An Ode to Grief
The fires of transformation and loss
Grief is a funny thing; just when you think it’s done with you, it knocks on your front door with a search warrant and a big hug. It’s a confusing arrival, vulnerable, scary, and loving all at once.
I know the signs at this point.
First, I dissociate. It’s a matter of days, maybe weeks usually. I run away into TV, work, anything to blunt and numb the sharp pain inside me.
Next, is denial. “I’m not watching too much. This work is good for me. I’m feeling great!”
And sometimes all of those things are true, but still, there’s something else under the surface that I’m willfully avoiding.
Finally, I stop, and look at myself in the proverbial mirror and recognize that I’m not helping myself. I’m hurting.
Then, comes music. And the pain unlocks, the water flows, and the fire is lit. This is the moment.
When I let myself sing, and pick up a guitar or lay my fingers on keys, I can’t run anymore from myself.
Today, I found tears pouring out of me as I played and sang the words that came through me. I didn’t know I had them, but they came out. I realized: I am hurting. And that’s alright. It’s okay to hurt.
In our world, people are shamed for feeling grief, and maybe for feeling at all. I see this in my clients.
But I do it too. I don’t always feel like I’m allowed to grieve. It’s almost not acceptable. I feel like I’m weak if I’m stopped in my tracks by the aching of my heart, and the fever in my soul.
And it is a fever in the soul. There is something trying to heal, to get out. Grief needs to get hot, it needs to burn. Then, it will break, like a fever, and salt water sweat will crash over me in waves, and I’ll feel a little better than before. And, then it continues. Wave after wave. But there is no rush.
The key is, grief is not meant to be held onto. But sometimes, the loss is so painful, we cling to the grief as a shadow of what has gone. The afterimage remains, and it is all we have left to love. But grief is not there to stay inside, it’s there to transform us.
Grief is like the volcano belching lava into the sea. It is formative while also destroying all that it touches. Grief lays the land for a new future. It is the dynamic force that flows through us and leaves us more whole, expanded, and even blessed. But this is only if we’re able to let it.
If we keep it inside, all that fire, that lava, that flow just bubbles there and burns us slowly from the inside out. And maybe that’s okay, but only if eventually, it erupts. If it stays stuck, it will corrode us from the inside out. So, let it out.
And this is a lesson for me, as well.
And it’s hard.
I don’t always know how to let grief out. Sometimes I feel like I’m just not skilled enough, or like the tools don’t work. But more often, I’m just afraid, afraid to feel, to let go, to let myself be burned away and reborn from the fires of death and creation. I’m afraid to change, for always when there is change, there is a loss of what was.
And grief will be there until it is felt.
So, choose not to be complicit in the face of it’s arrival. Welcome grief with open arms and a loving heart. It is an old friend. This is the answer. To welcome the most painful parts of ourselves with love, lets us love our whole selves. “No bad parts,” as Richard Schwartz says.
I strive to welcome my grieving parts. I strive to love them.
And it is hard.
But imagine for a moment, a world where grief is welcome, where we are allowed to break down, to feel real loss, and to transform through it. Imagine the love we could all share if we let our walls down just a little. I want to live in that world.
And yet there is so much fear, and I feel it too. We are scared to let go, to give our trust to the future, to surrender to this rebirthing. The world is sick. It is grieving.
And maybe it’s okay, too. Maybe it’s alright for the world to feel all this pain.
Maybe this is the path we all must walk together. Maybe we must let go of our attempts to staunch the fire, for only once it burns will new life come.
Wildfires sweep across the forests of our Earth. And we have created the conditions for them to burn by the very avoidance of flames. We must let them burn, and yet do so with intention and love for the land. This is what our Earth needs.
Might it be the same for ourselves? Might we let ourselves burn? Might we move slowly, intentionally, and lovingly through our own grief?
What would it actually feel like to let that happen? Wouldn’t it be a relief?
To any of you who are carrying grief, I welcome you. I honor your love which has been lost. I honor your hopes which are no longer. I honor your pain. And I welcome it. I pray that we all let it come, for if we do, perhaps we might heal, and in time, the world with us.
With all my love,
Faolan