Recently I was sitting on the beach. The surf was rough and no one was in the water. Beside me was a seagull. The wind kicked up and I noticed that instead of walking forward or backward in its forage for food, the bird walked sideways. I laughed and yet it reminded me of the advice given that when caught in an undertow, a swimmer should not fight the current and try to swim into it…nor should they try to escape the current by swimming away from it. A swimmer should swim parallel to the shore until he/she has passed the undertow current and can safely swim to shore.
With clients that are grieving from any significant loss in their lives, I often give similar advice. Emotions are strong and a bit unpredictable in the grieving process. No emotions are bad (now what we DO with those emotions can be a different story). It’s how we humans are wired…
When grieving we don’t fight the emotions by attempting to swim into them flailing and over exerting ourselves. We don’t try to swim away from the emotions by denying them…that only leads us into “deep water”.
We swim parallel to the safe shore we aspire to get back to …
allowing the current of emotions to take us gently…
until after a time we realize the undertow is no longer pulling us…
and we can swim safely back to shore. We, in a sense, ride the wave of emotions until its intensity has waned.
Our emotions in the midst of grief are not something we fight with…nor escape from…but ride…sideways into the direction of our healing. In the area of loss and grieving the dance with our emotions is at best a sideways shuffle.
“The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it…”Nicholas Sparks
