So there’s grief — what do I do? 🍐

I get confronted with this question quite often, and it’s quite complicated yet simple all at the same time. Much like the act of being alive itself. 

In short, grief is love with nowhere to go. It is love that is held captive in your heart, like an eternal breath you can’t seem to exhale. A love frozen in time. Many people think of it as an absence of love, but I think it is an abundance of it that overrides your system.

But what you need to understand is that love is like energy, it is not created or destroyed; but passed around. And similarly, time is an illusion. We may think our happiest moments with someone we loved are behind us, but they will always be happenING for as long as you can remember them. Whatever love you have experienced has happened, is happening and will happen again and again. The versions of yourselves in that exact moment will always exist, they will remain back then forever. It may feel like their love for you has left this world, but it swirls all around you, and takes new shapes and forms. 

I think that love is the only truly immortal thing in life, you encounter it at every turn and point in your life whether or not you are looking for it. And I think in a lot of ways, our capacity to love is what immortalizes us after we die. So don’t stop loving. 

Even through the greatest heartbreaks and loss, you must keep loving the world through your tears. For they still love you. 

Many people new to grief imagine healing to be it leaving you, it getting smaller; but that is not true. We grow around it! And the way you do that is opening your heart even further, instead of pulling away like you desperately feel like you need to. This new love builds foundations for a bigger and stronger heart, a city of tranquility around this pit — instead of just a bridge over it. Healing and moving on isn’t about forgetting, it’s about building a life whoever you miss would be proud of; and some way, somehow, they are still apart of it. Even if you don’t feel like they are. 

Whether it is a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a friend, a pet — their love has not left this world, it has not left You. You are not alone, not ever. Grief is a lot of things… it’s scary and sad and complex. I know it is complicated and overwhelming, but if you do anything: please do not let it take away your ability to feel. Cry and cry and cry, and scream and yell, and laugh and cry some more, anything but going numb. 

A past that contains somewhere you can never go back to is nothing to be ashamed of, do not cover up a past full of love. Going numb and not allowing yourself to feel will be the death of you, that is true mortality. 

I love you, my dear friend. Thank you for reading. I hope you have a lovely day and are able to find what you are looking for. 💛