Email from my friend Larry to his friend Ava: “Navigating this new reality since my beloved Mandy returned to her spiritual home has been a perplexing challenge, which my problem-solving skills do not seem to be a good match for. So far, it’s been a treacherous, roller-coaster ride with lots of spins, turns, and upside-down movement. Kind of nauseating really. And overwhelming. There’s so much turbulence, it hasn’t been possible to clearly visualize a potentially happy ending. We’ll see.”
To me, Ava’s reply is so wise: “Hi Larry, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of this, but I’ll say it anyway: Grief is not a problem to be solved and healing can only happen by connecting with the heart, not the mind. No amount of cognitive wrestling will get you through all this. You have to let the grief move through you.
And, sadly, there’s no rushing it, anymore than you can rush a rainstorm to finish. But along the way, you simply have faith that the rain will slow and then stop of its own accord. And all you can do is to keep reminding yourself what it feels like to bask in the sunshine.”
Larry’s deep grief is the outcome of his deep love. Love is our magnetic compass. Love gives us direction and purpose. Love keeps us oriented and attached. When someone we love dies, our loving compass becomes so shocked, scrambled and disrupted that we literally become disoriented and lost in the turbulence of our grief moving through us.
Grief researchers are finding that re-orienting our loving compass to fond memories of the past, our spiritual love in the present, and meaningful legacies in the future builds resilience, reduces depression, increases physical health and resolves grief.
There is no rushing it, anymore than you can rush the rain to stop or rush the moon to orbit around the earth more quickly. But we can slowly, patiently and purposefully reorient our loving compass by focusing on love.
The rain will stop, the night will become morning. The sun will rise and our loving compass will help us find the sunshine.
My name is Linda Hill. My book, Together Still: Love Beyond Death is a memoir about how I learned to continue my loving bonds with my beloved spouse John Scull and re-orbit my body, mind, heart and soul around love and happiness.
Now I am travelling the world virtually and in person sharing my story and listening to others’ stories of re-orienting to and re-orbiting around the spiritual presence of beloved people who have died as well as the physical presence of everyone, everything and every place that we love in this world we remain living in. I invite you to join me by subscribing to my blog.
CONTINUING LOVING BONDS 