Wise words if you are on a boat. But they also apply to the difficulties we face in life. When we are dealing with difficult emotions it is often tempting to avoid facing them head on. It hurts too much. But the emotions keep coming. They don’t go away because we don’t want to deal with them. It is like being on a boat. Those waves exist. They can’t be avoided. All we can do is go over them in the safest way we can. That is head on.
If the waves we encounter are emotions and difficult feelings, we can try to ignore them and suppress them. We can try to distract ourselves with activity or alcohol or anything else that seems to hide the pain. But those actions do not remove the pain. They are like the boat approaching the wave sideways. We are more likely to capsize if we try to ignore and suppress our difficult feelings.
Dealing with the pain of loss is hard enough. Trying to avoid those emotions is harder still.
You may be used to suppressing the emotions. That may have been the way you were taught to attend to grief. You may not know how to approach the wave head on.
This is where counselling can help. Seeing an experienced grief counsellor can help you to learn to face your pain head on, learn how to sit with it and be okay. It is always possible to learn how to face that wave head on.