Connecting to Grief and Mourning

I feel so connected to grief + mourning right now. Do you?

Mourning the continued erosion of our democracy as we wake up to the realization that liberty and justice for all is quite an illusion, and may further be. Mourning the further loss of collective civility, compassion, and kindness. Mourning the lives of those who have died, including those that did not need to. Mourning the loss of a bedrock many people are experiencing as they face home, food, and health insecurity. This is having me closer to to the wellspring of grief I have for previous personal losses I’ve experienced in my life.

Grief is connected, in Chinese medicine, to the lungs. With a rampaging virus that‘s transmitted via breathing and the harrowing call of I Can’t Breathe and a news cycle so fast that it seems like you can’t catch your breath, inhalations and exhalations have captured our mind and hearts, and we tap into and open to our grief.

Breathing can be medicine. As can giving yourself permission to feel the prismatic facets of how you experience grief.

From grief we get to conscious action. And compassion. And love. But first we need to be with our grief. My dear friend Michael, a soulful being who happens to be a grief counselor, reminded me this weekend that time isn’t the only medicine for healing wounds, that like a fracture, we need to actively set it, attend to it, and work though and with it, for it to heal.

This shifted things for me and had me really open to the grief and mourning, and in that I feel both heavier and lighter.

How are you? What are you grieving? What are you mourning? I hope that in this swirl/storm of grief + mourning you are taking the very best care of yourself and those around you.

---