Posts

A Blessing for My Fellow Grievers

-
May you always tell the truth, if only to yourself. May you refuse to betray your broken and beating heart, no matter what the world tells you. May you be a friend to yourself, holding your own hand, being your own steady presence and giving yourself every bit of grace. May you let others be a friend to you, holding your hand, being your steady presence and giving you every bit of grace. May you let your grief spread out far and wide, covering every surface, blanketing everything. And when that becomes too much, may you carefully wrap up your grief and tuck it away, letting it wait, letting it rest and letting yourself breathe. May you let yourself be in despair, be a bad friend, be a total mess, be a ticking time bomb about to explode. May you know this means that you’re bearing something unbearable, not that something is wrong with you. May you listen to your own heart, remembering that no one knows how to walk this path but you. May you know that you can trust yourself to do the nex
Read more

Stories

-
You write not just any story, but this story. The words you form are not just any words, they grow out of the reality of death. What is the story of the story you're in? The story I’m in feels like just that - a story. It feels as though there must have been some big mistake, a giant cosmic error. There must be some misunderstanding. This must be someone else’s life. I’m ready to file a grievance with the Universe. It must have been under the impression that I could live without her. Can you see now what you’ve done, ripping her away from me? How exactly did you think this would go? Parts of my brain keep telling me that the story is real. You were there, Jenn - remember? Remember crawling into bed next to her as she lay dying, remember feeling your heart break when they carried her body away? Remember picking out the box for her ashes, writing her obituary, delivering her eulogy? Remember that you can’t text her now, that you can’t hug her anymore, that she wasn’t there for Chri
Read more

Bone Setting

-
Take pieces of your writing, cut them out, and move them around. See what you create/what you notice. Bone Setting i. I cling to my grief because it’s the place where I can land, the place where you are, the place where I keep you with me. Moving forward feels like I’m dropping pieces of you behind me, casually letting you fall like breadcrumbs, the distance from my pain becoming a slippery slope toward my forgetting. I’m unable to move, unable to breathe. Horrified and frightened each time something shifts, each time something falls. Will I forget what it felt like to hold your hand? What the warmth of it felt like in mine, cradling those slender fingers and delicate bones? Will I lose the feeling of what it was like to scoop you up and gather you in my arms, your oxygen mask finally removed, that long-awaited moment when I was given access to all the parts of your sweet and broken body? Will I forget how it felt to have your lifeless face cradled in my hands, my forehead pressed to y
Read more

Where I Would Take You

-
This is the arboretum, the place where I go now. The place where I go to be in the woods, to look for fresh air, to feel the warmth of the sun against my back and the cold biting at my cheeks. This is where I walk. And walk. And walk. Trying to make sense of things. Trying to find you. This is the pond, teeming in summer with turtles and frogs and fish and heron. Now it lies quiet, covered in a sheet of ice. No signs of life, no movement, no breath. It feels so harsh, how this place that once constantly bubbled and croaked has now gone barren and still. How is it that you were once so full of life, and now you are still? These are the trees, strong and steady. I come to them for their steadiness and their wisdom. I come to them because they know you. They hold me, and they hold you. I meander along the garden paths and walk the trails through the woods. The garden beds are empty. The flowers are gone. Occasionally I see a clutter of red berries, a bit of green moss, a green fern lying
Read more

The Shape of You in Me

-
When you died, people said things like, “To know one was to know the other, because they were so thoroughly a part of one another.” I used to wonder if others could see it, if they understood - all the ways that our souls were intertwined, all the ways we were a part of each other. It’s hard to speak to the shape of you in me because you are my insides. We’ve always been a package deal. There is no me without you. You and I are the foundation of my heart, the place where I began. You were born when I was two; I literally don't know a life or a world without you in it. There is nothing that came before you, and no part of my life that will be untouched by you. You are woven into every part of me. And so how can the world see the shape of you in me? Your shape is in every bit of love I give, because everything I know about love started with you. Your shape is in all the ways that I mother my children, because our relationship taught me tenderness and trust. Your shape is in every one
Read more

From the Ashes

-
Prompt: Read this poem and write a response. Happiness grows back Like saplings after a forest fire Barren grief No longer your primary residence That old hollowness Carved out Washed With holy tears An old topography of loss You will follow Back to life Ugh, parts of this poem annoy the hell out of me. The idea that grief will hollow us out and then we are cleansed with “holy tears” simultaneously makes fire come out of my ears and makes me want to gag. Look, I get it. I get that grief can be transformative. But I hate that this feeds the narrative that somehow grief is here to do something for us, that it will cleanse us somehow, that we will be washed anew. Fuck that. I don’t need those holy tears. I don’t want to be cleansed, thank you very much. Keep your tears and your transformation and give me my sister back. On the flip side. . . I can believe (sometimes) that happiness grows back. I do like the image of saplings growing back after a forest fire. I can imagine it, those littl
Read more

Encounters

-
You’ve been coming to me during my meditations. I haven’t meditated since you died, unable to even contemplate such a thing. But this week, it felt right to try it again, and I dropped into that space. I wish I had better words for what happened during the first meditation I did. It was - transcendent. I felt your presence as though you were channeling energy to me from the other side. I kept trying to recenter and focus on my breath, but I couldn’t deny that something outside of me was happening. I could feel you as you are now, in all of your expansiveness and love and oneness with all things. It was extraordinary and beautiful and powerful. I know it was your soul, connecting with mine. It was you, sending me your energy from the place you are now, bringing me peace and filling me with love. And then a few days later, another meditation, and in this one we appeared together, snuggling against the ground next to each other, watching the northern lights appear and disappear against an
Read more