Who Am I Without My Grief?

Grief. It can catch us off guard, stop us in our tracks, and swallow us whole if we allow it. A deep sense of sorrow so vast that sometimes we feel it will never end.

I’m in the midst of working through some big grief.

Over these past few months I experienced a domino effect of losses: I made the hard decision to let go of my business (and my paycheck), a significant 10 year relationship with my teacher/business partner/friend, the beautiful house I was living in, a handful of relationships that were no longer serving me, my practice community, and my vision on where I thought my life was headed.

All of this gone, in the blink of an eye, at the same time.

Hello crisis!

I was devastated. Brought down to my knees in suffering and pain. There were many restless nights of sleep, followed by groundless days of searching for any anchor to tether me from blowing away in the unknown. I cried a river of tears on a daily basis. Nothing was the same. Everything had changed.

Thankfully, I learned a big lesson about grief during a weekend retreat not too long ago.

The room was being set for our holotropic breathwork session. There were 11 of us in this experience – all women. We started laying down our Thermarest air mats and covering them with blankets. I was ready in my corner of the room, and my intention for this journey was clear.

How can I feel completely secure in my own being, without relying on my job, bank account, intimate relationship, and friendships? What is it that I need to do to be absolutely secure in myself, 100%, even in the midst of great grief?

The music started and we all began to rock and breathe. Deep, tribal, drum and bass accompanied us as we dropped down into ourselves. Then came the vibrational magic of the didjeridoo and blastoff, I was on my way!

It wasn’t too long into my session that I experienced a cascade of losses going back in time.

A lifetime of loss revealed itself like cards in a deck, fanned out, one after another: the end of my business, the loss of friendships, the loss of my practice community, losing my house, running out of money, dear friends moving out of the country, the passing of my father, break-ups and broken hearts, ending a career, pets dying, more break-ups, etc… Moment after painful moment of letting go, saying goodbye and change: this is what my journey showed me.

You’d think I’d have been devastated, right? But I wasn’t. And that’s the moment that I became extremely curious about my experience. Where is my grief in the midst of all this loss?

I began the feverish hunt, searching up and down, front to back for my never-ending sorrow. “It has to be here somewhere,” I thought to myself.

“How can I experience all these losses and not feel the deep despair of my grief?”

After a noble exploration of my inner landscape, I couldn’t find my grief. It was as if it had simply disappeared. I was astounded.

As I continued my breathwork session, I asked myself a very simple question.

What I learned from this experience was that I was adding even more suffering and pain on top of the real losses I already experienced.

A part of me was attached to my grief, wanting to hold on to it to prove my battle scars. I couldn’t find my grief during my breathwork session because I had quite naturally let go.

When I let go of my attachment to how I think things should be, when I give up my need to control, when I don’t live a life filled with expectations, and when I step into a deeper sense of trust, that’s when I find true freedom.

It’s in this freedom that I find security in myself.

Interested in finding the same as you move and shake yourself and this world into a better state of being? Try this technique that works for me:

Letting Go Practice

On the harder days, I like to anchor myself through the practice of Letting Go. It’s especially helpful when I feel stuck and attached and have a hard time loosening my grip on the way I think things should be. Here’s how I do it:

Step 1:

Identify what it is that you want to let go. Perhaps it’s a relationship that is no longer serving you, a negative thought pattern, or an attachment to the past or the future.

Step 2:

Feel your feelings. Feel the sadness, pain, loss, anger, guilt, whatever it is, feel all the feelings that arise when you step into letting go. Sometimes it’s helpful to write down your feelings in a journal. The important thing is that you feel through your feelings fully, don’t hold back.

Step 3:

Offer thanks and gratitude for all the ways this attachment has served you.

Step 4:

Let go. Let go of the control, let go of the fear, let go of expectations and step into a bigger sense of trust. You’ll know you’re on your way to letting go when you feel the flow of joy and possibility enter your life again. After all, life is a mystery. Enjoy it!

Share your experiences of Letting Go in the comment section below. Together we can create a space where we connect, share and crowd-source our favorite tips and tricks for letting go of grief.

Why I Had to Elope, and Would Do It Again

On Instagram, #weddingplanning boasts nearly 500,000 posts. Pinterest has thousands of boards dedicated to “wedding inspiration.” You’ve seen them, right?

Have you seen how a quick Google search reveals countless articles on the average cost of a wedding last year and how the more expensive a wedding is the higher chance of divorce?

My husband, Aaron, and I skipped the bridal magazines and eloped a few weeks ago, in a tiny ceremony officiated by a close friend with just a handful of witnesses. There was little planning, no hashtagging (we decided to unplug for the weekend), and no disappointments, as we had set no expectations. There was laughter and authentic connection amongst the few friends invited, and it was easy and very inexpensive.

As the bride, and as a young woman who is emerging, my desire to elope stems from a strong disagreement with the gendered notions of what a bride should be, and the patriarchal, consumerist framework of which weddings are built upon.

I wanted to direct the time, energy, and money that goes into a wedding to things that actually matter to me in life. At this point in time, that means starting my own business with my husband and best friend from college, working for a few start-ups and supporting the expansion of a Bolivian NGO. My husband’s reply is: “Ain’t nobody got time to get married when they’re busy changing the world!” I couldn’t agree more.

“Ain’t nobody got time to get married when they’re busy changing the world!”

When I said “yes,” the course we set as a couple was intentional. As conscious millennials, we both knew we wanted something simple and fun. We didn’t want anything with a fiscal note that would hinder our entrepreneurial dreams (which had yet to come to fruition at the time of our engagement, but ideas were swirling around in our heads).

Blissfully engaged, we carried on with our lives. In efforts to solidify our entrepreneurial desires, and quench our wanderlust (we both are avid travelers), we quit our jobs and took off for South America for some much needed soul-searching and change of scenery. As we traveled, we casually shrugged off questions about marriage from friends and family, stating, “We’re too busy traveling to plan anything.” Which was true. We were busy learning Spanish, making friends, exploring, volunteering and dreaming up business ideas.

Spending time together abroad was critical for us as a couple. Our consciousness and understanding of the world were challenged, tested, and transformed.

When we returned to the US, we were even more inspired to start our own business, so we channeled all energy into replenishing our bank accounts. We also became consumed by  helping expand a Bolivian NGO we had worked with, and began to plant the seeds for a small social enterprise endeavor. We explored new areas of interest. We confronted fears about finances and business plans, and comforted each other in times of post-travel anxiety (like when I had a full-on consumerist meltdown in a big box store in Chicago).

When we decided to actually elope, we kept it secret to avoid getting distracted from our work. In planning it, we used the same values as when we took the plunge into starting our own business – we focused on community, human connection and supporting the local.

We leveraged our favorite resources that have continually enriched our lives here in the US and abroad. We rented a venue from Airbnb that would host us and 6 of our best friends for a long relaxing weekend. We found a young, aspiring, local photographer on Craigslist who wanted to build his portfolio to capture our event, and Siri helped us find a local bakery to get a cake the day of. We wrote the ceremony and our respective vows on a shared Google doc a few weeks out (in between meetings), and found the perfect spot for our ceremony on the edge of a cliff by simply asking the Airbnb hosts for a suggestion upon our arrival.

I never once stepped foot into a bridal shop. Time was never wasted picking out placemats, organizing a seating arrangement or trolling the endless pages of theknot.com (which I had never heard of before writing this). I simply didn’t want an entire year of my life to be consumed by one day. We exchanged vows with ease and smiles, our hearts happy and full.

At the end of the day, any day, I want to be part of something bigger and more important than wearing an expensive dress and doing the electric slide.

Hannah Faust is the social media manager for Emerging Women, a digital marketer, emerging entrepreneur, and helps run Cochabamba Pedal Project with her husband. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado.

Come connect with Hannah and the rest of the Emerging Women inner circle at Emerging Women Live 2015:

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The 5-Day Relationship Cleanse: Time for that Spring Detox

It’s spring, and you know what that means: buh-bye snow and time to do some cleaning!

But it’s not the typical green smoothie cleanse I’m craving. I’m spring-cleaning the mess of feelings I’ve padded myself with this winter.

As I start to remove some of that excess emotional weight, I realize that a lot of it is attached to over-engaging emotionally with a few “close” relationships that maybe shouldn’t be so close.

Let’s just say it: I wanted to write an article about getting rid of relationships that no longer serve us because I have one in my life!

She and I were really close. But then I had a baby, and things got AWKWARD as she became more and more scarce during my postpartum can’t-stop-crying and haven’t-slept-in-months and who-am-I and what-the-hell-happened-to-my-body phase of mommyhood. And I got angry. Why wasn’t she there for me when I needed her most?

As much as I want to just clean house, cut her out of my life, and try to move on – what I really need to do is re-evaluate.

According to friendship-expert and CEO of GirlFriendCircles.com, Shasta Nelson, “Friendships are the training ground for becoming the people that we claim we want to be.”

Let that sink in – because that shifts this whole friendship conversation…

In her Emerging Women podcast interview, Shasta says we too quickly bail on the uncomfortable awkward moments in our relationships, thereby abandoning potential intimacy-building moments.

The highest levels of friendships we can have are ones where we can be truly vulnerable, even (and especially) during the awkward moments. On the opposite end of the continuum are our acquaintances and more casual relationships – where we get to awkwardly practice loving people who are very different from us.

I do tend to expect way too much (and too soon) from relationships. Not everyone has to be an immediate best friend, and relationships can shift their levels of importance over time. Seeing relationships in this light tempers things a lot and takes some serious emotional baggage off of me (and my friends).

This cleanse really helps that process. Join me for 15 minutes a day to work off the emotional weight that’s built up this winter:

Day 1: Evaluating your Values

What are my top 5 relationship values? In my closest relationships, am I exhibiting these? Where can I get better?

Day 2: Assessing your Friendships

List your friends and answer the following questions about each relationship: Is this a healthy relationship? Does it have the potential to hold most of the values that I see as important? What (if anything) is keeping us from growing closer?

Day 3:  Appreciate, apologize and/or accept

Integrate your findings from Day 1 & 2. Apologize to those that you may have pushed away when it got awkward. Accept that some relationships are not going to grow stronger, and acknowledge the beautiful relationships that are currently growing.

Day 4: Go have a friend date with yourself!

I often expect so much from others before first figuring out how to be a friend to myself. Remember that playing and having fun are important features of any relationship. Go out and do something you enjoy: take yourself to a movie, go for a hike or start an art class. Chances are, if you’re having fun with yourself you are going to have more fun with others.

Day 5: Maintenance

How are you going to check in with yourself and your relationships? How will you handle jealousy or blame in your relationships? Can you find time to journal at least once a week and take yourself on a date once a month?

In three months this may change. Make sure to have the flexibility and grace with yourself and your friendships when changes arise.

As for me, I need to stop writing to you and start writing to an old friend. I’ve got some work to do and then a date to schedule with myself.