Try Not To Fear Loss, Aloneness

"Mom, what's the most important life lesson you have for me now that you're old?"

Try not to fear loss and aloneness. Being afraid of either is stifling. Here's my thought, and I'd like you to come up with your own. 

From the very first separation – when an infant encounters its new limitless space, there's a kind of grief as separation occurs. New, different bonds form. The nature of intimacy changes as time passes. Breakaways and chasms happen as a child grows up. Then, adult autonomy: a child grows into their own personhood.

The journey of life and love is always difficult. Things may sail along awhile, but grief in some form will eventually arrive, often as a surprise. We're never ready to lose who, and what, we love. The loss of dear ones - even if the loss is simple, inevitable change such as growing older - changes our life dynamic. Remnants of accumulated losses persist in signs and symbols throughout our lives. Sometimes I will hear music I listened to as each of you were growing up, and I feel a little memory-ping on my heart. Bittersweet. I'm so thankful though that I have them, even though the baby you is gone now. Though each time I look at you, I see you then as well.

Negative feelings have a way of sapping us. Longing into the void of impossibility isn't helpful. Anchoring yourself to your own center requires engaging with the energy and currency of your emotions and stepping toward voids without falling into them. I know well this is not easy. 

I also know that no one I've ever met benefited from periods of prolonged despair over life's "unfairness."

Healing from loss to reclaim vitality is more than patching up and moving on. It's seeing the cracks and voids as holding areas for precious insights and memories as they alight. There is more to heaven and earth than can be contained in our philosophies, Shakespeare said in his time in language that still resonates.

Use such words as a balm upon your wounds. Even more importantly, reflect now on such things and find language that comforts you, even if it arrives wordlessly, for example, in melody. Look for life-affirming ideas and metaphors. That's what I am trying to give you here, along with something I know to be true.

Sorrow makes you feel helpless in the way we humans are. Please don't let it ever make you hopeless.