Grief & Spiritual Growth After A Collective disaster
Natural Disasters are becoming a world trend. Statistics say that natural disasters have been increasing at a very steep rate since 1980. When we look at archeological finds, there are layers of earth that have covered ancient civilizations, letting us know that tragic events have been going on since the beginning of time, erasing ancient ways of life that have literally disappeared into the elements. These events are also buried in our epigenetic memory. While we can often overlook these events, once it happens to you, within your local area, your reality is forever changed, providing a nectar of spiritual growth for each individual and thus community. Where buried grief can be felt and finally released, allowing old worlds to fall away, so that new worlds can resurrect.
In recent, my Western North Carolina community has been tremendously changed and affected be Hurricane Helene that consisted of tornadoes and storm surges of water greater than 15 feet high that washed countless mountain towns away.
Wild Edible Tip: Eat weeds from your backyard. They are the most nutritious plants. Why? Because of their adaptability. They have a lot of wisdom (dense nutrients) within their plant body.
While WNC is one place on the map, in contrast to countless other areas, such as, Spain, Dubai, Austria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, have all been affected by massive flooding in the past year, causing collective grief and community reset. When affected by such experiences there is an immediate and palpable pulse of the vital importance to tend to the local needs and ground into a loving and helpful hand for your local area. The rainbow of grief that circulates within the collective air is equally as palpable as the incredible amount of care and assistance provided by the community. Each person within a community reacts differently and are called to tend to the circumstance in different ways according to each person’s uniqueness and God given gifts and talents. Thus so, we see the circulation of varying expressions of grief.
Below are a list of many types of greif that can arise individually within a personal, as well as a collective experience. I have also shared the over arching lessons that have arisen within my own personal life, as well as realizations working with various demographics throughout my life and in recent Hurricane Helene victims in WNC, as well as inquiry questions you can use in a downloadable pdf. to help you process your greif.
SURVIVORS GRIEF
In a recent community grief circle my family and I attended, the most common expression of grief was guilt. While so many lost homes and even their lives during Hurricane Helene, those who were not affected in such ways have experienced what is called Survivors Grief. This type of grief is a psychological response that can cause one to feel tension and distress even if they had no ability to help those in distress. In natural disasters, many can feel responsible for injuries and deaths despite attempts to help or had no ability to influence the situation.
Survivors Grief is a weighted feeling of “why did I survive, while so many died?”. A woman in a grief circle shared her guilt of living and being minimally effected by the Hurricane in the midst of so many who lost their lives, homes, and livelihoods. This type of grief if not processed can cause one to carry an illusory negative view of oneself and a post traumatic stress disorder of fear and guilt that can carry throughout one’s life and subconscious and epigenetic memory.
REMEMBER:
As an Hypnotherapist who specializes in Past Life, Akashic Records and Ancestral Healing, I have helped countless people in their exploration of grief. There is a main theme within our sessions that often arises as we explore the concept of life and death, and that is, the soul essence of a person, is only extracted when the soul is ready and has completed it’s mission. This means that they have learned their lessons for this lifetime, and are now ready to move to a different experience. Everyone has an exit strategy, and who are we to say wether that particular way is good or bad. It’s truly amazing what we sign up to experience in our lifetimes, yet when we are able to allow our consciousness to soar to a higher level of awareness we are able to see that our exit strategy for that timeline perfectly aligns to the stories that trace throughout our soul stories.
Thus, the guilt experienced by Survivor’s Guilt is linked to other experiences in the soul. In order to relieve oneself from such feelings, it’s important to process, inquire and understand the lessons of survivor’s grief. To peer into the deeper layers of what is at the root of one’s guilt.
EMPATHETIC GRIEF
Empathetic Grief is when you feel deeply the suffering of others, and have a strong emotional connection that is very intense and overwhelming. So much so that you have a burning desire to intervene and wish that you could take away one’s pain.
I can remember as a Trauma Nurse sitting by the bedside with others, so often thinking, “I wish I could take this pain away from you”. I discovered in conversations and healing sessions with nurses, that this is a very common thought. It wasn’t until I began to study Reiki and Shamanic Healing that I realized I was willingly absorbing the same frequency of pain they were emitting. It then made sense why I was always so depleted and continually sick and fighting off cold sores with a diagnosis of Epstein Barr Virus.
When having thoughts of a desire to take away someone’s pain you are taking the frequency of pain into your body bio-suit, however what you want to do is Transmit Compassion. By absorbing another’s pain, you are not helping anyone.
Parent tip: As parents we often want to take our children’s pain away, instead learn to hold space for them and teach them to go into their pain rather than putting a band-aid or arnica on their boo-boo.
REMEMBER:
As someone who has experienced a lot of life initiations in the form of chronic illness, traumatic experiences that caused injury, our struggles hold great potential and capacity to change our reality and set us upon a new and exciting path. IF we are open to that which wants to be known and embraced. We must be curious and open to recognizing the patterns, the lessons, and the awareness and gifts these events awaken within us. This takes a great courage and willingness to be fully present with not only our suffering, but the others. This changes the way we see the world, how we interact with the world, and helps us to understand our gifts we are here to bring to the world. Thus, helping us to be the grounded space for others to explore their own suffering.
As humans, it’s amazing what we go through. That which we chose as a soul to go through in our human incarnation. Yep, I said it, “That which you chose.” We often know what we need to do, but are not willing to do because our known reality is comfortable and easy, then uncomfortable and difficult events occur forcing us to change. This universal force of destruction is always happening, birthing everything into a new direction. Thus, your desire to take away another’s pain, is a desire to take away their free will to have an experience that exists purely to direct their life into a new and beneficial pathway. Now this does not mean, we sit back and do nothing to help others. It simply is an invitation to be with them in a very powerful and grounded compassion, offering support and love as needed, using wisdom and discernment, while recognizing that there is not a need to absorb their pain and difficulty.
Finally recognize that your desire to take one’s pain away is triggering your own hidden pain within, and that they are reflecting back to you your own need to heal within.
Again, rather than be a sponge, receiving the frequency of suffering, learn to be like Quan Yin, a Transmitter of Love & Compassion.
REPRESSED GRIEF
Repressed grief can be a conscious or unconscious suppression. Which can often look like a lost interest and motivation in previous endeavors, especially in a collective disaster or unexpected loss. It’s as if one’s path was clear, suddenly becomes derailed and there is a lack of desire and focus to do that which you were once most passionate about.
It can also look like illness or unexplained pain in the body where trapped greif are stored.
A consciously repressed grief can be suppressed for a time in one’s life, to the point that one continues to move through life feeling all is back to normal, however years down the road one develops imbalances such as heartburn, autoimmune disease and pain in the body that is do to an unconscious greif.
As we explore greif and other emotions in Hypnotherapy, we find countless layers of repressed emotions that have carried on from present and past lives. One hurricane victim, who has had major hip pain for years, had done a tremendous amount of mind and body care, such as massage and talk therapy, yet had not processed her emotional body. As we began to surrender into the pain, bringing awareness to her emotional and mental realms, we found a whole other world of realization that opened her into uncovering the layered storied past as a Palestinian elder who felt a great repressed grief and belief that he had let down his people.
REMEMBER:
To feel is to heal. When we choose to feel the yuck, then we open up to higher dimensions of yumminess. The simple but profound act of feeling every moment of life is what it means to be in the present moment. When we bring awareness to the body, emotions and mind, we become the observer of that which is arising in that moment. Whether that be pleasure or pain, we are bringing the fullness of our life force energy into every dimension of our being. This fills the imbalanced and empty spaces of our being that we were once unable or unwilling be fully present with in other dimensions of time and space that have the same frequency. Any core emotion has layers of thought and belief. Thus, the more we surrender and nurture these aspects we peel back the layers, rather than building upon the past.
DELAYED GRIEF
Delayed grief is a conscious effort to suppress one’s grief and can look many ways. Grief can be delayed within a collective disaster, because of the response that is needed for survival which could last for weeks and months, maybe even years in some cases. However, those less affected, such as a friend of mine, who immediately jumped to help community after the storm, found herself, three weeks later on a full moon, crying out of nowhere in greif one late evening due to all she’d witnessed and heard from her community.
If the delayed grief continues to be suppressed, and one is not making time to truly feel all that wants to be known, there can become really good at pushing their feelings into a corner where a layering of emotional, mental and physical instability sets in, and if untended to will pass down the epigenetic pathways. The act of suppressing grief can happen through self medication, work, food, business, alcohol/drugs, shopping, sleeping, sex, even healthier ways of living that become extreme. When my grandmother suddenly died of a massive heart attack when I was three years old, my father took eye drops that dried his tears so that he wouldn’t cry. As a child, one of my most core memories was my father holding me while we were at my grandmother’s funeral. Forty years later when my best friend died, I could not figure out why I couldn’t cry. It was as if my tears were stuck inside. I found within my consciousness the story of my father who purposely delayed and suppressed his grief all these years, and how his energy had passed into my capacious little body, lying dormant in his body which I feel is the root of his chronic digestive reflux. With this discovery, affirmed by my mother, I was finally able to release my own Delayed Grief, which not only connected to my English fathers repressed grief but also my mothers ancestral Cherokee ancestry.
Grief Tip: Often we seek comfort in food and external sources, thus delaying greif. STOP and be with your grief.
When someone has experienced significant and reoccurring loss, there can be a dissociation where emotional reactions did not happen, but should have. This happens because the situations are simply too painful to feel and there is a need to push on through the wreckage in order to survive, thus the mind blocks the feelings, emotions and thoughts associated with the experiences, until one is ready to process and accept the memories of experience.
A good example of this is a woman who I met who lost everything. I asked her how she was feeling and if she has ever felt this type of feeling before. She said, as her husband did too, that it was a feeling of powerlessness. Both felt the same feeling when they helped refugees in Eastern Europe and witnessed their homes being burned. Soon after the question she walked off while saying she didn’t have time to think about all that, for she had things to do. Meanwhile the husband sat and talked to me for an hour, crying and releasing his greif. He said that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried and had never realized the associations of him loosing his home with that of witnessing others loose theirs.
REMEMBER:
Greif is a natural emotion all humans experience. We can’t avoid it. Every experience we have and will go through, from a soul level, we agreed to experience such. From the realm of higher perspective, it always looks like the most harmless and neutral thing we could go through, and from that place we can see the purpose in going through such. For, every experience has important lessons, and those lessons have a meaningful purpose to fulfill. Yet, when we arrive in our feeling and sensing earth body, it is the most difficult experience, and we can’t see the purpose of it.
Thus to see the purpose of our suffering, we must learn to relax into a state of mind that is as neutral and expansive as our original soul blueprint that decided in the first place that this would be our experience. When we unwind from the dissonance held within the physical, emotional and mental body, we are calling our power back from the dimensions of time in which they first occurred.
Traumatic Grief
Traumatic grief is the result of an unexpected loss and/or frightening event. Traumatic grief can be accompanied by other types of grief listed above, which can interfere with daily functioning and sleep due to the change in one’s brain patterns. Such dysregulation can cause unwanted thoughts and memories; a sense of shame, blame, victimhood and persistent fear and negativity. One can find themselves in an exaggerated startle response and avoidance of situations that may trigger a response.
Grief tip: Our stories are a reflection of the past. Thus, there are dimensions to our greif. Get curious about it, and learn from your grief, so the past can finally be the past, and you can step into wholeness.
To process any grief, takes a necessary willingness, curiosity and courage, especially within traumatic grief experiences. Thus, it is important to find a skilled trauma informed practitioner who can help you navigate these experiences in a way that feels safe and empowering for you.
REMEMBER:
Your life can and will return to normal once you are ready to fully embrace your experience. You must summon a desire to see beyond the veils of the earth and remember why as a soul you chose to experience such hardship. From a soul level, every human experience is a walk in the forest, yet from a human experience, it’s much harder than what we thought. It’s amazing what we as humans go through, but once we understand the roots of suffering, we pull back the power and life force lost in those moments. Suddenly perspective changes from “What did I do to deserve this?” to “This experience has nothing to do with my worth. I will no longer entertain what I don’t deserve, and focus on what I do.” Finding the right practitioner to hold you in a space of discovery is of most importance.
COMPLICATED GRIEF
After a disaster, people can feel all kinds of emotions. Complicated grief is an enmeshment of many unprocessed experiences and thus many types of greif. There can be a sense of guilt of not being able to help in the way that you feel you should because you are in survival mode yourself, and do not have the resources and time to support others, as well as yourself.
Or you can feel so overwhelmed and exhausted by the situation, you simply don’t have the ability and energy to do what you think you should be doing to help others. All weighted down with a belief or sense of inadequacy that you aren’t doing enough, or even confused as to how to help and even grieve yourself. This can create a sense of self-blame and guilt, impacting one’s self esteem, self-confidence and self-worth. The main emotion of Complicated grief is guilt and is complicated by the sense of not knowing how to move forward.
A good example of Complicated Grief is a woman who who wanted to help, but she was dealing with cancer, and did not have the resources or strength to give in the way she desired. She also felt a deep grief and sadness about all the debris, trash and trees dispersed all over the riverbeds. She had moved to NC feeling that it was a safe area. A sanctuary from the world tucked away in the mountains. Yet, now everywhere felt unsafe to her.
In dealing with Complicated grief, there must be a recognition of every aspect of your grief. You will be surprised at how similar they are despite how different each aspect may look. It’s important that you set aside time to work with someone who can witness you in your grief and help you unwind this, allowing you to see through the illusions of your complicated greif.
REMEMBER:
Everyone has a gift and a role in this lifetime, and maybe that means that you take time to grieve, rather than boots hitting the ground to save others. There is purpose and power in taking care of yourself. When you create time to nurture and feel the depth of all you hold, you are drawing life force back into your being, so that you can move forward into an empowered presence that can assist others into a harmonic wholeness by stepping into a grounded wisdom.
It’s our Divine Human duty to find the gifts and magic we were given to bring to the world, to one another. For we each are the hands of God/dess. Each of us have a job and a role.
Those who can contribute their time in a disaster, those who have to work who contribute their money, and even those who are working, yet do not have the money to contribute, are giving in their own way, by doing there uniquely assigned job that supports the community and their family. Those who are sick and disabled who wish they could help, are also doing their job. They are the empathic feelers of the earth, who in their desire to help, are magnifying a new frequency and desire that is changing their own destiny, and thus the earth’s.
The heaviness we carry in concern of the earth and her well-being is a call to connect deeply with Creation and the Primordial Source that we all came from. From this connection there are deep truths and healing we receive that help us to take the heavy back we carry off, and begin our journey in giving to creation all of our love through the gifts that we came here to give during this time on earth.
So the best thing to do is to Recognize your guilt and grief, and sit with it. Have a conversation with it. Have you felt this before? Is there something that can be done to relieve this guilt? Are you doing your best? Do you recognize your gifts and what excites you? If so, do that! If not, start to figure out what really ignites your soul. That is your gift to the world.
When Navigating Grief Important things to Remember:
This statue of St.Francis was removed from it’s forest of trees and tossed among the destructive waters with all the large and small stones that were brought in from the high waters. He was found on the other side of the river, on top of large and heavy stones a foot above the grassy ground it use to reside.
Any hardship and loss is an opportunity to feel and heal. To learn and do things in a better way, An opportunity to give and receive not only in body but through the soul and Spirit that lives in all beings and things.
Grief is a precarious entity. Just as we are unique individuals with different stories based off of our genetics, environment and memory. The way in which we deal with grief, and unveils itself, also looks different for everyone. Thus, as it arises, be sure to make time to sit with your grief and surrender into it as it arises, knowing that there are many layers to navigate that come and go like the tide.
Learn to listen and inquire into your grief. Our grief is connected to lifetimes of memory stored within the subconscious mind, and if pushed into a corner, it will demand your attention through manifestation in the physical, emotional and mental realms.
Grief is a normal human experience. Make time to learn from it, and recognize that by doing so you are serving and assisting your family, lineage and the collective into healing and wholeness.
The death of our body only greets us when our soul essence is ready to be extracted and move into a new experience (or we willingly choose to extract our soul from body). This means that when our last breath is taken from a natural or traumatic event, our Spiritual Soul expression is in agreement that our time and work, and lessons learned during this current body on earth is complete.
When a loved one has passed, it is time to touch soul to soul, just as we once did body biome to body biome.
Within every hardship there is a lesson and a beneficial and potent potential available. See these hardships as an opportunity to guide you into a new direction and way of being. What wants to be known and embraced from this experience for yourself and the collective?
Summon your patience. To move through grief is a layer by layer process. But, be present with it, as it arises. Pushing it away for another day, only amplifies and extends your grief and thus imbalance.
Our most important role right now for ourself and humanity is to learn how to move through our shadows of grief. These shadows are filled with stories of betrayal and spaces in which we have not been able to fully love and forgive ourself, others or the natural universal flow of energy known as GOD, the generating, organizing and destructive force. When we begin to understand these aspects of ourself, we are able to live a life full of greater presence, love and joy.
In all of your strife, what have you received in this experience that you have always wanted or something you realize now was missing in your life that you are now experiencing and receiving that was unexpected, yet has brought about a great gratitude, a new awareness, a new inspiration, a new opportunity. Seek the wisdom, the lessons, the hidden gifts within the story.
Our difficult moments are intertwined to moments of the past in which we were unable to fully feel and be with the entire spectrum of experience, because either we were in survival mode, or we just simply didn’t know how to do such, because of that specific lens of consciousness. Luckily, we live in a new time in history where many are remembering the importance of being present with the entire polarity of human experience.
These experiences create opportunity for the communal compassion frequency to heighten, for the Separation frequency to fall, and the Unity vibration to rise. Another opportunity for all the parts of oneself that you were not able or simply weren’t known, to now shout out with exclamation points “Be Present With Me”. Which is exactly why they are happening. To stir your ancient baggage, and leave the past in the past. And we can birth a new world of Love & Unity, allowing the old
KARI RIVERS
Kari is a Spiritual Counselor and Intuitive Healer who guides those into deeper understanding and wholeness through Quantum, Multidimensional, Ancestral Healing using Depth Hypnosis, Past Life Regression, Akashic Insights, Shamanic Vocal Vibrational Healing & Rite of Passage. She works in person near Asheville, NC and virtually.
“I had such an incredible passive vocal sound journey with Kari! Even from the beginning, she really helped me get clear on my healing intention and distill what I needed support with. Her intuition is spot on and she is such a clear channel for divine healing!! In addition, she is highly professional. She has such a trustworthy, grounding presence and even tho I didn’t know what to expect, I felt so safe! The whole session was very clearing, supportive and profoundly healing- leaving me feeling lighter and more peaceful!! Exactly what I needed. Can’t thank you enough Kari.”
“Kari graciously offered her assistance with hypnotherapy and past life regression during a challenging time for me. I was amazed at how effortlessly I entered a hypnotic trance with her guidance. She skillfully delved into the depths of my soul, helping me uncover the answers I sought and piece together the puzzle of my past that was influencing my present. With grace and expertise, Kari facilitated profound healing and insight. I wholeheartedly recommend her to anyone seeking understanding and a deeper sense of purpose with rapid results.”
HURRICANE HELENE SUPPORT
FOR ASHEVILLE COMMUNITY WHO WERE Directly AFFECTED BY HURRICANE HELENE I’m offering A Monthly gathering For Vocal Vibration Shamanic healing.
These healing experiences are done in a group of four where you will be guided into a better understanding of the storage of your grief within your physical, emotional and mental body. Then you will get comfortable and be held in a supportive and relaxing guided and vocal journey to energetically reclaim and heal the layers of multidimensional grief you carry. If you are interested, please enter your information and I will be in touch to share with you times, dates and locations of these events.
