America: "...a culture obsessed with positivity and
a people without traditional customs to appropriately navigate grief. Instead
of acknowledging overwhelming, painful situations, Americans shove our feelings
down and sputter out phrases like, “It’s for the best,” “Now we can
appreciate…,” (via
Bust)
--
To appropriately navigate grief. I stop. and ponder. and read it again. To navigate grief. Quite recently I've begun candid analysis of myself being immersed in grief and yet not grieving, in not allowing and sitting with anger, in not carving space for the messiness of raw processing. Even to just myself. To be messy is ok and vital, I'm telling myself. For forging forth. I've often wrapped "lessons" from trauma and painful loss up in gratitude and reframes that allow for streamlined, digestible, and perhaps seemingly regurgitated sharing. So strong and so wise and so resilient and positive. "It made me who I am or now I can appreciate," I might have said. I probably did say. And perhaps the root of such a method was and is survival or maybe it makes it easier for me and easier for befallen ears and hearts. That I couldn't bear having to hold your heartache next to mine own. It's not the heartbreak hotel or olympics, but I've had a sad or hard story in these days. Another manifestation of caring and care taking. For anyone but me.
Having been groomed into many modes of abandoning. Of abandoning myself. Of knowing and propagating abandonment. Of seeking that which is familiar. Let me do it for me. It doesn't matter. She doesn't matter. Those feelings don't matter. Except that they do. They always have and always will. They're there. They're me and mine.
I feel positivity even through this forced isolation and distanced socializing. Aims that I held up to manifest during my previous stead from work but didn't fully uphold have revealed themselves deeper and more true now. And truly I'm glad for the tendency towards gratitude, in quickly recalling the most basic of universal offerings that maintain thine sanity. And yet I am short and judgmental and projecting of what is "productive" and valuable and worthy of time and energy. I am harsh to prescribe and define "appropriate" timelines for adjustment. We should all over the place and everyone. All over us.
"Judgement demands punishment," he said. Punishment of self or others. Demands punishment. And the truth is, I have been punishing and shaming this little girl.
The truth is, it took me a month or so to settle into this shift. The truth is I likely haven't identified or grieved all the ways life will never be the same. In realizing what we lost there may be gratitude, but it ought not serve as substitute for bereavement. It too, has been a death. A death of immense proportions that is worthy of remembrance and takeaways, sure. Of messy unfurling.
Happy and accidental discovery #whatever: I so value and wish to protect my space and time. For myself, to savor, to hold near and love and appreciate the fuck out of. For just me. #fuckyea
and still
Not every pain and loss is positive or need be. The positive
reveals itself most naturally when in reference to that which is not. That ying
or ying, black and white, or here and there. The gray spaces I've
inadvertently become adept at occupying. In not having the answers
(because there aren't always solutions). The answer is the silence, the truth
is in the muck and mire, the mud and the lotus. Writing this now I challenge
myself to be better, more eloquent and varied and descriptive. But if I don't
write I'll not harness the craft and without those less shiny entries, I
become no better. No different or improved. Just stuck in the mud,
paralyzed to seek the surface. Which requires swimming and thrashing and
being seen. Really seen. All up and wrapped up in this mess. This mess right
here. This (to be) non-judgmental mess.
 |
| Source: Instagram (@sed.b0i) |
