I’m in a grief tending mentorship right now, and this was the practice we were given: speak to your grief as if it were a stranger who has come from out of town.
First, get to know it.
- What is your name?
- Where do you come from, what area of the body?
- What is the reason for your visit?
Then, once you have sat together a while and become companions, you can ask the deeper questions.
- What would you like to communicate to me?
- What are you asking of me?
- What do we need to accomplish together?
Grief is not an intruder to be managed. It is a visitor with something to say. When I finally sat down and let mine speak, I was amazed at how much it had been waiting to tell me.
Practice adapted from Doing Grief in Real Life by Shea Darian, p. 27.
