Creative Grief Experience: Wholehearted Rocks

This creative grief experience from The Creative Grief Coaching Studio can help you get clearer about what wholehearted living after loss means for you – who you want to be, how you want to feel, and what you want to create after loss.

I experienced “Wholehearted Rocks” during my training with The Creative Grief Coaching Studio and wrote about it to serve as an example of the power of creativity in learning to live wholeheartedly again after loss. Reading the instructions first will help you understand my description.

My Experience with Wholehearted Rocks

I did this creative exercise in September 2012 during my training with The Creative Grief Coaching Studio.
 
Here is a write-up of my experience.
 

I chose a pink glass container because I loved its color, shape, and how it looked as the light filtered through it.

I filled the container as far as I could without overflowing.

The swollen nature of the water at the top was beautiful.

It was a perfect visual representation of the strain I felt on my emotions as if they were about to spill over.
 
  

I felt rage at the time that I did this exercise; I was really struggling. I wrote about my rage in a stream of consciousness manner, disregarding spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. I didn’t even care if it made sense.

I printed it out, tore it into pieces and put it in the water. I liked the idea that if I didn’t fight it but instead allowed it, my grief (the water) would cause the paper (my rage) to disintegrate slowly and become soft.

I chose several special objects that represented what I wanted more of in my life:

– Love: (large heart shaped rock, not perfectly heart shaped because love is not a fairy tale; it sometimes has sharp edges) I want to allow more love in my life even though loving opens me up to being hurt.

– Family: (a handful of “gems”, one for each family member). I want to bond closer with my family. I tend to shut them out and withdraw into myself, hiding my grief.

– Trust: (a heavy, smooth, black rock) I want to trust that I do not need to force anything, that my strong emotions will not take me over, that all will unfold as it should without me trying to control it.

– Authenticity: (my “J” shaped rock) I always want to show up as myself. I want to stop hiding who I really am. I want to come out of shame.

– Confidence, Courage, and Vulnerability: I chose 3 pottery flowers I had made after breaking up with my boyfriend of 10 years. At that time, I was exploring my creativity for the first time in a long while because it had gone dormant. I had to find my confidence and have the courage to experiment. As I was learning more about myself, I had to be vulnerable enough to show my new self to those who were used to me as a certain person and wanted me to remain that person. Now, at the time of this exercise, I find myself once again needing the confidence, courage, and vulnerability to put myself out there and extend my own authentic offering without fear or care about what happens.

– Self-compassion: (beautiful flowers) I want to love myself and treat myself kindly, despite how incredibly hard that can be sometimes.

– Patience: (a perfectly round, smooth rock) I want the patience to take the time I need to heal my emotional wounds, to allow things to unfold at the rate they will. I want the patience to know that even when it seems nothing is happening, that’s ok because sometimes nothing is what needs to happen. Everything is movement if we allow it. It’s when we force it forward or fight against it that we disrupt the natural unfolding.

– Intuition (translucent marble): I want to trust myself and my decisions and avoid overthinking things. I want to spend more time in my body and in a wordlessness state, relying on my innate knowing and trusting it.

– Joy: (a rock with “Love” written on it given to me by my daughter Maia) I want to experience joy and model joy for my daughters, but joy makes me uncomfortable. I mourn over times that I had an opportunity to share joy with my daughters and it turned into something sad. I want the courage to allow more joy in my life.

– Release (feather): I want to give myself what I know I need for release, which includes running, writing, creative expression, a beautiful home environment, nature, stretching, warmth, connection, intimacy, and time alone.

– Generosity: I chose a glass seahorse that I bought for my daughter. I am often somewhat stingy when it comes to buying things for my daughters because I have this thought that I don’t want them to expect things or take things for granted or not be appreciative of what they have. This parallels with an attitude that I used to have about parenting. I viewed (unconsciously) my role as their parent to tell them how to be “good”, how to do the “right” thing. I was focused on the negatives instead of the positives.

Now I want to do it differently:
o Instead of telling them not to be selfish, model generosity
o Instead of telling them not to be irresponsible, model taking care
o Instead of telling them not to fight with each other, model patience & cooperation
o Instead of telling them not to be unappreciative, model gratitude
o Instead of telling them not to freak out, allow them their emotions and allow myself mine while giving them reassurance that they are not the cause

– Gratitude: I learned that we cannot feel fear and gratitude simultaneously, so I turn often to gratitude to quiet my anxiety.

– Acceptance & Mindfulness: I am a perfectionist and can be obsessive and too focused on the details, steps and order of things instead of the actual meaning. I tend to miss the forest for the trees. I actively work on being present in the experience and knowing that not only is it ok that it is not happening exactly as I envisioned, but that it will happen exactly as it should and if I stay aware and present, I will always receive exactly what I am intended to receive and it will always be beautiful.

At the time I experienced this exercise, I was able to clarify what I wanted and needed more of in order to move towards wholehearted living. I have since added many of these qualities to my life, causing my grief to become less the focus and more of a connecting part of my story.

You can use this exercise anytime you wish to take a look at your life and discover what you can add for more wholehearted living. You don’t necessarily need to be grieving a specific loss.

This is just one of many creative grief exercises I learned in my training and certification with The Creative Grief Studio. I’d love to share others with you. Sign up for a free, 30-minute consultation if you’re interested.

Turtle Steps
There’s nothing that will stop your progress faster than feeling overwhelmed and like you’re just never going to get there!
That’s why it is *so* important that you break down de-cluttering and organizing into bite-sized chunks. These tiny chunks are called turtle steps, and I learned about them from my mentor, Martha Beck.
Turtle steps are the tiniest steps you can break a task down into. The criteria for a turtle step is that it feels RIDICULOUSLY EASY.
Here’s an example that illustrates how easy turtle steps should be.
Jenni wanted to take better care of herself by doing yoga so her back injury could be healed and she would be able to play outside with her kids (her WHY!!).
But the thought of yoga was so daunting and made her so anxious that she just never, ever did anything about it.
Finally she went through the exercise of breaking it down into turtle steps.
Simple Household, Peaceful Parenting 13
jessryan.com
Her first ridiculously easy step was… wait for it…
for 1 minute every day, Jenni would think about maybe, possibly doing yoga. She would just think about it. I am not kidding!
Jenni did this every day until it didn’t cause her angst anymore and actually seemed like a possibility, then she went to the next turtle step.
She knew she needed clothes for yoga, so she thought her next step should be buying yoga clothes.
But everyone seemed to have special clothes, and the thought of showing up in those tight clothes made her cringe. She realized going to buy clothes was too big a step.
So she made her next turtle step even easier – she would go online for 2 minutes every day and look at yoga clothes. Just look at them. Until they didn’t make her cringe anymore.
Next step was driving to the store to look at the clothes in person.
Then she actually bought the clothes and brought them home but left them in her closet for a week and peeked at them every day.
Then she put the clothes out on the bed and picked them up and looked at them every day.
She went on like this, with ridiculously easy steps, until she was finally doing yoga and loving it.
You may think this is silly, but this is how any difficult task can be overcome.
Try it! As you complete each turtle step, reward yourself! You are MAKING PROGRESS!

I always started out with grand plans for a simple household.

” I’m going to organize every room and closet! I’ll throw tons of stuff out so things aren’t so cluttered! And I swear I’ll keep things clean by doing a few minutes of picking up every day! “

All good intentions.

But my grand plans kept fizzling out, sometimes even backfiring and making things worse!

Trying to create and maintain a simple household became this annoying, overwhelming goal that I felt I would never achieve.

It was so frustrating!

What I finally realized is that I kept losing sight of WHY I wanted a simple household in the first place.

And that is the core of secret #1.

Secret #1: If you aren’t crystal clear about WHY you want a simple household, you’ll find it difficult to stay motivated.

In this secret, WHY is capitalized on purpose. That’s because I’m referring to your deep-rooted motivation for doing whatever you do.

Humans don’t do anything without a compelling WHY.

Sometimes it’s fear, and sometimes it’s love. The WHY behind everything we do can pretty much be boiled down to those two motivations.

Sometimes it’s confusing to figure out our WHY. Society, expectations of others, career pressures, family, money – all of these factors can motivate us to do certain things and mask our real WHY.

I’m sure you have lots of reasons why you want a simple household.

They might be pretty similar to some of mine -you’re tired of clutter; you want a calm, clean home; you want to stop feeling embarrassed about the state of your house.

These are all super reasons.

But they’re likely not enough to keep you going when it gets irritating and hard.

To maintain your motivation, you need to get down to the *real* reasons WHY you want a simple household, and then you need to set up reminders of WHY you really want it, so when you get tired and frustrated you’ll keep going.

One of my specific WHYs for wanting a simple household is:

I want my house clean and organized so that I can enjoy watching my daughters learn through creative role-play without me squashing their imagination by stopping them.

You can read more about that WHY in ‘3 Secrets to a Simple Household’.

So let’s do it, let’s find your WHYs!

The way to discover them is to play the WHY Toddler Game, and that is your homework for this week.

Take Action!

1. Get comfortable and eliminate all distractions (this means Facebook, too!) Do a Dirga Pranayama Grounding (If you forgot how, see your welcome email.)

2. Open up the ‘3 Secrets to a Simple Household’ and go through the WHY Toddler Game, starting on page 3.

3. Email me and let me know some of your real WHYs.

This week, try to ask yourself many times during the day WHY you are spending time on a particular activity. This is especially helpful if the activity is super annoying. Maybe you’ll find out that activity doesn’t actually match with any of your WHYs and you can stop doing it!