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If you're grieving, you may get advice telling you to "get over it" or "move on."

But this is both unhelpful and unrealistic. Grief is a process which takes as long as it needs.

If you let grief flow, and integrate the loss into your life, the pain can transform into bearable sadness.

Living a human life means we will all feel grief, at some point. This may start when we're very young, perhaps with the loss of a beloved pet or grandparent, but if we are lucky enough to move through life's seasons as intended, these losses will begin to mount up as we age.

In fact, the Buddha taught over 2,500 years ago that to be human is to suffer—this is an inevitable aspect of our existence. We grow older, get sick, lose people we love and our lives will eventually end.

But the Buddha also taught that we often turn this inevitable suffering into an optional but far greater suffering through our response to it. Trying to "get over" grief is likely to do just that.

The Therapist Who Saved My Life

The heart of my new book, Heal Your Trauma: How to Overcome a Painful Childhood to Become Happy and Whole Again, is the story of how I have spent the last 30-plus years healing from the sudden, traumatic loss of my father when I was just 24. I had been living in Asia for two years and he died before I could get........

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