Breathing Through Grief

The holidays can be a challenging time for many reasons and many people. They are for me. We held my mom’s funeral three days after Christmas, so this time of year personally brings up a lot of grief and loss. It’s been eight years since she died and my life has continued on. That’s what we do. Continue on. We have to. But sometimes when I hear a familiar song, or smell her favorite perfume, I’m hit with a wave of grief that knocks the wind out of me.

My dad sent me a text this year on the anniversary of my mother’s death that simply read “Your mom died 8 years ago today and she’s never left your side. She’ll be at your side tomorrow as always.” I read his message while I was in bed with my toddler soundly sleeping next to me. My chest heaved and I wept silently in the dark as I cradled my son in closer.

When my son woke up, I showed him pictures of the grandma he never got to meet. I want him to know that she had long brown hair just like me and a laugh that could fill a room. I want him to know that she cared deeply about people and would go out of her way to help someone in need. I want him to know that she loved chocolate as much as he does, and if she were still alive, she would have made fudge with him in the kitchen and let him lick the bowl. I want him to know that even though he couldn’t see or touch her at his birth, she was there by his side.

He looked at the pictures with as much interest as a two-year old can muster before shifting his attention to building a block tower and asking for snacks.

It made me laugh. Isn’t that the way life is? One minute, I’m grieving a loss so deep that it hurts in my bones, and the next, I’m knocking over a tower of blocks and belly laughing with my child.

There are days when my breath still gets caught in my throat. It doesn’t matter whether it’s been eight years or eighty years. As my mom used to always say, “that business about getting over it? Nobody ever gets over it. You learn to live with it. You learn to cope with the sadness. You learn to let joy back into your life. People say, ‘You should feel this or that.’ There’s no ‘should’ with feelings. They just exist.”

My mom was a funeral director and bereavement educator for over 25 years. She held space for people to feel their grief and taught me how to express my own. With the holidays approaching, I give myself permission to grieve. I also give myself permission to celebrate. It’s my eighth Christmas without my mom. It’s my third Christmas with my son. I mourn a death. I celebrate a life.

Grief and happiness can exist in the same space. One of the best gifts we can give ourselves this holiday season is the compassionate permission to hold both.

A Practice to Breathe through Grief

If you are currently grieving, here’s a simple and powerful breathing technique you can use to help you begin feeling, releasing, and healing:

Find a comfortable position seated or lying down. Place one hand on your lower abdomen and one hand on your heart. Take three deep diaphragmatic breaths, allowing your abdomen to gently inflate as you inhale and gently fall as you exhale. Then inhale deeply through your nose and exhale slowly through your mouth making a long, drawn-out “ssssssssss” sound, similar to letting the air out of a tire. Repeat for five cycles of breath.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, grief is housed in our lungs. We can strengthen our lung qi through conscious and intentional breathing practices. The sound “ssssssssss” used in the breathing technique above is one of the Six Healing Sounds found in Taoist practices and taught in many styles of qigong. It is a sound vibration that is paired with the organ system of the Lungs and Large Intestine to help clear sorrow and grief.

For more tools to help you move through grief, including a movement sequence and meditation practice for grief, check out my book The Courage to Rise, available here.