So anyone who reads this blog will know that RD and I both believe firmly in energy and how it can impact on your life. How giving something credence can thereby make it so. (Or to quote that famous phrase ‘be careful what you wish for!’) We do a lot of reading and contemplation on this and apply this to our lives most of the time. (Trust me when I say to quote ‘Byron Katie’ it is ‘Work’.)

Over the pandemic we have not bought into the hysteria, we haven’t given it credence. We have very much thought if we catch it we catch it, but we will not dwell on it because then we will catch it.

Since the Pandemic we have both travelled on boats, planes, fishing boats, and lived in two different countries, well in fact I also spent a fair bit of time in the channel Islands where I was trapped when the pandemic took hold.

We have met heaps of different people due to our adventures. We have not run around with masks and face visors on all the time, only when told it was the protocol. We accepted the virus exists, but believed that if we did not give it credence we could protect ourselves. It pretty much worked for us and despite working in hospitals and in close proximity to others, along with all the travel etc, we did not catch Covid.

But Grief (with a capital letter) then came along and took hold. Then life showed us the way with regard to how our grief was, and could, impact on our lives ..

I understand that we all have to grieve, burying it, swallowing those tears, is not conducive to mental health. Because grief, in itself, is an energy, and thereby I truly believe that we have to learn coping mechanisms to deal with it, or it will cause further problems down the line. Grief has to go somewhere and even when the tumultuous times have passed it is an emotion that lives with us forever. My personal feelings on grief are that it is such a powerful energy you have to work with it or it will consume you, literally.

Losing two beloved furry members of our family so close together knocked us on our arses. I knew we were struggling to not be consumed, all the time a little voice was whispering to me ‘you have to be careful, you have to manage this or it will eat you up.’ I was struggling, RD was struggling, and two weeks ago we both came down with Covid!

It was ‘Life’ showing us that we were not listening, we were letting grief get the better of us, instead of managing it. As a result our energy got depleted because we lost those we love, and we caught the virus.

Life was telling us to ‘get this under control.’ It was telling us to manage our energies, because although grief is necessary, although it teaches us so much, it can also be toxic and destroy you if you let it.

I am not going to let it consume me. I will work with it, much as I did when my mum died. I will give it ‘air-time’ and I will shed a tear, or cry a river, and then I will go on with my day.

All those years ago I would come home from work and go upstairs to tidy up and make my beds. I would put on the theme from ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ it’s beautiful music, with the poem ‘Stop All the Clocks’ in the middle. It was just over fourteen minutes long, and initially I sobbed uncontrollably for the whole time. Then when it had finished I would stop crying, dust myself down and go back downstairs to get on with my day. I understand now why I found that so therapeutic, because I was releasing some of the energy that the grief was creating and giving myself space to create as much positive energy as I could. I was a single parent with a seven year old son, I had no choice.

As the time passed I cried less, the terrible painful grief was spent, leaving behind a grief that I could manage. As with all things in life I learned and I have applied that ethos to my situation now. I know there will be times when it will bite me on the arse, and I accept those times, but I will not drown in them.

At the weekend RD and I were chatting and he said that at lunchtime he watches videos of Wiglet, she was his heart dog, his ‘furry daughter’. She is also RD’s first experience of profound grief. I asked him how looking at the videos made him feel, and he said ‘Sad.’ I explained that the sadness was an energy that was not going to help him, to accept the sadness but not feed it; and I gently suggested that he stopped looking at the videos until he was able to look at them and smile. I suggested that it may be too soon for that, and to wait for a while until he could look at them with fond memories.

Which he will one day, just not yet.

We talked about our energy, and how only we can manage it, and that we needed to understand the impact on us, and our life if we don’t. RD has stopped looking at the videos.

As with anything in life it is not what happens to you, it is how you deal with it that counts.

Rosie