Grief is not a medical disorder to be cured. Grief is not a spiritual crisis to be resolved. Grief is not a social woe to be addressed. Grief is, simply, to be felt in our hearts and our minds and our bodies.
I’ve been writing about grief since my child died in 1994. I can remember – at the time – questioning myself. Was I grieving too much, for too long and too intensely? But a small, still, thankfully wise voice within my feminine self rejected these intimations. I knew that this precious relationship I had lost was worth every tear I shed. Every cell in my body hurt – a physical pain that emanated from the tips of my hair to the tips of my toes. I couldn’t eat: eating was for the living, and I was still uncertain I was alive. I couldn’t sleep because thoughts of her haunted me. I didn’t recognise myself in the mirror. The yearning for her was so intense that her absence lived in the centre of my heart. I was changed and I knew it would be an irrevocable loss. I died with her that day and, after nearly three decades, I still miss her.
Self-doubt, loneliness, fear, anxiety and the sorrow of not trusting oneself to grieve honestly are a tragic legacy – and something I often notice in those who lack strong support networks. A bereaved mother I recently worked with, whose child died in 1972, is only now reclaiming her experience of grief – and, thus, reclaiming her true self. She’s learning to reinhabit her physical, emotional and spiritual body after nearly 50 years of being utterly detached from herself and others. We can certainly avoid our grief, but we cannot avoid the consequences of doing so. Grief will disguise itself as something else, in our intimate and family relationships, in our minds and cognition, and also in our bodies. The sustained state of suppressed grief is fodder for disease.
Today, we are witnessing the destructive psychological effects in this pandemic world, where so many have died, directly and indirectly, from Covid. The reclamation of who, and what, we are in the aftermath of tragic loss is a basic right as a living being on this broken and beautiful Earth. If you don’t know grief by now, one day I promise you will. Grief is the inevitable and worthy burden of loving another. It is an unstoppable and paradoxical force that creates and destroys. It moves in our bodies, it occupies the space between us and others, and it seeps through generations.
And so, may our broken hearts land softly in the world, reverberating compassion towards others who know what it means to suffer. Perhaps, one day, when grief is finally venerated, it will inspire peace instead of war, tenderness instead of violence, and love instead of hate.
Joanne Cacciatore is a research professor at Arizona State University, the founder of the Miss Foundation and the author of Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief
