To my new friend named “Grief,”
We had crossed paths at different points before but never spent a prolonged time together getting to know each other.
There was that time when a grade school boy in my class, who told me countless times how in love with me he was, ended his life by the time he got to high school. That was a rough and confusing crash course with you, grief. I sure didn’t know what to call you back then.
There was that other time when a high school classmate died on the football field at our homecoming game after our class won the pep rally that same day. You cast your spell on me that day again, along with my entire high school community.
There was another time when a dear family friend, my incredibly beautiful, Chilean, guitar-playing, introverted crush from childhood/teen years ended his life suddenly. You helped opened up new gifts in me, including mediumship and etheric/psychic conversations from the other side, alongside the loss of my young, light-filled friend with the big, gorgeous smile.
And then we got wayyyy closer in the weeks following the unexpected departure of my grandmother to the other side three years ago after a terrible fall while on family vacation, a vacation I chose under intuitive guidance not attend. Yeah, we got to know each other really well then through my wailing cries for my family and endless stream of tears at the loss of our beloved matriarch.
Then 2019 arrived.
A year filled with unbelievable, radical change, gut-wrenching moments and heart shattering loss. I broke up with my great love, a man who I knew in my bones that I would spend my life with. I released my home, a gorgeous SoCal, two bedroom apartment of “our” dreams. I left behind a California life I fell hopelessly in love with. I let go of my ocean, a place that calmed my heart no matter how I arrived to her shores. I left my friends, my favorite cafes, my endless sunshine, my gorgeous parks behind to seek ease in Ohio with my family for a time.
In the cascade of grief this summer, you came with me and stood at the doors of the veterinarian clinic in the middle of the night as my mom and me said goodbye to my sweet Sparky boy as he left his aged, 16-year-old body behind and his soul was set free.
And then, as if 2019 could possibly conjure more reasons to grieve, I lost a dear friend last week after a 3+ year journey with brain cancer.
Grief, my friend, we sure have gotten to know each other this year.
I marvel at my ability to call you my friend. I feared you most of my life. I still kinda do if I’m honest with you, which you know I try to be.
I often want to blame you for my pain, but then I remember that you are the vehicle in which that deep pain leaves my body...IF I let you work your magic on me.
You’ve come to know many of my friends, family and members of the Courage of Ease community this year, too. You are this inconvenient friend that has invited us to the edges of letting go, acceptance and surrender in the presence of your magnitude as we are all invited, against our own desires, to release people, homes, pets, lovers, health, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children, coworkers, family and a variety of old versions of ourselves.
I also remind myself that...
beyond the intensity…
beyond the heavy emotions…
beyond the loss…
...you’ve taught me the deepest levels of gratitude.
My sweater absorbs my fallen tears as I write these words laced with duality. How could such loss lead to such love?
I didn’t see any of this coming. It’s something I “lower case knew,” but now I “upper case KNOW.”
I am grateful to know my own resilience.
I am grateful to know how many generous friends would sit with me as I cried.
I am grateful to now spend time with my family and collect pieces of me in Ohio.
I am grateful to have reclaimed the parts of my essence I severed away unknowingly trying to fit in with my old life, relationships and roles.
I have been fortified.
I have been stripped bare.
I have been brought home.
I have been reminded of WHO...I...AM.
And while this process of grieving has been brutal at times, it’s been filled with grace the WHOLE time.
God has been looking after me every microsecond of this journey. And that, my friend called grief, under all your immense layers and complexity, you’ve been a close companion and extension of the Divine in my life this year.
You get a bad rap, I think. You’ve been forever misunderstood and avoided and shunned from hearts of millions around the world. It makes me wonder, though, if they tried to make friends with you, too, how much pain would be released from the outer layer of this earth and how much more love could pour into our collective hearts.
One of the most valuable knowings I walk with now is knowing how to be with you.
I spent my twenties avoiding the slightest possibility of knowing you, so much so that I avoided opening my heart AT ALL, to keep you at bay.
Knowing the pain of heartbreak now…
Knowing your companionship…
Knowing the blessings you unlocked in me…
...I will hold you close now in a perpetual dance. A dance that happens when certain songs come on along our journey together. Not every day. Not every dance. But, you and me, my friend, will always know our song when it comes on.
Inside those dancing notes of song through the air, inside the moments of loss and confusion, I’ll know you’ll be there with me and for me. I can rely on you. I can reach for your hand in gratitude that I know exactly who to call upon in the moments I need you most.
You are now included in my wide-ranged emotional spectrum, no longer buried under years of repressed feelings. I welcome you, my love. I honor you. I deeply and humbly respect you.
If and when we meet again, I will surrender my familiar resistance and instead await your walk across the dance floor with a hand extended my way asking, “May I have this dance?” Until then, I vow to LIVE this life I’ve been gifted.
This life that, by countless blessings under the sacred eyes of this Universe, I’ve been given another day to create, to feel, to love, to BE, to write, to make love, to dance, to girl talk with my sister, to have dinner with my parents, to go shopping with my aunt, to ring up my friends, to enjoy thanksgiving this week with my family, to flirt with sexy humans, to feel my feet in these cozy socks, to drink this deliciously warm tea and to sleep soundly under your loving gaze.
I often imagine the souls that sit in the clouds eagerly looking down on us, “the lucky ones” that got the chance to live in bodies down here in this mysterious and vast place called planet earth, as they say to each other, “Gosh, they’re so blessed that they get to feel and eat food and create cool things that never existed before and to fall in love. I wonder what it’s like down there? I sure hope I get a chance some day to live in a body on earth.”
I was given another day today.
This is a rare, never guaranteed, gorgeous gift.
I promise you, my friend, that even on my hardest days, I will say thank you for this treasured existence.
I will be here for all of it.
In the meantime, thank you for your lessons. Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for your love. I will take this gratitude with me always.
With love and admiration,
Krystal
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