unresolved grief

I heard a comment at the weekend that got me thinking.  The root cause of many addictions and mental health problems is unresolved grief.  I pondered this and last night had a very weird dream about my great aunt who died when I was 12.  I woke up singing a song in my head and it occurred to me to analyse my dream, something I have not done for a while.  We have all the answers we need to help ourselves within ourselves if we are open to letting them be heard consciously.  I realised that as a child I only felt unconditionally love by my great aunt and when she died I was confused.  

I have been reading a book on time management and NLP.  It mentioned about open loops in the mind.  Things that are left unfinished can niggle away at your subconscious,  small things as well as big and the book I was reading said that the unconscious cannot distinguish between he big and the small things.  For years I thought it was a little toy duck that I was missing.  It is a standing joke that the root of my problems is that my mother gave away my duck to the poor, as if we were not poor enough as it was. Maybe it was never the duck maybe it was the loss of the unconditional love of my aunt.  Last nights dream was vivid, in bright colour and very real. At the end I found the place I had been searching for in recent dreams and I woke with the realisation that I never grieved for my loss.  Children do not understand loss.  It is also perhaps a sign that my daughters need to grieve the loss of their father.  He is still alive but absent and unreachable consciously as he is resistant to seeking help for his many and varied problems.  

Grief is an important part of life.  Living in rural Ireland was an eye opening experience for me when I attended my first wake.  The tradition of the funeral parlour is now diminishing even in urban areas.  It is perhaps all part of the move away from consumerism, away from running the country like a business, and towards a society where it is OK to grieve, it is OK to have and show emotions, and it is ok to be a person and not a consumer.  I hope that I can finally grieve for my loss, for all the losses I am not even aware of and that I can recognise the need in others to give time to getting over those things that cause pain.

So today cut yourself even more slack than normal, as by now I hope that you cut yourself alot of slack, recognise the need to rest, to recover, to allow time to heal the wounds of life and most important dont force the flow.    

Happy Tuesday.