I’ve been thinking a lot lately about grief. We live in a world that is replete with occurrences that are hard to get through….hard to see, hard to hear, hard to feel…just HARD (and yes, that’s a huge understatement). And things that are horrifically sad. But how many of us actually allow ourselves to FEEL and EXPERIENCE the grief? And to what extent should we?
I know that I tried my damndest for YEARS to block the grief from coming inside my heart. And then when I had a child, I became the mother of all shield wielders! Protection became my middle name! It caused a lot of problems and SO much disconnection…to the point where I wasn’t capable of connecting in an honest way with another human.
You see, I didn’t yet understand the difference between walls and boundaries.
I’ve been working on this for years now with determined focus. Letting the shield down and taking off the armor (even if a few layers of skin came off with it)….I’ve been walking around vulnerable. Open. Honest. Authentic.
Nothing left to hide behind means that I’m getting hurt.
And it does hurt.
Until it doesn’t. I’ve been practicing this long enough that I can find times where I even can love the feeling of the hurt because I know what’s really happening and I know that it means I’m living IN this world and being a PART of this human experience….instead of trying to avoid it.
Grief is now one of my best friends. Sometimes we don’t get along & sometimes this friend bugs the shit out of me…but yes…grief is one of my best friends.
There are all these hidden gifts within pain. One of the gifts is….the opportunity to feel that pain that we could not afford to feel before. Inside this pain we have an opportunity to become One unto Ourselves…because now the pain is Ours….because we have loved, because we have yearned, because we have faced the fire and come out the other side…and damn, if that doesn’t earn ya a hell of a lot of your own self respect!
I’m done swallowing sobs. Once swallowed, they become stuck within. And I’m just not willing to carry that around anymore!
I always remember Anne Lamott’s quote saying “People ask me why I cry so much. I tell them ‘for the same reason I laugh so much. Because this is life and I’m paying attention’.
Yes!! Let’s FEEL the feelings dear friends!
I do have to say that every time I’ve allowed grief in instead of trying to avoid it, it’s taught me more than I ever could’ve imagined and transformed my life in huge ways. It knocks at the door and if I let it in (easier said than done!) it oozes in, filling every available space. As it enters my heart, there’s a feeling of cracking open….a feeling of literally breaking of parts of my heart. Then if I get through that part, the grief itself becomes like a vehicle that I can consciously ride. It lets me hop on and it takes me on a journey into the shadow…into the unknown. It shows me things I hadn’t considered before, it shows me how to elevate parts of myself & people around me. It shows me SUCH beauty that I’ve never seen.
BEAUTY and LOVE of such magnitude that it can only be housed within these hidden spaces….to be experienced only by the ones that willingly make the journey. For within the journey lies the lessons and the tools needed to equip oneself to be able to endure SO much beauty and love. If I were to magically just appear in that space of beauty and love without having made the journey, it would destroy me. The journey is part of the preparation process for being able to handle that much love & beauty. We cannot skip it.
We cannot skip the journey of grief. We cannot ignore this Teacher.
There are blessings in the grief. And the Spirits will always send someone to be with us in that grief. They will hide in our blanket forts with us. They will push us out of the blanket forts when it is time. They will annoy us with their persistence. They will enliven and strengthen us. And They will be patient and loving witnesses of our grief.
It’s worth a try, right? Life is nothing without feelings…and if we deny one, we cannot fully experience any of the others.
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