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Six Steps to Give Yourself Permission to Feel

How grief can teach us to give the green light to processing emotions.

Ricky Derisz
Change Your Mind Change Your Life
7 min readMar 11, 2021

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This time last year my aunt died. Two years ago my nan died. It feels strange to write, but these were the first deaths I grieved in a way that feels… healthy.

My uncle died after an unexpected and brutal fight with cancer when I was 13. My girlfriend’s mum died, also from cancer, when I was 17. Over the years, all my grandparents have passed on, plus another uncle. And that’s only family members.

After my uncle’s death, I saw the pain in the eyes of my mum, my dad, my sister, and the rest of the family. I wanted to be strong for them, I believed strength was hiding sadness, and my sadness was an unnecessary addition to the collective pain.

When my parents returned home from hospital after my uncle died, we embraced, and I didn’t cry, not fully, not in front of them. I excused myself, ran upstairs, and cried into my pillow, cushioning my tears.

Before my nan died, I never grieved fully. I unconsciously invalidated my grief. I created a chasm between my feelings and my intellect, one created in childhood and expanded each time I ignored or resisted a wave of emotion. I refused to feel.

The Courtroom And The Grief…

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Change Your Mind Change Your Life
Change Your Mind Change Your Life

Published in Change Your Mind Change Your Life

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Ricky Derisz
Ricky Derisz

Written by Ricky Derisz

Author. Podcast host. Creator of MindThatEgo.com. Free copy of my book Mindsets for Mindfulness 👉 https://bit.ly/2MnBlHp. It’s a bribe, but worth it.

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