Things are created, things exist, and they end. This is how the universe works. Life must have punctuation points. We all know that punctuation is what makes literature. Death is usually wasted on the dead. I don’t know what your beliefs are but when someone is gone, its us who are left that have a process to unfold and unpack.
Grieving isn’t a neat and tidy process. It isn’t contained. It’s dynamic, powerful, and magnificent. If you feel madness and overwhelmed with feeling every possible emotion at the same time, you’re probably “doing” it right. The ride is rich and amazing, strap in and hold on.
I’ve travelled the universe inside my head… mostly without drugs, but we won’t talk about that. I went on the hunt. It’s vast in there with endless nooks and crannies for things to hide. About five years ago I started a journey in search of remnants of unprocessed loss. Let me just tell you the truth, I didn’t really have a choice with all that had happened, it tapped me on the should and demanded it.
There was lots in there and as I started hanging out with it, it grabbed me and held onto me. It told me about humility, about how my priorities needed work, and how important connections and love are. I learned about what was really valuable.
What I believe is that sometimes when grief arrives, it brings with it any old loss that wasn’t faced; ending of relationships, loss of dreams or fantasies, distance from conceptualizations that we’ve been attached to, deaths, you name it. Fuck.
Because I’d never danced that long, slow dance with grief and death I was afraid of it, I thought I’d fall apart, I’d crumble, and I wouldn’t be the same afterwards. I can be pretty attached to myself. I had it all wrong. Evolution is the name of the game, it’s what’s for dinner. And nothing evolves our consciousness as thorough as being with our pain around the loss of something/someone important to us.
We need solace. David Whyte calls solace, the spacious, imaginative home we make where disappointment goes to be welcomed and rehabilitated. We need to mourn. We need to hang out with the loss of love and own how grateful we are to have felt what we did, and for the blessing that what we lost existed. Rest, integration that moves into reorder after the proper amount of time has changed us into our next version of ourselves.
See you there.