Are you in the waiting room with your old friend, Grief?

Christina Rasmussen, author of the book, SECOND FIRSTS, refers to a “waiting room.”

And with all the work I’ve done to understand grief – and through my own personal experience with grief - it makes sense. 

The waiting room is the place where we unconsciously go to wait for time to heal us.

It’s the place we go where we don’t fully engage in life because we don’t want to, because our person isn’t here anymore.

Because everything that’s sad is so much sadder without our person, and everything that’s happy is always a little bit sad because of the same reason. 

It’s the place we go where we don’t feel fully alive, but to sit in our sadness.

Because we think that we’re supposed to in order to give honor to our loved one.

And so we sit.

And we wait. 

And we wait some more.

We eventually become comfortable in the waiting room.

Sometimes we even stay long enough to decorate it. And then we become even more comfortable.

Now the waiting room feels familiar; it’s where we sit to feel sad and connected to our dead person.

Our grief, the sadness, has become very familiar.

Sometimes it takes on its own identity.

Grief becomes almost an old friend, sitting in the waiting room with us.

We kinda don’t even want to leave the waiting room, either. 

Because we feel like we’re not emotionally better enough yet to leave.

Because we might be scared – how can we leave our friend, Grief, who understands us so well while the rest of the world doesn’t ?!?

We don’t want to leave because we don’t want to leave our person, either, and you’re afraid they’ll be forgotten.

Eventually you might be wondering what’s on the other side of the waiting room.

You might even start looking for doors or windows to escape.

Even if you don’t want to step out of the room just yet, you just want to peek.

The answer is “YES!”

You can heal.

But you will need to let go of Grief. 

You can’t bring her with you. 

While you think befriending Grief is allowing you to honor your loved one, Grief is prohibiting you from really feeling alive.

Grief creates a block, she holds you hostage.

She disguises herself as a friend because you’ve become comfortable and familiar with her.

My 43-year-old husband died February 2017 of a massive ruptured brain aneurysm with instant and irreversible brain damage.

When he died, a huge part of me died with him.

Lots of people told me lots of things to help me understand the process of grief and how I felt. I didn’t say they were right or helpful, but they did tell me a lot of things.

One of those things is that “time would heal.”

But contrary to belief, time doesn’t heal anything.

Time just allowed my sadness, grief, and bitterness to fester until I became comfortable with it, until I learned to cope through life alongside it.

What I’ve learned as an Advanced Grief Recovery Specialist® is that I’m the only one who could help myself and with a series of correct actions.

At the time while I was sitting in the waiting room, I didn’t know what those actions are, but I do now.

It wasn’t until I was peeking through the windows of the waiting room that I discovered this program that helped me walk through the door and onto the other side.

Permanent healing from deep painful grief.

And this is now what I teach. 

I’ve become the person that I needed while I was in the waiting room.

I teach a tool – a series of correct actions - to help you learn how to step outside that door of the waiting room so that you can step back out into life again without the pain of your grief.

Only YOU can do the work to release the pain of your grief.

And only YOU know when you’re ready for it.