Grief as a gateway to tenderness

Ahh grief, you’ve become to be, my old friend

I find you more easily these days

Your heavy lull in the centre of my chest

Your beckoning call to have me descend into the pain

I used to fear your summons

Avoiding your darkness at all costs

The hurt in my heart too heavy to hold

Run away. Distract. Hide.

The past 6 months, I’ve grown close to you

Death, breakup, loss of identity, existential dread

A climate in chaos and despair

A whole world on fire, burning to the ground

You come to me at times that I fear

A gentle tug in my rib-cage

A pull at my eyelid

Heavy chest, unable to catch a breath

Oh grief, how I’ve avoided you

Too scared to feel the immensity of your weight

Your dark shadow of despair a very unwelcomed foe

But lately, over the past few months, I have become to know you well

I’ve tried you on, more willingly, more gracefully

Allowing your dark cloud to wash over my entire being

Engulfing me with your lament

I used to fear to drown in your ocean of tears

Struggled just to stay afloat in the sea of sorrows

My ego telling me, that it was far easier to outrun the tidal wave

Then it was to sit and face it

But lately, you and I have become well acquainted

Grief has become my solace

As I learn how to sit beside you

Listening, witnessing, learning, observing

Your tears are messengers from heaven

Clearing the old, bringing in the new

In your unravelling, of the tight spots around my heart

I feel a tenderness starting to unfold

In the presence of grief, I feel myself more

My heart growing more radiant by the second

Like an Ice pick hacking away at the cold, hard, brittle parts

To find the gold within,

Gracefully, tenderly, slowly, I bring myself back to empathic witnessing

Oh grief, you really do have so much to teach

You remind me of my capacity of love in this life

That my hearts ability to feel joy and ecstasy

Is in direct relation to how much grief can move through my body.

That the pendulation of these two seemingly polar opposites

Are in fact, connected by a tight-rope.