Self-Care for Grief: 100 Practices for Healing During Times of Loss by Nneka M. Okona

Author:Nneka M. Okona [Okona, Nneka M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self-Help, Death; Grief; Bereavement, Personal Growth, Happiness, Motivational & Inspirational, General, Family & Relationships, self-esteem
ISBN: 9781507215944
Google: 2-YDEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2021-08-03T23:48:06.091819+00:00

Create a Gratitude Practice

Being grateful—centering on the things you’re truly thankful for having—can be a Herculean task when you’re in pain. Especially when the pain you’re feeling is due to grief and loss. It feels almost trite to think about the things you do have when your life has all of a sudden started revolving around what you no longer have. But gratitude is life-giving and life-affirming. Gratitude can remind you to pause and remain present, to stop looking backward or projecting onto the future possibilities that have not yet made themselves known to you.

Remembering what you have—and feeling joyful and glad for those things—can lend an immeasurable amount of perspective as you continue on in your grief journey. Here are some tips for building and creating your own gratitude practice as a healing form of emotional self-care:

Start where you are (and as small as possible). When it comes to change and building new habits, it’s helpful to be as realistic as possible in the beginning. Big, sweeping changes are less likely to be effective in the long term. Instead, you must learn to gently and slowly introduce new things that you can easily integrate into your lifestyle. This allows you to truly accept these changes and adopt them as part of who you are. Start by thinking of one thing you are grateful for each morning. It can be as small as waking up that day, having a comfortable bed to sleep in, or the gentle rays of the sunrise. Over time you will learn that these small things are not small at all: They are the building blocks that can completely alter your perspective.

Build structure into your practice. Once you’ve begun those small steps of gratitude, consider making your practice more structured. For instance, some people translate their gratitude practice into journaling. They start or end each day chronicling the things they’re grateful for, either in an actual gratitude journal or in a notepad. Others make audio voice notes or even record videos on their phone or computer. If adopting one of these practices feels right for you, over time you can look back and see the progression of gratitude. And this progression will lead you into the last tip.

Take stock of how far you’ve come. Noting progression and growth is a crucial step in all habit building. When taking stock of what has happened along the way, as you’ve incorporated more gratitude into your life, you should notice some shifts. Plan to take stock at regular intervals, perhaps once per month or even weekly. You should notice some patterns emerging, and those patterns will be encouraging, aiding you as you continue to move through your grief with gratitude for all the losses you have not had to hold yet.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.