Grief Will Out
Recently, I’ve been musing on the ways that grief shows up. Perfectly reasonable people appear to be walking around going about their ordinary lives doing good things in the world. However if you poke, even slightly, at the thin brittle surface, tiny fissures form. Then in one beat, maybe two, a crack emerges seemingly out of thin air, and you are suddenly wading through a morass of unmetabolized trauma and grief.
Has anyone else had this experience lately?
I have. From all the positions - poker, pokee, witness to the poking, I have had the pleasure of unexpected grief journeys throughout the month of June. The audacity! Did no one get the memo that grief is only allowed at sanctioned workshops and quiet soft spaces where there is plenty of tea and tissues, and most importantly, out of view?
Fortunately, many dear ones in my purview ignored that memo and went for it, body and soul. Grief is a wild messy territory of emotions that come with a potent charge to transform an ordinary life and infuse it with wisdom and energy for the next stage. That kind of transformation doesn’t come without a cost - you have to give something to get something. While it may sound transactional, it is no less true.
For in this instance, what is must be given is the deepest part of your unformed being, those parts that have never seen the light of day, and received scant attention, acknowledgement, or care. Those tender parts of you that were tucked away for protection from judgment and harsh treatment because they were too monstrous for polite company. Those are the parts that grief wants with a ferocious hunger that will not, cannot, be denied. I say that with certainty because even if you think you have successfully contained it, the joke is on you. Because while you’re busy denying grief it’s due, grief is equally busy having it’s way with your body, your mind, and your spirit.
Life will out. Grief isn’t even a necessary part of life. It IS life. A rich full life includes grief.
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