete some serious “write and burn” journaling. I’m going to pull out a blank sheet of paper, journal and write and clear my heart and then burn it. Because that’s the thing, this type of journaling is not for the records. It’s not for the family transcript. This journaling is for you and for you alone. Its purpose is to clear out your heart for you.
So do what feels right. Buy a special book that you can dedicate to this beautiful story of yours and begin your writing. But if that feels unsafe to you and is going to keep you from journaling because you’re afraid someone might find it, journal and burn your page each day, like I intend to do.
I am a huge fan of the blog Momastary and in one of my favorite blogs she wrote HERE, Glennon writes how our cool ashes can no longer burn us. When we write out and burn up our pain and what has caused it, it can’t hurt us once it’s cooled to ashes. So if it feels right for you, join me in this journal burnfest and in turning our pain to ashes.
I want to begin to detach and heal and I would love to do this together this week. I think I might need the peer pressure and the support too because let’s face it, it’s hard to sit still and to be truthful with our story. It’s hard to sift through the heaviness in our heart. But as soon as we unload that grief, hurt and pain, we will feel lighter, renewed and ready to begin again. So who’s with me?
I can’t wait to see your pictures this week of your journals, your shreds of papers and your flames of journal pages. Do what feels right for you and share it with us. I intend to share mine with you too!
Love and Blessings,
Erin
Compassionate Listening
So often when our loved ones are grieving around us, we don’t know what to do. We want to do the right thing, say the right thing and be that person that they need, but we often just don’t know what to do. We’re taking care of that this week and it is much easier than you may realize.
Be the brave one at the door.
They just need someone to listen deeply and compassionately.
Thich Nhat Hanh describes compassionate listening so beautifully. He says,
“You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart.”
Compassionately listening is one of the greatest services we can provide another human being. Sitting, listening, being. That is the stuff that heals hearts.
When I do my compassionate listening with friends, family or clients, I make sure to hold gentle eye contact and place myself in my pink bubble. We learned about our pink bubble a few months ago. If you missed that blog, you can learn all about it HERE. Then, I envision holding a cup or a bowl outside of my bubble as an offering to let them empty their hearts into this bowl. I want to encourage them to clear their hearts of their suffering and pain. By envisioning this bowl outside of my bubble, I keep my energetic self protected from absorbing their suffering. This technique, in turn, will allow me to be stronger and more available for them.
I cannot stress enough the importance of the energetic bubble and bowl technique when listening so deeply to your loved ones. A few years ago, I worked an event where many different people were telling me their grief stories and I ended up in bed for two days. I didn’t have enough energy to walk or function for my family, much less, for myself. Once I could get out of bed, I began researching and speaking to spiritual advisors to find out what they did to protect themselves. I’ve landed on this bubble & bowl technique. It has been a life-saver, literally. It’s a simple technique that helps you keep your energy strong and clean. And it’s ALWAYS a good idea to ask God to protect you. 🙂 By listening compassionately, you are helping Him with His work in bringing support to people.
The second part of compassionate listening is the listening part. It may sound simple but listening = no talking. No advice giving, no suggestions, no help. Just sit and listen. I still struggle with this because I’m a helper. I never like to see people struggle. I always want to help in some way to make their “hurt” better, but in this circumstance, helping is not helpful.
Your silence will allow your loved one to reach the most vulnerable places in their heart.
And that’s where the real suffering exists. That’s the stuff that’s gotta come out. For this compassionate listening gift you are giving your loved one, allow them to empty and clear out their feelings. Then give them the biggest hug ever. If you have suggestions or advice, choose another time or wait until later to share your wisdom. And then pat yourself on the back for giving your loved one the best gift ever. True Heart Healing.
So the next time you are struggling with what to do for a grieving friend or loved one, be the brave one who shows up on their door, ready to listen.
If you are the one grieving this week, share this post on your facebook or email and put your request out there and say, “Who’s coming over first?” Let people know you need them.
I can’t wait to hear how your compassionate listening goes this week for you. Were you the listener? Or did someone gift you the opportunity to empty your heart into their bowl? Share with us what happened and let us support you too.
Love and Blessings,
Erin