Dance with the pain of the grief you carry
Some thoughts on grief.
One of the topics I definitely knew I was going to write about was grief. Grief is one of those topics I have had to learn to get comfortable with, even when it has felt extremely difficult. I have grieved many things in life; loss through death, friendships and relationships that I thought would last but have since ended, goals I set for myself only to have them crushed, and even roles (jobs) I felt deeply connected to initially but proved otherwise over time. This last example being a reminder that it is okay to grieve the things that eventually outgrow us.
This year, in particular, I have found myself time and time again noticing how the process of grief has looked so different with each loss; and yet oddly enough, all bound together by a small still voice that kept saying just be in the grief. Much to the resistance I have wanted to exude. Sometimes, as I noticed in myself, it was facing the journey of grief that initiated a kind of fear in wanting to confront the grief headfirst. A fear that came from a place of recognizing that I would have to endure the pain and face the revelations that come with grief, and even more so allow myself to feel it all. To simply dance with the pain and the grief, with all its sorrows and hurt.
But even as I write this I realize how grief is so complex that simply saying, just be or just dance in the pain is in itself so hard to comprehend when you’re deep in the sorrows of grief. More so if you’ve spent most of your life shutting and numbing out pain. The reality is that grief looks different. Some grieving seasons might come to us as though we “chose” them or foresaw their coming (like in choosing to walk away from something), and other times the grief will hit us smack right in the face. Like an opportunity you knew was damn right yours and had worked so hard for (heck even people around you believed it was yours) only to have it disappear and blown away from you, just as you were reaching out to get a hold of it.
I’ve found myself wondering how one even begins to grieve in such situations? What I’ve seen is that in certain kinds of grief (like death), there’s some level of acceptance and acknowledgment that allows you to sit with that pain for a period of time. And for other kinds of grief, that acceptance and acknowledgment aren’t welcomed with the same magnitude and even weight. There’s often an aura of “get over it” or “move on” with the latter. As though the intensity of the emotions they come with doesn’t matter. ‘Thank you, next’ - right?
Actually, no.
I’m led to wonder - what if, in experiencing the heaviness and grief of something, we just stood still for however long we need to, and however long it suits us to be able to make our next move?
What would happen were we to allow ourselves to dance with the pain of the grief we carry?
What if, in the dancing, we looked around us and saw all the emotions grief is packed with; the hurt, the disappointment, the anger, the sadness, the nostalgia, the hopes - all of this and more - and embraced and acknowledged them? Moving within and around these emotions. (Like hey there, *insert grief-associated emotion,* I see you)
Because amidst the loss we face - in people, commitments, relationships, jobs - and whatever else; I’m led to believe that there’s also this great abundance and a sort of rebirth that we cannot quite see, feel, or even touch until we finally acknowledge the presence of grief in all its shapes and forms. I think that is what grief simply asks of us. No matter how many times it comes to visit and no matter the overwhelming intensity and baggage of emotions it brings with it.
When grief knocks on your door, dance with the pain it has come with. Trust that the next dance step will lead you onwards to when you are ready to come to a standstill and finally take a deep breath of appreciation. And an appreciation not for what grief has allowed you to experience in offering new perspectives and leaving you with a deep heart of gratitude; but an appreciation for your presence, for your being, and for letting yourself embrace the process and just be.
I look forward to reconnecting in the coming year! 🌻
For now, I leave you with this quote and wonderful article:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…” Rilke.
Cry, Heart, But Never Break - A tale of 2 brothers (Sorrow and Grief) and 2 sisters (Joy and Delight)