Have you ever caught yourself in a moment of overwhelm and silently wondered, Can I trust anyone here to be safe for me? Maybe it was at work, at home, or even in your own mind when your thoughts feel loud and raw. And then, after a long pause, you notice that question gently shift into something deeper: Can I be safe for myself? This week, we are exploring what it means for ourselves in our grief work when we allow our inner world to be our first source of safety.
Our inner world is not the first place we naturally turn to for safety. For our whole little lives, we’ve been taught we need others to experience or create safety for us. Our parents, our teachers, sometimes our peers or partners. The belief that safety is an external experience is what leads us to prioritize our physical safety over all things. While physical safety is necessary, a fixation on only a sense of physical safety disallows our understanding of mental, emotional, and spiritual safety as well – all of which are necessary.
So yes, we are learning that our experience of safety needs to broaden from just physical safety but more importantly, as we do our grief work, we are noticing that we also have an inner sense of safety to cultivate and prioritize as necessary. This shift in our awareness is huge! And it doesn’t mean you’ve “figured everything out.” It just means you’re paying attention to what’s actually happening, honestly, in your heart and body.
You are allowed to feel weak. You are allowed to feel tired, unsure, or like your arms are full and shaking under the weight of it all. These feelings don’t mean there’s something wrong with you. They mean you’re human. Especially when grief — whether recent or a long slow unraveling — has found a place in your life, pretending everything is fine only makes the load heavier and harder to manage.
Here’s a picture I come back to again and again: imagine your life like a grocery bag. Each responsibility, each expectation, each worry, every hope you’re trying to carry — it’s something you place in that bag. You can only pack so much before the seams begin to strain. Eventually, if you keep forcing more in, the whole thing rips and everything falls out, leaving you scrambling on the floor.
Strength doesn’t look like holding it all at once. Strength looks like noticing when the bag is too full and choosing to set something down before it tears. It looks like honoring your limits, not ignoring them.
Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re weak. Leaning on someone else, letting someone else take a few items from your hands, or giving yourself permission to rest — these are brave acts. These are ways of protecting what matters most instead of wearing it down until nothing remains recognizable or steady.
But here’s the tricky part: external criticism can make this feel unsafe. When people don’t understand why you’re slowing down or choosing differently than they would, it can feel like you’re being judged, or worse, like you’re disappointing someone. That’s painful. And it’s where internal safety becomes essential.
Francis Weller, whose book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief has helped so many people deepen their understanding of loss, talks about the idea of a “container” for grief — a safe, structured space where grief can be witnessed, expressed, and held without judgment or dismissal. In his work, he describes how grief has never been just personal; grief has always been communal. When we lack an external container — from community, ritual, or shared witness — we try to become the container ourselves, and we can’t do that well. We hold, and hold, and never release.
That same insight applies to how we learn to be safe for ourselves. If your sense of worth depends entirely on others approving of your limits or understanding your pain, you will always feel like you’re juggling too much, trying not to drop anything just to appear okay. But when you begin to cultivate your own internal container you begin to trust your own signals of safety and care. This is about learning and naming our own capacity: to notice our limits, honor them, and rest.
This doesn’t mean you stop valuing relationships. It means you stop performing for them. You show up real. You show up with your edges, your exhaustion, your tenderness. And you let others see you as you are. Some will step closer, some won’t, but your inner steadiness becomes the anchor that keeps you from unraveling when the world feels harsh or doubtful.
Grief doesn’t require you to have everything figured out. It requires you to show up honestly, to carry sadness and still make intentional choices, and to hold hope even when you don’t know exactly what that hope looks like yet. Hope doesn’t have to be far away: it can be as close as the next breath, the next morning, or the next gentle decision to care for yourself.
And divine timing is part of this, too. Not everything has to be carried all at once. Some things will come back to you later, lighter, clearer, or with support you didn’t have before. Setting something down today does not mean losing it forever. It means honoring the season you’re in and trusting that life unfolds with its own wisdom.
So here’s the deeper question: Can you be safe for yourself even when others don’t fully understand your choices? Can you notice when your grocery bag is too full, set it down for a while, and trust that you can return when you are ready?
Real strength isn’t doing it all. It’s noticing your limits, honoring them, and holding yourself with care through it all. It’s learning to carry less so you can live more fully, anchored in your own steadiness and safe in your own arms.
Thank you for listening to episode 226 of Restorative Grief. Cultivating your own inner world and experience of safety is an ongoing practice – one you can practice anywhere you go. What does safety feel like for you? What does it sound like? How do you know you are experiencing safety within? These are just a few of the curious and complex questions you can ask for yourself as you continue building your inner scaffolding for safety – and I can’t wait to hear how it goes!
If this is your first time listening to the podcast, please be sure to subscribe and leave a five star review. You can also become a Patron of the show to gain access to our monthly workbook which includes reflections and activities designed to help each episode be more applicable and intentional for you and your grief work. Thank you to all of our past and present patrons – you are the reason this work continues! And as always, before we go, one last thing. Please remember, the only solution for grief is to do the work of grieving. Thank you for listening. I’ll see you next week.
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