Guaranteed Grief

I was blessed early with the kind of grief that doesn't go away.

I was five years old when my father died in a plane crash.

There is nothing in the world that can make this better.

Even if I could have made the pain go away, wouldn't that be so wrong? Wouldn't that require erasing my love for my father and my attachment to him?

Yes, the only thing was to feel it.

The only thing for me was to accept that, whatever the creativity of my imagination, I was stuck with reality where things hurt this bad, so bad you think you can't bear it, and then you do. They're supposed to—things are supposed to hurt this bad sometimes.

Things hurt, my love, because you are participating.

Peace is not an ocean free of waves.

Peace is a ship that can withstand any storm.

Emotional management is the foundation for devotional love.

Until we have skills, tools, and practices of emotional management, we are not ready to presence in intimacy. We will refuse to see, or immediately attempt to fix, anything we decide is "wrong." This is unloving and unwelcoming and uncurious about reality as it is arising. In rejection, condemnation, or judgment of any emotion, expression becomes manipulation.

Learning emotional management means having peace in any and every now. When it is I who am in the grips of an intense emotion, I trust my body and soul to be a large enough container for that experience, and I know that the experience cannot endure. I know that it is here and now and no one can fix it for me any more than they can relieve my bladder for me.

When it is another who is in the grips of an intense emotion, I am able to hold clean space, knowing the experience is sacred and theirs, and however they might try to personalize it to me, it cannot be about me. I can listen and ground, remain curious, open, loving, as the other moves through intensity. I can peacefully drift away if that's too hard for me, and be in something else that is peaceful to me as I trust their wave to pass.

Grief is an essential part of human existence. You don’t have to like it, it will be there for you no matter what.