Processing Grief: A Journey Through Energy, Presence, and Love
Grief is one of life’s most profound guides. It never arrives by choice, yet it teaches us lessons we never knew we needed. Three weeks ago, I lost my elder sister, Eileen. While her absence is still fresh and aching, I’ve found myself reflecting on grief—its weight, its movement, and its ability to transform us.
Grief is a part of my personal life right now, but it’s also part of my work. I sit with clients in grief—people who have lost a spouse, a sibling, a parent. In those moments, my own experience of grief becomes part of what I bring into the room. Grief is deeply personal, but it is also universal. It lives in the body, in the energy of our being, and in the way we continue to love those we’ve lost.
Here are my reflections, not as a formula or prescription, but as gentle invitations into this very human experience.
Grief Lives in the Body
Grief doesn’t just live in the mind. It’s not a thought or even just an emotion. It lives in the body. It can feel like punches, like blows to the chest, the belly, the shoulders. Our emotions, after all, are not “just in the brain.” They are biochemical; they are energy that moves through every part of us.
When grief lodges itself in the body, we need ways to release and restore its natural energy flow. This is where somatic work becomes essential: simple, intentional ways of letting our bodies breathe, move, and process what they’re holding. I’ve found that this work—whether for myself or with clients—is often where the true healing begins.
Grief Is a Way of Loving
A dear friend of mine, Paul Bennett, wrote a beautiful book called Loving Grief. In it, he says something to the effect of, “Grief is how we love those we’ve lost.” That resonates deeply. Grief is not something to “get over.” It is something to honor.
Even years after my parents’ deaths, I still grieve them—not in a way that feels debilitating, but in a way that keeps my love for them alive. One of my clients once said, “It feels disrespectful to think that I won’t grieve my spouse at some point.” I understand that. To grieve is to respect. To grieve is to love.
Choosing Who You Share Grief With
Grief can be isolating, but it can also connect us—if we choose wisely. In times of grief, we benefit from being in communication with others, but it’s important to curate who we share our grief with. Not everyone knows how to hold us in these tender moments.
What we need are people who can sit with us and truly be present—people who don’t rush to compare our loss to theirs, or who aren’t stuck in their own stories. Whether it’s a professional, a friend, or a loved one, the right kind of presence can be profoundly healing.
A Worldview to Make Sense of Loss
For me, part of navigating grief has been cultivating a worldview that helps me make sense of the loss. I’m a theist, so I’ll share my perspective here—not to impose it, but to offer it as an example of how we might make meaning of death.
A few days after Eileen’s passing, I asked myself: What would the divine perspective on her life and death be?
Here’s the answer I found:
“I had a good run doing the Eileen thing for 80 years. I wanted to have the Eileen experience, so I manifested as her. I loved well, I learned much, and I had a beautiful, full life. But that experience was done now. The body was used up, and there was no need to suffer. So I called that piece of myself home.”
It’s a story I made up, but it’s not a random story. It aligns with many traditions, and it helps me navigate both my sister’s death and the inevitability of death in general.
If you’re not a theist, you might find another way to make sense of loss—a framework that helps you hold the pain without feeling consumed by it.
Grief as Part of the Human Experience
At some point, we all grieve. It is part of being human. The question is not how to escape it, but how to meet it—how to let grief teach us, transform us, and open us to deeper love.
If you’re in grief right now, I invite you to be gentle with yourself. Ask:
What somatic work might I do to move the energy of grief that has taken up residence in my body?
What ritual might help me honor this loss?
What friend or counselor can I trust to sit with me in this grief?
What worldview or story can help me make sense of this experience?
Grief is not something to push away. It is something to tend to—to listen to. It is, as Paul Bennett wrote, a way of loving those we’ve lost.
Let’s stay in dialogue about this. Grief touches all of us, and when we meet it with presence and tenderness, it becomes not just something to survive, but something that can nurture us.
