The raggedness of this post reflects the raggedness of mind that comes with acute grief. The piece below is written from a few fragments of my journal during this time. While the insights are simple, they were hard for me to remember in the bewildering, shredded reality of losing a child. My hope is this writing will help Wisdom Well readers, particularly those navigating through the dense fog of uncertainty and confusion that accompanies grief.
As I walked into the memorial service for my daughter, who was only three weeks old when she departed, I was embraced by a dear friend who whispered the truism: you will be stronger.
One part of me thought, I don’t want to be stronger as a result of my daughter’s death. But what came out of my mouth was: I don’t want to be stronger. I want to be softer.
That response didn’t come from my mind. It came from my heart, my spirit, and it has echoed through my life since I kissed Elowyn goodbye.
Our society rewards and asks us to be strong, rather than soft. Strength in our culture means gritting through, having resilience, enduring whatever is thrown our way. This can be useful when we seek to achieve something, but in the face of acute grief it is brittle, and it breaks.
Grief requires another kind of strength: the strength to yield, to open, to let sorrow move through you. Grief requires the strength to be soft.
In my grief, I have used the following mantra and practices to ground me and help me remain soft:
Mantra
Love begets love. Pain begets pain. Hope begets hope. In grief, it is difficult to feel anything positive. It is difficult to get out of bed, to not feel as if the universe is closing in around you, to not feel as if the fates have forced you into a hell for the living. To pull out of this, I’ve found that when I ask myself, If I had hope or love, what would I do next? That action invariably leads to more hope and more love. If I act from pain, I yield more pain. If I act from a place of love or hope, even if I’m not feeling it, it eventually leads to more of both.
Practices
Gratitude. Gratitude is necessary for countering the feeling of nothing. No matter what we have lost, we still have much around us. I have in the past found myself without any support, even a home, and in those times gratitude supported my survival: the smell of a flower, appreciating a long walk to work, or the freshness of an apple.
A commitment I wrote to my daughter and shared at her memorial included: Even if there is the remotest of remote chances she is still with me, I may be her eyes, ears, and hands to see, hear, and feel what she will never be able to. I must care to see the world with the same focus and grace with which I would have tried teaching her.
To deliver on my commitment to her I must find gratitude in every moment.
Perspective
Perspective is necessary for countering the feeling of being alone. Whatever hell we find ourselves in, we are not the only ones there. Everyone’s grief is unique, but there are so many others who have walked through similar halls of despair and confusion.
I’m reminded, through my work internationally, of the countless families who have lost children to war, famine, and other tragedies.
Having perspective is not a salve for grief, but it counters loneliness. You are now immeasurably different, but you are not alone.
I hope these humbly constructed insights find a home in the hearts of others who are grieving.
Your MEA brother,
Christopher ’23
Christopher Ede-Calton is a global affairs professional based out of Washington DC.