Tender

We should be very tender with our grief, I think.

We ought to nurture it for the small, fragile thing it is, that holds all of our weight and memory and possibility.

We all have our griefs, all of us. They tell us what we have loved and they remind us of who we were once and the things we have had to let go of as we made our way through life.

We can grieve for someone lost, for parts of ourselves that faded or died, for a future that we thought we would have, for the person we will never be.

Grief whispers quietly of our most secret sorrows and shows us how to be gentle, with ourselves, with others.

Grief does not rage or fight, it does not shout or throw itself about. Grief is what lies beneath.

Grief is the smooth pebble of our knowing, that we keep in our pocket and stroke from time to time. It brings the parts of us that were lost back to being, holds them close, speaks their names.

A life without grief is a life without love, without care, without tenderness. We have all met the ones who run away from their grieving selves, but truly it takes up such a lot of energy and every time they turn around there it still is. Inescapable.

I don’t want my grief to be a hidden, frightening thing. I want my grief to stand as a testament to who they were, to who I was, to what I have lost and to what I still have.

We should be very tender with our grief, I think. It is a precious thing.