Sacred Sadness

It’s strange how some days, some moments, stick with you, and years later come back, almost as full of color and life as the first time you lived them.

I have this memory of being a brand-new therapist, still in grad school, and sitting with one of my very first clients. She had just experienced a tremendous, earth-shaking loss. She was filled with grief but couldn’t cry.

She sat so very still in her chair, and I could barely hear her when she spoke.

“I’m afraid if I start crying, if I start feeling, I will never stop.”

That’s where the memory ends. I don’t remember what was said next. I do remember sitting with her, in the stillness and in the silence, and being deeply aware that there was something sacred about what she was sharing with me.

There is something sacred about grief, something sacred about deep and true emotions of any kind.

Much of the time, when we feel something that is painful, we just want to feel better. We feel depressed, anxious, sad, angry, or lonely, and we don’t want to feel that way anymore. Most of the time, we can do some work and feel better. We can go to therapy, exercise, try medication, find accountability and support, read a book, pray a lot, and the painful feelings start to subside. We manage our mood, navigate the complex

relationships, and find ways to take good care of ourselves. We find ways to feel better.

But sometimes, we feel a painful feeling, and it isn’t about feeling better. We want to feel better, we hate the pain, but the work that we must do isn’t about managing the bad feeling so that it goes away. Sometimes, the work is about finding safe places to really feel the uncomfortable, painful thing. Grief is that kind of work.

It’s a natural reaction to want to move away from pain, physical or emotional. We don’t like it. We aren’t supposed to.

But emotional pain doesn’t work the same way that physical pain does. Moving away from emotional pain does not reduce or diminish it. Sometimes, moving away from emotional pain intensifies and prolongs it. I am not talking about clinical depression or anxiety here; those are different monsters altogether. I am talking about the intense emotional reactions we have to pain and loss.

I am talking about grief. About losses that are so big and painful that for a time they may consume you. Losses that you know a part of you will feel and live with every day of the rest of your life. The loss can be a person, a relationship, a future you felt so certain existed, or a childhood that you needed but didn’t get. The loss can be sudden, like an unexpected death, or gradual, like the ending of a marriage. It can be a loss everybody understands, or it can be a loss that looks minor to an outsider, but hits you deeply. Loss can come in many forms, and our emotional reaction to loss is usually complex and layered.

We want to run away from grief, like we want to move away from any kind of pain. But running away doesn’t make it go away. The work of grief is not to manage it, but to feel it and honor it and do the sacred work of grieving.

There’s no time limit or time line for grief. Every person and every loss is different. You have permission to take as much time as you need. You have permission to cry loud tears and quiet tears. You have permission to let fear and anger and loneliness be a part of your grief. You have permission to let relief and maybe even hope be a part of your grief. You have permission to grieve alone and to grieve with others.

I hope I told the young woman from my grad-school memory that she wouldn’t cry forever. That it may feel like it for awhile, but that I could promise her she wouldn’t cry forever. And that a part of her would always feel and mourn this loss, but that she would not always feel consumed by it. And that right now, her job was to let herself feel and mourn the loss with every part of her self that needed to feel and mourn it.

I hope that I helped her find a safe space to do the work of grieving. And, I hope that if you are grieving, you can find a safe space for the sacred sadness.

#grief #emotions #relatoinships #loss #counseling #thearlingtoncenter #therapy #arlingtoncounselingassociates #laurenshaw