ST Healing Love-IntoBalance October2022 - Flipbook - Page 21
I’ve now had different trips with grief as my companion. I’ve navigated the deaths of
dear ones. And, for me, in some ways the most challenging, I’ve traveled the dark road of
betrayal - losing my way on a road where I felt confident, because of ruptures I would
never have anticipated. On this windy, scary journey grief has given me an improbable
and unexpected choice: how do I want to show up? Even while angry and hurt by this
devastating breach; even while unmoored by the loss of what I believed was true, even
while regulating my feeling of foolishness while attempting to access self compassion
for trusting a messy human being. I still have a choice in how I show up.
And grief teaches me again, that love is the way. Loving life, loving even those who
hurt and deceive me, loving myself. Grief reminds me to be curious about all my
feelings, even the feeling of devastating hurt and righteous anger. And, I’ve been able
to see how anger and hurt are parts of love, present due to love—and that love can
guide us forward through the darkness. Grief is my curandera, guiding me to notice
and experience the magnificence that is always around me. Gently coaching me: if I
grieve with all my heart and soul, I have more access
to loving with all my heart and soul.
—Belma Gonzalez
Grief: a Portal to our Abundant Selves
In societies rooted in separation, that attempt to cut us off from our
wholeness, grief is frowned upon. There is no space for sorrow, no
supportive rituals that allow us to sit with the pain and metabolize it.
As a child I remember being scolded if I cried, and this message stuck
with me into adulthood. Crying feels selfish, extra, and off-putting to
others. How many times have we heard colleagues, friends apologize
for crying? “I’m sorry for being so emotional…” as tears flow. Why is
that? Denying ourselves the space and permission to grieve means
denying ourselves the growth, perspective, and healing that can open
up when we sit with the pain.
As many poets have expressed in different ways, hearts must break
in order to grow. It is the pain of heartbreak and loss that calls
forward our deeper human qualities. Loss creates space for different
aspects of ourselves to emerge. But these natural growth cycles
are interrupted and thwarted when we mask the pain, or doubt our
capacity to move through it to the other side.
What would it look like to reclaim and reinvent grief rituals that allow
us to honor, even celebrate what we have lost, to give our losses
proper burials, that they may be composted and feed new insights,
new skills, new ways of seeing and being in the world?
Healing Love: Into Balance | A Brown Paper
21