Grief Wisdoms
Helpful insights from my heart to yours.
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Sometimes our broken hearts need attention. Sometimes they need a walk in the woods. Other times, listening to a song can help us move through dark places.
What’s your way of grieving? What helps you get through the upsurge of emotion? Where do you turn when you feel lost? What inspires you to keep going?
These Grief Wisdoms are little offerings that have supported me when life went sideways. I share them here as gifts to nurture your healing heart— small lights for the journey through loss and the tender work of moving forward.
We fall into grief — this deep, dark well that can feel so daunting, so scary, so mysterious.
Poet David Whyte offers a way to invite us toward the frontier of the unknown. He set out to write a long poem about grief. He was surprised by how short it turned out to be — and he knew he had reached the bottom of it, rock bottom, when he wrote that final line about the small round coins.
He touches on something too often left out of the conversation about grief: that we, the bereaved, hold grief alongside love. That we grieve because we care so deeply. That our pain is a way of honoring what has been severed.
It takes deep courage to turn toward the black waters. It takes reverence to move beneath the still surface. It takes compassion to give ourselves permission to be fully present to our grief.
Grief doesn’t dissipate by being denied. It transforms by being met — and in our willingness to be with our suffering, we are given access to something deeper. To source.
And this changes everything.
The well of grief
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief,
turning down through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe,
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering,
the small round coins,
thrown by those who wished for something else.
As grief companions, we walk alongside the bereaved — turning down into the black water to the place we cannot breathe.
Let’s recognize each other’s suffering. When we do, we all heal.
From my heart to yours: remember that when we do our grief work, it works.
