By Andrea Hylen
I am a writer, speaker and guide on the subject of grief transformation. I have radar when I observe conversations and I look for the gems of grieving and healing.
An unexpected lesson of love and grieving appeared as I was watching a TV show with my teenage daughter. The show is called the Bachelorette, a show where 12 men spend time pursuing one woman. They go on group and individual dates with the bachelorette. At the end of each show, she gives a limited number of roses to the men. The men who do not receive a rose go home that week.
The lesson appeared during this season when two of the men left the show to return home to an old girlfriend. I was really struck by one of the stories and I felt like it is the perfect example of what happens when our heart expands in love.
One of the men on the show was falling in love with the bachelorette. Week after week, Frank was falling for Ali, but he also seemed conflicted and sad. He didn’t know what was wrong with him and the bachelorette was questioning why he needed so much reassurance from her. They were both falling in love with each other.
The ultimate moment came when the Bachelorette, Ali, selected the last four men and spent time with each of their families. When she was in the hometown of Chicago with Frank, he began to realize that he was having feelings for his old girlfriend. He and his girlfriend had broken up right before he came on the show.
Without taking the time to analyze the whole situation between Frank, his girlfriend and Ali, the bachelorette I want to focus on something that truly happens for all of us.
The show defined a moment we all experience at times. We are going along in our lives and we feel really happy. We are falling in love with a job, a house, an idea or a person and all of a sudden we feel sad. It can be a blip of a moment or it can deepen and stop us in our tracks.
Frank and Ali were awakening to love. As part of his awakening, Frank began to feel conflict and sadness. He was remembering the love he had for his last girlfriend. When the feelings surfaced, he had an opportunity to identify them, feel them and heal them. Or act on them. He decided to go see his old girlfriend for closure. When they connected again, they both realized they still had feelings for each other. They are together now and he is off the show.
Whenever your heart expands with love, you shake loose and stir memories from the past. A light shines into your heart. It is one of the reasons we all grieve moments that happened many years ago when something happens in the present. A song, a smell, a food, a location can awaken a memory.
I have experienced this a number of times since my husband died five years ago. We were married for 15 years and had many dreams for our future. When my husband died, some of the dreams died, too.
One dream was around a house we were renovating together. I completed a few things after he died and then slowly the dream of completing the house died within me. A new dream of selling the house and all of my personal belongings emerged. As I cleared and released items in the house, I grieved over and over again. Layers of my identity with my husband were dying. When I sold the house, I was filled with joy and new possibilities and still there was more to feel and heal.
If you are really happy with your life and you feel a wave of emotion that seems strange in comparison to the life you are currently living, take a breath and create time to examine it. Are the feelings surfacing for you to release the past or are the feelings a clue to something unresolved?
As you take the time to examine the emotion, it is a gift to sweep out the old and embrace the new. Give yourself a clean slate by feeling, healing and releasing the past. One moment at a time.
Author: Andrea Hylen is a Grief Transformation Guide, Minister of Spiritual Peacemaking, a facilitator for people in the ministry program, an Inspiration Coach, and co-author of Conscious Choices: An Evolutionary Woman’s Guide to Life. Her next book, Open to Inspiration: The summer a woman discovered herself with a teenage daughter and the Jonas Brothers on a 10,000 mile road trip will be published in 2011. Her greatest desire is to inspire people to live a deeper, richer life. http://www.opentoinspiration.com, http://www.calltoinspiration.blogspot.com
Article Source: The Bachelorette – A Lesson in Grieving to Open Your Heart to Love
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