This is a meditation to bring comfort to those in grief.
It's not a how-to session.
It won't fix it.
It's more like a benediction and a place to rest.
A soft place to settle into where you can know that your tender heart is welcome here.
So come,
Rest down now.
Take a pause place.
Take a moment to be with these feelings that are rising within you.
Get comfortable.
You do not need to sit straight.
Life is putting you through enough.
Rest down.
Settle in and know that by making this time to be with your feelings,
You are meditating.
You are being with the present.
You are doing your inner work.
Soften your breath.
Soften your eyes.
Let them drop if that feels good.
Soften one part of your body,
Maybe your shoulders or your hands.
Rest down as best you can.
It can be tricky times when grief comes to us.
Grief is an unbidden invitation.
It is our initiation into the world of adulthood.
It takes us to the core of our humanity.
We don't get to be some invincible teenager or some untouched privileged person anymore.
We get woven into the warp and weft of the world.
It takes us and makes us part of the tapestry.
We see how strong our ties to others are.
We realize how much our threads are all woven together and that when one part is stripped away,
How much we feel that loss.
Grief is a consent to community,
To being seen when we're bruised or broken or bewildered by the baffling beauty of it all.
Grief is a willingness to come into contact with life.
We have loved and we have lost.
We're having the human heart stretched and worked in ways we couldn't even have imagined.
Grief is a place we sometimes get lost in.
It's okay that you don't know the maps through this place.
Subtle things get made in this darkness.
This time can't be quantified or measured.
It isn't logical.
It doesn't come on schedule.
Grief ripens us.
It makes us more fully human.
We're more touched by life,
Like the shape of a scar on our hands that someday will be tenderly touched by someone.
Someday's grief is like shedding a skin.
Things have been peeled away from us,
Perhaps before we're ready,
And the skin underneath that loss feels too thin on the surface,
Like everything touches us too much or not at all.
So rest,
Dear one.
Let yourself be impacted.
If you're walking with grief,
Let this time take you down.
It will season you.
It may even scar you.
You will feel the rawness of life.
Yet trust that something within you is being made in this fierce fire.
That good things will come out of this journey.
Grief can be like a lead insole in the bottom of our shoes.
It's heavy.
After a while,
We don't even notice that we're walking around with it.
There's a sense of increased gravity.
That lightness and levity are harder to reach than they once used to be.
Maybe we feel that we're dragging our feet through our days.
I want to normalize grief.
That what you are going through is rightful,
Is a response to loss.
Whether that is numbness or sadness or anger,
Disbelief,
An emotional roller coaster,
Know that this is part of having a human heart.
Your job is to care for yourself more in these times.
To turn towards your own heart.
To turn towards all that you have loved and lost.
And to show up for yourself.
To let yourself be impacted.
That is how we heal.
It sounds something like a platitude,
But the feeling is the healing.
And the only way out really is through.
Trust that although this time is unchosen,
That the brokenheartedness will make you stronger in the end.
Trust that your humanity is increasing.
Your compassion is growing.
This remembrance of mortality is bringing more of what matters to the forefront of our lives.
That your ability to deeply live your love is coming through.
Trust that although this time is uncomfortable,
You will be held.
That your heart can stretch to sustain you in all of this.
So you are somehow being initiated as an individual.
Trust that you will come through this with something to offer.
And that there is no hurry to get there.
Trust that you are being deepened.
That delight in life will come back to you.
That you may become more deliberate in intending to live and love more fully.
As we get to feel the deeper currents under the surface busyness,
We will notice that we are not only feeling the deepness of the ocean,
We will notice the beauty more too.
The way the wind moves the leaves on the tree.
The steam on top of our mug of tea.
The beauty of a friend's smile.
The kindness of someone bringing us a slice of cake.
The billion bits of day to day beauty that comes with this gift of life.
Feel your body.
Feel what you are resting down on.
See that you are still here.
Still living.
Still breathing.
Heart still beating.
Come in close to yourself.
When we grieve,
We come into deeper contact with what is.
We get to see what's missing in our lives.
Yet we also get to see what is still here.
The gifts that we have been given and how precariously precious the whole thing is.
It seems that the weight of grief teaches us to lean into each other's levity.
It calls us forth to continue to lift each other up.
To see that the threads that we are bound by each other by is the very thing that also heals our heart.
Maybe what gets grown in grief is more willingness that our own lives can matter to the world.
In grief we get to see how much one life can touch us.
We can think that if that person or place or passion left such an indelible imprint within us,
Maybe our lives can matter that much too.
Maybe our contribution is key.
So rest here as long as you need.
Take the time to let this move through you.
To shape you.
To impact you.
And know that when the time comes you can come back to life.
To turning towards a friend.
To sending a thank you note.
To offering some kindness on.
To giving your gifts.
To sharing the talents that you have.
To being willing to burn bright while you're still here.
Know that although this time is hard,
It will bring you gifts.
And that it may take some time for that process to work its way through.
So rest now.
Turn towards your heart with kindness.
Turn towards your life with kindness towards this moment this day.
Turn towards life for this too will pass.
I bear witness for your bravery today.
For being with a hard topic.
For staying with it.
For coming in closer to what it means to be a human and feel deeply.
Thank you for being part of the Insight community.
Thank you for being a wholehearted human.
Thank you for sitting still today and being with whatever is moving through you.
I wish you so much wellness and wonder and wholeheartedness.
Thank you for your practice.
May you seize this day and all the other days that we are blessed with.
