If You're Coping with Grief...
Some of us are coping with grief, this holiday season.
I'm among them.
In a few days, it will be my dearest friend Jane's yahrzeit -- the anniversary of her passing. We lost her just last year.
Jane was my best friend Jeffry's partner. She was like a sister to me, a wonderful companion in so many things we both loved. I miss her terribly.
It doesn't matter when we lose the people we love, we feel their absence the most during the times we most loved sharing with them.
Jane will always be with me at the Winter Lights at the Arb, and whenever I go to the Guthrie Theater. And every December I will accompany her again on her unexpectedly swift journey away from us, we who are still here experiencing this physical existence.
I'm so grateful for all my mindful years of coming into tender, witnessing, resonant presence. They have allowed me to fully feel my grief, and to keep the walls of my heart low, so when my felt grief rises it can spill over and return to its truest form -- my love -- and spread that love into the Universe ... rather than leaving me drowning inside of it.
I'm so grateful for my Thriving Village mates and for the Thrive Roadmap. Without these, I would never have been able to Be With and alchemize every grief of my life in this most deeply honoring and healing way.
If you're grieving the loss of a loved one this season (or at any other time), I hope this helps comfort and accompany you in your time of heart-tender sadness:
The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
-- Ellen Bass
Please know that my heart is with you, during this tender time.
With tender care for all of us who are grieving the loss of someone we love this holiday season (or any other time),
www.facebook.com/realvikamiller