Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.
~ Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Grief as a place? Grief as a feeling? A state of being? Writers, poets, and musicians have long grappled — and pushed and wrestled — with words attempting to describe the experience of living through the aftermath of someone’s death. The absence. The void. The missing-ness. The the-phone-doesn’t-ring. The empty chair.
And not one of those writers, poets, and musicians can know exactly what MY grief, what YOUR grief experience is. All fall short.
And yet, reading or hearing their words is somehow comforting. Someone else has come to this place before me. I am not alone here. This place IS inhabited — even though it feels like an island and that I am alone.
Allow yourself then, to read their words, to hear their songs… and join them there.
And once you’ve been there for a while, pour a cup of tea, and come back. Come back to where you are. Use your senses — taste, touch, smell, hearing — to bring yourself to the present, to the life YOU are called to live now.
Photo credit: Kipras Štreimikis on Unsplash
