The truth behind "time heals all wounds".

Anyone that has lost someone significant in their lives knows that there are phrases that pop up in themes - mostly in the spirit of attempts to comfort and relate. When we create a little bit of space between our pain and others' reactions, we can see that these efforts of providing comfort and/or relating are endearing human qualities. It's just that the popular things to say have worn out their welcome, and we need to refresh our "phraseology".

The phrase "time heals all wounds" is one of these phrases that grievers hear a lot, and many bristle against it because just like so many over-used sayings, it's lost its meaning and can feel impersonal and dismissive.

However, in my experience time has been a powerful healer. When my brother Rollo died, I remember my day saying, "time is on our side". I was not convinced of this at the time, but there was something comforting about it coming from my dad who had lost his share of people close to him. By that time, both his dad and his mom were gone as well as many, many others that were close to his heart.

The cyclical nature of grief.

The truth is that time is on your side when you are going through a loss. But there is more to it than that. It isn't just the passing of time that heals but rather how we engage with the passage of time. You see, grief is cyclical and not linear. Just like the unfolding of our lives happens in cycles and seasons, so does the healing of our hearts after loss.

Everything in our lives happens in cycles, rhythms, and seasons. When navigating loss, grief helps us by providing reminders through nature's example. Because we ARE nature, when we pay attention to nature's rhythms, we, too, can see that over time things do change.

As we actively engage with our grief through mind, body, and spirit grief practices we begin to notice tiny shifts happening - and I mean tiny. Significant losses can take a lot of time to heal through - and we won't be the same person when we come out the other side. But slowly through the seasons we move.

Fall teaches us to begin to move inward and is the season of grief in traditional eastern philosophies. We cultivate gratitude for having something so amazing to love and lose and begin to move inward for a season of quiet and surrender.

Winter forces us to head further into ourselves for practices of contemplation and restoration after a tough loss. Without the distractions of the outside world, this is where a lot of our deepest healing happens before we emerge.

Spring encourages us to begin to peek our heads out and anticipate the warmer days of summer, and we start to see signs of life once again - but the world is different, and we are different. We must align with our new realities, our new life. This truly can be jarring and scary, but over time (and maybe even several more cycles are needed) we can begin to plant new seeds of support.

And finally, summer's warm long days tell us to be out in the world a little bit more in a defiant act of creation and expression. We can truly tend to our new selves in a different way. As we express ourselves and feel a little bit more comfortable being out in the world, we might notice that we are feeling more confident and trusting in ourselves and even in life again.

I have seen this pattern unfold in my own life over the course of many, many years. The reason I love viewing the grieving process as cyclical and not linear is that it honors our ability to find our way back to ourselves over time while acknowledging that it is an ongoing process that doesn't really end.

This cyclical nature of loss and grief is the formula for creating wise elders. The more seasons we have under our belts, the more hard-earned wisdom we have gained. We all know those elders in our lives that have managed to provide us with a sense of awe simply by continuing to live fully after a lifetime of loss. Those that have come through the fire and have allowed themselves to be changed - transformed, even - through the years because they engaged with their losses and have made meaning from them.

So no, time alone does not heal all wounds. But there is a case to be made for time when we recognize that as time passes, we can do move through countless predictable cycles. We can tap into the wisdom of the seasons and step into their flow, learning and softening over the course of time.

Time is on your side.

Love,

Andrea