A GRIEF Educator is like this “HELP” person who has waded through this transitional area between land where life calls and this unfamiliar submerged aquatic life system where one will need to be taught snorkeling in brackish waters till resurfacing is actually possible. He is one person who has been there, done that and knows there is no timeline for grief.

GRIEF creates big physical restrictions in the body along with a free invitation to mental ailments and labels, full of pain and emotional overwhelm, where spiritual light is an all-time low. It is difficult to light one’s own lamp for a very long time because your own wick is wet. At this time spiritual discourses are boring and meaningless because one is frozen in reality and is in deep despair. The griever needs a quick relief from his colic and no further dilution with wisdom. It may not work. Today it is easier for me to understand why all the orange robed Sadhus who were invited for my brother’s condolence meeting in a packed hall of family and relatives in a temple fell on my deaf ears. I could barely hear them and wished they would leave sooner than later and I wished the crowd would disappear too. There was simply too much chatter soaked in sympathy and empathy which wasn’t serving me and frankly the world’s enlightenment was not helping me either. They were preaching detachment while I was in deep pain. The quotes from BHAGWAT GEETA ( a sacred Hindu scripture that is a narration between Lord Krishna and Pandav prince Arjuna and can be equated as a word of God amongst Hindus) were refractory because I played Arjun, my favorite character in Mahabharata, the Great Indian Epic at many points in my life. Arjun like me was also grief struck much before the actual doom and devastation that the war heralded and completely frozen before the calamity. He was going to lose many of his loved ones and would serve a pivotal role in destroying some of his favorites. He had huge anticipatory grief at the very thought of massacre with no coping skills at that point. Krishna was his GRIEF EDUCATOR who had viewed the entire war from a third person’s viewpoint remaining neutral, calm, composed and centered. Best Spiritual Grief educator I can quote from Indian mythology. He only used a body -spirit -mind approach for Arjun to make him understand and self-assess where he was required to take action in life. He passed no judgment and had no intention to fix Arjun. Arjun in return in unfolding of this grief found his destiny to prove himself as an archer par excellence and a spiritual warrior.

GRIEF EDUCATORS understand that people are not broken but are in deep anguish and caught in inaction. The beauty of GRIEF is in its journey and learning to soothe and support yourself is the key to unflinching confidence in life. The courage to approach, face and accept the losses in a fashion that life even with heartache and pain becomes truly meaningful someday. There is no set algorithm, logical solution or formulas where one size fits all. Each individual’s journey is unique and worthy of being witnessed and heard. This perhaps put me on the search to educate myself more.
What brings me to being a GRIEF EDUCATOR today is that in all honesty I have not been heard like others. My grief remained unwitnessed even by me. One because I did not like to express and show my hurt and secondly because people didn’t have time for my stories except express shock and disbelief which is understandable. It is not that the world lacks sympathy or empathy but simply the fact is that people are not in the same tight spot as the griever. So, while I was at my grieving best somedays someone had more important things to deal with and it was perfectly okay. My grief has been a costly affair and left me with fewer relationships.

Mourning and style of Grieving in India is a limited period offer more as a cultural practice. It can range from four days to thirteen to forty days till one is allowed to wallow in sadness and self-pity. I have always struggled with this one particularly because my sadness and pain habitually hits me on day 14 the day, I am supposed to be integrating my life which has enormously changed in a span of thirteen days prior and brought additional responsibilities amidst the loneliness and the reality of loss locked in a houseful of memories with thousand tasks to do. That’s when you need someone more than ever not the mourners and latecomers who could not make it on that day. Understandable again because the world is a busy place and people have no time for your grief.

A GRIEF EDUCATOR serves the other holding the griever’s grief in utmost respect allowing its fullest expression with no hurry to suggest that one should stay strong and move on. He/She knows that grief obeys no orders and is a heart job, not a mind job.

I have been called painful to talk too, cynical, traumatized , full of death, advised to visit mental health professionals for anti-depressant medications and suggested so many of these moving on helper remedies like sight-seeing, theatre, concerts, social gatherings. When the vision of the griever is blurred with pain sightseeing offers little. A food filling junction to senselessly eat is a poor remedy while grief is eating an individual from inside. The distractions of movie theatres merely last hours and work would end anyway even if over-stretched. I could bury myself in all of that but found no relief. My MAD SAD moments are reminders how I have fooled myself for days at a stretch.
GRIEF EDUCATOR has lived his/her life moments. He/She is now there in order to support you in yours.

GRIEF is a fine, wise lover. It will not chase you when busy. It is waiting patiently right there in the layers of your comfy blanket and is going to snuggle up to you for the entire night like this narcissistic lover that will gas light you and demean every sensible argument you have against it and laugh at your very face. You have to learn to sleep with your enemy and allow him his love making lying awake at nights till you gather enough courage to walk out of bed and leave his house. The courage will require tools, techniques and treatments to deal with it all. The effects of Grief may have lasting imprints in your body as numbness which will need to be worked out too, as in awakening of your body sensations.

A GRIEF EDUCATOR will offer you a safe space so that this agonizing journey may at best be shortened (mine lasted eighteen years and is still on going )and may be even appreciated and loved someday. He/She understands this struggle and knows that at any point the griever is just in the exact place he needs to be and is just doing it right. It does not have to be perfect and there is no actual cure.

Grievers have suffered real time losses and find it hard to talk to someone and express. There needs to be a lot of sensitivity around the way conversations happen around bereaved and grievers and there is enough scope to make the world GRIEF LITERATE starting with our immediate environments, society and country.

I have a tiger seated next to Buddha both in my personal space and in my car and I always have to answer this awkward curious question as to why an aggressive animal finds place near an ascended master who taught the world AHINSA or non-violence.
My grief has been my most traumatic yet most transformative healing journey and I know when I was in it, I handled and fought it like a tiger and today I am like this Buddha in Grief. I bear minimal violence towards myself in my own emotions and that means sitting like BUDDHA on special occasions which bring me the priceless memories of my loved ones who have passed over and that’s the beauty of it all. I like to remind myself how I am doing on that day after so many years. It has become manageable. I have become non violent in my own ways. There is no more urge to hurt people as hurt people.

I am glad to have understood and challenged myself to do this beautifully designed course by the renounced grief expert David Kessler and being the first batch of this educators. It meant revisiting all my Grief timelines, taking deeper dives, answering where I did it wrong and where I could do better. Where I struggle still and where I can help others? I am glad about the date imprinted on my certificate mentioned as 1:11 as if the universe knew I was all set. What I had invested in heavily has returned to me as a stamped certificate to be proudly displayed that I am finally a certified Grief educator by none other than David Kessler.
What do I do?
Well, I do GRIEF. I AM A GRIEF EDUCATOR.

Big thank you to the work of David Kessler ” The Grief Guy” who opened my doors to new learnings in the grief world. From a griever to a learner and an educator  I have seen it all, and still learning and moving on.