Can you hold grief and peace at the same time? This guided meditation explores a truth that transforms how we navigate loss.
The Impossible Becomes Possible
If you’re grieving, you’ve likely heard well-meaning voices tell you to “find peace” or “let go.” Perhaps you’ve even felt guilty when a moment of calm settles in, wondering if experiencing peace means you’re forgetting, moving on, or somehow betraying the person you’ve lost.
What if I told you that peace isn’t the absence of pain—but the ability to hold it without being consumed?
This is the foundation of my latest guided meditation, “Finding Peace While You’re Still in Pain,” and it’s a practice that has transformed how many of my clients navigate their grief journey.
You Are Not the Pain—You Are the Container
One of the most profound shifts in grief recovery comes when we realize: we are not our grief. We are the vast, unchanging sky that holds all weather—including the storms of loss.
In this meditation, I guide you through two powerful visualizations:
The Snow Globe Practice
Imagine your grief as a snow globe that’s been shaken. Right now, everything feels chaotic—emotions swirling, thoughts scattered, pain everywhere you look. But here’s what happens when you simply hold the globe steady and breathe: the snow begins to settle. The pain doesn’t disappear, but it finds its place. And through the settling particles, you can see clearly again.
The Sky Meditation
Your grief is weather. Sometimes it’s a thunderstorm. Sometimes it’s gentle rain. Sometimes it’s the heaviest fog. But you—your essential self—are the sky. The sky doesn’t fight the weather. It doesn’t try to push the clouds away. It simply holds everything with vast, spacious awareness.
The weather changes. The sky remains.
Addressing “Grief Guilt”
One of the most common obstacles I encounter in my work with bereaved women is what I call “grief guilt”—that crushing feeling that experiencing any peace, joy, or normalcy is somehow disloyal to the person we’ve lost.
Let me be clear: Finding peace is not forgetting.
The person you loved didn’t want you to suffer endlessly. They wanted you to have a beautiful life. Honoring their memory doesn’t require constant pain—it requires you to carry their love forward while also allowing yourself to heal.
You can miss them deeply and still allow yourself to feel okay. These two truths coexist.
The Breathwork Practice
During the meditation, I guide you through a gentle breathwork practice that many of my clients find profoundly soothing. We breathe “golden light”—warm, healing energy—directly into the physical places where grief lives in your body.
For many people, grief settles in the chest, the throat, the solar plexus. This isn’t just metaphorical—grief has a physical presence. By consciously directing breath and gentle awareness to these areas, we begin to soften the grip of pain and create space for both grief and peace to exist.
What This Practice Offers You
When you engage with this meditation, you’re not trying to:
- Get rid of your grief
- “Fix” yourself
- Pretend everything is fine
- Rush your healing process
Instead, you’re learning to:
- Expand your capacity to hold difficult emotions without drowning in them
- Recognize moments of peace without guilt or fear
- Understand that healing isn’t linear—peace and pain will coexist throughout your journey
- Develop compassion for yourself and your grief process
A Personal Note
As a widow myself (I lost my husband in May 2024), I intimately understand the landscape of this journey. After 35+ years as an NHS nurse and midwife, I thought I understood grief. But experiencing it personally taught me dimensions I could never have grasped professionally.
This meditation comes from both my clinical expertise as a certified hypnotherapist and RTT practitioner, and my lived experience of navigating profound loss. I created it for the woman who is exhausted from fighting her grief, who is ready to explore a gentler way forward.
Watch the Full Guided Meditation
This blog post only touches on the concepts—the true magic happens when you experience the meditation itself. I encourage you to find a quiet 20-30 minutes, get comfortable, and allow yourself to be guided through this practice.
Watch: Finding Peace While You’re Still in Pain
Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Grief Recovery with Gwen, for weekly guided meditations and grief recovery support.
You Don’t Have to Walk This Path Alone
If you’re struggling with grief and would like more personalized support, I offer one-on-one hypnotherapy and RTT sessions designed specifically for bereaved women. Whether you’re newly widowed, processing the loss of a parent, or navigating complicated grief, I’m here to help.
What I offer:
- Virtual Zoom sessions (available worldwide)
- Face-to-face appointments in Thurso (Thursdays)
- Flexible scheduling including evenings and weekends
- Specialized support for widows, bereaved mothers, and daughters who’ve lost parents
Book Your Free 30-Minute Consultation
Let’s explore together whether hypnotherapy could support your healing journey.
Resources for Your Grief Journey
📚 Read: My book “Gentle Unravelling: A Compassionate Journey Through Grief, Loss, and Renewal” offers deeper exploration of these concepts
📅 Explore: “Advent Calendar: A Widow’s Gift“ – my 24-day grief recovery program designed to carry you through difficult seasons
🎙️ Listen: My podcast “Living with PTSD” addresses the complex intersection of trauma and grief
📧 Connect: Email me directly at [email protected]
Remember This
You are not broken. You are not failing at grief. You are learning to hold an enormous truth: that love and loss, pain and peace, sorrow and hope can all exist within you at the same time.
And that vast capacity to hold it all? That’s not weakness. That’s your profound strength.
With compassion from the Scottish Highlands,
Gwen
Gwen Gould is a certified hypnotherapist, Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) practitioner, and former NHS nurse/midwife with 35+ years of experience. Based in the Scottish Highlands, she specializes in supporting women through grief, loss, widowhood, and life transitions. Her work combines clinical expertise with lived experience, creating a compassionate, judgment-free space for healing.