This Time Too Will Pass

You are experiencing a loss. In choosing this card you have chosen to recognise your loss and honour it. Grief has opened your heart to help you embrace the new way.

This card points to a loss you are grieving. This loss may have occurred suddenly or as part of life’s natural progression. All loss signals a period of transition in which you are moving from one state of being to another. Transitions are often accompanied by grief. Grieving is the process of honouring and letting go of what has been. Grief in its true nature gives one the possibility to transition and honour your Spirit. It is a total emotional experience, cathartic in scope that encompasses a profound emotional release process. The pain of your grief signals what is lost but is designed to unlink you from your connection to the loss while celebrating and acknowledging what you love and what is no longer. Letting go through the unlinking process does not take away the love that connects you to what you have lost. A vital part of you or a person that you care for will remain beyond the loss. In fact, there is joy when the process of transition has been completed.

The transition through your current loss requires you to let go of one way of being (identity) in order to move into the new. In the grieving of this loss, in deeply feeling the pain of this loss, you identify your connection to a person or situation and honour the meaning and depth of your connection to them. This deep connection of love is what defined you, gave you a sense of yourself, your place and way of being in the world. When you experience the loss of this connection, your world no longer makes sense; there is a hole where you see love should be. The depth of your loss is reflected by the depth of your love, this investment of yourself. The loss means there is something missing and the bit that is missing is you (all that you have given and all that you no longer receive). Your soul has been broken and in the transition you are retrieving your soul to become whole. The journey of transition leads you to what is true within. By connecting with your inner guide you find your own spirit. Grief is the bridge that will bring you home to self.

Your current grief may be from a sudden loss of a job, a loved one or a cherished pet. A sudden injury or your partner’s infidelity may be the catalyst for your grief. Perhaps the nature of a relationship to what and who you have loved has suddenly changed, such as when a family or couple endures an illness. Whatever the case may be, the many sudden losses we experience on this journey are emotionally catastrophic. When we open our hearts to others, when we allow ourselves to love, we connect from our deepest self. When this connection is suddenly and permanently severed, the grief we feel is devastating, leaving an emptiness in our heart. The unexpected death of a loved one leaves us suddenly hanging, uncertain of our place, our future; in experiencing the void of the loss, our love now seems to have nowhere to focus.

Often times the grief from a sudden loss feels too great to bear. The loss feels a vital part of one’s self and there is no wish or desire to move to the next stage. You fear completely losing your connection to that person or identity, fear that you will not be able to recreate that love ever again. Unresolved emotions concerning your loss – as expressed by ‘why did this happen, what could I have done differently, if only they hadn’t gone out that night …’, etc., may prolong your grief while you struggle to understand, comprehend or forgive another person’s actions or your own. Holding on may hide the confusion about what to do next. In this case the growth and clarity come when through your grieving you connect to and understand from your core values. It is from this connection that you are able to accept the unacceptable. Your spirit deepens to a new level of understanding.

This is not to undermine that some loss will last a lifetime because there are many losses that will create pain for all of one’s life. It is to understand that such loss is part of our spiritual path. Those we love define our fear, our guilt, our anguish, and they never leave our hearts. Love always con-nects us.

Loss is not always sudden. You may be experiencing grief through the natural progression of life, such as the transition from a working life to retirement, or from a house full of children to an empty nest. These natural transitions from one stage of life to another are maturation, a form of development where you are letting go of one thing in order to experience another. In life we transition from our youth, from our childhood, from our college days, from our career, from having children in our home, moving town, etc., and we are constantly evolving into a new self – if we choose. Through these transitions our sense of self becomes more expanded as our spirit engages in a process of refinement. Many people go through these natural transitions experiencing a loss of self and this requires finding a new self, with a new meaning, new vision, and new purpose. Honouring this loss will enhance your ability to embrace the new.

If your grief becomes lodged then it signals an inability to transition through a loss. If this is the case then your grief is not being released because it defines an aspect within you that was not visible before, an aspect that has been fulfilled by the object of your grief. Grief that is lodged does not allow anything new to fulfil it because it does not wish for anything new to replace the object of its focus. That is a choice.

Transitions through loss are different for different people. If your identity is fulfilled by another person, job, status, etc., then your loss will ask you to face these parts of yourself that believes they cannot exist without what is lost. This is a process of growth to build this part of you that has never developed. Your loss points to the change you are being asked to make, to expand your self-image beyond a job, another person, an organisation, etc.

For others, the transition is learning to accept that the evolving new identity is a refinement of your spirit through a new purpose, new vision, and new view of yourself. The experience of loss makes you more than you were, even though in your pain you feel less than. You find a depth of spirit that allows you to redefine your sense of self beyond your sense of loss. This growth never takes away the love you feel for what you have lost. It is purely a call to expand into another form of love.

Any loss is profound and overwhelming. Time is a key component to your grieving process. Adapting to a new identity takes time as we learn to fill the inner void with new skills, new abilities, new meaning; all the broken links within ourselves need time to heal and regenerate to help us feel whole again.

Practical ways to help your grieving process:

1. Honour what has been

Acknowledge what your loss meant to you. Honour what has been, the joy of knowing someone, what they meant to you or the joy of creation. Share your stories of the person/situation and the other people involved, all of your memories of the time, the sun on your back, the rain, and the experiences you shared with friends or total strangers. Hold a dinner party for the career that has now ended. Or write a poem, a song or a letter for what you’ve lost.

2. Soul retrieval: recover the parts of you that were lost

All relationships, jobs, people, projects, will take your time and energy. The more you invest of yourself, the more attached you will become to the experience and the more it will mean to you. So a large part of the journey to resetting the boundaries of your identity and feeling whole again is to recover the part of you that you lost in your journey. For instance, in losing a job or career you may have lost what you valued most in yourself. The face you showed the world was the face that you were proud of. The loss formed a part of your core identity and you feel lost without it. All the energy you shared with the person (or changed situation) is still lodged there with the other person or situation. If you retrieve this energy the result will not change what you have loved. Use the Tuning In process described below to recover the aspects of yourself that you have lost. You can use this energy for the next stage of your life.

3. Look at your point of growth

Each person, each situation has a point of contact. The connection that exists between you is often your point of growth. Understanding the point of contact will open you to the new possibilities beyond your loss, possibilities that are now in front of you. Trust that in time this too will pass and that you will love again. You will feel whole again. You will find the joy you came here to be. See this and believe in it.