Welcome to this reflection on grief.
Find yourself a comfortable position that's best suited for you,
One that will be quiet and free of distractions.
And when you're settled,
Close your eyes and just focus on the sound of your own breathing.
Pay attention to the natural rhythm,
The gentle ebb and flow that exists between your body and the stillness of air that surrounds it.
Then stay in this quiet for just a moment.
And with each breath,
Allow yourself to let go,
To sink deeper into the comfort of your own body.
Notice the coolness of each inhalation and the warmth of every exhalation as it's released from your body.
This flow of air is impartial to your life experiences.
It simply is.
It's a mechanism that sustains life.
It's immune to joy.
It's indifferent to sadness.
Yet when grief arrives,
The natural flow of our breathing shifts inward.
It becomes constricted,
Unfocused,
And pierces an irreparable hole into the outer membrane of our reality where pain and trauma exist.
There are many reasons why we grieve,
Death,
War,
Self-hate,
Chronic pain,
Injustice,
Or expectations.
Regardless of the why,
If one lives long enough,
Grief is something we will all surely experience.
And while grief is an emotion that we all share,
It's so subjectively personal.
The way one person grieves can be completely different from the way another experiences the unfiltered candor of grieving.
Grief is not easy,
But in the long run,
It can open our hearts to compassion and empathy.
It expands our mind to new perspectives,
And it opens our spirit to the challenge of being human.
Grief can be described in many ways.
It's a talisman of personal change,
Yet can feel like a bridge to nowhere,
An empty hope,
Or a broken promise.
It can feel like a dark,
Chaotic spell that fools us into believing that the light in our spirit has lessened.
Grief itself is like a purple watercolor that soaks deep into your skin until it shatters every cell in your body,
Leaving behind the dulled discomfort of being human.
It whittles life down to the bone,
Creating a rugged canyon in your heart that becomes wimbledon and barren.
It's the shallow black of nothingness that leaves you torn and disoriented until you find yourself at the bottom of a musty well broken and flipped around.
Here you welcome the darkness and sit quietly in its round prison,
Waiting,
Breathing,
Surviving.
It's okay to grieve.
Letting yourself grieve is natural and unavoidable,
But when the morning dawns,
It's okay to let yourself see the sun,
To begin the process of letting go so your spirit can be freed from the chains that hold it to the thickness of this earth.
Grief creates a physical crack in our heart that cannot be filled.
It's a prickly beast that jolts the regularity of our system,
Creating an imbalance in our body.
It punches a black hole deep into our psyche and creates a darkness where no stars exist,
No light,
No oxygen.
It's just empty.
It shreds happiness into tiny shards that fall to the ground,
Stagnant,
Unrecognizable.
The one single moment when your inner self,
Your guardian angel of the universe or God,
Faintly whisper in your ear that this too shall pass,
Then bit by bit,
Ever so slowly,
Your broken heart stops bleeding and you survive for one more day.
Grief is also like an opaque bubble that wraps itself like a sticky film over your mind.
You can see out,
But others can't see in.
It's a shadow that roams freely in the darkness,
Blocking out the light of your memories.
It's turbulent and it's lonely.
It isolates us away from love and distorts our perception of joy.
It's clumsy and feels insurmountable,
But when you're least expecting it,
Hope appears in the face of a loved one,
A comforting smile,
The warm touch of human kindness,
Providing a brief encounter that allows us to celebrate something new,
Giving us a moment to be grateful.
Most often,
Grief is associated to the loss of someone or something that held a space in our heart,
A parent,
A child,
A brother or sister,
A friend,
A colleague,
A mentor,
A pet,
Or even a personal object.
But it's more than just holding a space in our heart,
Though.
Our hearts felt fuller with them in our lives.
We smiled more,
We touched more,
We shared more.
The agony of grief reminds us that love was in our heart and that love is still in our heart.
And in those moments when grief takes hold,
We forget the color of joy.
We forget the texture of happiness.
When my mother died,
I bargained God for more time.
My negotiation started at an hour,
Just give me one more hour with her I pleaded.
Then it became 30 minutes,
15 minutes,
Until I begged for just a single second,
A glimpse,
A single moment to see her face again.
One final memory to see her smile or hear her voice call my name.
After she died,
Silence blanketed every room like a heavy mist.
I couldn't see clearly.
I was just functioning,
Smiling through the ceremony because I felt broken.
But in a flash of divine inspiration,
A thought entered my mind that I should lean into gratitude.
Gratitude pulled me out of the destructive darkness of grief.
Gratitude saved me.
It consciously replaced my sadness with moments of appreciation that allowed me to be grateful for what I had.
And instead of praying about her passing,
I offered gratitude because I knew my mother would always be in my heart.
That change of thinking,
That simple shift,
Pulled me out of that bleakness.
Gratitude was the next step.
Gratitude was light.
Gratitude was me accepting the hand of God.
And in doing so,
Gratitude restored my sense of being and allowed me to move forward with a smile.
It allowed me to recognize the power of eternity.
Periodically,
Grief still enters my heart,
And so I let it.
But now,
When it reaches out its hand to offer false comfort,
I smile,
Acknowledge its presence,
But ask that it keep moving through me.
I no longer hold on.
I honor its greater purpose to atone,
To forgive,
To cherish,
So that I may continue to evolve as a spiritual being here on earth.
I now recognize that grief is a change agent,
A teacher of the forest,
Which now and forever is where my heart space remains,
In a lush,
Green forest full of life.
That heart space is my connection to a higher power,
So I choose to leave it open to love and kindness and joy.
And when grief or sadness appear,
I offer thanks as I would a spring shower that cleans the air and brings life to the world around me.
Until next time.
