Grief Is Love With No PlaceTo Go… how having the courage to and feel grief heals
I’m not fine.
A drab blue-gray is the color of my general mood these days. Perhaps it’s change. The tears don’t actually fall… Its an awareness that my internal forecast is cloudy. Not knowing when it will be safe to go out without a mask or hangout with friends without worry. I miss parties and dining at leisure. I miss hugging people and teaching my in-person classes. Perhaps it’s politics and simply not knowing how it all ends. Perhaps it’s menapause… ughhhh… I’m just not ok. If loss, change and disappointment are the main causes of grief then this explains a lot.
I know, I know… I’m not suppose to say that. Only children all honest enough to tell that truth. When did saying something hurt our hearts or body become wrong. Why get tough and mute this reality? This is insanity and has lead to such disconnection.
GRIEF: A low grade undertow. A pull away from the direction I desire to go in. Heaviness in my heart and spirit. A faint smile… think Mona Lisa.
Why do we avoid grieving? For years I masked grief with busy, shopping, hanging out, keeping up with everything that was going on, eating, drinking… anything but being still. In the quiet I could hear the thoughts I wanted to avoid. I could hear the deep sigh of unfulfillment and lonliness.
In the quiet I could hear the thoughts I wanted to avoid. I could hear the deep sigh of unfullfillment and lonliness.
I look around and see tears in so many peoples eyes. Dry tears that is. Tears that are never given permission to fall. Tears that are shhh’d, shamed, choked back, masked with bravado, cloaked in the familiar armor of anger or all together ignored.
So few people are honest enough with themselves, let alone anyone else, to admit that the inevitable losses, disappointments and changes cause grief. I mean who wants to admit that?!
So… we say over and over again, to ourselves, lovers, friends, children, co-workers and anyone who can see our universally well-worn mask, otherwise known as I’M FINE.
What would be so hard about telling the truth?
Has anyone ever really told the truth?
Have you every wondered why expressing grief is so uncomfortable?
Since I believe that looking at what we are grieving is moving in the right direction that is not only healthy but healing for us, let’s take a look at what causes grief. Some grief we are able to readily identify (e.g. you have loss someone you love to divorce, break-up or death), but their are many other ways in which we grieve. In his book “The Wild Edge of Sorry,” Francis Weller speaks of the The Five Gates of Grief
- The First Gate: Everything We Love, We will Lose.
2. The Second Gate: The Places That Have Not Known Love.
3. The Third Gate: The Sorrows of the World.
4. The Fourth Gate: What We Expected and Did Not Receive.
5. The Fifth Gate: Ancestral Grief.
Did you know unexpressed grief actually can https://medium.com/@thelightactivator/what-lungs-have-to-say-about-covid-19-c718d67f1deb
Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eye, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow par of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go. ~Jamie Anderson
Be gentle with yourself and ask grief
