Ten non-positive affirmations to ease the pain of grief
About eighteen months after my son died, I decided to try a yoga class. A chose a nice restorative stretch class; nothing energetic or taxing, just something to nurture my soul. Wrapped in the warmth of the room, surrounded by women each on their own path to wellness, feeling my breath and my body in a way I hadn’t for ages—it was exactly what I needed. Until I was resting in savasana at the end of class and the instructor (a bubbly young thing in her twenties) invited us to reach to sky and repeat after her, in a loud and confident voice, “I love my life!”
I almost gagged. My heart leapt into my throat, and I was overwhelmed with emotion. I squeezed my eyes shut, held my breath (not very yoga-like, I know), and willed myself to be okay, to be calm, to let it go. I warred against a more urgent, louder part of me that wanted to yell, “How can I love my life?! My son is dead. What the fuck!?”
I left that class crying and a bit traumatized.
Walking home, I worried about why I became so upset. Did it mean I hated my life? Did it mean I was failing at the healing I was working so hard towards? Would I ever again be able to take part in normal human life? I didn’t think any of those things were true, though, in that moment, it felt that way.
I had run smack into one of the many affirmations our society embraces and promotes as a stepping stone on the path to wellness. Positive affirmations are empowering to many people, much of the time. But not to me; not at that time. Being in a situation where I felt expected to participate in a positive expression so far removed from the reality of my deep grief made me feel disconnected from myself, from the others around me, and from society. It made me feel alone and broken; a failure at living life with positivity.
But it wasn’t my failure. It was simply a disconnect that came from putting myself in an environment that didn’t support my grief experience. And there are so few environments that support us in our grief-averse, pro-positivity society.
I’m here to tell you something different: When you’re grieving deeply, to hell with positivity! Life sucks right now. Of course it does, how can it not? But that doesn’t mean that there is no relief for your pain. And you are certainly not alone—everybody dies, and most people have grieved deeply at some point in their lives. It is one of the truly universal human experiences.
So, instead of trying to pretzel yourself into positivity, I invite you to simply sit with your grief. I quite like affirmations, in general, but it’s important that they meet you where you’re at. For me, that meant coming up with my own affirmations that rooted me in the present, promised nothing in the future, and provided me with something that resembled acceptance or peace. I would say them to myself, repeating them over and over like a mantra, whenever I got caught in a tidal wave of grief or anytime I felt that my grief disconnected me from life.
Here are ten affirmations that worked for me:
1. I’m okay.
2. I need to feel this pain.
3. I choose hope.
4. I can act in kindness.
5. Nothing is permanent.
6. I’m doing the best I can, and that’s good enough.
7. I’m learning a new way of being.
8. It’s okay if I grieve imperfectly.
9. There’s no hurry.
10. Other mothers have survived this.
Affirmations, of any sort, don’t “cure” anything. As if grief can be cured, anyway… it simply is. But I did find my affirmations to be helpful in lessening grief’s pain and balancing my emotions through early grief.
A few weeks after that first yoga class, I went back, but this time I was more prepared. As everyone else called out a chorus of love for their lives, I silently yelled my own affirmation to myself: “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.” A year or so later, I realized that I could listen to others say their positive affirmation with something like curiousity: would I ever feel that way again? Now, it’s more than four years since my son died, and I genuinely love my life. And I join in with the other yogis as they reach to the sky and loudly proclaim “I love my life!”
Though I say it in a whisper, as I think about my son.