Grief Autopsy • Name the Losses to Find What You Seek
Have you found what you're seeking?
To my fellow seekers, here's a truth biscuit 🍪 – you cannot find what you don't know you lost.
Grief is the emotion of loss. It's natural. It's necessary. It's by design.
Grief can serve as a sacred pause and a looking glass into what we truly cherish/value and who we truly want to be.
But if denied, suppressed (conscious avoidance) or repressed (unconscious defense mechanism), it acts like food poisoning: incapacitating us and/or projectile vomited onto others.
Grief needs to be met.
Grief needs to hear, "Your pain is real."
Grief needs to hear from you, "I'll go slow with you."
If you don't let your past die, it won't let you live.
3 Types of Grief
| CLASSIC GRIEF |
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| From loss of a person or healthy part/function |
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Examples
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| AMBIGUOUS GRIEF |
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| From an intangible, invisible and/or invalidated loss |
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Examples
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| COMPLEX GRIEF |
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| From ongoing or prolonged loss |
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Examples
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Each loss can be further flavored by varying intensity, timing, quantity and scope – see Flavors of Grief 🌶️🧂 in footnotes.
A Grief Autopsy
For better or worse, my approach to freedom is, "Why open a can of worms when you can unleash barrels of anacondas?"
If you're of the same penchant, join me for a Grief Autopsy. So you can live. Truly live. Fierce and free type of Liiiiiive!
Disclaimer no. 1 • A Grief Autopsy can be decimating before it is liberating. The only way out is through 🍪. A Grief Autopsy is a powerful Opportestiny™ to...
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... courageously dredge your psyche and release the depth and beauty of your soul |
... break down your ego's scaffolding against your sacredness and end past haunting |
... alchemize grief into glory and free your genius so it can free the world |
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| OPPORTUNITY | + |
TEST |
+ |
DESTINY |
Disclaimer no. 2 • You may want a trusted coach / therapist / conscious friend on hand, or at least nourishing food/environment or comforting items (eg. pillows, blankets, plushies) to cradle your emotions.
| Mini-Quest |
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✏️ Go ahead, name your entire life's losses
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Ellany's Losses
If you run out of ideas or losses to grieve, here are all of mine! In alphabetical order 🤪.
Use words in parenthesis as synonyms or standalone losses. Contact us to add suggestions.
For the extra credit seekers and slightly masochistic ones 😛, here's an Advanced Mini-Quest.
| Advanced Mini-Quest |
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✏️✏️✏️ Connect-the-dots between each of your Parts and each of your losses
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Ellany's Grief Autopsy
It takes a Spiritual Gangster to attempt a Grief Autopsy. When you come out the other side, I promise you much, much:
- clarity in the mind 🧠
- peace in the heart 💖
- joy in the body 👣
- and nectar in the soul ⭐️.
Flavors of Grief 🌶️🧂
Intensity
- Abbreviated grief - low to medium intensity + short duration
- Acute - high intensity + short duration
- Traumatic - any intensity + long duration
Timing
- Immediate grief - instant crumbling in or lashing out (can lead to under-functioning or over-functioning)
- Inhibited grief - in shock, suppressed (deliberate avoidance) and/or repressed (unconscious defense mechanism)
- Delayed grief - late onset, often due to major competing life events and/or denial of loss
- Anniversary grief - cyclical and/or triggered by certain events/people/places
- Prolonged grief - doesn't subside or worsens
- Anticipatory grief - in advance of actually loss (eg. impending divorce, announced layoff, terminal cancer), it can sometimes reduce the grief from the actual loss but does not eliminate it
Quantity
- Singular grief - due to one loss
- Cumulative grief - due to multiple overlapping losses
Scope
- Individual grief - on one person's mind, heart, body and/or soul
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Collective grief - on family, community, nation, and/or global
(First Published Aug 22, 2023)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Having lived, died and traveled 131 countries, 87 emotions, 16 career reinventions, and 46.5 traumas, Ellany Lea inspires and guides women overachievers, phoenixes, wisdom keepers, and entrepreneurs to free her genius, so it frees the world.
