Week Ending 1/19

I've been thinking about grief a lot.

Grief colors everything. It makes it hard to think. Hard to feel anything else. Grief can be powerful and consuming. 

I wanted to find a way through it. A way to deal with it. A way to move past it.

Then it hit me. Grief is love. 

Grief isn't grounded in love. Grief isn't the other side of the coin of love. Grief isn't caused by love or an outcome of love.

Grief is love.

Nothing more, nothing less.

I no longer want to find a way through grief, to deal with it or move past it. 

I grieve deeply because I love my mom deeply. My relationship with her has always been one of the cornerstones of who I am. That hasn't changed. I said last week that my love for my mom isn't a "past tense" thing. I haven't stopped loving her because she died. I still love her. She is still a cornerstone of my life... and part of that, now, is this pain. This grief. 

It will never go away. I don't want it to. But it does hurt less, knowing that at the heart of it, is love.

Love is powerful. Love is difficult. Love is sometimes painful.

Love holds us together. Love joins us together, across distance, across time, across the borders of life itself. 

My mom believed "God is Love" 

I embrace my grief. I embrace my love.

Onward.