People do not pass away. They die and then they stay. -Naomi Shihab Nye

Your sadness is welcome here.  So is your exhaustion, your irritability, your clumsiness, your cloudy mind, and your anxiety.  I invite to rest here a while your desire to forgive, your refusal to forgive, your tearfulness, your tearlessness, your deep abiding faith, your heart-rending doubt, your looping memories, your drawing a blank, your magical thinking, your cynicism, and your child-like wonder.  There is room here for the lump in your throat, your guilt, your shame, your regret, your celebration, your stifled laughter, your fear of betrayal, and that sensation in your torso that is somehow hollow and heavy, frozen and on fire, a dull ache and a sharp stab. Your righteous indignation that, “It’s not supposed to be this way,” your rationalization that “It happens to us all,” your fed-up-ness with clichés, and your impatience with people trying to fix you are not a problem in this moment.  Please call in your balking at finality, your sense of the surreal, your awe, your fear, and your longing.  Most importantly, bring that familiar and haunting, self-deprecating voice that says, “I think I’m doing it wrong.”  It’s all welcome here.  You are welcome here. 

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When our life is fundamentally altered through death or deep change and we experience the often profound and radical break with what is “normal” or how things are “supposed to be,” grief is the process through which we heal, transform, and again, slowly, find equilibrium. The fundamental work of grief happens in three broad, relational categories of meaning: identity, worldview, and life-rhythm. In other words, much of grief is holding in our bodies and hearts the simple but profound questions: “Who am I now?” “What matters to me?” (and/or “What does this mean?”) and “How do I do this?” We might then say that grieving is the skill of consciously, repeatedly, patiently, courageously, and compassionately turning toward our felt experience of the instability and vulnerability intrinsic to reorganizing our lives and our relationship to the dead (or changed). In this context, grief is not the injury, but the treatment, not the fragmentation, but the gathering again into wholeness. Therefore, grief is not to be avoided, but met, listened to, even revered. One benefit of framing grieving as a skill is that it communicates the possibility of active cultivation and maturation. This framework empowers each of us to choose our grief—not begrudgingly or with resentment, but with resolve and whole-hearted commitment. 

We burn out, not because we don’t care, but because we don’t grieve...because we have allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care. –Rachel Naomi Remen, MD