Befriending grief to make space for true gratitude
Grief as a sacred daily practice, and all the ways it allows me to receive what's the juice of whats really here.
Earlier I wrote this post about celebrating the journey of parenting.
Embracing these experiences hasn't come natural to me and it wasn’t ever just like gratitude fell upon me. I often find myself either fighting against them or dismissing them as unreal. It’s taken great will and intention to move my attention towards what good is happening.
I've come to realize that I cannot fully appreciate the blessings of parenting unless I also allow grief to coexist with gratitude. When I let my heart's defenses crack open, I can fully embrace all that comes with it—believing in love anew and recognizing the beauty and blessings in my life.
It takes practice to direct my attention towards love, especially since I've spent much of my life vigilant against threats. Receiving these experiences, as I shared in my last post, means to me to recognize and acknowledge their existence and letting them embrace and penetrate my being. To do that, I work a lot to let down my defenses and misconceptions about the world.
I also look for them elsewhere because if I missed them in one place, I surely overlooked them in others.
My major learning journey of processing grief into gratitude was through building a relationship with my husband.
During the first year of dating him, I cried nearly every day, processing all the love he shared with me. I still do at times. For me, crying is a way to increase my capacity to hold something so precious and yet so unfamiliar, something I deeply yearn for as a human being. Crying allowed me to open up and let go. It helped me let in what was real and true, while also honoring the ways I’ve been living in the past as valid and sensible.
Our relationship feels to me like it’s profoundly secure, and I feel like I've let him in in a way I've never done with anyone else. With him, I’ve surrendered to the love that surrounds me instead of fighting it. I've experienced a level of acceptance that I never even dared to dream of existing before I met him. A level of security and reliability I thought was ridiculous to expect from anyone is now my daily reality. The process of opening my heart to his generous love involved mourning all the times I didn't feel this loved in past relationships. All the times I wasn’t trusting in love.
Through this relationship and process, I've been learning to fill a part of me that has felt empty, yearning for fulfillment. There’s a cultural notion that you shouldn’t grieve when you receive something—you should be “grateful.” But I've found that grief naturally coexists with gratitude. True gratitude encompasses grief. The grief reminds me about the uniqueness of what I’m grateful for, I hold it as precious. Without the grief, I take it all for granted.
Whenever I resist the grief, I end up feeling cranky and suffering. It never fails. Each time, I feel stuck, stagnant, and I start blaming everyone around me for how things could be better but aren’t. I’ve got shades of “everything is bad”, and starts to make up stories to fit to the feeling inside me that something isn’t flowing. But it’s usually not something out there, it’s the grief within me that’s stuck.
Allowing myself to cry daily is my sacred practice, a way to circulate all the energy through this love that I am receiving from him and my daughter. For the blessings of my life.
I grieve how this relationship has changed me. Although the changes are so welcomed and appreciated, I’ve also lost an old part of myself that I know very well, the one who fights for love or needs to be a warrior when it comes to romance, or the one who is unlovable. All of those parts of me dosen’t need to exist in our relationship, and I’ve previously been very attached to those stories and identities. Griefs allows me to honor how they served some time in my past, and how I let them go now that I don’t need those beliefs anymore.
Another example of this more related to parenting was the postpartum of birth. I was often unfairly cranky and upset with those closest to me. I was receiving so much more love and support, more than I had ever known, and I had the most precious being in my arms experiencing the juice of life every single day—my dreams were coming true. And it happened so effortlessly, not because I worked hard or fought for it, but simply because I allowed myself to acknowledge and accept my desires. And acted upon them.
And here I was, with it all. So upset! A total victory hangover.
I kept fighting like a warrior. It wasn’t until I could let myself grieve for weeks that I could let it all in. I’m living a life full of miracles. I was cranky because I didn't allow myself to believe that having a loving, secure, and supportive family could be true. That being a mother is what I truly desired, and I got to experience that. Acknowledging it and believing in it meant that I could have had it all along, had I chosen or been able to choose it.
Daily, I process the grief of never having what I now hold, the grief of what I cannot have because of my current choices, and the grief of unfulfilled dreams. I process the grief of knowing it could all disappear one day, and the grief of leaving the old me behind and embracing the new me. With this process comes immense gratitude.
I live in so much gratitude now. I see more clearly all the ways my husband supports us. I recognize the beauty, joy, safety, trust, and the supportive environment our family and community offers. It’s unique, yet I see these qualities in other families too, even if they don’t.
Grief reminds me that I am still alive, still receiving, still growing, still expanding the capacity to receive all what this life has to bring me.
And I’m taking it all in.