How to Release Your Grief of a Lifetime

A while back I watched one of my favorite movies for the second time called, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, starring Richard Gere. I usually don’t watch a movie more than once, but this one I did because it touched my heart so deeply. The movie is based on a true story about a college professor’s bond with an abandoned dog he adopts. The professor takes the train to work every day, and Hachi walks him to the train station every morning and comes back at night to greet him. One day, the professor has a heart attack and dies. The professor’s daughter decides to adopt Hachi, but he runs away and finds his way back to the train station. He finds a home underneath one of the old train cars and continues to go to the station every morning and every night to wait for his master. This goes on for nine years. Amazing!!   

To me, this movie is not just about a dog’s loss of love and connection with his master.  It is about the grief we all experience. It is about the grief of a lifetime. Stephen Levine, author and poet, tells us that the deepest grief we carry is not for the loss of loved ones, but for the loss of ourselves. Our grief is so deep because we lost our connection with life and with love when we were very young, and we have been longing for it our whole lives.    

When we were born, life was a magical mystery. And then slowly and surely, we slipped behind the veils of shame, loneliness, despair, and all the other states that keep us separate from life. We carry so much grief inside and yet most of us are not willing to acknowledge it because grief is not easy to be with. It is too scary. So, we mask it through compulsions, like busyness and food and liposuction. “If I just do things a certain way, if I just get to a certain place, if I just look right, I will be loved.” I can’t tell you how many people have told me over the years that they don’t want to start crying because if they do, they will never stop. So, we hold our grief at bay, sometimes for an entire lifetime. 

I watched this movie cuddled up in my bed with my cat Bodhi. I started crying the first time Hachi returned to the train station after the professor died, and I cried, and I cried. Every once in a while, the tears would almost stop, and then something else would happen and I would cry and cry some more. As my tears flowed, I was aware that they came from a very young child inside me who held so many un-cried tears from my childhood, and I gave her the space and compassion she so needed.  I kept on saying to her, “Oh, sweetheart, I am so glad you are here. It is okay that you cry. I see how hard it has been for you.” And she would cry again because she knew she wasn’t alone anymore 

I am here to tell you that grief is one of the most healing of all the states. It is also the most challenging. Looking back at my experience watching this movie, I realized that it allowed me to let the grief pass through me and after the movie ended, the tears stopped, and I felt at peace. There are three reasons why this happened. First, I know how to be aware of what is. I knew that grief was being woken up by this movie and it was moving through me.      

Secondly, I truly know that who I am is not the state of grief. Anything that is a state — the state of grief, the state of fear, the state of shame — is not who I am. I also know that these states are part of a passing show. They come and they go. And because I know this, it has become much easier for me to be with my grief.   

Thirdly, I have cried oceans of tears and I don’t resist the tears when they come or try to make them stop. I welcome them with open arms because I know they are cleansing my heart and healing my grief.   

So, the next time you feel tears coming on, let them flow. Be with your grief. Just notice it tenderly, and lovingly touch it with your heart when you can. And be gentle with yourself.  You are holding the grief of a lifetime. And if you are in the place I was for so many years, where you can’t cry, be with the resistance to feeling your deep sadness. Touch it with compassion for it has held your grief at bay until you can come to the place where it can come home to your heart. 

If you want to explore this more, my Being Healed by Your Compulsions interactive online course begins again on January 12, 2022. This course shows a new way to be with our compulsions, which is about listening rather than controlling, opening rather than closing and relating to your compulsion rather than being lost in it.