If we can’t feel into the heart of grief, we can’t truly move on to experience hope and joy. We can’t be present to what is now, and what is next, because we are bound by the loss and sorrow that holds us to the past. Grief has to flow. It has to be carried, not just by you, but by the others with you, by your community, until it transforms to the next rightful calling of your heart to action.
The intensity of my grief hits the mountains across Eclipse Sound, and then echoes throughout Arctic. There’s nobody around. I can barely see the town below the hill, nestled within the valley of barren tundra, across from the tiny airport, my only access to the south. I’m alone amidst this desolate landscape and there’s nowhere to hide. No trees or buildings or distractions. It’s just me in the depths of my suffering and all my faults and mistakes of the past are exposed underneath the spotlight of the midnight sun.
I have lived in the shadow of loss—the kind of loss that can paralyze you forever.I have grieved like a professional mourner—in every waking moment, draining every ounce of my life force.I died—without leaving my body.But I came back, and now it’s your turn.I have learned to remember my past—without living in it.I am strong, electric, and alive, because I chose to dance, to laugh, to love, and tolive again.I have learned that you can’t re-create the life you once had—you have toreinvent a life for yourself.And that reinvention is a gift, not a curse.I believe your future self is a work of art and that science can help you create it. If you’re lost . . . if you’re gone . . . if you can barely absorb the words on thispage . . . I want you to hold this truth in your heart: when it’s your time to go, you won’t wish you had spent more time grieving; you’ll wish you had spent more time living.That’s why I’m here. And why you are, too. Let’s live like our lives depend on it.
Dancing in the rain is better than despairing in the storm.
Every road leads to sorrow. All aspects that make life beautiful – friendship, love, art, and truth – will end. All aspects that make life hideous – pain, poverty, illness, betrayal, hate, crime, war – will also end. The fact that human life is a mere blip on a cosmic scale is no reason for personal angst as we came from nothingness and will return to the great void that birthed us.
Time possesses emotional potency. For persons whom suffer from of bereavement, time possesses a healing capacity. Passage of time cures heartache by dimming the mind’s attunement to painful occurrences. For some people, the passage of time is akin to placing a welcomed physical boundary between themselves and past horrors. Passage of time allows us to forget and the ability to forget is medicinal. Time acts as a mental barrier between our present mental state and the pain that we once felt.
But in all of the sadness, when you’re feeling that your heart is empty, and lacking, You’ve got to remember that grief isn’t the absence of love. Grief is the proof that love is still there.