March 14th, 2017
Affirmation: I will be gentle with myself. I will be open to others. I am not alone in my problems or in my search for solutions.
Word of the Day: besmirch (v):
The taste of today is not that of yesterday.
A pot boils over.
A watchman calls down the ladder,
Did you hear the commotion last night
from the seventh level?
Saturn turns to Venus and tells her
to play the strings more gently.
Taurus milk runs red. Leo slinks from the sky.
Strange signs, because of a word
that comes from the soul
to help us escape from speaking and concepts.
I answer the night watchman,
You will have to assign meanings
for these ominous events.
I have been set free from the hunt,
the catching and the being caught,
to rest in these dregs
of flood residue, pure and empty.
____
Love and Loss
Like many people, I have a complicated, private, ill-defined, and perpetual relationship with grief. I was never taught how to grieve - though I doubt that most people are or that there is a specific set way to do so. I believe that these five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - do exist for most people. However, many people never get to acceptance about certain issues in their lives and each stage looks different for different people. Grief and grieving also tend to be very private. This is why, in our voyeuristic world of comparisons, it is hard to allow ourselves to grieve organically, and not stop wondering whether we are "doing it right."
In the wake of a profound loss, it is common and easy for us to measure everything and every person we encounter in terms of and in relation to its similarity to the thing or person we're grieving and mourning. Ironically, much of what makes loss so challenging is the uniqueness of what is no longer. Indeed, if we could easily replace what we have lost, we probably would not feel its being gone so deeply.
Thus, in my life, healing has come in the form of accepting and leaning into the possibility that I will not be able to rekindle or recover what is gone, but that I can and will experience new bonds and connections in my life. I believe that we cannot replace our losses, but I also know that the human spirit - that love - is resilient.
In the context of loss, author Steph Davis writes,
"Love is not 'or' love is 'and'. Love is the one thing that has a beginning but not an end, that makes more space the more it grows. It's the one thing that lasts forever."
Love does not die when the presence of something is no longer. Love is nimble and agile, transforming and metamorphosing in new ways into new people, places, and things.
The cost of knowing love is that the object of our affections may leave our lives. It is a cost that many wounded hearts refuse to keep paying over time and injury. But I am convinced that loving is always worth it. And that love is the only thing that can heal a broken or grieving heart. It may not always help us to love the world, but doing so does prevent us from hating it or living a life or numbness or indifference.
In the words of author Gregory David Roberts,
"Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that's all there is. Love and its duty, and sorrow and its truth. In the end that's all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn."
If you're grieving, allow yourself the possibility and acceptance that you may never replace what you have lost, but that you will find new attachments.
If you're wounded, allow yourself to risk being cracked open into the light again.
And trust in your spirit and resilience. They will not fail you.
Affirmation: I will be gentle with myself. I will be open to others. I am not alone in my problems or in my search for solutions.
Word of the Day: besmirch (v):
1. to cause harm or
damage to: sully, soil.
Flood Residue
The taste of today is not that of yesterday.
A pot boils over.
A watchman calls down the ladder,
Did you hear the commotion last night
from the seventh level?
Saturn turns to Venus and tells her
to play the strings more gently.
Taurus milk runs red. Leo slinks from the sky.
Strange signs, because of a word
that comes from the soul
to help us escape from speaking and concepts.
I answer the night watchman,
You will have to assign meanings
for these ominous events.
I have been set free from the hunt,
the catching and the being caught,
to rest in these dregs
of flood residue, pure and empty.
____
Love and Loss
Like many people, I have a complicated, private, ill-defined, and perpetual relationship with grief. I was never taught how to grieve - though I doubt that most people are or that there is a specific set way to do so. I believe that these five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - do exist for most people. However, many people never get to acceptance about certain issues in their lives and each stage looks different for different people. Grief and grieving also tend to be very private. This is why, in our voyeuristic world of comparisons, it is hard to allow ourselves to grieve organically, and not stop wondering whether we are "doing it right."
In the wake of a profound loss, it is common and easy for us to measure everything and every person we encounter in terms of and in relation to its similarity to the thing or person we're grieving and mourning. Ironically, much of what makes loss so challenging is the uniqueness of what is no longer. Indeed, if we could easily replace what we have lost, we probably would not feel its being gone so deeply.
Thus, in my life, healing has come in the form of accepting and leaning into the possibility that I will not be able to rekindle or recover what is gone, but that I can and will experience new bonds and connections in my life. I believe that we cannot replace our losses, but I also know that the human spirit - that love - is resilient.
In the context of loss, author Steph Davis writes,
"Love is not 'or' love is 'and'. Love is the one thing that has a beginning but not an end, that makes more space the more it grows. It's the one thing that lasts forever."
Love does not die when the presence of something is no longer. Love is nimble and agile, transforming and metamorphosing in new ways into new people, places, and things.
The cost of knowing love is that the object of our affections may leave our lives. It is a cost that many wounded hearts refuse to keep paying over time and injury. But I am convinced that loving is always worth it. And that love is the only thing that can heal a broken or grieving heart. It may not always help us to love the world, but doing so does prevent us from hating it or living a life or numbness or indifference.
In the words of author Gregory David Roberts,
"Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that's all there is. Love and its duty, and sorrow and its truth. In the end that's all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn."
If you're grieving, allow yourself the possibility and acceptance that you may never replace what you have lost, but that you will find new attachments.
If you're wounded, allow yourself to risk being cracked open into the light again.
And trust in your spirit and resilience. They will not fail you.
I understand complicated, private and ill-defined in the context of grief but perpetual? Holding on to the grief is holding on to the pain - it robs every day of its joy and learning value as we remain frozen in the moments of grief and pain. In my experience, that sets up a repetitive pattern of self-sabotage. Let us accept that we were 'asleep' and let go.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but letting go is so much easier said than done. That is why I wrote, "healing has come in the form of accepting and leaning into the possibility that I will not be able to rekindle or recover what is gone, but that I can and will experience new bonds and connections in my life. I believe that we cannot replace our losses, but I also know that the human spirit - that love - is resilient."
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