Remembering that grief is part of love.
Image of Sequoia Trees in Kings Canyon National Park. On a birthday hike, I soaked up all the lessons from nature on the enduring cycles of birth, growth, death. And how even in death, nature nurtures new life.
It's midyear, the beginning of Summer in the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of Winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Through all the highs and lows of life, the pages on the calendar turn, and with these turns, the seasons change day by day.
We also experience these cycles in our personal lives and community. Endings of cycles can bring grief for what was, what could have been, what will never be.
We can experience grief not just in death but in the ending or transition of relationships, jobs, moves, as a child or parent enters different life stages. When what we hoped for or worked for does not come to fruition.
Grief attends to us in so many ways, a companion of love along the journey of life.
As we don't talk enough about grief, have public spaces for grief rituals, and do much attending to grief, except for funerals. So it's hard to notice let alone quantify our own grief, the grief of those around us, our societal grief. We celebrate beginnings and avoid the complications of endings. Though life is a cycle and all of us will leave this life the same way. Though nothing lasts forever, but we don't plan for or know what to gravitate towards, what to do, how to honor when cycles end.
The amount of grief we are currently holding as individuals, communities, and collectively is part of the struggle to reckon with the world, actually to reckon with ourselves, as it is. What if we could better tend to our grief?
Three Resources on Grief
I've been drawn to a trilogy of grief-themed resources recently:
Renegade Grief by Carla Fernandez - A book that pushes back on our death-denying culture, treating grief as something to respect rather than pity, to be held with respect and creativity.
All There Is podcast with Anderson Cooper - Prompted by his mother's death, Anderson revisits family losses including his brother's suicide. These public conversations of grief create doorways into deeper connection. Having lost one of my brothers to suicide and another to cancer, I am gobsmacked with the early podcast episodes where he narrates his experience cleaning out his mother’s apartment and also his conversation with Stephen Colbert. These public conversations of grief are palpable and a doorway into another way of connecting with each other.
"Grief Has Arrived" by Thandiwe Nqada - The author reads her poem shared on Instagram, its a tender portrayal of grief that acknowledges the depth and potential of the experience. From her book of poetry Time to Mourn.
Creating Through Endings
Given one of the tasks of our time is to create the future together, I ask myself with both grace and challenge: how might I hold space for grief even as I imagine and dream? How do I tend to what is ending while nurturing what wants to be born?
One of the ways I tend to my grief is by choosing to create.
In 2018, as I was embarking on a series of decisions that felt like they would hurt so badly I might die, I also chose to write my book. This wasn't coincidental - it was necessary. I decided, if part of me will die this year then part of me will be born. In tandem, I made painful decisions and stuck with them, grieving what was ending. And in the mornings, I would wake at 4 or 5 am and write toward a future state, toward what could be.
It was a way to balance the death of parts of myself - my identity, my ways of being in the world - while simultaneously creating toward a new version of my life. The creating didn't erase the grief; it held space alongside it. Both the ending and the beginning deserved attention, deserved tending.
Perhaps this is what love asks of us: not to rush past the grief, but to companion it, to accompany it, to welcome grief as a guest. To honor what we're releasing even as we reach toward what calls us forward. To create not as escape from difficulty, but as devotion to the fullness of being human - the breaking open and the rebuilding, the goodbye and the hello, the love that remains even when everything else changes.
What season are you in at this time? How are you tending to the cycles of change in your life?