A meditation on Loss, Love and Grief, two sides of the same coin by Amanda

“It’s a fearful thing to love what death can touch.” – Judah Halevi

An Invitation to pause

The following post is more of a letter from my heart than a teaching or helpful tips. I

hope from wherever you come, my words can invite you in, cause you to pause, take a breath,

and offer space for the ways grief can fill our lives even as inopportune as they might be. I

recognized how nuanced grief can be, and my perspective speaks to just one facet. All facets

exist and are welcome- take what is yours to receive from my words. Thank you for being here.

An Inevitable paradox

Perhaps you’ve arrived at this post because of your own recent loss, or perhaps you

have yet to experience loss and the curiosity and freight of what it’s like has also drawn you

here. Both are welcome, as grief is one of the few human experiences which are universal and

inevitable. This makes the work of one’s grief paradoxical. As, no one is excepted from

experiencing loss in this life, and yet no one will ever truly know the exact nature of your loss

except for you. I think of how even within families, different members share different

experiences together, they live through different sides of a family story, each being informed

and shaped by each other together. Just like your love and memory of a loved one is yours and

yours alone, so is your grief. This can be both lonely and precious.

Grief: a different sort of animal

I often experience working with grief as tangibly different than other concerns my

clients bring to the room. Grief causes a certain pause and trepidation in me. Don’t get me

wrong, I’m not afraid of the sorrow my clients bring, but rather I respect it, I sense its fullness

even in fleeting glimpses. I often cry with these clients. I give them my tears as a gift, to say

even though I’ve never met their person, I see how much they mattered. I see their value even

though they are no longer here. To be let into this space feels sacred, and I treasure these

moments of vulnerability and connection. This is a bitter joy that makes grief work especially

precious to me as a therapist.

Holding the weight

In the English language grief and gravity share the same Latin root word – Gravis, which

means “to have weight”. I find this a poignant expression of the experience of grieving as so

many people express a sinking or heaviness within them after loss. Grief at its lightest might

feel like the twinge of a dull ache reminding us of the vacancy within our lives where our loved

on once filled. Grief in heavier doses, however, can feel like an unended plunge into darkness,

threatening to cast us into depths unknown. There is a reason why we often feel numb to loss,

as the reality of its impact is overwhelming. Grief truly does carry weight.

Unspent Love

So, what is it exactly which we bare together? Actor Andrew Garfield once described the

weight of his own grief during an interview on The Late-Night Show as “unspent love”. I find

this such a profound yet warming observation. How often have we made an enemy of a feeling

when it causes us pain rather than ask it what it would like us to hear? Framing grief as unspent

love gives voice to the love that has yet to be given, yet to be received, yet to bear fruit in its

season. Unspent love carries weight, but perhaps it feels different than simply being viewed as

sadness. Grief as unspent love holds so much more room for the fullness of our yearnings.

Grief is to be felt not fixed

If we shift from sadness to unspent love, this may shift a common sense to “fix” the

grief. Love seems to give us more permission to feel, because it’s already there rather than

entering the unfamiliar territory and uncertain depths of sorrow. However, both still might be

very real realities, that have only one path to resolve: feeling. This is perhaps the hardest reality

to break to those newly exposed to grief, but it is not something we can fix or bypass. Our only

option is to live with it. In this way, grief is like an uninvited guest, occupying our space. It is a

contract you never agreed to or wished for, yet there they are, cluttering your space, and

displacing you from where you once felt at home. The pain and discomfort of grief tends to

bring us keenly awareness of our life. We live in a world that is quick to numb, distract, and

resolve our discomfort. Many of us live beyond our capacity as we are profoundly overloaded

with information, obligations, and busyness. Our resting baseline for functioning has been

pressed continually into new limits, which further disconnect us from ourselves. Yet grief forces

us to slow down, even drags us down to a complete halt at times. Sometimes in that slowness,

that jarring halt it feels like our existence is rendered to our moment-to-moment awareness.

We feel we have no choice but to just be with our breath, we have no choice but to just inhabit

this second. Which makes complete sense why people seek help. I often hear the lament of

uncertainty, of how they are not sure how they can persist under such strain. I wish there was

another way, but I urge you, grief is not your enemy. I’m so sorry for the sorrow, I’m so sorry

for how it knocks to breath from your lungs and drags you deeper than you could imagine, but

the grief itself is not your enemy. You see, to numb the grief, to disconnect completely from the

pain, is to disconnect from the very parts of you that make you human- a capacity to love and

be impacted by that love. There’s sorrow because they mattered. There’s pain because you

have loved and felt someone once sown into your life, torn away from you.

A Piece of My own Sorrow

As I’ve written this post, I’ve had my own near brush with grief unfold simultaneously.

As I straddle the line between being with and without them, I’m reminded that this is not my

first loss in my life and certainly will not be the last. While this grief will not be life derailing, like

some of you may have experienced (or are experiencing), it has still left me winded and dazed

by its impact. These past few days, I’ve chosen to hold it softly, as I hold the memory and

relationship of my loved one softly. I listen to her, my grief, as she tells me there is unspent love

longing to be expressed. I give myself permission to have inevitably missed opportunities. It’s

only human to think of the “I wish I called mores” and “ I should have visited more” thoughts.

Our vision in retrospect is often all too clear and there will always things one could have done. I

could have pushed it down withheld my tears, but instead I chose to let it move through me as I

needed, I chose to share vulnerably and invite those I trust in to hold me while I hold my grief. I

was able to uphold it’s weight through the love around me.

Grief is the weight of a sleeping child

Maybe your grief is one that stands on your chest, crushing you beneath its weight

whenever you slow down or lay in bed to rest. Maybe your grief is the uninvited guest who

hangs around your neck constantly dragging you down as you move. Or maybe, your grief is as

Anne Micheals describes in her book Fugitive Pieces as “Grief is the exact weight of a sleeping

child” may you carry it with tenderness. May your grief be felt and held in love.