“Grief dares us to love once more.”
Terry Tempest Williams
What do we mean by grief or to grieve? Are we talking about the loss of something that we once had or maybe something that we never had, but always longed for?
We feel the intense feelings of loss, associated with the bereavement of a loved one. They are no longer there, our whole environment and way of being in the world can feel fundamentally different. In this sense, grief is often viewed as the absence of something or someone.
However, grief can also offer us the invitation to explore our relationship to what has been lost or never had. In this sense grief asks us to explore what it means to be alive, in that the loss of a loved one may be the first time we have considered that birth, death and the inevitability of loss are inextricably linked to being human. It reminds us that despite all our future plans, we will have to let all of it go in the end.
In this respect, grief challenges us to dig deep and engage with that which is most authentic in us and to ask ourselves the most difficult questions, in terms of who we are, how we have lived our lives and what is most important to us. As my own therapist would often say “grief brings us back to who we really are!”
In this sense, grief asks us to be shaped by a larger existential truth, one which can often be experienced as uncompromising, as it requires us to face patterns of avoidance and the heroic striving of the ego.
This opening to a larger truth, can allow us to connect to a deeper humility in what it means to be alive. That we come to face that we are only here a finite time and how do we then want to use this precious life?
I am not suggesting here, that our lives should be lived with being preoccupied with grief or sorrow, but rather to allow ourselves the means of facing these moments consciously. This then, offers us a quality of presence with ourselves, and the ground available to face what challenges us. It is through this movement, which then becomes its own freedom and one might say, the secret of being fully alive.
(Weller, F., 2015. The Wild Edge of Sorrow. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.)