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Watercolor painting by debbie homewood: cabbage and onion
Connecting to Your Heart
A guided meditation written and recorded by Debbie Homewood to help her clients strengthen their connection to their emotional and spiritual intelligence which supports them on their difficult journeys.
Are you Suffering with Grief?
Read Debbie's article Understanding Grief
Lilacs: watercolor painting by debbie homewood
Understanding Grief
by Debbie Homewood
What is grief?
Grief is the pain we experience when there is a loss in our lives
- not just the loss of a loved one
- loss of independence
- mobility
- self-image
- loss of a job
- loss of dreams.
- loss of hope
- loss of energy
What is this pain we feel when there are losses such as these?
- Sadness
- Fear
- Emptiness
- Anger
- Despair
- A broken heart
- Meaninglessness
- Confusion
- Hopelessness…
Grief is a complex experience and it is different for everyone, and for different losses.
Serious illness brings many losses with it and all those losses, for the patient, and family, bring the experience of grief.
Grief is the emotional experience we most fear. For the most part, we don’t understand it but we know it hurts. We are afraid the pain will overwhelm us, destroy us, or incapacitate us. So we tend to avoid it and yet avoiding it causes more suffering.
We cannot grieve in our mind, our intellect. Our emotional intelligence or heart is equipped to handle grief. We must consciously and intentionally connect with our heart and work with grief in our heart. This is so important to understand and to work on, because in our lives there are many times we are faced with grief.
The amazing thing about grief is that when we are able to grieve, a little bit at a time, it changes the pain; it transforms it into something different and brings little bits of peace. It certainly brings strength and acceptance.
On this website there is a free guided exercise, Connecting to Your Heart, to help you develop the ability to connect with your heart, experience compassion and meet the pain of grief with the healing, transforming power of compassion.
Compassion is a quality of loving kindness that is the tender acceptance of even that which might be otherwise unacceptable; a respectful, kind understanding of suffering; a soft, gentle appreciation of suffering. Compassion comes from the HEART, not the head,
One of the greatest ways you can take care of yourself is to strengthen your connection to your heart.
Copyright © 2009 Debbie Homewood