127: Letting Go Of the Fight
Well hello friends! I am excited to dive into today’s topic, it’s one that I’ve been leaning into and close to my heart. But I wanted to ask first, could you please take a moment to review this podcast? If it’s helped you and you are a weekly listener, please, go, stop right now, and leave a review. When you do that, send a screenshot to me at hello@meganhillukka.com and you will be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift card, that every time I reach 50 reviews, I will draw a name. So- go right now, leave your review, and send the screenshot over to me!
From my last episode series about Teaching Others About Grief I thought about how exhausting and draining it is to try to teach others about what grief is like. This episode is for you my friend. For when you are grieving and feel so misunderstood. How you don’t really understand what’s going on with you yourself, and how others in your life are misunderstanding you and thinking so many things about you like you should just get over it by now, why can’t you be your normal self again, why can’t you just move on already, you can’t carry the dead forward with you.
All of these things, at least for me, make me want to fight and proclaim that they're wrong, and let them know that they don’t understand, and that I’m glad they don’t understand but they have got it all wrong. To tell them that they are being hurtful and they are pushing horrific things on the griever and that they don’t know what they are talking about.
And yet, there’s a way of being that I’ve begun to feel into and be. Which is kind of weird and hard to describe, but I’m going to share it here. Maybe you will find this useful, maybe you won’t. Take what works and resonates with you right now. Maybe you want to fight and it feels good to try to explain and teach others.
So- when this episode is about letting go of the fight, I mean it in so many ways, letting go of fighting grief, letting go of fighting others about grief, letting go of the need to fight to show that you aren’t forgetting your child, and you are not moving on, and show to others how horrible this really is. Letting go of trying to be okay when you are struggling, and pushing back grief when it’s so intense and needs to be felt.
So the first side I want to dive into is from the perspective in relation with other people. Byron Katie says defense is the first act of war. It took me forever to understand that. But it’s so utterly and completely true. Defense is the first act of war. When someone says something to you, you might feel attacked. Someone tells you it’s time to move on, you feel judged, you feel angry, you might feel like they have no right to be saying that to you.
Then you try to defend yourself, to tell them they don’t know what they are talking about, to explain yourself, to tell them why they are wrong.
Then notice how you feel. The emotions it brings up in you. The energy it’s drained from you. I’m not at all saying that we can’t explain and teach and try to show others what it’s like to grieve, I believe it’s a really important thing to do. But notice how it makes you feel, and if you feel like you have to fight them. If you feel so much struggle inside of your body, how this experience might send you into a spiral that lasts for hours or days. Notice if you have the energy for that or not?
Is this worth it? What if you don’t have to fight? What if they can say whatever they want to say, they can believe whatever they want to believe, and you can be exactly where you are at the same time.
Notice the difference with defense. The emotions that it brings up inside of you, I can feel it in my body right now as I say this. I can feel the fight, the anger, the indignation that someone would say such a thing and think that of me.
And now, notice what it’s like to let go of the fight. To let go of the need to prove you are right, to prove they are wrong, to let them have it, even to try to explain. What if they don’t deserve an explanation? What if they don’t deserve the energy it takes for you to explain to them?
Notice what it would be like if you let go of the fight and need to explain to others. What would that give you? What calm could you find in your own grief journey because you let go of the defense.
I have taken this approach in so many areas of my life and it’s helped me step back and really not spend my energy fighting with someone when it really doesn’t matter. Sometimes the fight isn’t worth the fight and the intense emotions you have to face afterwards because of trying to explain to someone who doesn’t understand, or who maybe doesn’t want to understand.
Okay- remember, take that or leave that. It’s just really helped me in my life not only with grief, but so many difficult conversations or places where I do things differently than most other people. I just don’t feel the need to explain.
Ok- the other part of letting go of the fight that I wanted to talk about is in the sense of letting go of fighting grief. This does not mean giving up on life. This does not mean giving up. I know if you’ve been fighting and struggling it might seem like when I say letting go of the fight that it means the same as giving up. And this couldn’t be further from the truth.
When you fight grief, you are prolonging the suffering and the pain and the agony that you are living in every day. We’ve been taught that fighting is how we move forward. That we gotta fight to sink or swim. And there is a fight in grief, there is a battle, but it’s not against grief. There’s a fight to find your will to live and a reason to keep going. But grief is a part of the journey and a part of it.
When you welcome all of the emotions of grief into your life, it gets easier. It's releasing into grief and allowing it all to be there without judgement or needing to change it. That’s where the healing and processing happens, it doesn’t happen when you are resisting or fighting grief.
Don’t want to be angry? So you pretend you are not angry because it’s not good to be angry, but now you are just burying the anger deeper inside of you, so it’s building up, it turns into bitterness and resentment. Now you have to use energy to hold the anger down and pretend you aren’t feeling anger, meanwhile adding judgement on top of that why are you angry? You shouldn’t be angry, that’s not what good people are.
Wow- that’s so exhausting. What if you could let go of that fight, and just simply say, I’m angry. I have a lot of pent up energy in me that is anger, and I am going to release it, process it, work through it, and let go of the judgement of it, because anger is normal in grief and because I have anger, does not make me an angry person. (just a side note, what makes you a angry person is not processing the anger and shoving it in)
Ok- that’s all I have for today’s episode. I’m also super excited to let you know about something that I’m doing- I will have access weekly workshops teaching different topics like anxiety and grief, who I am i after child loss, how to get through grief, those kinds of topics. You can register for the workshop and it will bring you right away to the workshop, where you can watch it, and you will also get an email with the link so you can watch it anytime as well! You can check out these different workshops by going to www.meganhillukka.com/workshop and see what the week's topic will be and save your spot.
So- I’ll see you next week!
If you like this podcast, and found it helpful, I want to invite you come check out Grieving Moms Haven, my monthly community for Grieving moms, where you can learn positive coping mechanisms, find a safe space with others who understand, and learn life long skills that support you as you learn how to carry this weight of grief in your life.
There are group coaching calls where we do guided meditations, tapping meditations, breathwork, and just talk, knowing that everyone in the group is also walking the path of child loss
You can come check out Grieving Moms Haven at www.grievingmomshaven.com
