grieve alone
We all grieve alone, she said. I knew this not to be true. Somewhere in me was a deep knowing that it didn’t have to be this way. I was too young to understand the needs or the feelings of a widow asking for company upon the anniversary of his death - young and close enough to be family, but not family enough. I felt alone grieving him - grieving a liminal nearness to someone destined to leave soon, but at some unforeseen time.
The timing of cancer.
And when he died, there was only me left to hold the immensity of our friendship. It felt as if it wasn’t even real. I didn’t know how to feel loved by him without his breathing affirmation. How to hold what was special to me, dear, all on my own. Inspired by loss, I was reuniting with a past love. We had each other in the wake of his passing. The past lover could affirm the memories. Beyond this, it was lonely. And so she said we all grieve alone, and we parted.
It was this year that I learned of wholehearted grief, a fortifying journey of sorrow and contemplation. And yet, we don’t have to grieve alone or feel shame in the handling of what is rarely invited into the open. Rare, sharp, profound, and normal. Sometime after the death, the parting, the reunion, and the eventual break up was an initiation into understanding how to hold myself in grief, while also holding the invitation of community support. I began to feel sadness for those that believe we must withdraw from one another in the depth of bereavement.
We were not designed for isolation. Not all is transmuted and transcended in isolation, and strength is not born only from stark independence or marching as a single entity. There is divine beauty in the willingness to be seen and held, to embrace bodies that have carried the echoes of the past for generations. Vulnerability is a shining force that illuminates a pathway for honest relating and shared humanity, offering an intelligence and belonging that moves with the bonding of grief and celebration. When we fear unwanted emotions or being seen uncensored, our imaginations and trust do not invite a larger circle. We neglect the possibility of vulnerability and presence.
Presence is a loving act. To be seen is an act of liberation, freedom. To see and be seen, these are sacred love languages - this is the power of the loving witness. Presence supports the wilds that move within us. The currents that can otherwise lay stagnant. The tenderness wanting voice and possibility. The witness holds steady the air for what feels too fragile to ever find ground again. In the moment of being seen, inviting acceptance, the act of witnessing transforms and changes the very thing itself - the thing we fear may never move, the very thing that asked for permission to be known and affirmed. It sparks movement as much as it holds steady the space for the cry to cry itself forward.
Our grief is an offering, so that pain may move through us and breathe love into old stories, allowing for depth of connection and availability to life. In being witnessed, there is a willingness to declare the self as loved enough to heal for self and other. To dare into existence the continuation of healing the unseen wounds and felt restrictions that distort perspective - distort the ease of muscles willing to express and make love on this earth. I believe there is belonging, breath, and transcendence to be found in grieving with one another. Spaces where the processing of human existence is cherished, where we can fall apart without weighing one another down. Spaces where our emotional beings are not engraved into the flesh and kept hidden, as if the business of emotionality were complete, while in reality it lays latent. Unprocessed threads producing smiles that make business as usual easy and tidy. Spaces for forgiveness to be planted.
written in the summer of 2019, while driving from Yosemite to LA
image captured by beloved Rhys Tivey in Yosemite