Farewell to Friends

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Photo by Tony Morris
Home Page                                                 Welcome.
  • This is a place to grieve in peace, 
  • To quietly contemplate in the virtual presence of natural beauty and soothing music, 
  • To meditate and perhaps to help heal an aching heart. 




Farewell to Friends Vision
  • This website has been created to offer you peace kindness and support during the difficult time of grieving the loss of a loved one.  
  • It aims to be a loving resource in a time of need and sorrow.  
  •  It offers peaceful imagery, soothing music, empathetic verse and guided meditations to help you through the grieving process.

Meditations
Who Are the Meditations For?

These meditations are for anyone who has loved deeply and feels the acute pain of loss through the death of a loved one.


About This Website

How Long Will it Take Me to Recover?
  • A recovery period can take time and none of these techniques are a quick fix. 
  • Nor can they be a substitute for good supportive bereavement counselling
  • Used alongside therapy they can be an extremely effective way of managing feelings 
  • They can help you to learn to nurture yourself well  
  • They can help you to move on from acute grief to a calmer state of being.  

Meditations
The Benefits of Managing Your Own Feelings
  • Managing your feelings will help you gain some self control over emotions that can be overwhelming (i.e. overwhelming grief, hurt, anger, sadness, perhaps confusion) whatever those feelings are. 
  • Being able to cope with them as they come up is incredibly useful.  
  • Being able to make yourself feel safe whilst dealing with waves of strong feelings (especially sadness) is also very important
  • These meditations and techniques can help you positively support yourself in the face of an emotional storm.  

Powerful feelings can turn inwards on the self and it is important to learn how to nurture yourself as feelings come up and counteract any self-blame with self-love.  Empowerment in this context means positively supporting yourself however you feel and especially if feelings of deep grief come up.  In this case empowerment is letting those feeling come up and pass through to be let go of without self-harming in any way.  Learning to love yourself and be your own best friend is especially important and some of these meditations will help you uncover what that means for you and encourage you to actively love yourself.


Empowerment

As with other methods of recovery it is up to you to make the effort to change and grow emotionally as no one else can do it for you.  The emphasis behind the meditations is the concept of empowerment.  You are allowing yourself to recover from the pain of loss by using techniques to enable deep and lasting change.  The changes you need will depend on you, your personal experiences, your  personality and ways you have coped in the past with your personal experiences.  Everybody’s personal healing journey is different. 

 The use of affirmations
The idea behind affirmations is to change old thoughts and limiting beliefs to a new more positive thought.  Often if we feel hurt or have been traumatised in some way, we develop beliefs that can limit us in the future.  When you experience the passing of a loved one you may feel you will never be happy again.  Or could never love as deeply again.  This limiting belief could stop you from loving again in the future, or could become entrenched if you think there is no point in getting close to someone ever again.  
A useful affirmation in this case could be something simple like, 'I am allowing myself to let go',  or '‘I am creating a new future for myself’, or ‘My life goes on’, or '‘I am moving forward one small step at a time’.

What to do if you find a particular meditation difficult 
 You may find some meditations more difficult to do than others.  
If this is the case, notice how you feel, and where you feel it.  
 Perhaps you feel a tension in your jaw or you feel unable to concentrate on a particular meditation. 
Perhaps the thought of a certain meditation makes you feel like cleaning out the bathroom cupboard.  In that case take advantage of the feeling and consider it feng shui.  
 If your jaw is tense then spend some time tuning into your body and ask it what it needs.  Is your jaw tension stopping you from speaking out and changing a situation for you?  Is your jaw tension stuck anger and you feel like if you speak you will never stop shouting?  Maybe it is trying to keep you safe from anger that could be turned inwards and become self-destructive.  
If you are tuning into your body and asking questions then always be gentle with yourself as your body usually is trying to do the best it can with the resources you have available at the time.
How to use this website?  
                 
  •  You may want to choose a page at random. 

Use the meditation that you think would benefit you most at this stage in your healing journey. 

·         Enjoy a stroll through our virtual garden.

·         Be soothed by music

·         Read and listen to the poetry

·         Listen to the guided meditations

·         

However you use this site, I hope it provides a wellspring of ideas and action to nurture yourself and uplift your spirit.