Grief is Love

You may know that today we close #griefawarenessweek. It's been so beautiful hearing people's stories of grief and loss. No matter what form your grief comes in, I always find mirrors to my own experience. 

This week I have been reflecting on what grief has come to mean to me. Here are my thoughts… 

Grief is Love. 

The longing and the loss, the searching and the sorrow, the fear and the fury are each an expression of the deep Love that I have known. Grief is as normal as breathing. I have no more control over it than I do falling in love. Grief is all consuming, taking me to depths previously unknown and to an intimacy with life I had only imagined.

Grief not only says that I dared to feel, but that in the face of loss I chose not to turn away, not to distract or distance or deflect. Being in total surrender to Grief is a willingness to be taken into the arms Love, to let myself cry and howl and scream and somehow laugh and trust and heal.

Grief means feeling it all. Welcoming it all.

Grief is building a life from the ashes of what I had expected, rising slowly and gently like the phoenix. Grief is being taken to my knees in humility, to realise all that I cannot know and all that I cannot see. To walk through the world carrying grief in my heart is to have touched the fragility of life and to have somehow survived. To trust and to thrive. 

The world is longing for us to feel our grief to its very edges, she is ready and waiting to catch our tears as they fall, she is aching for us to let our hearts be as big as they can possibly be. 

Somehow through grief itself I have expanded my capacity to hold myself through it all. 

Life and Death.

Love and Loss.

Grief and Gratitude.

Grief is Love.