Grief & love are one and the same.

honouring the life-death-rebirth cycle within everything

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A few days ago, I found out that yet another beautiful soul I grew up with has passed away. I wasn’t close to this person, but were in some overlapping social circles. This is the third person I went to school with who has died, and the fourth person close to my age to pass. Every time this happens, I am both saddened by the loss of young life, and I notice the world around me seems more vibrant.

The sun on my face feels warmer.
The leaves on the maple tree outside seem more defined.
The way the light shimmers on the ocean’s surface appears more enchanting.

Death creates an opening for us to sink into our own lives more deeply. To sip in the air we breathe like wine. To taste every minute with hunger rather than apathy.

Grief and love are not two separate emotions, they are one and the same.

We grieve, because we have loved - a person, an idea, a dream, a relationship, or an identity. Grief is a manifestation of that love.

So often we tend to silo these experiences into their own separate emotional corners. And yet the more we can embrace the whole spectrum of emotion - from joy and love, to grief and sadness - the more we can wholly embody our humanity.

We can dance with both sides of this experience, dipping into grief, and then back into life, gratitude, and wonder, before finding ourselves shrouded in grief again. Such is the nature of being a deep feeling human.

My baby is due in five weeks.

As much as possible, I have been basking in the freedom and flexibility of these last days without them earthside. I am tremendously excited for this new chapter, and I also notice waves of anticipatory grief rising.

For freedom. For solitude. For the quiet dance Dexter and I have with each other. For the spaciousness. For the choices I can make now, that I won’t be able to make in a few short weeks.

What transmutes this grief - and the anxiety wrapped up in the unknown of it all, is gratitude.

I am leaving one way of being in the world behind, and entering a new chapter. And I am so grateful for all that has passed, all that I have, that has gotten me here.

I am grateful for the ways in which my life up to this point has prepared me for this moment.

I am grateful for my home, and my love, and my sweet pup. I am grateful for the friends and supports I have in my life. I am grateful that I have work that I can return to in a way that will support our family ecosystem in the future.

I am grateful to myself for all the ways I have already been walking this path toward motherhood with intentionality.

And I am grateful for all I may be leaving behind - or that at the very least will be changing forms: the friendships, the ability to simply get up and go without much forethought, the time and space for me, for us.

Some things will die.

And someone new will, literally, be born.

Such is the cycle of all things. Life. Death. (Re)-birth.

For so long I have resisted this rhythm, in more ways than one.

A part of me has often wanted to hold on for too long, has struggled to let go of what once was.

And another part of me, a shadow self I have recently identified, has pushed away those people or experiences I have held close before they could leave me. This part of me has had a burn it all down approach. When something wasn’t working, or a friendship was no longer what I wanted it to be, I withdrew, isolated, ghosted, or sometimes even lashed out.

I have a tendency to walk away when things get hard.

I force the Life-Death-Rebirth cycle before it is ready.

Perhaps this is because of my own discomfort with holding experiences of loss. So instead, I have tried to control them wherever I can, to make them occur on my own terms, or to fake nonchalance.

But I am noticing that when I force an ending, the soil that is left is far less fruitful for re-birth.

What if I were to, instead, allow the natural unfolding of things, to soften to the feelings that arise, to trust the process, and allow.

I yank plants out of the soil of my soul the moment they begin to wither, because I don’t want to look at that dead and dying thing.

But if I could tolerate the discomfort of leaving them, of allowing them to decompose, to melt into the soil beneath and leave behind the rich nutrients required for future abundance… I would be creating space for life, instead of barren land.

So often this is what I return to, both in my own life and in my work with my therapy clients: learning to tolerate discomfort.

We want the quick fixes.
We don’t want to look at the dying things.
We want to grieve, and then move on.
We want to hide what feels hard, and close the door.

And yet, what we most need is to tolerate the pain, the grief, the discomfort, the loss, the reckoning. To be with what is. To allow the unfolding, the decomposition.

In many cultures, dead bodies are honoured reverently after the person has passed away. They are cleansed, washed, and tended. In these traditions, we sit with what is. We spend time in the discomfort. We practice being present with death.

What if we did that for all things? Not only the people we lose, but the dreams, the ideas, the relationships, the ways of being, the identities.

Wash the body.
Comb the hair.
Don’t turn away.
Look death in the eye.
Proclaim your presence.
Hold what you once thought intolerable.
Breathe deeply.
Breathe slowly.
And allow space for new life.
To rise
Out of the ashes of your own discomfort.

Recent writing and other offerings you might have missed…

• A visualization to connect with your future self and find solace in the knowing of your intuition.

• The story of our conscious conception journey and the path we took to call in this baby.

• More musings on connecting to the inner wild woman and the power that can be sourced from within.

• Want to connect with your inner child? My self-study course on embracing and re-parenting your inner child is available and open once again.

Hello to anyone who is new here… I’m Kelsey, a therapist, writer, space holder, community tender, creative business coach, and soon-to-be mama. You can find out more about my work here. If you enjoyed this essay, please do subscribe. And if you have the means, I would be so grateful if you chose to support my creations as a paid subscriber.