grief.

sometimes art can help you move through it but sometimes you just need to sit with it. let it move through you and take over, it won’t last forever. if there are things you have to do, do them, but don’t try to do anything else that’s big, just grieve. this might be crying, or yelling, or staring quietly at nothing. it might be napping a lot, or watching netflix for days. that’s ok. grief is hard, and if you need to not do it so you can rest, that’s ok, too. it can come for all sorts of reasons, and you don’t get to choose the timeline or the end date. someday you’ll come back to the things that are calling you, and you’ll come back different. tenderness will come with you and seep into everything you touch. let it; it’s beautiful, and we will feel it. thank you, in advance, for showing me what it looks like, and making it easier for me when it’s my turn to grieve again.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry.