Do you give yourself permission to grieve?

How often do you let yourself WEEP for the loss of the birth you envisioned?

How often do you let yourself feel the RAGE for the ways you were ignored, mistreated, or misled during pregnancy, birth, postpartum?

When do you WAIL for the separation you and your baby endured after birth? For the loss of the Golden Hour? The ICU visits? The breastfeeding interruption?

Giving yourself permission to feel is essential to healing. You can do this with a ritual called a grief practice.

The practice described below is one that I developed for myself. It is drawn from my studies in somatic trauma healing and embodiment.

Think of grief practice like a yoga session for your emotional body.

Grief Practice is one of the most important things I did to help myself heal after my traumatic birth and earlier pregnancy losses. I frequently recommend it to clients who have already done work processing their birth - e.g processing the content of their story - and are now ready to begin moving the trauma out of their body.

Grief practice costs nothing and can be done in less than 20 minutes a week.

HOW TO CREATE YOUR GRIEF PRACTICE

PREPARING FOR GRIEF PRACTICE

In a perfect world, you would set aside time for grief practice every time you are triggered.

How do you know you are triggered?

For me, its the feeling of needing to cry, stuck tears, or stuck energy/heaviness in my throat or chest. I might be triggered by the uncomplicated birth of a neighbor, a dangerous birth scene in a movie, or seeing my OB in public. The sensations in my body are telling me that an emotion needs tending.

Instead of swallowing down grief, or numbing it, allowing yourself to feel it fully and completely allows you to heal it.

Most of us don’t have time for this everyday. So instead, start by setting aside 20 minutes twice each week for 3 months.

Even if you don’t feel grief in the moment you’ve designated for your practice, do it anyway.

Make this a sacred ritual.

I prefer to do my practice when I‘m home alone so that I can make noise without anyone hearing me. But sometimes that isn’t possible. Having a pillow available gives you something to scream into. Yes, feeling rage is part of feeling grief —yelling sounds cheesy but can be extremely helpful. Many female-bodied people have a lot of anger that we’ve shoved down. This practice will help you release it.

1. Light a candle. Dim the lights. Try to fully remove yourself from what’s going on outside the room. Lay down your yoga mat or a lush blanket. Light a candle.

2. Choose a song. I use melodic songs, but you could use anything that helps you access your emotion without distraction. Tell yourself, “I’m going to feel my grief for the duration of this song.” That’s your container. That’s your safe place. The song is going to hold you. You are going to feel ALL of your feelings during this song, and when it’s over, you have permission to stop feeling. Your big feelings can be safely contained in the song.

As you become more comfortable with grief practice, you can expand to using more than one song. I often use 4-5 songs. Here is my playlist.