Glazed over grief

Making friends with what we rather not face.

Grief beckons me,

She asks me to lay my head in her lap.

But I fear her,

I hide from her,

I choose anything over her.

Still, she sits patiently, waiting.

I do not know who I am anymore,

But I know what I’ve lost.

Parents, lovers, friendships…

Myself, a million times.

Still, I refuse to befriend grief,

To enter her warm, murky embrace.

I have let her hold me before,

I know her energy well.

She is love’s sadder and more painful cousin.

She talks a big game and she wants you to let go for her.

She wants to see you cry.

She wants to see you struggle.

It may sound terrifying, at first…

But if your choose her and trust her,

She will bring you home to yourself and your heart.

She will remind you love is the only thing that matters,

And it is worth grieving for when it escapes your grasp.

- Glazed Over Grief by Emma Del Rey

I thought I would pull apart the sticky pieces of grief I have been feeling lately, but I am tired and I am not sure I have it in me to do such a thorough exploration. So instead, I offer you this poem. Which, ironically, feels more vulnerable to me than getting into the nitty gritty details.

I do not think we talk about grief enough, I think we shove it down and pretend it does not exist. I think culturally there is a specific message around grief - not too long, not too loud, not too public. Our grief often feels like an inconvenience for others. Most people do not know what to say when your tell them your heart is aching.

When it comes to my own grief, I swallowed these messages whole. I pushed a big loss down to a place where I could barely feel it at all. Then another life altering loss came and the two losses merged. Grieving one meant grieving the other. The sadness persisted for months, even years, because as much as I let myself feel, I never rounded the final corner to acceptance.

To accept loss, to accept grief means to be forever change, altered, different than before. I have grown tired of forever changing only to find I have been more or less the same my entire life. I have grown exhaustion by my perceptions of myself and my life. I want to be free.

My heart hurts. There is a pervasive sadness I cannot name. There is a longing for something more true and real incessantly humming in the background. There is a deep need to practice acceptance, for what I have lost over my life and for who I have always been.

I am tired of pretending my heart does not hurt when it does. I am tired of faking a smile and continuing on when I feel utterly confused and unsure. I am tired of acting like I do not feel everything more acutely than most. I am tired of dismissing parts of myself when they are necessary parts of the whole.

I am tired of thinking there is something better than this. I am exhausted by my belief in more. I no longer have the heart or energy to pretend, to fake, to dismiss. It is all right here at the surface, all the time. This is what you are getting.

So, if you are grieving something you lost last week, last year, a decade ago, two decades ago or more. I see you, I feel you, you are not alone. While there is a place for acceptance in grieving, I do think the swells of grief only subside, never leaving us completely.

Because love never dies.

Grief is love and love is grief.

Maybe that is the universal link we feel between the two.

Until next time,

Emma

Welcome to Being in Motherhood, I’m a writer, artist, and mother constantly redefining myself. I write about what it means to be human while navigating motherhood, neurodivergence and living a full creative life. I believe reflection and compassion can change the world, the way we see things, and how we be here.

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