Yesterday I was filled with grief.

Yesterday was filled with grief. 

It was not my own but the grief of others, grief from the loss of a beloved one, grief from a life they imagined might happen, the death of an ideal, the ending of a marriage, the pain of saying goodbye to who they once were, who they thought they were married to and a life. I found myself holding the messy grief of others in my hands and with that the reality and despair of having zero control over the outcomes of our lives. 

Holding the space for someone requires grace and agility, its heavy and undesirable but in those moments I was honoured to be present. To allow those people to be exist with their grief but not feel alone in their existence was hard but if thats the only thing I ever do, that will be enough. It’s something that happens to me often, I must look like I can bare the weight even if it’s just for a gasp of air or two. 

Grief is the normal and natural emotional reaction to loss or change of any kind, in and of itself can be a powerful persuasive tool that we didn’t want but now have to use. It can force us into decisions, into commitments and into different life paths we least expected it and certainly didn’t want to take. Grief can rob us and will change us- and with that comes to need to grieve who we used to be and began to know the person we are now. This new person is a different shape perhaps smaller and maybe softer and probably pissed right off. This is double the grief with half the capacity, how lovely… 

Grief is a gunshot wound from an masked intruder whether we run or not it will still get us in one way or another and when we leave the that wound unattended it will grow an deep and unapologetic infection, it will eat the best parts of us and we won’t even know. We can cover it up we can replace sitting in our grief with the need to do every other thing that needs to be done or that we think needs to be done or we can compensate for it until we have decide we have nothing left to prove but we will not escape it. It will creep its darkness back into our life years later to compromise the light that we allow in today. 

Transition through every shade and colour of it let us together wade through the deep blue seas of it. Lose our ideal pretty, perfect, beautiful image that we’ve built up to show the world that we are in fact, okay… get down to the nitty gritty really ugly stuff.  Let us cry the cry we wouldn’t’ want anyone to see and scream the primal scream and lose our breath under the water that is the pain. Let’s grieve what happened, and grieve what we think should have happened and grieve the old life and person that is no longer. We can take as long as we need to do this there is no map and no timeline and no plan B because when something comes back up from 15 years ago that we didn’t acknowledge- we need to feel it again, honour it again and lean into it a little bit more and then when we’ve done all of that. We can release it wish it well as it no longer serves your wellbeing and if we have to do it ten times we will do that. 

Let’s do what we can with what we have but for fuck sakes don’t bury it and move on because it will return with a vengeance, it knows our fears and will capture that tremble and continue to burrow. Let’s talk about it, feel it, pause with it, write it down and then burn it and start again with the same work the next day. We were not given a shovel to dig the hole deeper we were offered a ladder to take one step at time.

Yesterday was filled with grief- my own when I was faced with that of others. I will honour its presence I will ask myself why and what can I learn from this. I will be present in the darkness so that I can recognize the light when it comes and know this, I will not allow the pain of the past to define how much joy I allow in my present. I will not grieve tomorrow when I live in today. 

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