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Grieving the Past: Self-compassion, Self-nurture,
& Support
by Lesli Musicar
If you have had painful disappointments, failed relationships, missed opportunities, or broken dreams, you have good reason to grieve. Too often, our “internal” judge will tell us to “snap out of it" or "stop feeling sorry for yourself." Or, it will remind us of how “others had it worse.” Some feel self-contempt for what they consider to be weakness or self-pity. Others worry about being too self-indulgent. This is how we cheat ourselves out of our natural healing process. We cut off our grief, convinced we're not entitled to it.
Sometimes, people around us will discourage us from grieving. They’ll tell us to “leave the past in the past” or that “time heals all wounds.” But if the past continues to haunt you, it isn’t really in the past at all, it’s in the present. And time does not heal all wounds. So allow yourself your grief, or you’ll end up dragging it with you as an extra burden through life.
Self-compassion
The first step toward moving through the grieving process is self-compassion. We have to stop beating ourselves up for feeling down. Just because you feel bad, doesn't mean you are bad. It's a simple concept, but so many of us slip into self-blame for our bad feelings. This especially tends to happen when the grief stems from childhood.
Children blame themselves for the bad things that happen to them. It's how they make sense of the world. So if your losses occurred in childhood, you may be struggling with self-blame, or even worse, self-hatred. In order to heal from these wounds, we need to give ourselves now what we so desperately needed then: compassion and understanding.
Most of us know how to be compassionate and understanding when it comes to others. We are able to lend a caring ear or offer a shoulder to cry on. But when it comes to us, there seems to be a double
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