Like a marble slab, with grief comes weight. It’s a suffocating, crushing pressure that pushes you down from above, and pulls you from beneath. Staying alive takes focus and intense concentration. This breath, this step. Like a child we learn to live again. This is how we breathe, in, out, in, out. This is how we feed ourselves, this is how we brush our hair and teeth. Focus.
Day by day we grow stronger. That marble monolith doesn’t lighten, but we can lift it, just for a second and breathe deeper, just for one breathe. Tomorrow two, then three, then rest again, exhausted by the weight once again.
And in that power and resistance, the focus remains. We concentrate fiercely on the light, give thanks to those moments of relief and of pure joy that once we scuttled passed with our heads down and our arms full: A beautiful sky, a puppy’s ears bouncing as it runs, really good custard. Day by day we left the light in, a joy that only exists because we have grown strong enough to carry it.
Like a marble slab, grief and joy compressed together, their veins intertwined over time, inseparable and immoveable.
This was written as part of Beth Kempton’s Summer Sanctuary