to freely grieve is to freely live

All of life is affected by change and the letting go of someone or something that once was, therefore all of life is a relationship with grief. Death is the most widely acknowledged source of grief, but with the letting go and letting in that we endure through all of life’s changes, there is a natural grief that swells from needing to say goodbye to a way that we understood the world, an identity we had, a way that we interacted with life, a relationship we counted on, or a story about ourselves or our lives that no longer serves us.

We cannot fully step into the new if we are desperately clinging to the old. We cannot grow if we do not grant ourselves the growth space that emotional blockages can clutter. And we can not heal what afflicts us if we intentionally (or unintentionally) ignore it in fear of continued pain that the awareness of it might bring. This only makes for a festering wound that infects other parts of us. It is this that creates long term suffering and detachment from parts of our self and our life.

Yet we often resist grief because we perceive it to be painful, negative, or scary. But as Rebecca Solnit writes, “Pain serves a purpose. Without it you are in danger. What you cannot feel you cannot take care of.” To bravely feel into our grief and allow ourselves to integrate it is to allow ourselves the space to heal, find nourishment & meaning, recalibrate and become fully connected to ourselves again.

To fear grief is to fear life, and to make space within ourselves to cultivate a healthy relationship with loss and grief is to allow for the chance to be in the flow of life, the chance to flourish, and the chance to find meaning in life and in who you have been, who you are, and who you are headed towards being.