Expecting to feel pretty slammed by grief on Tuesday, when all the family had gone and I would have the time to stop and think...and feel... it surprised me to just be numb and lethargic. I spent all morning reading a library ebook that had become available that day. Didn't get out of my pajamas until 2 p.m. Couldn't stay focused in the afternoon, thoughts flitting from one thing to the next in rapid succession.
Then while surfing through my Facebook feed, up popped a link to a post about "leaning into grief" (sorry, I wasn't in the proper frame of mind and didn't think to note the author or title) and it made sense -- but how exactly do you do that? Lean into grief? The author said the point was to face it head on, rather than trying to go around or ignore grief. The idea floated in and out of my head all evening.
Wednesday morning I decided to read emails Sharon and I had written to one another in the months leading up to our departure from Argentina. As IRL, my emails were lengthy (blah, blah, blah)... while hers were short and to the point. We were so very different in so many ways but, for whatever reason, we totally understood one another. That's rare. That's a gift.
For me that's what leaning into grief looked like on Wednesday.
3 comments:
Leaning into grief sounds like a wise thing. Too often we try to push it down, be strong and carry on, but it always bubbles up. I'm sure that reading those e-mails brought lots of tears, but I bet there were smiles too.
Thank you for sharing. Keep leaning, learning, and giving us the gift of your reflections. Okay for them to be lengthy, that's you!
This sounds like the right thing to do, right now.
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