Befriending the Void

photo by Roman Odintsov

Prelude:

Personal reflection in the closing days of 2022 made me realise that it was a year of intense personal grief. I mourned the loss of a unique friendship that surprisingly mirrored certain aspects of a previous major loss.

The most noticeable similarity was the loss of a relationship; Grant, my husband, died fifteen years ago due to an accidental combination of alcohol and Valium, while in the other case, my friend betrayed me. Either way, I lost a relationship that once was wholesome and beautiful.

Then there was the loss of a dream. During the good years of our marriage that preceded his alcohol addiction, Grant and I dreamt of a future where we would be happy and grow old together. With my friend, there was the shattered dream of the significant collaborative art projects we had planned, parts of which had already begun. Neither dreams would come to fruition, and I mourned for what would never be.

Grieving for Grant was complicated; it began while he was alive. I mourned for the man I loved and had chosen, struggling to reconcile that man with the one he’d become. Then when he died suddenly, grieving shifted gears as I wrestled with the finality of his sudden death. In the case of my former friend and fellow artist, her exit was cruel and sudden, her betrayal cold and calculated. In my experience, grieving for the living seems to amplify vacillation, at times leading me to ignore my intuition: the wise, silent sentinel that serves to protect my soul.

Much of 2022 was an emotional rollercoaster. Stress and anxiety wreaked havoc on my immune system, and immensely exacerbated existing fatigue. Even though I’d experienced significant healing processing grief throughout the year, occasional tears revealed that there was more to be done. Then the penny dropped. During my year-end reflection, I realised that I needed to face grief and speak to it, eyeball to eyeball.

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This is my letter to grief:

You crept into my life

Unnoticed

Uninvited

Unfamiliar

Tentacles became vines

Vines became shoots

And shoots became roots

Meandering deeper 

In search of clear water

You sought to quench your insatiable thirst

Silently siphoning my energy, swallowing my serenity 

An insidious invasion of my soul

Then twilight turned to darkness

Twisted shadows leapt out to assail my mind

Perverting how I perceived my situation 

As I witnessed its rapid decline

Rivers of tears from an inexhaustible spring 

Blindsided me, often when I least expected

Still, your ravenous roots went deeper

Further ravaging the once succulent morsels of my soul, body, and mind

Shameless

Fierce

Unrelenting

You drained my nectar and left your abhorrent sting behind

Over time, when your fury abated

It made room for me to be with my feelings, befriend the void, and to explore the pain 

As I danced with my experience

Resistance yielded to allowing

Pushing away surrendered to deeply feeling

And denial gave way to acceptance

This broke your stranglehold

Little by little, joy returned, and, in time, I felt light and free again 

Yet, mistakenly, I presumed that each of your roots had been expunged from my cells 

So, it took me by surprise when in February 2022, you struck with sudden force

Your iniquitous battleplan inspired by the fiendish cohorts of hell

Violently

Vehemently

And with savage velocity 

Your sharp fangs pierced my jugular and quickly drew blood

Warm, rich, red droplets oozed out, rolled down, and then slowly coagulated

Dark stains accentuated my heaving breast

Then, the ghosts of the past joined in the fray, gleefully holding me down 

You extracted energy from my deterioration

Revelled to witness my descent into desperation

You relished in my subjugation

The cruel conquering of my soul

Until I became an unwilling sacrifice at the tear-stained altar of sorrow

Kicking and screaming during the deadly infusion 

As you infiltrated every chamber of my heart

Invaded every inch of my mind

And injected your deadly poison into the intercellular and intracellular spaces of the fabric of my being

Until the shrivelled skin of my psyche was ready to relinquish the hope of a better tomorrow

Then my inner, wise hero arose and rallied my embodied remembrance of allowing and being with difficult emotions

Of dancing with disappointment, dancing with abandonment and pain

Of acceptance, self-compassion, forgiveness, releasing, then reaching forward, and finding hope again

Grief 

You have taught me that every experience of grief, irrespective of what or who you're grieving for, touches on all prior grieving experiences

My body remembers

My body recognises you even when you show up in disguise

My body speaks and demands to be heard

My body knows and understands that remnants of the residue of your prior encounters are left behind in its cells

Intuitively, my body knows that there’s no blueprint for grieving and navigating you is not a linear process 

It does not follow a neat timeline or neatly boxed stages 

It knows that complex emotions that arise aren't good or bad; they simply are, and that they can erupt at unexpected and inconvenient times

Grief, once you become a squatter, you never leave, neither do you shrink smaller

Instead, it is I who grow larger until your eminence begins to dissipate   

This gives the illusion that you’ve departed or that your size has diminished

My body also knows and remembers every prior experience of accessing resources like creativity and faith; these too are embedded in my cells 

My body remembers that it can let go of expectations, compassionately be with my experience and authentically show up for myself

My body remembers and draws from the wellspring of embodied wisdom that knows how to anchor my soul, and this empowers me to walk your winding, unpredictable, unwelcome, and stupendously messy path with strength, courage, and grace

Emotional and spiritual healing applies a soothing balm that progressively diffuses the pain

Until finally, deprived of your source of energy, your grip begins to weaken, and icy claws slowly release their iron-clad hold 

Occasionally there’s an unexpected resurgence

As you fight, abdicating what you’ve audaciously claimed as your throne

But as I lean into my experience while harnessing energy from my garnered resources 

The effects of your efforts grow smaller and smaller until your influence recedes into the background

Deflated

Defeated

Undetected

Until another loss awakens certain aspects of your latent tendrils, and you make a sudden and ferocious appearance on the stage of my emotional landscape again

So instead of seeing you as a malevolent, marauding invader

I’ll do my best to receive you as an unwelcome but necessary agent sent to assist me to process loss as I traverse this intrepid journey called life

I acknowledge you as a needed component of the human experience of navigating the seasons and cycles of endings that make way for new beginnings

As I honour my unique and personal journey through shadows, from darkness to light

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