Grief and owning your truth
Healing isn't a battle, its a romance
In March I wrote about death, and grieving, and healing in such a public way it caused a shift in the earth I was standing on. all of a sudden everything I thought I knew, the people I thought I knew, no longer existed. I remember that morning, seeing the results of my vulnerability, and feeling sick to my stomach. I stared at my phone for a long time not knowing what to do. I could hear my husband in the kitchen making breakfast and I knew I couldn't talk to him.
I walked out of our apartment building in my pyjamas and bare feet (in March), sat in my car and called a dear friend. I didn't know who I was going to call, who would help me make sense of this mess, and by some miracle my fingers dialed her number and she just happened to have a few free minutes.
I don't think I said a word for 10 minutes. I just sobbed in a way that made my entire body hurt.
Today is the first day of fall and it feels like grief.
I don't know how to write this, or even if I should, my fingers shaking over the keyboard. But the only way I know how to deal with the pain, the hurt, the feelings inside of me is to write about them. I write about them so I don't go crazy.
Today feels like grief and I don't know why I'm missing him so much today. I don't know why today of all days I'm remembering all the little things and they are taking my breath away. I could blame it on the TV show character death I watched last night, or how this time of year always makes me more introspective.
I'm remembering how after he died, I said out loud "Whatever souls were made of, I think his and mine were the same" and I still believe that.
I read a quote a while ago, and I wish I could find it again, about how there are 3 different kinds of soul mates. There is the person you fall in love with, the person you stay in love with and the person you can't stay with because its too painful. You're too destructive to each other, but yet they teach you something you need to know.
I think he was that kind, the last kind. Because we destroyed each other, but I can't help but think about how our souls were the same.
I'm remembering how people kind of assumed how I would feel. I was allowed to be angry until I wasn't. When I was honest I was disinvited from remembering, from feeling sad. And a lot of the time I didn't know what I felt because I was constantly trying to be what everyone told me to be. Some days I was angry, and some days I was sad in the purest ways, and sometimes it was both, and some days I'm grateful for how far I've come and some days I feel like I've made no progress. And here's the thing about healing, its not about one or the other. I thought it was, and I was wrong. I thought I could be angry or sad. healing is an and/both. It's about feeling both things, all things, and letting them create this sacred dance within you.
I'm learning how to hold my sacred ground. When things blew up, when I stopped writing, I learned the gift of not explaining myself. At first it was because I was afraid, and then it was because I didn't need to. I didn't need them to understand, or give me permission to grieve. No one else had a monopoly over what I was feeling, over death. Not needing permission from anyone else brought me to a place of being by myself. I was alone, and I learned there that the most powerful thing a woman can do is not explain herself. the most powerful, radical thing I could have done was stop asking for permission or looking for validation and learn how to give myself permission, to be ok with going home to only myself day after day and being ok.
So this is what I'm remembering: the pain healed me. the pain split me open in a way I've never been opened before and it felt like hot death and I wanted to die because it felt like a part of me was torn away. but then the pain healed me. not soon, it took a while. it's still healing me. but the pain was like surgery and it opened me up to a new part of myself and I think this is what I meant when I said all those years ago, on the day he died, that I wasn't going to let the darkness win. I meant I wouldn't shrivel up and die because of the pain like I wanted to. And I wouldn't just survive either. I would find a way to become free, really free, and wild in a way that shakes things up and unnerves people but feels so authentic and true.
I'm not angry anymore. I feel nothing but gratitude for his life, for us, for the pain that birthed wild freedom in me, and for every inch of the twisted road that led me here.
And today I feel sad. I feel the truth, and the pain of that in every inch of my body, but I also feel this kind of sacred sadness and I'm realizing the two aren't mutually exclusive.
It's a dance, a romance. Healing.
In March I wrote about death, and grieving, and healing in such a public way it caused a shift in the earth I was standing on. all of a sudden everything I thought I knew, the people I thought I knew, no longer existed. I remember that morning, seeing the results of my vulnerability, and feeling sick to my stomach. I stared at my phone for a long time not knowing what to do. I could hear my husband in the kitchen making breakfast and I knew I couldn't talk to him.
I walked out of our apartment building in my pyjamas and bare feet (in March), sat in my car and called a dear friend. I didn't know who I was going to call, who would help me make sense of this mess, and by some miracle my fingers dialed her number and she just happened to have a few free minutes.
I don't think I said a word for 10 minutes. I just sobbed in a way that made my entire body hurt.
Today is the first day of fall and it feels like grief.
I don't know how to write this, or even if I should, my fingers shaking over the keyboard. But the only way I know how to deal with the pain, the hurt, the feelings inside of me is to write about them. I write about them so I don't go crazy.
Today feels like grief and I don't know why I'm missing him so much today. I don't know why today of all days I'm remembering all the little things and they are taking my breath away. I could blame it on the TV show character death I watched last night, or how this time of year always makes me more introspective.
I'm remembering how after he died, I said out loud "Whatever souls were made of, I think his and mine were the same" and I still believe that.
I read a quote a while ago, and I wish I could find it again, about how there are 3 different kinds of soul mates. There is the person you fall in love with, the person you stay in love with and the person you can't stay with because its too painful. You're too destructive to each other, but yet they teach you something you need to know.
I think he was that kind, the last kind. Because we destroyed each other, but I can't help but think about how our souls were the same.
I'm remembering how people kind of assumed how I would feel. I was allowed to be angry until I wasn't. When I was honest I was disinvited from remembering, from feeling sad. And a lot of the time I didn't know what I felt because I was constantly trying to be what everyone told me to be. Some days I was angry, and some days I was sad in the purest ways, and sometimes it was both, and some days I'm grateful for how far I've come and some days I feel like I've made no progress. And here's the thing about healing, its not about one or the other. I thought it was, and I was wrong. I thought I could be angry or sad. healing is an and/both. It's about feeling both things, all things, and letting them create this sacred dance within you.
I'm learning how to hold my sacred ground. When things blew up, when I stopped writing, I learned the gift of not explaining myself. At first it was because I was afraid, and then it was because I didn't need to. I didn't need them to understand, or give me permission to grieve. No one else had a monopoly over what I was feeling, over death. Not needing permission from anyone else brought me to a place of being by myself. I was alone, and I learned there that the most powerful thing a woman can do is not explain herself. the most powerful, radical thing I could have done was stop asking for permission or looking for validation and learn how to give myself permission, to be ok with going home to only myself day after day and being ok.
So this is what I'm remembering: the pain healed me. the pain split me open in a way I've never been opened before and it felt like hot death and I wanted to die because it felt like a part of me was torn away. but then the pain healed me. not soon, it took a while. it's still healing me. but the pain was like surgery and it opened me up to a new part of myself and I think this is what I meant when I said all those years ago, on the day he died, that I wasn't going to let the darkness win. I meant I wouldn't shrivel up and die because of the pain like I wanted to. And I wouldn't just survive either. I would find a way to become free, really free, and wild in a way that shakes things up and unnerves people but feels so authentic and true.
I'm not angry anymore. I feel nothing but gratitude for his life, for us, for the pain that birthed wild freedom in me, and for every inch of the twisted road that led me here.
And today I feel sad. I feel the truth, and the pain of that in every inch of my body, but I also feel this kind of sacred sadness and I'm realizing the two aren't mutually exclusive.
It's a dance, a romance. Healing.
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