[1] I turned up
The heart of the suggested steps to Peace & Acceptance is contained in these steps describing the experience of grieving widows and widowers.
Meetings focus on working through the steps, often in a repeating pattern as more learning is revealed to us on our journey. There is often no linear progression.
The first step is to turn up, that means to turn up at a meeting or a support group, but I think it also goes deeper than that. We can be there physically, we can turn up at a support group physically, we can choose to watch a video physically. But really what I’m talking about here is turning up with our core being, with ourselves, with all of our pain, with all of our sadness and with all of our joy from the times we had with our partner, including what’s happening in life now – let’s turn up with all of it!
Let’s not leave bits bundled up and packaged and away, things that we aren’t going to look at, things that we aren’t going to deal with, things that we aren’t going to turn and face.
Turning up goes way beyond the physical.
Turning up is a deep internal feeling and connection to ourselves, and we may not get it right the very first time we may make a commitment to turn up.
And as we work through various steps along our journey, we may realize that actually we’ve got stuff that we didn’t turn up with – stuff that we have decided to not deal with – in which case we may need to go back to the beginning again and choose to turn up again afresh, anew, with our new learning, with the stuff that we had decided that we would bundle away.
Perhaps we decided to bundled it away and forgot about it, a bit like a parcel we might bundle away for years in a cupboard and it’s only when we go searching in that cupboard we discover it again.
It’s an “Oh wow, I’d forgotten that was there!” moment.
There will be things that we’ve bundled away at the back of our mind and forgotten, so turning up is a constant reminder, every time we watch a video, every time we engage with this process towards peace and acceptance, we must always truly turn up.
And of course, when we truly turn up, with all that pain, we feel vulnerable. But vulnerability is the thing that connects us to other people, we are saying “I can’t do this without you”, and it’s in that willingness to be vulnerable that we find we can connect with others and learn from their experiences.
Thinking prompts for this step
If you wish you may find it helpful to use these as prompts to guide your thinking when it’s your turn to share during any group meeting.
- Do you always turn up?
- How do you know you have turned up?
- Is there a feeling you would get inside that lets you know you are fully present?
- How would you know you have not turned up? Is there a feeling inside that you would get that lets you know you are holding something back?
- Are you prepared to be vulnerable?