Honoring the Human Experience of Sacred Grief

Throughout the end of November and most of December I was in a grief portal within my trauma body. It was one of the deepest, extended purges of my life. I went through an entire nervous system detox and recalibration as the layers of grief and trauma came up for processing and healing.

It was the 5 year anniversary of my Mom’s death and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Every year during that season is a mystery and I never know how I will feel. Grief itself is a mystery and is unpredictable. I always give myself space and time off to honor the unseen that may or may not arise. I did not anticipate this season would last over six weeks.

This year, a milestone year, I was tucked away in our new home within my personal sanctuary. Safe, surrounded by trees and stillness. I wasn’t on the road traveling — I was settled. Which meant I could actually meet the parts of myself that needed presence and love.

The beauty of God’s infinite intelligence is that God set my month up in terms of client & service work to support my process. I didn’t plan it, it just happened naturally.

I had to let go of all my plans of what I was working on outside of client deliverables because I didn’t have space for it.

My healing process was the priority.

God communicated to me that this was the assignment. That if I didn’t take time to be with this process that I wouldn’t be able to step into what was coming next for me.

I chose to trust the process, often reminding myself that it was temporary and just a season.

I found that it was difficult for parts of me to fully “turn off” and go into the healing because I didn’t want to “abandon” my responsibilities. The deeper I went, the more I had to surrender my mind’s idea of what I was supposed to be doing.

Instead, I threw the rules out the window and honored what my body needed and all the parts of me that couldn’t process the trauma and immense grief of losing my Mother in a tragic way.

I had the privilege and deep honor of midwifing her death process alongside my younger sister. No one saw what we saw or went to the depths that we went to with her. At a certain point, it was time for my sister to take her leave and let me be the one to see my mom through her transition. Elijah was with me, always by my side and holding it down. I know God brought him into my life years before so that he could be there for me. I never could have done it without him and his unwavering support and love.

It’s fascinating how stored trauma, unprocessed pain and emotion in the body controls you unknowingly and creates stagnation, sickness and heartache.

I have cried a million tears since my Mom passed and I still feel like there are millions more to cry.

I honor her journey and I know it was God’s plan for her but all the human parts of me that miss her Mom and don’t understand why she had to leave this way…well, they needed to to be heard and seen.

Grief is complicated. Add that to complex trauma and ptsd and you have a dynamic that requires patience, compassion, love, presence and the environment to hold all of that as it alchemizes.

The wild thing is that I would be so deep in my process and then God would calibrate me back into my power and current embodiment to do my sacred work when it was time. And it was easy — I facilitated incredible work for my clients and was able to show up for them fully. Normal set point, muscle memory.

And then once the work was complete, I would migrate back into my cave and be back in the process.

Things are not black and white when it comes to healing. You oscillate in and out of spaces, identities and embodiments when you are healing. That’s why sometimes it feels like you are in an old part / version of yourself being witnessed by your current self.

You can hold space for all of it.

And sometimes, you’re in the mud.

Let yourself be in the mud.

Accept it. Be present with it. Get curious with it. Ask yourself, what do I need right now? And then do that thing. Invite God into the process.

The human experience of ascension is messy.

Everyone has trauma. Some trauma is more complex and requires more space. More time.

My extended grief portal taught me that it’s ok to be in the mud and feel all of the things. That when I invite God into the process and trust where God is taking me, I can more easily relax into the experience and receive.

I tried to fight the process. I didn’t want to feel it all. A lot of what happened during my mom’s death process had been repressed. I was dissociating a lot back then. Dealing with the medical system during the plandemic in 2020 created a rage inside of me that could burn everything down — IYKYK. What I saw opened my eyes to the ongoing injustice in the world that people accept as normal. It is not normal or organic.

And I also found myself in the gratitude of the miracles of God and what God did for me and my mom during that time.

The healing that took place in my grief portal was extraordinary and my field and body are so much lighter because of what I was able to release…in safety, in peace. It was the greatest blessing for me even though it was hard AF during the process.

God knew it was time and set me up for it, although I didn’t see it coming.

And it was exactly what I needed.

I’m grateful to be on the other side and deeply honor the parts of me that went through those experiences and have carried them all this time.

Sometimes grief portals last longer than we would like. I have found that when it’s organic, it’s a vital step of the process. If we don’t grieve and release, it gets trapped and buried and creates patterns and suffering in the body and mind that stay with us.

We don’t need to carry the grief longer than we want to — we can unburden it to God.

Your tears are sacred.

Your grief is sacred.

And your human experience is sacred.

Honor the process and trust that God will bring you through when it’s time to come out on the other side.

Grief is a season…just like all of the other seasons of life that occur during the human experience