Free post: Does it ever end, or is grief the truth of our times?
Deaths, illness, lost loves, friendships ended...this week I spiraled into my grief.
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It is currently the last day of our five-day class break here in Norway. If I haven’t mentioned it already, we do five days on and five days off. The rest days are when we go into town to resupply food, relax and have self-care, finish up projects, etc. Our first day off we relaxed and had a sauna in the evening (this is how we bathe in the wild…in a sauna, with icy cold plunges between sweats). I cooked that night…I made a delicious sheep stew over the fire pit and seasoned it with coconut milk, curry & cilantro.
Our second rest day was a town day…we went in for groceries, to do some things at the library, and sort out bus & train tickets for our way home. It was our last trip to town for the rest of the immersion, which means stocking up on food & supplies for 13 days.
As we were waiting for the taxi back to the land, I got a text from my mom. She said:
Daughter, I don’t know when you’re going to see this, but your Tía Rosario passed away this morning.
My first response was a deep sigh of despair. This is my third aunt/uncle to pass away in three years, my last aunt on my Venezuelan side, and the last of my family still living in Venezuela.
I felt a little numb about it…on the one hand, it was her time. She had been bedridden and very sick for many years now. She wasn’t herself, she was suffering, and she was in her 80s. She lived a good & long life, even though we would prefer to have her with us and in health.
On the other hand, it feels like death has become normal. It feels like the difficult things in life are piling up and the pile is not getting smaller. I honestly can’t remember a completely carefree time in my life for many years now…even being in the forest on the other side of the world, mostly offline. I thought the skills we were doing here would be the hard part, but turns out the rest of the world does not get left behind. We carry it with us in our hearts and in our connections.
I want to reach out to my friends for support, but I feel like a broken record.
Hey loves! So, another horrible thing happened in my life…more prayers? more support? more processing?
I’m getting tired of my own needs…I’m just exhausted.
Sometimes, I wonder if it will ever end? Or is this the hand we’ve been dealt as souls who chose to come in for this time on Earth?
I look around at the world and see so much sickness of the soul. I see people working jobs they hate, choosing to stay in unfulfilling or abusive relationships, talking about the latest TV show because they don’t know what else to say, drinking into the night because it’s their only way of being in community…
I see people who are living, but don’t want to.
I see people craving community & not knowing where to find it.
I feel the despair in the air…that same despair that I felt when I got the news about my aunt because…I really don’t know what else to do or how to feel or how to make things better…it breaks my heart and I wonder:
Is this it?
Even for people like me who are dedicating their lives to a new way, a better way than the one we were given…are we just going to keep getting slammed with more to grieve, more to endure, more to numb ourselves over?
Will we ever catch a break?
The next morning I sat for Tea, like I do every morning, and about four or five bowls in it all started to come out. The waters of my grief started flowing…slowly at first, a little trickle here and there that I could suppress, especially right now given that I am sharing a small space with five people…
I started to think about my mom. I was so worried for her. Her next door neighbor died a week before. She was alone. I’m in Norway, my sister is in London and my dad is in Hong Kong…she was all alone. I also knew how much she had been dreading this moment…her last sibling. This is the moment when she becomes the last one living in her generation…
I began wailing as I worried more and more about her and wished that I could be there. Why am I in Norway off grid learning how to cook over fire & tan furs?! Wtf?? If I were in the US, I’d be on a plane to go support her!!
I started to cry all the grief that I’ve put on hold the past few months…and there was a lot of it. With all my travel & things to coordinate in order to be present leading a retreat in Colombia, sandwiched by two trips to Scandinavia, I had put A LOT on pause. There was a primary friendship that ended, a severe health crisis with my father, saying goodbye to my beloved, the death of my aunt…and the older things too, the deaths of my aunt, uncle & grandma in the past couple years, the loss of my homeland to a corrupt government, the pain of the Earth & her children who are dying from our greed & ignorance, the fact that we’re all so freakin’ afraid to be loved, to be happy & to be free…
I wept all day. I let it out. I set the grief free.
I woke up the next morning and hauled our communal water jug to the snow covered creek to fill it with water. As I pulled the sled back up the hill I could feel the toll the grief portal took on my body. My heart ached, my lungs were strained & my body was tender and weak.
I spent the rest of the day in deep self care, nourishing the temple that had witnessed and processed the sorrow of so many.
I believe that many of us sensitive beings are waking up to the grief & pain of the world first. We have the courage to feel what others numb. And there is a LOT of untended, repressed pain in our world.
So yes…as I ask my friends and contemplate over Tea, I believe that yes, grief IS the truth of our times. It’s a dam that is about to burst…and we are feeling and processing the first little streams of water leaking through. There will be more, and it is intense, but we must remember that at the end of every storm is a rainbow.
Even though we may see, feel & hear the pain all around us, if we trust, have patience & look closely, we will see the beauty as well.
If you are one of these sensitive people, I thank you & honor your service to the world. It is not one to be taken lightly. It takes serious heart & bravery to feel in these times. It is so needed, our world is starving for our emotion.
At the same time. don’t forget to nourish yourself, offer the grief to the Earth so you don’t have to hold it yourself, and move forward. Grief is not supposed to be a permanent state…it is a process of healing and coming back to life.
Look for the rainbows.
My mom messaged me the day after my tía Rosario was buried. She said she prayed for her the night before and woke up to a garden full of orchids…they bloomed overnight, and she knew her sister’s soul was at peace.
Thank you, tía Rosario for being my aunt and for inspiring this post that I hope touches the hearts of many. Te amo.