December 14, 2023
Dear Leland and Everett,
Your mom and I lost a friend to cancer this week. That set me thinking about the grieving process, and wanting to share a few thoughts with the two of you. Revisit this when you need it; only then will it genuinely be useful.
First off, grief is felt in the body. When you suffer a loss, honor your body. Pay attention to your body. During meditation, actively search for the pain in your body. Send your attention and awareness to the area of the body feeling the most discomfort. Ask the discomfort what it wants you to know. I find that my body communicates with me regularly in this fashion.
You may feel a desire to distract or busy yourself. Beware this temptation: sadness can get stuck, blocking your ability to feel love and joy forever after. Process the sadness you feel now, while it is acute, lest the sadness fester like an open wound, spreading and infecting more than just the area it touches directly. Expose the sadness and allow light and love to heal.
Others may attempt to distract you, or encourage you to truncate your grieving process. Ignore these people: they are merely attempting to avoid confronting their own negative emotions.
Grant yourself the grace to grieve in whatever manner feels friendly to you. Grieve loudly or quietly. Grieve publicly or privately. Sometimes movement helps facilitate the grieving process, other times stillness proves the more effective tool. Consider utilizing any or all of your five senses; smells and songs I’ve found particularly acute at triggering memories.
One cannot rush the grieving process. The body needs the time it needs to heal and recover. You can delay the process by avoiding the emotions you wish not to feel. But you cannot accelerate the process faster than what your body and soul are prepared to allow.
Find the people who are prepared to let you grieve properly, and lean into those relationships.
Grieve messily. Proper grieving is messy.
Grief is destructive; it may consume and destroy other aspects of your life. Perhaps these are areas of your life seeking rebirth or renewal.
You may experience a depth of sadness you didn’t know possible. Just know that on the other side of that sadness may be a depth of love, joy, and connection you also didn’t know were possible.
I’ve come to believe that emotional pain almost always carries a gift. Unfortunately, early in the grieving process it’s impossible to discern what that gift might be. Grant yourself space to feel the shock and pain, and do not rush to make meaning of it all. Meaning may only come days, weeks, or even years later. So be it.
Grief tears a hole in the soul, and grants you an opportunity to fill that hole with love.
Few will understand what you are going through. As a result, most of the advice you receive will be terrible. Take what advice you find useful (including mine), and unapologetically bin the rest.
As your father, I wish I could protect you from extreme sadness. Except that I’m learning to accept that sadness is a gift: we only grieve the things we’ve loved. Grieving helps us observe and appreciate not just the thing we lost, but also the love and beauty still present in our lives. Death invites rebirth. Grieving is painful but inevitable: you will eventually lose something you love, such is the circle of life. In that pain is the opportunity for discovery, for distillation, for renewal and rebirth. But first, you must honor the grief, the pain, the emotions you feel. If you don’t know where to start, I suggest get still and listen to your body.
I love you,
Dad
Letters to Leland 