The Intersection of Grief and Bliss
Grief has a way of stopping you in your tracks. This January I lost my Mum. It was shocking and sudden. It hit me especially hard since I had only seen my mum once since the beginning of the pandemic, and her illness prevented her from traveling and others from visiting.
Upon returning home from the exhausting weeks of witnessing her return to the stars and her hastily planned funeral, I made a quick turnaround to travel to Mammoth for a long-planned ski vacation (that apparently we were unable to cancel and get a refund or reschedule through Alterra/Mammoth Mountain in spite of my mother’s death.) I landed in Palm Springs from DFW (after a lot of flying and driving, mind you!), drove 2.5 hours home in traffic, packed for my ski trip and drove the almost 5 hours to Mammoth.
The next morning, after eating dinner with our friends, exhausted, still reeling from the past 2 weeks of activity, I found out that a family member had Covid-19 and I had to return home that morning. Add another almost 5 hour drive, alone, to my already extended travel, leaving my husband and our friends to enjoy the weekend of skiing.
It wasn’t just one of us who had the bug. My eldest brother passed away 2 weeks to the day that we lost my Mum. A this point I also had Covid, which meant I was not able to attend my brother’s funeral. I was out of work for a month, with a ski vacation also stopped short and my life turned completely upside down and drowning in grief, disbelief, anger, maybe rage, and succumbing to a drunken pile of depression— of e beautiful life in the mountains, skiing my brains out.
A sunset is the perfect embodiment of grief and joy together. The sadness of a day ending, the beauty and art of Mother Earth.
Of course I had several weeks to grieve since I had Covid and was forced to sit at home, alone. It was a sort of shot in the arm grieving. I had all this idle time to sit and think about things. I processed a great deal but as we’re all aware, grief doesn’t just get processed and go away.
I’ve had a series of reminders of my grief in past week or so, and honestly today was the hardest day I have had in a while. I can’t lie. I am the happiest I have been, perhaps ever, in my life. Things are going very well. I am living in beautiful places, eating the food I love to eat, doing the tings I love and seeing the people I want to see and be around. I have a business I love, I get to work in the ski industry and ski every day when there is snow.
Triggers come from the most unexpected places and at completely unexpected times. A song, the Covid-19 pandemic in general and people harassing others for wearing masks.
Of course, being a balanced and spiritual person and coach, one would expect me to not react to triggers (or to not be triggered at all, am I right?) and to be able to uphold my calm. But let’s be real. I am a human, and I have feelings. While we are all striving to be our Highest Self every day, some days we feel low, sad and downright depressed. Grief is powerful and can take you to your knees. Sometimes the reminders are just a little bit too poignant.
Honestly I have been living in my little carefully curated bubble and I love this space. In Human Design, my environment is the Cave, so that makes sense. I need to have control over my surroundings and the people in my energy and aura. Of course we do have to live in this world, and that means living with every type of person and flowing through life. And this can be difficult when people avoid you because death and grief make you icky, people do not know what to say or how to hold space. People are judgmental as well, as if they are the owners of the grief process. How can she be so happy right now? Why isn’t she over this already? It’s confusing, it makes you anxious and alone.
At any rate. This year has been topsy turvy. The deepest sadness. Days of grief. The highest highs. Days of pure bliss. I am living it all, the highest highs and the lowest lows. Riding the waves, getting crashed out, coming up for air and being pounded down, riding the best wave of my life and doing it all over again. We have to live our life after all, we cannot stop, we cannot go back, we cannot end the pain, we have to work through it. We cannot stop or reverse time. We can only move forward, one step, one turn, one day one moment at a time. Love the happy moments, embrace the sad and you will come out in a higher vibration. Maybe not today, but keep going, it will happen.
You have my permission, as I give myself permission, to be happy, to be sad, to grieve, to rise up into your bliss. This is life. And the worst thing you can do is push your emotions away, swallow them, “be strong”, or numb yourself. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks your grief should or should not look like. It’s your life, your path, your purpose.
Feel it. Feel it all and go out and live your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. The happy, the sad, the downright depressed. This is our one chance (depending on your belief system!), so get out and live, friends.
namaste
-Tonya