The Other Side of Grief

Kathy Walters

Grief is something I thought I understood. Thought I’d managed my way through the morass after my partner died in March 2010. Imagined I’d come out the other side, as if grief is something we get (like the flu), suffer with for a while, then it’s gone, and we are recovered. Back good as new.

Not quite.

There’s very little support for anyone grieving in our culture. Few people really want to talk about it, there are almost no social constructs to support those of us in grief, little or no patience with lingering grief. Merriam-Webster has this to say about grief: “a deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement” with such synonyms as anguish, heartache, sorrow, woe, heartbreak – and, “grief implies poignant sorrow for an immediate cause.” When that immediate cause is no longer so immediate, what reason do we have to continue to grieve?

Why can’t we just get over it? Back to real life and onward. Even some of my closest friends or those who are also grieving scratch their heads, not understanding why I’m still talking about her death. Medical people and energy healing people and those with no apparent credentials at all tell me it’s not healthy to hold on to grief, it will muck up one or more physical or etheric systems and cause illness if left to run rampant. And yet, grief remains present for me, in this small physical body, in the air around me, in my thoughts and senses. Not intrusive, just sitting there, a part of everything, all the time.

And it’s not just about my partner anymore: my lovely animal companions who have transitioned, many other humans who have passed over as my father used to say. Even deaths that took place well before she passed; all are part of the mist of grief I now feel. And not only deaths of living beings. Any loss qualifies: homes I moved from, friendships I once enjoyed and took for granted, a favorite car, interests and pastimes that no longer amuse me or I can no longer perform, existential crises and losses. It’s an endless list and has become a sort of undifferentiated mass of grief.

The sources of grief form a long list and are always active, yet most of us don’t even notice; it’s just how it is. I learned the need to recognize grief in whatever form it appears. And to process it as well as I can, not to disappear it, but rather to incorporate whatever I need to learn from it and keep living my life. While doing my own work I began to see that countless other humans carry grief without acknowledging it. This is not blaming, since most of us just take it all in and don’t think much about it at all.

I tried to fight it, to put it off. I tried to understand, that’s why I went to bereavement groups. I tried to be done with grief, “thanks for stopping by.” It was only when I stopped struggling and efforting, and just relaxed and inhaled grief that I could allow it to propel me into a space where I am as close to Spirit as I possibly can be.

Some of us, I’m pretty sure, are given the task of processing this amassed grief for ourselves and on behalf of the collective. I seem to have this assignment, which I thought was temporary when I first learned of it. I checked in often to ask if I was close to meeting my quota and when I could expect to no longer feel the onus of carrying grief that wasn’t mine. It’s not a punishment, it’s simply part of my job right now in this lifetime. It’s rather like having an inbox that empties and immediately fills up again, all this grief to be processed. I don’t take it on – it’s not mine. I had to sort out how to process and release it without the grief of others leaving any remnants in my energy field. No idea how that happened, but it seems to be working okay.

Here I am looking at my own grief, how it grows and lessens and expands and changes shape and color and sensation – along with a small share of grief from the collective – thinking I’ve nailed this. I have a rhythm now and all is proceeding according to plan. That is, until an additional part of the plan was revealed to me; coming within another mix of signals and sensations as is often the case.

Over many years, I had other losses and became better acquainted with grief, yet I was completely in the weeds and unprepared for the impact of my partner’s death in 2010. Despite a variety of meetings with heartbreak, I was really no closer to a full realization of grief. During her illness and my caregiving over a couple of years, we avoided the subject of death at all costs. Until we were at the finish line and her death was imminent and there were no other options.

I am grateful for the rest of my days that I was at her side when she transitioned back to spirit; it was a moment of profound intimacy and love. I saw and felt her spirit leave the broken physical form and rise up, as if it was passing through me. In my vision were snowflake like shapes, shining and sparkling, all in a kind of pure air, floating. That distinct visual and the sensations stayed with me for several hours. I remained on Earth yet was also with her in another dimension.

She was gone from this physical plane, and everything was just as it was, and nothing was the same as before. I was fully immersed in mourning and remained so for many months, even as my day-to-day life continued on a familiar track. Our sweet dog and I did all the things we’d been doing before, and he was pretty much always with me. I joined bereavement groups, sorted out her things for the kids and for donation and packed up and moved and settled into a new home. My grieving remained, even as I met new people and began an extraordinary spiritual awakening and attended numerous trainings and moved again and kept going, one day into the next. I discovered my intuition and ways to communicate with angels and guides and those in spirit, learned energy medicine techniques and shifted the place of grief and its contours even as I remained deeply immersed in our connection and the loss of her physical presence.

I kept thinking I would move out of grief and into some other mode. But what was there beyond this immeasurable loss? How could I simply pack it up and gently store it in memory and actively pursue something else entirely? I let it be. Grief became a comfort of sorts, not overwhelming or in control, just part of me, perhaps the most loving and caring part. And my life continued, with this added aspect giving me a kind of wisdom or additional insight into the ways of things.

Until it shifted or the light around it shifted, and it became something else, beyond whatever I could possibly have imagined.

In the midst of an energy session that included examining my life lesson about processing grief, a new vision came clear. I saw past the walls and closed doors and around the corners, into another room, a chamber of sorts, with many compartments and nooks and shelves and such filled with treasures, learnings of all kinds that had come to me during this lifetime along with many from other lifetimes. Each one was like its own miracle, some kind of clarity or perspective on what lay beneath or next to or beyond it. Dozens of them; probably hundreds or thousands. All of them tucked safely away, pristine, just waiting for my attention and awareness to reveal them.

This was and is a storage room of treasures I could explore and use forever, never diminishing or becoming hidden again. It had been there all along, just past this curve in the walkway, a step beyond this pile of stones, on the other side of that shadow. All at once it was available to me – to use in any way I chose, following my intuition, listening to the whisper of spirit, without reservation. It seems to be a path into deeper feelings and sensations, higher wisdom, in the form of sparkling lights and sweet sounds, with a soft rhythmic drumming just barely within my hearing.

The grief I had been feeling and experiencing and processing had become a doorway of some kind into deeper feelings and sensations. An enormous shift in perspective. I was at the point when I knew I was meant to use grief and disappointment and heartbreak to lean into this open doorway, this portal, and reach the treasures within to use according to my life purpose and plan, all in divine order. This realization took my breath away and, in the same moment, provided me with unlimited resources and energy.

I have been shifting into how best to use these insights and learnings as I continue along my life path. There is no need for me to arrange anything or make priorities since all is according to plan. Instead, I stay open to possibilities and do not worry about a script; I am in the flow. I have a sense of completion, as in completing a significant portion of my mission, while remaining in motion, equipped with powerful tools that only recently became available to me in their fullness. As if all the pieces of the puzzle have found their place.

“The measure of our courage is the measure of our willingness to embrace grief, to turn towards it rather than away, the understanding that every real conversation of life involves being heartbroken somewhere along the way…”

David Whyte

In this time of my life my primary focus is on being rather than doing. My job is to sit peacefully on the park bench – approachable, insightful, smiling. At this moment, happiness is bubbling just at the surface – informing my physical challenges and emotional path. The day is bright and mild and green. Sprites are playing in the shrubs and along the garden walk, singing and dancing. If I adjust my vision just so, I begin to see the shapes of ancestors and elders, grandmothers, and angels. We are all celebrating this day. Right now.

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