To Be is to Grieve

Today I am grateful for the pleasant day yesterday that made for a pleasant school activity, and for all of the people who helped out in so many ways with the activity. I also appreciate that I am slowing down more in my morning time. I miss much when I race on ahead in productive mode.

As I continue my goal of daily morning meditation in May, I am leaning into grief. To be is to grieve. To be alive and to know love means that we also will know loss and pain. I can avoid and ignore the pain and grief, which seems the route many of us want to take, and that our culture encourages, or I can lean into it. 

Yesterday, it was seeing my sister Mary Jo for the last time. Today, it is aging and the physical limitations that show themselves more. It is also accepting the regrets of previous choices, mistakes, shortcomings. Grief ebbs and flows. Contentment does too. Avoiding grief doesn't make it go away. It gets us stuck. 

And when I am stuck, I am missing so much beauty and the great fullness of life. Allowing grief to flow also allows everything else to continue to flow. Feeling pain frees us in ways only feeling it can. So I lean more and avoid less. 

I am a morning person. My emotions are easier to tap into early in the day. This helps make meditation and quiet time generative.  This poem captures that. I often hear the mourning doves when out walking early. Any grief or sadness that may emerge more often has some peace, acceptance, and gratefulness not far behind. To be is to grieve. To grieve is to be fully alive.  To be fully alive is a blessing.