Activation Thought Exercise: For the Loss of a Child

(Casey Cole Corbin | From Good to Great)

Begin by finding stillness
Not silence, not perfection
Just stillness
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Let your shoulders fall away from your ears
Let your breath arrive a little slower than usual
Let your body begin to feel safe
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You’re not here to escape the grief
You’re here to be with it differently
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When we lose a child…
the world doesn’t just feel broken
It feels like time rewrote itself
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Like something unthinkable happened…
and the body remembers
even when the mind tries to forget
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There’s no fixing this
There’s no bypassing it
But there is another way through it
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A way that honors what was
and also allows for something new to breathe
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So…
Just let yourself settle into your breath
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And again
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Now in your mind
Try to count backwards from 100 by sevens
And as you do
Let the part of your mind that tries to “get it right”
begin to soften
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100
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93
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86
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If you forget the next number
That’s okay
If you keep counting
That’s okay
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Either way…
you’re moving inward
The thinking mind begins to rest
The feeling self begins to breathe
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There’s a story your body has carried
A story of what was lost
A story of what should have been
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The mind says it’s too much
The heart says it’s too quiet without them
The arms say—where are they?
The world says—keep going
But you haven’t known how
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Let all of that be here
The pain
The confusion
The resistance to even doing this
Let it all breathe
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You don’t need to force anything
Grief isn’t asking you to push
It’s asking you to stay present
long enough to let it move
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There’s a part of you that froze the moment they left
A part that doesn’t want to accept it
A part that’s afraid to move forward
Because it might mean forgetting
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Let that part be seen now
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And there’s another part of you here too
The one listening now
The one brave enough to be still with this
The one who knows you don’t want to stay trapped in the ache
but you also don’t want to let go of what mattered
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Let those two parts come closer now
The frozen one
And the one willing to heal
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Say to the frozen part
I understand you
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I accept you
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I love you
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I forgive you
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See them begin to move toward each other
Slowly
With care
With truth
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They may reach out
Or simply sit beside each other
But the wall between them begins to soften
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And as they come together
There is no forgetting
Only the beginning of remembering differently
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You do not have to carry the weight the same way
You get to remember with gentleness
You get to love them without drowning in the loss
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Now…
imagine yourself months from now
You still feel the loss
But it no longer holds you hostage
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You speak their name
Without bracing for the pain
You share their story
Without collapsing in the memory
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You haven’t let go
You’ve just learned to carry them inside you
in a way that doesn’t break your body
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This doesn’t erase the love
This doesn’t erase what happened
But it lets your nervous system come back online
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Because now you are not carrying it alone
All parts of you are in the room
Together
Whole
And walking forward
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Take one more deep breath
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Let it fill your chest
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Feel your body
Feel this moment
Feel your own strength
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I’m going to count from 1 to 5
And with each number, you come back to the room
Calm
Present
And steady
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1 — breath deepening
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2 — body reawakening
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3 — mind clearer
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4 — awareness growing
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5 — eyes open
Here
Now
Alive
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You’re doing beautifully