My mind gets busy at times. I forget to just allow myself to sit quietly and breathe experiencing being in my body instead of a few steps outside it. Dusk especially brings a reminder of sadder times but surprisingly lately I am in a more peaceful accepting place and when I can deepen into just being at this time I feel more deeply connected.
I just read a few posts by a person who recently had her father die suddenly…and was reminded of what a chaotic process loss and grief can be, especially if we don’t get much time to prepare and even then, in my experience denial may steal in.
There is a huge adjustment process to undergo and it takes time and many mixed emotions and body symptoms for grief is a full body blow especially if our attachment or wounding around the person is deep and grieving can be complicated by these.
I’m grateful grieving is integrated within me to a degree..I didn’t realise that for a long time I was reacting in grief..Anger is grief, sadness is grief, disorientation is grief, losing our moorings is part of grief, as is feeling lost or abandoned, addiction is grief….I wish more people realised this then maybe we may not need to suffer and run so much.
Grief can over take us too…ideally that should happen for a while but letting go is important as well…Not fighting a reality life decreed must take place perhaps for another purpose…because only with this acceptance can we truly deepen and soften rather than remain hard combatative and bitter or be sucked into the most primal of unforgiving depths. That said, if that is part of someone’s path so be it.
For many grieving may be an Underworld experience while for others death may be felt as a release. I certainly experienced that with my sister’s passing 6 years ago and with my Mums just over 28 months ago. I felt Mum in the rain and breeze a few nights after she passed. I felt her in the butterfly that came to rest on my living room curtain for 3 days before dying in the week after she passed. I feel her now as I write this as darkness grows though it’s warm and cosy inside my home and chest…release for me has come slowly and at times through great floods of emotion alone, with Jasper, with my sister and Kat my therapist…But it has come and slowly I have found my peace most especially at dusk.
In our culture we are not encouraged to give full expression to grief. Last week my nephew told me how he threw himself on his mother’s body after she died. I left 2 hours before to get some rest but the family told him to pull himself together. If you knew what he had endured in his life that reaction was necessary and entirely appropriate.
I wish more people were supported in grief and yet there is a depth and solitariness to the experience too..this is as it should be..But it would be good if the extent and necessity of the process could be acknowledged so that those enduring it did not have to ever feel so exiled or lonely within the aftermath and depths of loss and letting go.
.
Emerging From The Dark Night 