Living with Loss
Love weaves the fabric of living with loss-- little pains from not being met, from rejection, from betrayal, and the large pain of losing a parent, a spouse, a child. Love exists in the same frame as loss. One is the frame (loss), the other is the image, the beauty or challenge or destruction that love has wrought. Loss is the container that allows love to flourish ... it is present in every breath. There is no inhale without an exhale.
Our children are born with their own destiny encoded deep within their cells. We like to think we can control this outcome- that we can protect them from harm, illness, abuse, and we do our best to instill a deep desire to live, to cherish life, to know there is a reason for engaging in this challenging world in which we live.
Perhaps the lesson that everything you love you will lose should be taught from the beginning of life, woven into the fairytales and teachings of childhood, discussed at the dinner table and in the classroom. If love and loss were part of our lifelong curriculum then we would also have to create space, ritual, and an honoring for grief.
It's astonishing how little grief is discussed or understood despite the fact that all of us experience it every day. The loss of a friendship or of our trust or the future we dreamed of. The loss of a familiar school for the bigger, more exciting, and terrifying world of high school. The loss of innocence or youth or security. Each time we embrace a new lover, we bid farewell to the spaciousness of solitude. Every new opportunity that arises, whether you invited it, or it hit you over the head, involves letting go of something.
The thought came to me yesterday that I would like to facilitate a group for teenagers-- I was going to say for girls until I thought of Hunter and Aiden and how they would have benefited from such an offering if they would have allowed themselves to participate. I see how much it's needed, how little soul-tending and witnessing is available for sensitive teens. How amazing it would be to tell them transformational stories and play music for them, introduce them to poetry, and teach them how to honor where they are while also holding space for each other. I know I'm not there yet... it's too soon to be external like that and I do not have space inside to hold the immense challenges that these teens are carrying. But down the road, it might be a way of giving back.
Love has been whitewashed by a culture intent on lifting up the bright and shiny parts while demonizing the shadow, the dark, mysterious, soulwork of grief. We need to learn how to hold the whole person, the whole mess of humanity bumping up against itself in all the failing and fabulous attempts to love.
Why is don't we have schools dedicated to the Art of Loving? Our most basic needs to be loved, seen, witnessed, cherished—this can be taught. The curriculum would include things like healthy, healing touch, love languages, mature communication, how to listen, sexual arts, how to develop intimacy in romantic relationships, establishing boundaries and giving consent, how to ask for what you want and need, tools and resources for conflict resolution, basic psychoeducation about the brain works, neuroplasticity and trauma response, and how to develop discernment in love and friendships.
Of course, grief, loss, death, and dying would also be included because without fully grieving our losses we enter into new relationships with additional overstuffed baggage that can make it nearly impossible to enjoy a harmonious partnership because you live in fear of loss or betrayal or abuse.
Oh, how I want to help tilt the world towards acknowledging and processing grief so more love can shine through. AND now is not the time. I'm still a liquified mass of unknown mush. Sigh.