How to Keep Your Routine Through Grief

“The pain of grief is just as much a part of life as the joy of love; it is, perhaps, the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment.”

– Colin Murray Parkes

What changed your routine unexpectedly?

I was home early in the morning last week when I got a call from my mother asking me to travel with her to see my grandmother, who had been feeling sick. We traveled that same day to El Paso, and unfortunately, my grandmother passed away the next day. Needless to say, I did not keep my routine as planned in this time of grief.

Instead, the rest of the day was spent in the nursing home, waiting for the funeral home to pick her up and at the hotel, accompanying my mother through her pain. The weekend was filled with funerary arrangements, visitations, and meeting family members I hadn’t seen in a few years. 

What can we do to move on through grief? 

It can be difficult to maintain a routine during difficult times. Unplanned family matters require time and energy. It can take all your effort to pay bills, do chores, focus on a project, and move on. However, there are a few ways we can practice self-care while we process our grief.

Here are a few tips:

• Try to keep your tasks to the bare minimum. In circumstances where we don’t have the energy or will, we can reduce the effort we put into our routine practices. I usually try to write a page daily; however, during these times, my journaling can be a phrase or a word that summarizes my day. My meditations usually take an hour; however, I’ve been practicing The Breath because it only takes 7 minutes. 
• Give yourself time to grieve. We can get carried away with planning a funeral or supporting other family members and forget to give ourselves time and space to grieve and process what we are going through. Giving ourselves time, whether a few minutes or hours, to release our feelings won’t heal us immediately, but we can at least acknowledge our feelings and allow ourselves to start processing our pain.
• Accept the help of others. While we’re used to being independent, there are times when we must recognize we need the assistance of others. One of my mother’s friends sent us sandwiches while we were waiting for the funerary. Another of my mother’s friends helped spread the word to other family members about visitation times in the funeral home. 

It is important to give a sense of order to our days in a time of grief. What is another way to practice self-care? How could you care for someone going through a hard time? What self-care practice is currently in your routine that relaxes and calms you? 

If you would like to learn how to create a morning routine, read this article here.