the healing moment
What's right now? What's happening right now?
My friend Stephanie shared a video this morning about living in the hard spaces. When you are at the end of the rope, ready to collapse, shaking and trembling, what then?
She shared a story from when she taught yoga and took her class through the holding of a posture. As the posture was held, as the muscles began to shake and the mental game turns into "I can't do this, i need to be done, i need to collapse into child's pose" she would say "the shaking means you're still in this. you haven't given up yet."
I wrote a letter to a friend this week detailing a specific aspect of grief i am currently finding challenging. It's not the ache of loss itself but one of those unexpected side notes that pop up as a result of the drastic shift that just took place, and i wasn't writing to get an answer so much as i was writing to give voice to what i was feeling.
And she replied with "Oh, it's like this. You can't be so hard on yourself especially since its so soon after your loss."
I sat with her response for a bit. And I began to feel the weight of every single other time that someone has put a timeline on my grief. The people that tell me its too soon (to which i then want to respond when is it not too soon? I have seen in the grief of others and imagine for myself it will be similar that i can be years out from the moment of losing him and still feel the acute sense of loss, still feel like it wasn't that long ago, still have moments of loss that come up and steal my breath away. I think of it along the same frame of reference as when one stops calling themselves a newlywed after getting married, to which the best response i've heard is whenever they feel like it. I've been married a year and a half now and I still feel like a newlywed in a lot of ways, but according to the world's definition am i still? How do you know when its been long enough?), the people that tell me to wait x amount of time until i've healed.
One of the things I'm grateful for is going into grief i knew enough about it to know i couldn't give myself a timeline. Even in the earliest stages, i was very in the moment.
So when someone says not to worry about it now or to wait until i've moved farther away from the moment of the trauma i've begun to ask why. I know their logical answers, and I know how grief works even in my own life and that the pain is less acute and constant now than it was 3 months ago. But if it matters to me now why not let it matter? Why not breathe into the moment, into the shaking and the trembling and the complexities of what I'm feeling?
Not looking back and not looking forward but letting this moment be exactly what it is.
In this moment, i am grateful. I am insanely grateful in the most bittersweet way for the life of my son and what it's taught me. I am grateful for the stronger, more confident, more determined, softer, wiser, more refined person that has emerged from the ashes - the kind of person I have become since becoming a mother. I look at this life i am living now that i created from the ground up following Paris' death and I am so grateful to him and for him and for this.
And I am overcome with love. Love that sometimes expresses itself as gut wrenching sobs because how hard it is to love someone who isn't here, but sometimes its the kind of love that causes a smile to spread across my face from ear to ear because, yes, he lived, and sometimes its the kind of love where i catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror with all the ways my body has changed since growing and birthing a baby and a pang of love grips my chest.
And i have moments when i miss my baby so much i can't breathe, moments when my entire life feels like it has been blanketed by grief and trauma, when relationships don't exist in the same way they used to and old spaces don't fit anymore, but i'm getting better at breathing into those moments and letting them be what they are, letting myself feel what i feel, knowing that this shaking and trembling is happening for me and not to me, so that something brand new can emerge, and that soon, if i am able to bear witness to the moment and let it be what it is, a new moment will come offering up rest and healing.
I'm not afraid of my own grief. I'm not afraid of my own joy, or my love, or my gratitude. i have this deep knowing that all of this is healing work. And i think that gives me the ability to exist fully in each and every moment, without trying to change it or bypass it.
I am surviving the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I am still in this, i haven't give up yet. something new and healing and beautiful is being birthed in this wilderness space. I can feel it all, experience it all, and not be crushed by it. And this is how we heal - one moment at a time.
yes
My friend Stephanie shared a video this morning about living in the hard spaces. When you are at the end of the rope, ready to collapse, shaking and trembling, what then?
She shared a story from when she taught yoga and took her class through the holding of a posture. As the posture was held, as the muscles began to shake and the mental game turns into "I can't do this, i need to be done, i need to collapse into child's pose" she would say "the shaking means you're still in this. you haven't given up yet."
I wrote a letter to a friend this week detailing a specific aspect of grief i am currently finding challenging. It's not the ache of loss itself but one of those unexpected side notes that pop up as a result of the drastic shift that just took place, and i wasn't writing to get an answer so much as i was writing to give voice to what i was feeling.
And she replied with "Oh, it's like this. You can't be so hard on yourself especially since its so soon after your loss."
I sat with her response for a bit. And I began to feel the weight of every single other time that someone has put a timeline on my grief. The people that tell me its too soon (to which i then want to respond when is it not too soon? I have seen in the grief of others and imagine for myself it will be similar that i can be years out from the moment of losing him and still feel the acute sense of loss, still feel like it wasn't that long ago, still have moments of loss that come up and steal my breath away. I think of it along the same frame of reference as when one stops calling themselves a newlywed after getting married, to which the best response i've heard is whenever they feel like it. I've been married a year and a half now and I still feel like a newlywed in a lot of ways, but according to the world's definition am i still? How do you know when its been long enough?), the people that tell me to wait x amount of time until i've healed.
One of the things I'm grateful for is going into grief i knew enough about it to know i couldn't give myself a timeline. Even in the earliest stages, i was very in the moment.
So when someone says not to worry about it now or to wait until i've moved farther away from the moment of the trauma i've begun to ask why. I know their logical answers, and I know how grief works even in my own life and that the pain is less acute and constant now than it was 3 months ago. But if it matters to me now why not let it matter? Why not breathe into the moment, into the shaking and the trembling and the complexities of what I'm feeling?
Not looking back and not looking forward but letting this moment be exactly what it is.
In this moment, i am grateful. I am insanely grateful in the most bittersweet way for the life of my son and what it's taught me. I am grateful for the stronger, more confident, more determined, softer, wiser, more refined person that has emerged from the ashes - the kind of person I have become since becoming a mother. I look at this life i am living now that i created from the ground up following Paris' death and I am so grateful to him and for him and for this.
And I am overcome with love. Love that sometimes expresses itself as gut wrenching sobs because how hard it is to love someone who isn't here, but sometimes its the kind of love that causes a smile to spread across my face from ear to ear because, yes, he lived, and sometimes its the kind of love where i catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror with all the ways my body has changed since growing and birthing a baby and a pang of love grips my chest.
And i have moments when i miss my baby so much i can't breathe, moments when my entire life feels like it has been blanketed by grief and trauma, when relationships don't exist in the same way they used to and old spaces don't fit anymore, but i'm getting better at breathing into those moments and letting them be what they are, letting myself feel what i feel, knowing that this shaking and trembling is happening for me and not to me, so that something brand new can emerge, and that soon, if i am able to bear witness to the moment and let it be what it is, a new moment will come offering up rest and healing.
I'm not afraid of my own grief. I'm not afraid of my own joy, or my love, or my gratitude. i have this deep knowing that all of this is healing work. And i think that gives me the ability to exist fully in each and every moment, without trying to change it or bypass it.
I am surviving the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I am still in this, i haven't give up yet. something new and healing and beautiful is being birthed in this wilderness space. I can feel it all, experience it all, and not be crushed by it. And this is how we heal - one moment at a time.
yes
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