Grief As Altar – Day 1: I Didn’t Expect It To Feel Like This

A sacred voice memo where the raw immediacy of grief arrives—unexpected, unbidden, alive. She invites you to sit with what’s happening now when loss returns again and again. Listen, breathe, and know you are not alone.

Transcript

I didn't expect grief to feel anything like this, And I've experienced a lot of grief. I suppose I expected to feel up and down and in and out and cycling over time, But I didn't expect grief to feel as multidimensional as it does, Cracking open lifetimes, Bringing the past into the future, The future into the present, The present into the past, For cycles to shift and change, For something to happen in my children's life to bring me back to something that happened with my mother, And then having it wide open again, Like a. . . I was always a picker, Right? So, Like a scab that you just picked open again, It's raw, It's never. . . It's like once you pick a scab, And you have a wound underneath, It's never as bad as the original wound, Right? But you get that scab off, And you. . . It resonates, It resonates or vibrates like the original wound, But it's not, You know, And it's different, It's a different shape, It's a different color. Each time that scab grows back, It's a little different. You keep picking it, It's almost like that, But I'm not actively picking it, I'm just living life and noticing and being conscious about life, Conscious about my children's lives, Conscious about what's going on around me, And out of nowhere, All of a sudden, It's like the universe hands you another layer, Another level, Another piece to add to the game. It's timeless, Isn't it? Bending time, Grief bends time, Grief bends it sometimes in a whole circle, Not just an arc, And so I didn't expect that, I didn't expect that. Time bending with grief. I didn't expect the ins and the outs, And the wormholes, And the universes that open up. I didn't expect my faith to balloon, And then get all the air sucked out of it, And then balloon again, And then get all the air sucked out of it, And then ballooned again, And then someone comes with a pin, And then I figure out that my lungs are balloons, And every time I breathe, I can inflate my faith. You think that grief is this human experience, Right? And it is, It's totally a human experience, But it is, It is connected to life, Which is, Yes, A human experience, But it's everywhere, Everything, It is, It is, I am, Right? I didn't expect the deep walk into who I am from this grief. I didn't expect the fire to rise within me. I also didn't expect to still feel beholden to a dream of people who are gone. That's been interesting, Because even if I get that dream perfectly, I won't have the hug of congratulations in the same way, Though I know they're there. I mean, This whole grief journey is one big surprise after the other, And I'm not judging it good or bad. Each piece, Each surprise has been another question to lean into, Another way to look at life, Another doorway to open. I just, I never thought my life would be this big without those two people.