Floating Through Grief
They say grief comes in stages. For me, it comes in waves.
For years now on February 19th, I awaken startled, gasping for breath. The flood of emotions comes quick and strong. For a moment, or several, the pain feels as strong as ever, stifling in its enormity.
For so long I tried my hardest to drown it out as quickly and efficiently as possible. The pain of grief can feel so immense that maybe you’ll drown in it. The only sensible solution, it seems, is to fight for your life, to swim against the current, desperately trying to reach the shore.
Today marks 26 years since that day, and what I’ve finally learned is that to live with grief one must learn to dance, to flow, to float. Grief, for me, comes in waves and that much like a rip current, my best bet is to stay calm and float. In releasing that struggle, we make room for all the emotions coming to the surface, and as any therapist will tell you, the moment we make room for a feeling, the moment we let it flow, is the moment it starts to complete its cycle, making room for the next emotion behind it. So now, when that grief crests I gently lean into it, finding whatever grace I can along the way. This looks different on different days, but rather than turning from it and fighting, I turn towards it and try to determine what it may be telling me today. Sometimes it’s enough to slow down and breathe through it, others it requires more work, perhaps a therapy session, a time to journal, or a hard run through the park. Others, it just requires a moment of solitary silence, of reverence for what was. Whatever it is, I now know that to fluidly float with grief is, against all intuition, the sanest and safest way to go.
If loss teaches us something it is that nothing lasts forever, not even that soul-crushing pain. While it is likely to return at some point, much like waves recycling themselves on the ocean surface, this wave, in particular, will flow and meet land at some point. And if you’ve allowed yourself to float with it, you too will feel solid earth beneath you again.
