It’s one of those nights when every song that plays reaches some part of my heart that can’t help but open to grief—I’m in tears every 10 minutes or so. Not because anything bad has happened, or because I’m in a difficult place—simply because it’s there—that grief, these tears—they are in me. It’s part of the human experience to suffer, sometimes to grieve, and if we don’t give it space when it makes a natural appearance, its later manifestation is never quite so congruent with our hearts.
This sadness, tonight, is asking for my attention.
Grief is not comfortable, for most of us anyway. It’s not something we choose to hang out with much. And in our efforts to avoid it, I often wonder what else we miss. We do so much to push it away, repress, suppress, distract, distance—but isn’t there validity in our pain? Isn’t there something there that, if we can lean into it, might have some wisdom to impart to our hearts?
There is a reason that we weep to the point that, at times, it can feel as if our hearts will rip apart. And I have to wonder, is it maybe our soul’s way of asking us to stretch a little further into life, into love? Love is certainly not for the weak of heart, so if we are going to feel its depth, we better find ways to strengthen our tolerance.
My belief is that when we are willing to allow grief some space in our hearts, and we stretch into the discomfort, and simply “stay” …we are equally strengthening our capacity for the other end of our emotional spectrum. We stretch ourselves into deeper love, to fuller compassion toward the human experience, into more receptive intimacy, into more complete authenticity, and into gentleness toward ourselves, and to those around us.
Grief can break us open, and in the depths of our open hearts, we sometimes find who we were made to be.
For the Love of Your Life,
Angie