For the past couple of months, I’ve been present to the grief of answered prayers.
I’ve crossed a threshold, and as soon as I did, I tried to turn around to look back, and the long, windy road to here had vanished into the void. There is no going back. There never was, there never will be. No matter how hard I pray again, things are different now. I am different now.
To access the tenacity and courage to continue on, there is also the grief of what is being left behind. Even though I prayed many, many times for it to be left behind. It had to be offered up. To release what once was to become what now is. To make space. To clear. To reset. To recalibrate. To keep going— less of a heroic option, simply the only option.
You’ve likely touched the sweetness, clarity, spaciousness, and relief that becomes available after a good cry.
Maybe this progression is familiar: the grief moves, the wrath comes, contentment settles. As if by magic, more capacity to be with what is appears.
Perhaps you’re also familiar with this series of events: grief comes— maybe it feels as though a storm is coming, or the air is getting sucked out of the room, or you need to get down on the floor and not move for hours or maybe even days— and then poof. Notifications beckon on your phone. The dishes need to be done. You drink, vape, and/or eat to keep it all away. For a time, it does seem to stay away.
Until it’s back. Grief (or any emotion, really) will make you make time for it. I write about it a lot. I hold space for it with others a lot. Same thing again and again.
This is the thing: it’s not to be done alone. Who is around varies. Ideally—and I truly wish this experience to every single member of this human family— it’s with a loving, safe, spacious living human person whose own sense of safety and attachment aren’t threatened by your expression of grief. But oh, how the trees, and the rivers, and the dogs, and the stars, and the moon can steady you. How our well and bright ancestors can provide an extended nervous system so we don’t lose ourselves. How the well and bright ancestors of place (the landcestors) can be oriented to. They are begging us: don’t hold it in. Don’t swallow it down. Don’t get busy and distracted. Most urgently: don’t be scared. Let it out. Bless the earth you walk upon with your grief. Slowly, or all at once. Again and again. More. More. More.
To exhaust yourself from grieving is a sacred expenditure in exchange for more love.
Always.
That’s the secret.
