Oh hello!
How are you? In this moment? If you truly pause to ask and actually listen?
I write to you from a desk slightly too large for this space, nestled under a window over looking a paddock punctuated by glorious gum trees. Even though I can’t see horses, I know they are there. There is a breeze and bird song and there is incense lingering in the air. The afternoon light is beckoning me outside to play but first …
I must inquire too. So I draw myself in…further and further in, away from the temptations of distraction, from my periphery home to my core, to feel what is truly there, beyond the surface of my default answer to How Am I?
There is an ache. I feel it mostly in my heart. Sometimes my whole chest feels heavy. This is not a permanent feeling - none are - this is simply information my body is feeding back to me so I can formulate an honest response to the inquiry. And this is where I wish to connect with you from, from the depths of this trip called BEING HUMAN.
I know this feeling to be grief. Oh how fond I have become of my grief! I am no longer afraid she will swallow me hole or that I will become so completely and utterly consumed, never to rise up off my knees again.
I am astounded by the many disguises but now without a doubt, when I tug at a single thread of tenderness and allow an unravelling to occur, it’s always the same. It’s always grief just there, to remind me ….. how bloody much I love. You don’t really grieve what you don’t really love. Well not in my experience anyway.
My wish is that we weren’t so afraid of our grief. That with some tending and befriending, with guidance and most wisely, integration, grief can become such a powerful ally. Grief has become a guide for me, back to Love. I give Love a capital L because I am referring to the over-aching sense of Love that knows no boundaries or conditions. Not skinny love.
Let me share an example . . .
This weekend I was in a 2 day yoga intensive, aptly named Nurturing your Authentic Self. We did a lot of processing and one practice brought up so much rage in me. If you haven’t heard of Internal Family Systems, phwoar! I was so fucking angry. I let me body express this. Move push pull reach yield make ugly faces, roar & repeat. Once the anger had it’s air time, the tears came.
Under the anger was grief. I have found this to be true, personally and professional, pretty much always. Under these big gnarly feelings that we so often avoid, is grief. Grief being our natural and normal response to a loss. Any loss! A loss of freedom, of love, of hope, of friendship, of trust, of faith in humanity even.
Normally we would stop here. Go no further. Back away from THE BIG FEELING. Reach for something. Anything!!!!! But, I have learned to stay. And do you know the reward for staying? Love.
As Frances Weller says, Grief & Love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us there there is no love that does not contain loss.
Once grief had her air time, I returned to love. Under all of it, there is this remembering of this ‘never not here kinda Love’. The benevolent force we are born with. The all pervading, big wide unencumbered Love.
This is the ache of being human though, feeling it all, remembering and then forgetting again. But we gotta do whatever we can to remember!
Again, and again, and again. Humanity is depending on it. If only we would #givegriefachance
My teacher also said something along the lines of
‘these words are placeholders, until they become your lived experience’
So if what I have said so far doesn’t make sense, that’s ok.
Me & the time and space and reverence I hold for grief isn’t going anywhere. I’ll be here, if and when you are ready to get to know your grief (which is as unique as you!) better.
The current state of this grief illiterate world is fuelling my reason for persevering with this work. Global and local atrocities have me even more convinced of the necessity that we - you and me - must tend to our grief. At some stage (preferably this life time) and when one feels safe to do so. A sense of safety is paramount.
Ponder this - we all love & we will all lose. Consumer culture would like us to subscribe to buying things, replacing things, bigger shinnier even more unnecessary things to fill the gaping whole loss leaves. However, this renders most of us depressed, anxious, addicted, angry, bitter and beyond.
What if we had the collective courage to peek underneath what the insert symptom here is? I imagine we would find almost always find a loss.
Loss of identity. Loss of a loved one. Loss of land. Loss of agency. Loss of innocence. Loss of basic human rights. Loss of something, someone, or someplace that was loved.
This is where we normally stop freeze reverse rarely allowing ourselves to GO BEYOND. This perpetuates a whole world of hurt. You only have to look around and see, the whole world is hurting.
But there is something INCREDIBLE that happens when we allow ourselves to go into the belly of the beast . . . and then beyond. We cycle all the way back . . . to love.
Imagine if we chose to give grief a chance?
What cycles would we break?
What world would we create?
I have grieved so much these last 5 or so years. It has not been easy, gosh there were times were I genuinely didn’t think I’d make it through because I had no tools but
BECAUSE OF GRIEF
I am more connected, compassionate & clear than I have been in my entire life.
I wish this for everyone.
If you or someone you know would like to join me for my final offering for 2023, we have a community grief gathering this Friday December 8. Rest assured, this WILL NOT be a workshop like my weekend that just was, this will be a very gentle evening to tend to our grieving hearts through ritual, reflecting and remembrance.
With this invite, I shall sign off. The sun is well and truly down and rest is calling.
I am thankful for your being, I am thankful for your support and I am also here if you’d like to share anything.
Big love x
I can no longer tell
whether this grief
currently crushing
my rib cage is mine
or yours.
But perhaps
that’s the point.
Maybe the illusion of separateness
has dissolved
revealing the truth
to those
who didn’t
or couldn’t
(or wouldn’t)
see it.
Maybe we can no longer
deny the ways in which
we belong to each other.
// Fara Tucker