When one is in the throes of grief, it feels never-ending. In some ways, it might be. We continue to mourn for lost loved ones, lost opportunities, lost dreams. But in my experience, there is a distinct experience of closure that eventually surfaces. The only person I have seen effectively put words to this experience was the poet David Whyte in an interview with Krista Tippett, where he was discussing the unexpected death of his friend John O’Donohue. He said,

“But when he went, it was like the other half of me disappeared. And we have this physical experience in loss of falling toward something. It’s like falling in love except it’s falling into grief. You’re falling towards the foundation that they held for you in your life that you didn’t realize they were holding. And you fall and fall and fall and you don’t find it for the longest time. The shock of the loss to begin with and the hermetic sealing off is necessary in grief. But then there comes a time when you finally, actually start to touch the ground that they were holding for you. And it’s from that ground that you step off into your new life...”

I’ve spoken with some friends in grief who have experienced this falling, but I’ve yet to engage with anyone about the solid ground that you eventually find. For me, this solid ground felt like an ease or willingness to feel the full scope of my emotions, the ability to make a decision I had not been able to make for several years, returned motivation for work and creative projects, more energy and mental clarity in general, and a kind of insulation from my life. I do not mean that I am standing at a distance from my life (as Rob Bell would say). I am not. What I mean is that my own connection with myself is so profound that it seems to hold every else at a distance. There is something fundamental that is unaffected by the tides of life.

I found this out because only a few weeks after I started to find this ground, I received some painful news, more painful than the initial cause of my grief. It was interesting to be returned so suddenly to grief, but from this new place. There wasn’t really any falling this time, which makes me wonder if sometimes crises that seem to be about other people are actually more about bringing our attention to how unstable our own foundation has become. Once I had this firmer foundation, I was capable of absorbing great loss without losing my footing. My experience suggests that if you take radical care of yourself in the years after loss, you may find a kind of sovereignty that carries you through whatever comes next.

Outside of my own internal change in state, I received various forms of confirmation externally that seemed to contain my experience and indicate that the period of mourning had closed. My son cut his forehead open a few days after the initial trauma. He split his chin open when I started to feel closure. Around that time, he also broke a crystal that I had been using to meditate with. When I texted my energy healer to ask about this, she said, “When a crystal breaks it indicates that the situation we have been meditating on has resolved.” There was about a month period where I had these types of experiences every day, something that said to me, “this phase is ending.”

I hesitate to give a time frame for this; I think it is different for everyone. But for me it was almost exactly two years from a trauma. I’ve heard that for many people it takes three years, but I am relatively young and have lots of resources—material and otherwise—so it makes sense that the timeline was shortened in my case. In the coming weeks I plan to write a series on grief and resources. I already have one post about the things that were helpful to me in the first year. I’d like to identify some good self-care resources in and near Oxford, OH for my colleagues. I’d like to discuss free forms of self-care for those who have fewer resources or are interested in the simplest approach to healing. And I’d like to talk about the stages of grief as I experienced them, since they did not correspond to the traditional stages. In the meantime, if you are in a season of grief, I hope my experience strengthens your own hope that you will soon find your footing, maybe sooner than you expect.

Peace and love.