I was washing the dishes recently, and I accidentally dropped my favourite glass on the floor. I felt it slip through my fingers and the realisation that it was about to fall to the floor was met with a gasp of shock and then such disappointment as it smashed into chunks and splinters. Oh noooo! I really liked that glass. Now it was just a broken mess on the floor.

My feet were bare and the dustpan and broom were not close by. I had to carefully tip toe around the bulk of the glass, trying not to step on any, while berating myself for not being more careful.

I brushed up the mess and then got the broom to give the floor a really good sweep to make sure I got all the glass.

I carried on with my day and soon forgot about the whole thing.

A couple of days later I walked into the kitchen, barefoot, my mind pre-occupied with what I was working on. I walked toward the sink and felt the sharpest piercing pain in my toe. That really hurt.

I looked at my toe and run my finger over it, I felt something sharp embedded in my toe, a tiny sliver of glass.

I managed to pull it out and put a Band-Aid on my toe. I got the vacuum cleaner out and gave the floor a thorough clean, hoping I have now captured any other little shards or slivers.

You know what – Grief is like glass.

When we experience a significant loss, your life shatters instantly. There is a chaotic mess where “before and after” collide. A split second changes what felt rock solid and permanent to something that is now permanently broken. You cannot simply “glue” what was back together.

When glass breaks, you can sweep up the large, obvious pieces easily. But for weeks or months afterward, you will unexpectedly step on tiny, invisible slivers that are hiding.

Grief triggers are kind of the same, you don’t see them, they are there waiting for you to ‘step on them’ – music, smells, words and memories – driving a painful blow to the heart.

I use the analogy of cleaning up glass to describe the Grief Recovery Method.

The method is like a deep clean, getting into the nooks and dark corners of our grieving heart to clean out the shards and slivers so we don’t continually press against them when we think about our loss, talk about our person, or hear a song that stirs up painful memories.

It is the deep intentional work to clean up the wound that loss has created. All the things that are no longer, and the things that will no longer be possible.

The feelings of unresolved grief hide the slivers and shards, and doing the work of the method means we get to expose them, acknowledge them and minimize their ability to inflict further harm.

Processing these emotions means moving beyond the pain of loss.

While there are no timeframes, and rules when it comes to grief, the question does remain….Are you ready to stop stepping on glass?