The very first step in the Healthy Grieving Process is called Being Honest.

What do we mean by being honest?

In the Healthy Grieving Process, we define being honest as the willingness to expose our experience of our self as it is.  Not as we dream it is or our fantasy of what it is. Not our imagination of who we are. Not what we hope. Not what we believe. Not what we pretend. Not what we present to the world. Not what we are striving for. But our experience of our self as it actually is.

Why is this important for letting go of grief?

In the Healthy Grieving Process, we say that no healing can take place at the level of the story and that is why being honest is the crucial first step.

One individual who has extensive experience with the Healthy Grieving Process shared her understanding, “<i>For me being honest is one of the most crucial aspects of grieving. I can't grieve without being honest with myself first. I like the map analogy. If I am trying to get somewhere on a map, I have to know where I am first. If I don't know the "You are here" spot, I can never get to where I am going.</i>

<i></i><i>Being honest is the "You are here" mark on my map. When grieving, I have to push past what I think I'm feeling or why I think I'm feeling it and search for the real loss and how it makes me feel. When I'm not being honest I get caught up in the drama of emotions that protect me from the actual loss I need to grieve. These emotions make me think I'm somewhere else on my map, or fool me into thinking I'm at the "You are here" spot when I'm not even on the map.</i>

<i></i><i>Being honest means admitting to myself what I am truly afraid of. It means pushing aside the niceties or protective barriers I have in place that make me feel safe or in control. These have little to do with what I need to grieve. Being honest means seeing myself at my worst or most raw or most vulnerable. </i>

<i>It seems so terrifying and impossible at first, but being honest is actually like ripping away a shroud or a veil that keeps me from seeing. Once I can see, the fear and the pain actually go away. I'm left seeing things as they really are for me. Then I can see where I need to go, and that what I was holding onto so tightly is no longer necessary.”</i>

A Healthy Grieving practitioner shared her definition of being honest, “<i>Being honest with myself is the genuine willingness to uncover and expose thoughts, emotional reactions, beliefs and life stories that limit my experience of life.</i>

In relation to the Healthy Grieving Process she said being honest is critical because, “<i>I can only let go of something when I know exactly what I am hanging on to.”</i>

This makes perfect sense. In order to truly let go, we have to know what our real loss is – and be honest about it.

I was having a hard time letting go of a long term friendship of more than 30 years. I was sad and emotional until at the “being honest” step of the grieving process, I admitted that the principal role this person played in my life was as a safety net – someone who I felt would be “there” for me if I was ever in dire need – of money, of a job, of powerful connections. Once I was honest with myself about that , I could explore the underlying issue of why I didn’t feel confident that I could take care of myself and/or why I needed a “powerful” person who could “save” me. It wasn’t until then that I could release what was holding on.

The beauty of the Healthy Grieving Process is that it not only uncovers the underlying fears and beliefs that keep us stuck in life, it actually neutralizes the charge and frees us to move on, not just from the presenting grief or loss, but from the stuck places in our lives.