Resilience Movement

Another day in grief and love, grieving the loss of a dear one and holding space for whatever may arise from our shared tears. The past months I have been remembering this text I wrote in Dutch five years ago during corona-time, and today I feel ready to share a slightly adapted English version here with you. Reading and re-writing it helps me to let my tears flow, to invite my own inner grieving space while feeling connected to the grief in the world outside. May it serve you somehow as well.

❤

One morning, Joan Sutherland’s article on grief, love and mourning crossed my path. It seemed like the autumn 2019 re-publication had been waiting to hit me right in my heart today, like an archer waiting for a target to appear in a deserted place. It says “Grief is a form of love, how we go on loving in the absence of the beloved. It is the transformation of love through loss, and how we are initiated into a new world”. And it says that the Latin roots of the word ‘grieving’ are related to pregnancy. 

Some years ago, during a training day, I shared in a conversation that I felt the sensations of love and the pain of grief in the same spot in my body, as different expressions with the same origin. The most vivid memory of it was when my first child was born. I cried for several days, for the loss of our constant, intimate connection of her fragile little body, well protected inside of me. I cried tears of awareness that she too will encounter grief and pain in her life and that I will have to allow it, witnessing and staying present, letting her deal with those experiences in her own way, to discover how to live and love fully on her own. I have been holding her lovingly for years now, firmly and corageously, so she may hold herself and others in a loving way.

Acts of love continue to move and endlessly captivate me. Wading through waters of sorrow and suffering, love can transform and gradually take on deeper meaning, greater bearing. It can boldly face even the most intense feelings of terror, shame and guilt, and through the murky waters, find what it takes to stay connected to life. But love can also be swept to the bottom of those waters by the turbulence, by the unbearable weight of pain, and remain there, waiting motionless, maybe numbed or invisible, for a long time. 

The arrow of the patient archer hit me and instead of cramping, my body gave way. I felt I was prepared to receive it. I too was waiting for this moment. When grief and love come together, something powerful emerges. What seems like the end becomes a new beginning, the birth of an unknown adventure. Through the bitter-salty tears of grief and mourning then shines the warm, soft light of love, patiently holding space for the tears to come and go, like waves, to take them along, into a new part of life.

During covid-time, deaths were counted daily and repeatedly communicated in a serious and distant voice. There was often little love, warmth or gentleness to be heard. Again and again, I was facing my own helplessness and grief, knowing that for many, those feelings were so much closer and heavier than for me. And knowing that grieving will go on for all of us and loss will always be part of our reality. 

So I want to invite you to join me in feeling deeply into our bodies, to hear all our inner voices, and to make choices out of love. For if love is the active process of trusting, caring, committing, learning and taking responsibility, it is challenging to choose love and to make decisions about how we face our loss. Can I embrace the dignity of grief, held by love? Will I be able to acknowledge today’s needs and my emerging future? For now, I’ll start with the trust that love is there somewhere waiting for us, pregnant with the uncertain future, to hold space for whatever wants to be held.

And I thank you for being here in this vulnerable space with me ❤

Ylva