My grief is intimate and personal. In many ways, it becomes a series of awarenesses revealing the once tightly held mysteries I carried within.
Your grief is personal. Your grief is yours and no one can tell you aren’t grieving correctly. It’s confusing when we hear someone tell us to move on from a place we happily lived or abandon the once warmed hearth where our hope and contentment dwelled tranquilly.
Phrases like letting go or moving on are easy to say, as if it were just that simple. Physically letting go of what was familiar is the hardest and scariest awareness after a penetrating loss. It’s fair to say we know this by heart. And I know with the absence of someone, I’m left inside the emotionally bereft existence I must somehow come to terms with. An existence I’m not interested in getting over with, but to fully recognize, as I’m forced to begin a journey everyone at some point must walk.
And so it is with all we hold dear; our emotional attachments, active passions, and all the glimmering parts to our unique world. And amazingly, we discover the grief reflecting off the pieces, having no bordering shape or outline, fill us with the haunting pain of what is gone , what can never be, and no more.
No more phone calls. No more planning for the day in the ways you were previously preparing for. No more trusting in who, what or where you placed much of your energy called belief.
Grief is a wide field of mist and flowers, where in the center was a tree. As I falter through the haze, I find a shining joyful hour. As I stumble through the days, I cherish the bright, unforgettable leaves of what used to be.
Sometimes heartache itself can become a soothing and predictable place to retreat, and yet even sorrow circulates and moves. While there is no timetable for mourning or processing —and it is appropriate to take our own time— it also may be important to dissuade any desire to remain in the same place permanently only because it’s grown familiar.
As you walk through the field, you will arrive at sole points when you sense it is time to process a little more as you bridge to a deepening space and have a poignant look around. I think as we grieve over time, we are not actually letting go and moving past, but entering an Opening. An Opening where there waits many great revealings intended for you, and you alone.
Going beyond and further into a sacred place of understanding What Was. At times in the beginning, we hesitate or pull back because we don’t previously know what lies before each personal point, and we may fear what others call letting go, means Forgetting altogether. And we are not wanting to forget. And so, Life reminds us that we are still here. We needn’t ever forget or get over it, or absolutely and completely let it all go, but we must go on and allow our suffering to soften as we enter the place of deeper knowing, and because the frailest of things keep living.
The time of your Remembering is the holy of holies —the inner sanctuary of observance —where remaining in connection with what was once held close and dear continues.
And your conversations may continue spiritually. Mine certainly do. Your dreams may transform and lead you somewhere else. Looking back, I can observe how my perishing hopes and longings sometimes guided me into other earthly planes.
Last night, I realized I carry so many deaths inside me. Many types of death beyond the kind of losing a loved one. And at the same time, while I’m alive, there are new breaths always being born. The death of my faith rendered new beliefs. The death of one pertinent need transformed into the desire to pursue other forms of fulfillment. Throughout life, I have sat bedside to the dying parts inside me. After they’re gone, I visit their graves from time to time, lingering in introspection or tribute before I move on to the task of daily living.
REFELCTION
Amorphous Grief, you are as real and concise as anything I’ve come to understand. We’ve heard it being called many things and described in multiple ways. Phantom, ambiguous and obscure. These are the mysteries inside each one; the dreams we nurtured yet never came into fruition are like the premature deaths of a something loved and prized. Broken trusts leave us weeping when no has one died, but our connection to someone and their promises are no longer holding us securely.
What amorphous or ambiguous grief are you mourning right now?
"Ambiguous grief." I am glad you put a name on it. Often we think we can only grieve losing a thing or a person, but the loss of mental or emotional "possessions" are felt as deeply or maybe even more so.
I can remember sitting in my empty condo in Houston after my divorce in the 70's. A deep sadness filled me, not so much about the divorce, but the loss of innocence about how life unfolded. We were in our late 20's, early 30's and we were supposed to get married, become mature, and live happily ever after. Restless spirits in restless times sent us careening off course and off script.
Both of us were ambiguous about marriage but felt social pressure to conform. We were ambiguous about the responsibilities of being married or of even being adults. We were ambiguous about hurting other people or each other. We were selfishly hedonistic and saw no real reason to be otherwise. We were mere phantoms living etherial lives.
Amorphous and ambiguous means without a form or shape... lacking substance. Somewhere along the way I had left my body and was simply floating through life without direction or purpose. While no actual death had occurred, I sensed a deep yearning for a sense of Self that I had lost contact with somewhere along the way. There was no defining event, just a series of empty feelings of ennui and loss of passion. I suppose my spirit had died, but not dramatically instead simply withering away from neglect.
Until that moment, I had been able to tell myself that my sadness was temporary and perhaps just the price paid for being alive. It was the emptiness of the place that pierced me deeply allowing me a sense of the emptiness within me as well. My empty ambiguity peaked its way into my consciousness and haunted me for years asking for witness and recognition. Psychologist Matt Licata speaks of the need to "metabolize" change, transforming it into substance that nourishes us. It took me quite a few years of rumination to discover how to nurture my soul and to transform the amorphous into the morphic and be embodied. Otherwise, surely I would have starved.
Grieving loved ones and "Broken trusts leave us weeping when no has one died, but our connection to someone and their promises are no longer holding us securely." It's a lot to take on in this lifetime, especially if you are an Empath...everyone and everything affects you on a deeper level. My only wish is that the ones that judge me for taking too long to grieve a dear friend, former boyfriend, former fiance who passed away unexpectedly...these personal things should always be considered our own journey towards learning more about our beautiful heart and how it will always love everyone that blessed our lives with joy.