Grief is complex: a cognitive jolt after the sudden realization of loss, then incredulity, perhaps anger or denial, and the mind’s grappling with an ongoing wrongness in the world. Grief is a response to trauma, and moving through can be cathartic and exhausting. But when we do, we can reach some kind of closure, regain a sense of safety, and move forward. We may feel broken, but we mend.
I’m writing this at the conclusion of what I thought was to be a lifelong partnership, and I feel like someone died. In a very real way, something formerly vital is certainly dead.
This sense that I have grieving to do is growing, both heightened and hindered by recognition that the world is incredibly broken and violent right now. Just reading the news is traumatizing, and there is a distinct dissonance between the awfulness of it all and the belief I have in the basic goodness of humanity. There is desperate suffering in the world, and a great many people I care for feel aggrieved and helpless. Worse, some feel their personal struggles or victories are not worth talking about, or they are somehow ashamed to focus on themselves.
I’m considering what happens to us when closure, justice and healing are difficult to come by, and what I think can be done about it, for myself. But I’d like to share because tools are needed for sorrows large and small, for healthy ways to live in a world gone wrong. We are not broken.
More later.