When Grief Awakened Me

Grief has a way of awakening me—sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes in the middle of my life.

I first met Grief years ago.
It arrived abruptly.

Sharply.

Like the thorns of a rose. A beautiful red rose.

I was not ready.

I had no idea what to do with it.

The environment I was in at that time was not suitable for Grief. This system worshipped strength and success, and grief was seen as weakness. Part of me was comfortable in this oblivion. This fantasy.

Because it kept me from feeling. If I could just not feel, then I was safe here.

So when Grief showed up I did not want anything to do with it.

I first tried to ignore it. I tried to tell it, “You have the wrong person.”

But it insisted it knew me. So, I did the only thing I could do in that season….I ran.

I ran fast and hard. Through work. Through family. Through many things. Good things.

But at some point after running for a while, eventually exhaustion hits. Surrender set in and I could not run anymore.

Tears started showing up on their own as I tried to work. As I cooked dinner for my kids. On vacation….

I hated what was happening to me. I didn’t understand it and neither did anyone around me.

But this wasn’t weakness.

It was wisdom. Grief had a sacred agenda:

To disrupt my oblivion. To awaken me to wounds that were secretly hemorrhaging within me. Wounds I had not tended to from my childhood….

and from my life.

It was inviting me to stop running long enough to feel what my body had brilliantly buried deep within for many years.

Inviting me to face truths my survival system had wisely put away. Emotions survival had buried for me, stories I was terrified to acknowledge.

But you see, Grief is a relentless truth-teller.

A sacred Witness of the real story. Not the stories we tell ourselves, but the real story.

I could not hide from it.

I could not outrun it.

Grief is too loyal for all of that. Too authentic.

But I didn’t know any of this back then.

Grief started to feel like rupture—
a tearing inside my heart,
a breaking open I didn’t know if I would be able to survive.

I lost all I had relentlessly worked: My dream of family, my community, my sense of purpose….

These multiple, simultaneous losses echoed of past childhood abandonment.

Flashes of a brutal father.

A little girl surviving an orphanage…

Grief was unearthing memories I could not have accessed otherwise, they had been buried too deep.

I wept everyday for a whole year.

Twelve months of tears.

Three hundred and sixty five days of blurried vision.

Grief started as thorns on a rose.

But soon it felt like a Tsunami wave.

I could no longer resist it. I had no strength left to keep my head above water.

“Breathe,” I would tell myself. “Just breathe”…

I stopped trying to be strong. I allowed myself to weep as much as I needed to.

At some point, something started to come back to life within me.

Now I know Grief is not an enemy to conquer.

Grief comes regardless of what theology you may or may not hold.

With compassionate presence, I discovered Grief was a womb to hold me gently and safely.

A Guide, a Companion walking me toward Love, holding me gently into rebirth.

The very thing that once felt unbearable
slowly became the womb where new life formed—
new breath emerged.

And somehow I rose again with deeper love for all my stories and for all the versions of me:

The little girl.

The woman.

The mother.

The survivor.

The healer.

Now, when Grief knocks at my door, I see her as a good, old friend. I take a deep breath, and I let it hold my hand through yet another sacred threshold.