What about our grief?

When I lost my father at twelve, I remember feeling I needed to stay composed for all the adults at the funeral. The words that I had to be strong for my mama ringing in my ears. I felt there was no space for my grief. And I remember my first day back at school. The other kids politely avoiding eye contact, because they didn't know how to treat me. And my reaction was to play it cool. A few weeks had passed already. I was over with it.
But the rage and grief in my body grew silently over the years. My body accumulating tons of ailments and excess pounds. I never drew the connection. But every time I would watch films or read books of children and parents losing each other, I'd crumble and be torn apart by the overwhelming waves of my grief.
When my stepfather died in my mothers arms ten years later it was the same. I put myself together and got on with it. Because I had to be strong and I was always too emotional anyways. That's what I had been told by countless grown ups.

It took my nearly twenty years from my fathers death, to understanding that this rage and anger in my body were my grief needing to be heard and my anger towards all the adults that weren't able to hold space for me, and later at myself because I never learned to hold this space for me.
And still to this day I feel the deep grief of my father deciding to leave so soon. I sometimes feel abandoned.
And you know what? That is what it means to be HUMAN! This is what we come here to experience: Our emotions. And today it doesn't devour me anymore. The fear of being unloveable and abandoned doesn't choke the air from my lungs anymore, because I now let it wash through me. I breathe it and welcome it, when it shows. It is part of my story and it shaped me. But it doesn't define me anymore.

Somewhere along the way of our human evolution (or should I say socialisation?) we lost our willingness to feel and witness grief.

Have you ever noticed that for many people – maybe yourself included- it seems impossible to sit with someone in their grief, just holding the space. When someone else is falling apart before us, we almost see a direct call to action, to make it go away, to soothe, to mend. And it starts with our very young children: We find it hard to allow their accumulated expression of emotions during tantrums, we need to shush them when they cry. It is hard to see someone else in a state of agony.
We cannot simply hold the space for others, because we never learned to hold it for ourselves in the first place.

Can you truly allow yourself to sit with grief? To let it wash over and through you? To stay still with it when it gets so big that it threatens to devour you? NOPE? Well, then you will never have experienced the immense tranquility and freedom that lies beyond it, once the storms have calmed and the waves have turned to ripples. The unbelievable connection and love for yourself, once you have experienced grief and sadness and anger and let them work through you, mend your soul... And when you can allow them to permeate you, they will simply leave you like the cold leaves your body when you sink into a hot bathtub.
But we haven't learned to hold that kind of space. What we have learned instead is to judge. To stay safe. What we look down on, rationalise out and reject doesn't come close to us. It doesn't affect us. It's not part of us. Is it not though?
Our society is made up from a legion of crippled children. Crushed by the weight of physical and emotional dysfunction. But instead of letting that be our invitation to tune in and learn to listen and connect, we are busy finding labels for our behaviour and placebo pills to disguise the symptoms of our ailments. Until we have numbed our bodies and minds so much that all we can feel is the bass of our rage and fear that are buzzing like a monotonous white noise of a broken television in the background of a boring living room cell. If we keep telling our children not to indulge on their emotions and sulk like a teenager, we are creating a self fulfilling prophecy. Can you not see that we have created exactly that? A society of people not being able to let go of their feelings, because they never learned to feel them in the first place.

Our grief and anger inherently hold no shame.

We need to live with them, or shall I say we are blessed to experience them, but they don't need to be the definition of who we are. We came here to experience. And in the polarity of suppression and allowing there will always be a back and forth. And that too, is experience. But don't let the black maw of your shame devour you. You once knew how to let your tears and your rage be a momentary relief for your suffering. Learn to cry again. Can you witness yourself cry in the mirror? Can you simply hold your partner or friend in their grief without trying to make them feel better, just so you don't have to feel the uncomfortable truth of your own grief. Can you cry in front of the mirror and be with yourself?
I am sorry but I have no half-hearted ‘don't worry if not’-ending for you. This is our only chance to finally feel again. You gotta go the uncomfortable route here.