This Robert Frost quote is the core of the foundation of what it means to do good grief work. Good grief work, I believe, leaves us transformed. The Buddha stated "if your heart does not break a bit everyday, then you are not fully awake" (paraphrased). The trick in grieving is to be able to feel your pain AND feel your joy. Oriah Mountain Dreamer in The Invitation, wrote "We are afraid of pain-emotional and physical-and we want to believe there is a way around experiencing our own sorrow, that we can avoid the pain and lose nothing of the fullness and joy of living. It's simply not true." We try to anesthetize ourselves to avoid the pain. We move toward the healing without understanding and embracing what is actually lost. There are a number of numbing agents employed- food, drugs, alcohol, work, television, physical activity, sex, religion, doing good, arguments...
Mountain Dreamer continues "But I do breathe, allowing the sorrows of the world to break my heart over and over again, letting the joys make it whole again. Knowing how to do this, finding the courage to take another breath and not close my heart to myself and to a world where there is pain, is what I seek to learn-how to love well.".
Starting today, in what ways can you take loving action, heal old and new wounds, breathe...embrace your broken-hearted humaness?
