on grief
In an earlier post, I talked about how it is usually easier for people to hold space for celebrating beginnings; less often, our friends and family are able to sit with us fully when moving through an ending transition.
Sometimes this is because the ending may be a good thing - someone choosing to stop smoking or choosing to leave a job that was too stressful - and our friends and family are happy to see it occuring. Holding space for our emotions and supporting us through those transitions may be fraught with friction. I’m currently reading David Richo’s book Ready: How to Know When to Go and When to Stay and the following passage speaks beautifully to this very topic:
Grief follows all departures, no matter how bad or how good the situation was. We are built to mourn any ending. Even graduation from high school meant the end of friendships that had blossomed but were not about to fade or vanish. We were excited by what might be coming next and so not in touch with our natural grief about that ending. When I think back now to my own graduation, I recall the girls crying at the ceremony, something we boys dared not do. Yet, now I realize the girls were the healthy ones. They were going with their grief, giving it voice and tears. That is the way to go through anything, positive or negative - with grief. It is not the kind of grief that stops us, only one that smooths a transition and gives a sense of closure. It is grief as a processing a change. All transitions require attention both to an ending, grief, and a beginnning, excitement. (Page 74)
I was chatting with a coworker the other day and he shared that his recent relationship had ended; he commented that he was upset and did not really understand why because the last many months had been difficult, and he knew this was the right decision. Richo comments more on this dichotemy on the same page, “We are not sorry we finally left what couldn’t work. Our grief is a holdover from the start of the chapter when we were so convinced that this connection would surely be perfect for us. We are grieving the crashing of our original hope that the relationship, career, affiliation or belief system would really work as it seemed to promise.”
As the end of September approaches (and thus the end of summer here in the northern hemisphere), what is one ending that you may have felt your feelings were not in line with what you rationally know about it? Can you sit with what expectation you may be mourning the loss of and be kind towards yourself?
Be well, beautiful people.
