Grief, The Unreasonable & Uninvited Guest

My break from this space was never intended to be this long. Over the summer, grief visited me in ways I didn’t expect. It was unknown and heavy, and I was too in the middle of it to know what I wanted to say to you here.

The grief professional in me felt obligated to tell you how I’d figured it out. To follow the narratives that I so often see–-how I found my way through, how I uncovered some new truth, how I could distill my experience into something that will bring you comfort and help you in your own healing. 

I thought, “In September, I’ll know what to say.” 

Now it’s September, and I both do and don’t know what to say in this space.

Because while the grief professional in me wants to give you words of wisdom, the human in me isn’t having it. The human in me knows that sometimes what grievers need most is the truth (the whole, messy, what-kind-of-nonsense-is-this truth).

The truth is that there were moments this summer that were hard and heartbreaking, filled with old wounds reopened and new griefs discovered.

I felt annoyed and exhausted and angry about once again living with grief so near.

The truth is that the shapeshifting nature of grief sometimes scares and exhausts me. It presents one way, only to show up differently somewhere else, requiring me to constantly negotiate our relationship. It asks me to hang onto hope in ways that I can’t always access. It taunts me with the worry that if I don’t do this “right,” I’ll lose my people again and again.

Sometimes grief feels like the most un-figureoutable, unforgiving, unreasonable thing there could ever be. This summer, it was all I could do to hang on, with nothing but a wing and a prayer, and the slightest hope that somehow I would find my way forward.

I know that there’s no neat and tidy place on the other side of grief. But after years of being in close relationship with grief, I also know that finding my way forward often looks like this: Grief finds new ways to get my attention. I resist until I realize there’s no resisting. I find new ways to allow it, even though its new presentation often scares and confuses me. We find new ways of being in relationship with each other. Slowly, we come to an understanding.

And then we keep doing that over and over again (did I mention that grief can feel unforgiving and unreasonable?).

Until this version of grief and I get better at co-existing, I know that my job is to wait. To feel what I feel. To tend to my body and my heart in the best ways I know how. To allow grief–so often the uninvited guest–to be with me at the table when and how I can, as often as I can.

While there are parts of me that can see the beauty in this, there are plenty of parts of me that are damn well over it. I want to honor those parts too (both in myself, and in you).

In this season of crisp mornings and sharpened pencils that signal new beginnings, I suppose I want to make room for the struggles that we experience on repeat. For the questions that don’t have answers. For the realities that we must learn to–sometimes reluctantly–integrate and live alongside.

I don’t always know how we make our way through, but I know that when all else fails, the truth is usually a good place to begin.

I hope you’ll connect with the truth of your grief today. Write it down. Whisper it to yourself. Say it out loud. Put it in a doodle. Let all the parts of you be with whatever is, even when you’re over it and there are no answers.

Especially when you’re over it and there are no answers.

As always, take gentle care of yourself.