How To Deal With Grief

I've learned a lot about grief in the past ten years. From watching my father die to a miscarriage to more breakups than I willingly admit, I feel like a bit of an expert. 

Therefore!

How To Deal with Grief

Here’s What I’ve Learned:

Grief is the heaviest emotion.

As the grief rises through your system, it lifts every other emotion up and out with it. Misery, fear, sadness, anger, loneliness, you name it. It's a feelings cocktail mixed by one of Satan's underlings and served with a maraschino cherry.

So you think, "Well, hey. This royally blows, but at least I get a maraschino cherry." Then you bite into it and have to hack it into your napkin because it's so damn foul. You didn't even think it was possible for maraschino cherries to go bad, but then your horned bartender turns to you and grins the grin of someone who ruined a maraschino cherry on purpose. 

I joke about hell's minions, and that's often how the process feels, but my father's death was one of the best things to ever happen to me. I say that feeling like a grade A twisted asshole in my human self and like it's 100% true and perfect in my higher self. 

Being forced to drink the grief cocktail is nothing you'd ever want to put on your calendar, but it swept me clean of so much emotion that I'd been carrying around my entire life.

I think of my dad's death as my Cracking Open Moment. Those are the moments that shatter you, but in the breaking, you let all the sticky emotion flow out, everything you were holding onto and protecting without even realizing. 

After you put yourself back together, you realize that there's so much extra room now. Room for joy, room for love, room for peace. 

Grief comes in waves. 

Sometimes when you're angry, you're really grieving. Sometimes when you're lonely, you're really grieving. Sometimes when you're pissed at the world and especially everyone currently driving a car, you're really grieving.

Sometimes you think you're done, and you aren't - and the grief wave knocks you into the sand. 

See: grief cocktail mixed by Satan's minion. This time with gritty sand in indelicate places. 

Don't beat yourself up for riding the emotion roller coaster. 

Be extra careful with big financial decisions while you're in a grief cycle. 

Everything is all over the place, so stay out of your bank account and away from your credit cards if you can.

But since life happens, you may need to sell a house or something. Call in someone you trust with a dispassionate perspective to help you do whatever needs to be done. 

But also trust yourself. If you need to take some fancy trip, maybe that's the exact perfect thing for you to do. 

(But don't do what I did, which is try to take a trip and then end up not taking the trip after paying for half of it. Whoops.) 

Love doesn't die, it only changes forms. 

Love isn’t gone because the object of our love is gone, we simply learn to love them in a different way.

Do whatever you need to do to get yourself through. 

Be extra gentle with yourself. Rest as much as you need to. Lean on your friends, watch your favorite shows, read your favorite books. Give yourself whatever feels like a soul sigh of relief.

If it means developing a weird relationship with a stuffed otter and taking her on road trips, so be it. 

How To Deal With Grief: Try a stuffed therapy otter!

Go on long drives with your therapy otter, take classes in things you're terrible at, read anything you want, eat fried chicken in bed, upgrade to first class.  

Ramp up your self-care exponentially. Shower every day. Treat yourself like a toddler, making sure you've napped, eaten, cried, and played in the grass.

Tap into your creativity. Journal, draw, paint, sing. Tap into your innate ability to move through emotion and come out the other side.

Let yourself feel without making it mean anything. 

One of the grand challenges of being a human is allowing your feelings to be felt.

Feel them as physical sensations, as something passing through, rather than something that needs to be stuffed into your spleen until one of you dies. 

As the feelings are rising, your brain will frantically try to give you reasons why the feeling is happening, and it doesn't care if those reasons make you feel better or not. So your brain might make those feelings mean something about you, something about your life. Do your best to disengage your brain from the process. Just feel. Let the energy move through your body. Up and out. Hush, brain. 

Keep crawling through the tunnel of sewage, Shawshank Redemption-style.

Keep going, keep crawling, keep putting one foot in front of the other.

You've got this. It will pass. You will feel better. You will feel joy again.

You just need to move through this season of your life until the next season arrives with cherry blossoms and red convertibles driven to Mexico by Tim Robbins. 

Lots of love,

Amber

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If you want to dive more deeply into your feelings, Feel Better was designed to support you as you move through your emotion and tap into your power, intuitive guidance, and ability to heal.

Magic Requires Space

Making space can be one of the hardest things for smart, driven people. What do you mean, space? Won’t the world crash into some unseen barrier if I stop working? Shouldn’t I be doing something?

Nope. Not always. Sometimes when you give yourself some time to just sit on the deck in the sun, mind blank, the problem your brain has been wrangling will suddenly snap into focus.

Sometimes it doesn’t, but you still got to sit outside in the sun rather than glaring angrily at your computer and a project that refuses to cooperate.

I’m in big building mode right now and it is vaguely terrifying. And by “vaguely terrifying” I mean MOSTLY TERRIFYING.

I am terrified. Sometimes when humans get terrified, they freeze. So do deer. But, unlike deer, when I’m terrified I get to crawl onto the couch with Sally and watch season four of Mozart in the Jungle. Instead of, you know, getting shot by big game hunters.

But the terror actually feels similar. When you step outside your comfort zone, your brain immediately yells UNSAFE BAD IDEA GO BACK. And will flood you with fear and adrenaline and, if you’re a delicate peony like me, sometimes you collapse.

Onto aforementioned couch.

(At least I’m dog-sitting right now, so I’m being kept company in my terror by Homer, the biggest floofer that ever floofed. When I got here, I spent a solid seven minutes singing about how fluffy he was. Homer was not impressed.)

On Monday, I was accidentally still in Napa, sitting on a deck in the sun, not expecting anything of myself. It seems that when I don’t expect anything of myself, it unlocks that flow state and suddenly I’m having a merry time creating things on my phone and eating truffle fries.

I’m trying to hack this quirk. Because my aim is to be in that glorious soul-flow most of the time, just letting things unfold in a way that also makes me a lot of money.

But apparently my subconscious is too smart to be fooled by me not expecting anything of myself in order to be massively productive. Or maybe such convoluted hijinks are too much and my subconscious just rolls its eyes and wanders off to do something else.

I think I’ve spent a lot of time suppressing my Type A drive because I have trouble turning it off. Once the switch gets flicked, I push myself until I collapse, and I know that's not the way I want to live. 

So what's the choice here? Because I believe our choice is the most powerful tool we have. 

I choose to allow it to be easy. I choose to let my business be guided by my joy. I choose to show up as me and have that be more than enough. I choose to allow myself to be visible so that anyone who needs or wants my work can find it. 

If that looks like sitting on the couch with a fluffy dog and watching TV instead of creating the business thing I told myself I'd make today, that gets to be perfect. 

I choose to create space for magic. Maybe that's all it takes. 

Dear Empath,

If you’re an empath (or any super sensitive human), here, let me give you a hug. 

Cause that shit is hard.

I basically didn’t get out of bed for actual years. 

I Netflix binged like a seasoned pro, scarfed Pringles and gummy bears like I was being paid by the pound, and - well, honestly - kind of loved life. Except for the part where I was clinging to financial solvency by a thread because 1) energy and 2) I didn’t believe I was allowed to have money if all I was doing was taking care of myself and writing whatever made me happy. 

(NEW WORLD ORDER: I AM ALLOWED TO HAVE MONEY - LOTS OF MONEY! - IF ALL I DO IS TAKE CARE OF MY ENERGY AND WRITE AND MAKE WHATEVER FEELS FUN.) 

(Sorry for shouting. I’m doing my best to rewire my brain and sometimes that requires yelling over the old stories.) 

I spent so much time curled up in bed with my stuffed therapy otter because I was so exhausted from trying to carry the pain of the world. 

Remember Marley’s ghost at the beginning of A Christmas Carol, carrying all those chains behind him? Yeah, it’s like that. Only empaths carry all that clanking weight because they’re trying to be good people. 

It’s a hell of a pickle. Empaths without boundaries are in for a rocky ride on this planet.

We tend to think we’re required to heal the world by taking on its pain. So we do. Pass a homeless woman on the street, pick up some stray trauma and deep loneliness that we carry for years. If our partner is angry - whether it’s at us or something entirely unrelated - and we start feeling that anger too, thinking it’s our anger, and acting on it. Oops. 

You can make a hell of a mess when you act from someone else’s feelings rather than your own. Often, it takes empaths a lot of practice to know which is which. 

Vacuuming up all the emotion in our vicinity takes an impressive toll - on our energy, on our relationships, on our ability to do the things we love. 

My sensors were fried from trying to process other people’s emotions my entire life. 

So, bed. It seems reasonable. And often felt like the only viable option. 

I was in a very slow and profound healing process for a long time. I was cleaning up a lifetime of accumulated emotional baggage, toting it out to sea and tossing it overboard. Leaving it on the ground, feeling it leach out of me as I lay in the grass. Engaging in the slow grind of learning what was my pain and what belonged to others. 

But here’s the good news, if you are an empath on this journey. 

IT GETS BETTER. 

(I’m not yelling at you, I’m yelling at the story in your head.) 

What you clear makes room for joy. For peace. For inspiration.

Where you set boundaries gives you fresh energy to do the things you want to do, experience what you want to experience, create what you want to create. 

Doing this work is hard, but it’s worth it. 

You get to engage in unabashed napping. You get to learn who you are and what you feel, rather than being constantly overwhelmed by everyone else's hulk-smash emotions. You get to step into the person you always knew you were meant to be, you just couldn't quite get there and you weren't sure why. 

There is nothing wrong with you. There never was. You were just learning how to operate your superpowers. 

Love, 

Amber

Locked Out and Muddy Subtitle: Fuck Friday

After I pressed publish last night, I sat down on my bathroom floor and sobbed. Like something deep yet mysteriously prominent had rearranged itself in that quantum box where I keep everything I don't fully understand. (It's a really big box.) 

Sobbing on your bathroom floor is never fun - I've done it a fair few times in my life, and somehow, it's always on a white bath mat. Perhaps I should only use colored bath mats from now on. Because the color of my Cost Plus purchases are obviously the culprit here.

I've given up trying to explain my feelings. They've always been a mystery tsunami, like just hanging out on the beach in the sun with lemonade and your dog and then all of a sudden, "HOLY SHIT THERE'S A SEVENTY FOOT WAVE RIGHT ON TOP OF US."

(Don't worry, the imaginary dog is a champion swimmer.) 

That said, It felt like I was grieving something I had only just realized I lost, but had disappeared long before. I still can't explain why or what the good green earth was going on. 

All I can do with feelings is ask whether or not they're mine (half the time they don't, being an empath is annoying). If they do belong to me, just let myself feel them in my body without letting my brain attach a story to them. I'm usually only about 37 percent successful at this, but that's better than the last decade's .003 percent success average. 

For reference, attaching brain story to feelings often looks something like: 

Feelings of anger, sadness, loneliness, pain, grief, etc, from apparent nowhere. 

Brain, ever helpful, hops quickly in: "It's completely logical that you feel this way, because x, y, and granny smith apple happened last week. In fact, we should probably obsess about x and granny smith apple for awhile, or maybe forever, so these feelings never happen again." 

Helpful, brain. Thanks. 

Anyway, post traumatized-bathroom-sob-for-no-apparent-reason, I wake up feeling much better and ready to greet the morning with vim and, I dunno, vigor - or at least coffee. And then there's another quantum collapse. I don't have a better description than that. Kinda like the black cat in the Matrix. The one you see after they've changed something. 

I'm reeling from latest quantum shift when I realize I don't have my keys. They're just...gone. I search my path from house to car, and conclude I must have locked myself out.

IS THAT WHAT THE MATRIX CHANGED? IT TOOK MY FUCKING KEYS? Come on, Matrix. Be better, 

Peering in my back window to ascertain location of said keys - are they really in the house? did I drop them on the stairs and they're now in the ivy? shall I call a locksmith or try to engage a wily raccoon? - I slip on my rain-slick deck and fall on my ass in the mud. 

Fuck Friday, is basically what I'm saying. 

Hours later, after licking my wounds at Starbucks and driving almost two hours to means-of-unlocking-my-house-without-my-key (luckily, I had a spare set of car keys in an accessible place), I get back into my house.

My keys aren't there.

It's like they slipped into another dimension.  

Which would've been pretty sweet, except no. After retracing my steps for the seventh time, it seems that, actually, they're IN THE GARBAGE CAN. Couldn't the Matrix at least try? Try and make a slightly cooler shift in my reality? 

But this is the joy of blogging again. As I'm hopping mad on the freeway, because of course I don't have time to drive multiple hours today just to unlock my door, I think, "At least I have something to write about now."

Even if I'd rather Friday would slip casually into another dimension, maybe the one where my keys were hiding.  

Grinch of Las Vegas

My heart grew three sizes this weekend.

While I’m definitely the Grinch of Las Vegas - my 70-something mom and aunt both out-gambled and out-drank me - it was more than just fleeing the Strip for the rocks and the lakes.

Vegas has nice rocks. 

It was seeing my brother happy. It was exploring caves and riding a train with a stuffed fox-toting seven-year-old, and buying his love with vanilla ice cream. Sitting by a lake in the twilight while bugs hummed, kids ran, and a new baby kicked.  

Some people go to Las Vegas to gamble. I go to sheep-gaze.

It was wholly unexpected and so perfect. My heart definitely grew bigger, and that gives me more faith in myself and my capacity for love.

Before I left, I was telling a friend that I 100% expected this trip to be epic, I just wasn't sure what that epic would entail. Las Vegas epic makes most people think of slot machines and unexpected marriage certificates under an empty tequila bottle on the bedside table - not freshly-hatched babies or a field full of big horn sheep. But that's the kind of epic I prefer these days - and it doesn’t even require a hangover.

But going to Las Vegas with your family will definitely test your empath boundaries. I started to see where some of this grief I've been carrying around for years isn't my own, and realizing anew how hard I have to work to stay clear of what's not mine. When you feel it, you assume it belongs to you, especially if you've been sponging up other people's pain all your life.

It's the challenge of the empath - to remember to ask to whom this emotion belongs. Even when your brain can logically assimilate it to your own experience, pointing to a specific event and saying, "This. Yes, this is why I feel this way. It makes perfect sense." When, in fact, it isn't yours at all - and there's no sense to be made. 

God love you, smart empaths. It's not an easy road. Someone told me recently, "You're very smart. But more often than not, your brain completely fucks you." Well...yes. 

Luckily, having a stuffed therapy otter in your purse helps.

As we circled Las Vegas, getting ready to land, I got the hit that my father had just reincarnated in India, because he doesn’t want to miss this time, this rebirth of ancient wisdom that's beginning to sweep us clear of multiple dark ages. He hit the re-set button and landed back on planet Earth, ready to go. 

Honestly, who knows. As with most intuitive hits, they’re impossible to fact check. You just have to trust - and realize that, in the eternal sense, it ultimately doesn't matter. But it was fun to think about, in those last moments before we landed.  

We're all connected to our people - those we know and those we don't yet remember - on this plane and beyond it. It's like my relationship with my brother - fathoms deep and about half an inch wide. Like, we had no idea he had a girlfriend. He just...showed up with her. There was a lot of frantic rearranging of facial expressions, let me tell you. 

In the small talk sense, I know more about most of my first dates than I know about my only sibling. But it ultimately doesn't matter - I can feel his heart and so it makes my heart happy when his is happy. 

Maybe that's the reward for being an empath. I got to be so happy this weekend in Vegas because he was so happy. When there's that much love gathering, each heart reflects it like a hall of mirrors reflecting a lightbulb. And I got to feel it all - and feel my heart expand with it.