Grief Is Transforming You

Everyone's posting "Available for Work." None's posting, "I don’t know who I am right now."

Yesterday I chatted with my friend Be from her cross-country drive while I baked a chicken. "The energy of grief is pure transformation," she said. I closed the oven and set my timer.

I'm hunkered down in the Hudson Valley, on call for my cousin's baby's birth. Since moving here in July, I've had the city as my pressure release valve, just two hours away. My toiletries have become as natural a grab as an extra layer. Now, as I mourn the end-end-end of my on-and-off-and-on-and-off love that I wouldn't have written any other way—I can't escape the quiet I've pined for. Or the grieving process.

Text from friend: I'm moving and thinking very slowly. Me: You're growing two humans inside you. If all you did was sit on the couch until they came, you'd be doing so much.

The whole world is crying or screaming or laughing in the faces of those who put them down. Everyone's posting "Available for Work." None's posting, "I don't know who I am right now." It's a tilt-a-whirl. Nauseating. We're too old for this shit. Isn't life supposed to cement into place as we become pillars of society?

Text from me: How are you? Friend: I've been to five funerals in three weeks.

Something I know is when I use my energy to love or care for people and places around me, I don't need to know who I'm becoming or what I'm missing or what potential I'm squandering. I know I smile from the inside when I arrive at the Waldorf forest school where I teach 2-6 year olds. Miss Lucia's a role that nourishes me. I know I feel better after I've talked honestly with a friend, even for a moment—even if it's the friend at the market checkout counter who just had the craziest week of her life and you'd never know it from her sweet and helpful demeanor. I know supporting coaching clients through their evolution connects me with my soul's power.

We're not meant to go away to feel bad until we can come back together feeling good. We're meant to be as we are together as we go, being as helpful as we can be when we can be, being helped when we are brave enough to be. The messier, the more human. The more human, the more what we need now. We're all in it. Be says, "Let it happen."

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