The Fearsome Guest
1/6/24 (Old Christmas Day)
To those who celebrate the magic of the lunar calendar, the Appalachian tradition of snubbing British Colonizing rule, the peace of woodland creatures, simple comforts and pagan revelry tied to the old world, Happy Old Christmas. It's been a sweet celebration here with moments of “bright.”
Nevertheless, my most loyal guest these last couple of months has been grief. So I share some deep reflection below:
when grief comes unwelcomed but insistent as a fearsome guest
please meet it, sit down with it
just let it swell and grow like
unrelenting breakers to your chest
and then when it enters the threshold of the solar plexus and feels like it's going to explode upward like a wave hitting a seawall… the pain… and take over your whole body
remember
stay with it
it's so hard to ride it out. the fear kicks in. we might drown (some people feel this way about love, too, the two are so similar).
it goes against our instincts to submerge in grief rather than run from it.
the mind wants to brush it away -
create a simple story for a quick reward of peace
like
no no
they never cared about me
save your tears
there are no miracles
there is no magic
people can't be trusted
it never works out
my story is uniquely tragic
I can't trust my own judgment
I can't trust my own heart
there isn't enough
something is wrong with them
something is wrong with me
write it off
shut it down
yet
and yet
I've learned this incredible thing about love
grief is its mirror. and there is a bit of ecstasy to it like childbirth. a widening. a new creature we become on the other side
and the pain is less than with the nihilistic agreements we want to make like
shortcuts
for a bag of silver.
we open. open to the desperation and the vulnerability of being bereft.
one who bears the scars of this deep labor, this heart's cry for mercy, can themself hold mercy.
when you sit right down with the grief
that swelling feeling in your chest
that growing balloon that crowds and hurts and pushes all those tears out and makes you want to tear the veil with your own claws
as if a fire were lit inside you to hollow out your trunk and make of you a canoe for the slinking river of the underworld
it is working
we are widening
if we allow it.
then there will be a clearing in our souls
we didn't have before
a glade in the woods
a spring
space to carry complexities as tangled as complicated grief
space to live peacefully with paradox and not revert to our lizard brain’s path of least resistance.
only grief can do that.
You were deeply loved
and
You were hurt
You can trust your heart
even when you don't understand
I can stay hopeful
while moving on
our minds want a simple story
an easy dopamine fix. an enemy.
but complex internal capacities need more room to grow
and just like the runner breaks through an oxygen threshold to an anaerobic state
grief breaks through to the deeper peace that baffles
the mourner's high
sorrow’s rapture
tomorrow’s wisdom.
Photo: Frances. Perdido Key on the Solstice
Image description: [ a beach at sunset in grays, light blue, pinks, tans and oranges.]