Healing Within the Blur

This is the title of an article being circulated by Scott Berinato, an editor from the Harvard Business Review, which captures an interview with grief expert David Kessler. The interview is excellent; I have posted just his last summary comment. Granting our feeling life sovereignty is the teaching at the core of the Hags and Heroes story. I appreciate his observation on “one unfortunate byproduct of the self-help movement…”

(Berinato) What do you say to someone who’s read all this and is still feeling overwhelmed with grief?

(David Kessler) “Keep trying. There is something powerful about naming this as grief. It helps us feel what’s inside of us. So many have told me in the past week, “I’m telling my coworkers I’m having a hard time,” or “I cried last night.” When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you. Emotions need motion. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through. One unfortunate byproduct of the self-help movement is we’re the first generation to have feelings about our feelings. We tell ourselves things like, I feel sad, but I shouldn’t feel that; other people have it worse. We can — we should — stop at the first feeling. I feel sad. Let me go for five minutes to feel sad. Your work is to feel your sadness and fear and anger whether or not someone else is feeling something. Fighting it doesn’t help because your body is producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way, and it empowers us. Then we’re not victims.”

This entry was posted on April 11, 2020 at 7:53 am and is filed under Connecting the Dots Series, Grief. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Grief, sovereignty