Coping With Grief: A New Morning Routine

Transform Your Mornings:

A New Routine to Embrace

Grief can be a powerful, overwhelming emotion that makes even the simplest tasks, like getting out of bed in the morning, feel like climbing a mountain. However, it's important to remember that it's okay to feel this way. Grief is a natural response to loss, and everyone experiences it differently. It's a process that cannot be bypassed, but should be witnessed with tender loving care.

If you are currently grieving, I want to suggest a different way to start your day.

This daily routine has helped many of my clients find a sense of peace they didn't think was possible during such a difficult time. They’ve found that creating a new, morning routine can bring about significant changes. It helped gain new insights and perspectives, brings new focus and energy.

This daily routine has made a difference in many people's lives, and maybe it will for you too. You can try one step at a time or all at once - the choice is entirely yours.

Remember, we all have different abled bodies, living conditions, and access to things. So, the routine may need adjusting to fit your circumstances. That's perfectly okay. The most important thing is to make it work for you.

A Four-Step Morning Routine

Here's a four-step routine that you can follow when you first wake up in the morning:

• Hydrate with Intention and Focus on the Body

Reach over to a glass of water next to your bed and sip it slowly. Hydration is crucial for your physical health, and the action can also serve as a gentle way to wake your body up.

The intentional, slow sip helps rewire the brain to focus and create familiarity with pausing.

The pause is critical, to discern our next action, and giving automaticity a well, pause.

• Breathe

• Practice focused breathing.

• Breathe in while counting to three (1-2-3).

• Breathe out while counting down from three (3-2-1).

• Repeat this pattern anywhere from three to ten times.

This exercise can help ground you and bring your thoughts back to the present.

• Connect with Nature

Rest your attention on something from nature. It could be the view out your window, a tree, the sky, the lawn, a plant in your room, or a photo or painting of a natural scene.

Nature can have a soothing, calming effect on the mind.

Allow nature to help your nervous system regulated.

• Salute the Day

Look out the window to greet the day.

On sunny mornings, close your eyes and let the sun wash over your face.

On cloudy days, watch the clouds move across the sky.

On rainy days, listen to the sound of the rain.

On snowy days, rest your attention in the stillness and silence of the snow.

On foggy days, rest your awareness on all that you can see and not see.

This is a moment to acknowledge the new day and to appreciate its beauty, regardless of the weather.

Rather than focusing on how you wish the weather would be, focus on what is here and greet it.

It is a practice in allowing what is here already, what we cannot change and to greet it.

This morning routine is intended to be a gentle, calming start to your day. It's a way to give yourself permission to refocus when your grief feels overwhelming.

So, which step would you like to try tomorrow morning? Feel free to share in the comments.

Remember, grief will take time, patience, love, and kindness.

It might feel like a heavy burden at times, but it's also an important part of the healing process. Alongside this, it's crucial to give yourself room to breathe and space to heal.

My hope is that this new routine can provide a sense of calm and spaciousness, helping you navigate your grief with a little more ease. But always remember, it's okay to reach out and ask for help when you need it. You don't have to walk this path alone.

In moments of grief, remember to allow the shift in perspective and take a pause when needed.

Remember, you're not alone in this journey.

With peace and love,

Yasemin 💚🩵

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Grief and The Ocean

Grief and The Ocean

Yasemin Isler

Dec 21, 2017

Like the waves of the ocean, waves of grief come and go.  Like water waves, they wash off the pebbles with a whoosh, whispering as they leave the shores of our hearts. To return back, yet again. Sometimes the return of the grief waves is a soft tap, other times a loud crash.

They rock our hearts in rhythm. We may be familiar with this swirling of waves coming and going from a long time ago. Or their presence may be intimately fresh from new experiences of loss and tenderness. Or, perhaps they may be our first introduction to this ocean of grief and the land of the heart.

Grief ocean, meet heart land. A united force of nature, resisted, pushed away, yet it surrounds us.

How are you in your grief journey and your grief today? Welling up? Dancing with it? Resisting it? Relaxing into it? Turning towards it just enough to know it’s there? Maybe all of the above?

What would happen if you pause and meet this grief, just enough to get to know its ebbs and flows? What happens if you open to it enough to sit with it, listen to it, hear it, feel it, then release it until the next time it flows in?

May you have ease and peace in the shores of love where the tender spots of the heart meet the waves of grief.

-       Yasemin Isler, December, 2017

A Fresh Moment

Wherever we go, we bring ourselves. 

Death Brings Us Closer, Maybe for a Brief Time

Through griefs over deaths of loved ones that I have experienced or observed, there seems to be a pattern. Death brings people closer.

Death Brings Us Closer, Maybe For a Brief Time

Through griefs over deaths of loved ones that I have experienced or observed, there seems to be a pattern. Death brings people closer. The days following the passing, up until and possibly immediately after the service, a very special bond is formed among the survivors. You may say that it is the strengthening of an existing bond. Possibly. Still, there is a uniqueness and different authenticity to this bond that it may deserve to be called its own. This is the time when people often remove or soften their barriers. They expose their vulnerabilities to life, to death. They speak from their purer authenticity. They allow pain to show and desire to support one another to surface.

Naturally, we grieve differently. Those who are hit the most with the death, the ones closest, are perhaps too numb to participate in this “connectedness” ritual of sorts. They could be brought in with the help and support of others, gently and slowly. This authentic connectedness can be healing. It may even be more healing if it could be allowed to be sustained for a longer period of time. Instead, often, people – usually the outlying survivors -get back their habitual fears and go back into their flight modes. Once again, they escape the reality of the certainty of death and the pain that it could bring.

Death brings the survivors closer together for a brief time. It then becomes a springboard for most to flee into their alternate realities. How wonderfully healing it could be if we could suspend ourselves longer in this connected state, authentic with one another, in total kindness and radical acceptance of our vulnerability!

Yasemin

On Father's Day

On Father’s Day

from the perspective of a grieving child

Yasemin Isler 

June 17, 2016

How to embody being, with equanimity, on a day when many eagerly celebrate? This pondering nudge reminds me of the way of impermanence, of expectations versus letting go, of hopes versus surrendering to what is.
My son is joyful today, as his natural state of being. He is focused on flying his paper airplanes. He is waiting to go row a boat with me and “bust some moves” on the Charles. I recall that my husband was the skilled rower. Now I am the only parent, being reminded by my seven year old, and that I “need to take him on the boat ride”.

My dad has crossed over a long time ago. I am not even able to relate to this day’s meaning as a daughter or remember him fully. I can only acknowledge with gratitude that he made it possible for me to come to exist in this life, as much as my mom did. I am entrenched in the experience of a wife and of a mother of a son who witnessed the passing of their family patriarch too soon. On this second commercialized June day to celebrate all dads, in our home without him we are to decide how to live this day. To follow traditions, to make new traditions, to escape from the significance of Father’s Day or to acknowledge what is and remember to offer gratitude, and to consider how we can be present to each day of our lives, however the days are laid out for us.

    Meaning and purpose of life evolves, 

    as we experience what unfolds in ours. 

    For each precious moment we behold, 

    may we be able to savor their gift in our hearts. 

The humility, in the face of life’s vast power over us and all that is beyond our control, is often staring us in the face even when we deny it. Some moments are more powerful than others, placing us in the gentle hands of not knowing, to surrender and respect. Other times, we are left to contemplate.

As for my Father’s Day poem from my son’s perspective, below, I felt the desire to acknowledge where he is with this life experience, as a young grieving child. The desire to honor it arose in me. I may be bold to think that I feel or think what my son feels and thinks some days. When I asked him about these thoughts, he said “Yeah, I think that sometimes.“

To my husband, I am grateful for co-creating a precious son. He reminds me of you, while I do my best not to tell him how often, so that he can have the joy of growing up to be himself.

 

On Fathers Day

From a Young Son to His Dad

Pure love could make me fly

Into your arms my dad

Feel your arms hold me tight

For an instant I feel so mad

Your life stolen from my dreams

Where normal included two parents

Where weekends meant ice creams

Bike rides, boat rides, lessons in science

I see your eyes smile at me

But that’s just a photo you see

I sense you shout your love to me

Over the threshold of life we carry

I whisper my love to you, quietly

Longing to feel your presence, fatherly,

My paper planes take hold of me

In my visions of you, I keep thee.

Through Esplanade bike rides 

Remote controlled boats on the Charles

Walks on sunny beaches

Home made toy car races

You helped me hold a power drill

Made paper planes my newfound skill

I witnessed your creativity shine

With windmills one day to be mine

Huge planes that take us to France

Train rides that go super fast

Laughter and meals with friends

Impromptu fun doing odds and ends 

Family get togethers so big

Where you were treated like king

Plans halted to travel by the sea

Or live somewhere called Montpellier

Train ride to visit you in another part

Of country, questions filling my mind

I gave you a get well balloon shaped like a heart

Confusion sadness hope intertwined

Waiting to receive you home healthy

Waking up one night to see you lastly

Then left with what happened to me

To you, to our family.

My mom and I will be fine

Souvenirs of life once upon a time 

We will soar on our side of life

While you soar, an angel in flight.

I have your dimpled smile

I too have a suave style 

You shared with me your brilliance

A joy of life and vivaciousness 

My mom keeps quiet 

as she watches me

She tiptoes around 

how much I resemble thee

My father you’ll always be

And I am your son forever truly.

Yasemin

June 17, 2016

Compassion and The Grieving-Bereaved Person's Rights