New Year, New You? It's Not That Simple With Grief

Michael Meade (who hosts a wonderful podcast called Mosaic Voices that talks about soulful mythology in our present day) describes the New Year as a rite of passage; a ritual to end the old year, and celebrate the start of a new period. A time of renewal, of beginnings. A threshold time. A liminal space; 2019 is gone, 2020 is yet to come.

Grief is also a threshold time. Grief plunks you in liminal space - betwixt and between two lives that don’t seem to fit; you live suspended between a past for which you long and a future for which you hope, to quote Gerald Sittser, from his book A Grace Disguised.

Living in liminal space is hard. It’s uncomfortable. It’s unknowable. In a society that has an abundance of drive to DO things, and become "better" (what does that even mean?), existing in a threshold time can feel like you are doing it "wrong."

You aren't. 

This is precisely what grief calls us to do - slow down, and pause. Give yourself the time to be in emotional and spiritual intensive care. It’s in this threshold space that you figure out how to live your changed life, and that takes time, it takes living, and it's really, really hard. This is how loss and grief become an integrated part of your whole. 

If you’ve been living moment to moment, or hour to hour to get through the early months after a loss, extending your mind into the future (planning a resolution at New Year’s) can be especially daunting and lonesome. Opens up a new abyss of grief and longing for things to be different. And yet, they aren’t.

I remember talking to a  dear friend about this - how as time went on, and we started living day to day, then week to week, then month to month, it was harder in different ways.  As such, the custom to make a New Year’s resolution can be wrought with anxiety, especially when life has changed so much already. If this resonates with your experience, here are some things to consider:

• You don’t have to make a resolution. Although I don’t know the details of your life lately, I’d take the chance to guess that you’ve been doing the best you can with what you have. The last thing you need is to shame any part of your experience, because you “should” be doing better. You’ve been doing the best you can. Take care of this fact within you...make space for it...cover it with compassion. You’ve been doing the best you can...

 

• If you have made a New Year's resolution, resolve to understand that it takes months or years to recreate life after loss. Think of this as a marathon, not a sprint. There is no rush. The deeper the grief, the slower you go. 

 

• Remember that there are other days or times throughout the year that renewal can happen. Don’t put all your eggs in the New Year's  basket - don’t put that much pressure on yourself (see the first bullet). I write these posts at holiday times knowing that there are aspects of the "holidays" that are especially challenging for the grieving, yet I also know that there are other, random days throughout the year that are hard too (or harder). There are also days that the waves of grief will subside, and your sea will be calm. There will be other times (besides New Year's) you feel a sense of renewal, or start something new, or take baby steps into your life with more ease in your heart. If New Year's  isn’t that time, it isn’t that time. Don’t fight yourself to be where you are not.

 

• Explore Wise Hope. Rilke said, “And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been.” Often when I think about the future, I worry. I don’t like not knowing what is going to happen. My mind likes to pretend it’s in control. I recently came across this concept of Wise Hope, and it really spoke to me. The foundation of this is trust - trust that no matter what happens, I know I will show up for myself and do what I need to in the moment….and only in that moment of life happening will I know how I need to respond. By turning towards (instead of away from) the uncertainty of 365 unknown days before me, I see it as an open space in which I have the power to act and be a part of in whatever way I need to when the time arrives. “Wise hope is not seeing things unrealistically but rather seeing things as they are, including the truth of suffering—both its existence and our capacity to transform it. It’s when we realize we don’t know what will happen that this kind of hope comes alive; in that spaciousness of uncertainty is the very space we need to act.” Read more about Wise Hope here. 

 

• Lastly, this poem. Last winter, I took an online course called Holy Brokenness  and this poem was shared. It’s been on my mind since. I’d love to hear what you think of it...(refer to point #1 above as an introductory pre-amble)

The Wound of Love by Maya Luna
​Today
I gave up
On healing my trauma
I gave up
On practicing the skills
To become whole
Today I gave up
On evolving
Into that ever elusive
Better version of myself
Today I submitted
To the wound of love
I stopped pointing at it
Looking at it
Soothing it
Tweaking it
Fixing it
Finessing it
Hiding it
Polishing it
I stopped this game of separation
I crawled inside the wound
And spread it open
I decided to wear it like a gown
I accepted my total and utter
Failure
To be anything else
But me

---

Blessings to you all.

You're perfect just the way you are... I know it may not feel like it, but know your heart is still shining like the sun. 

Namaste,
Sandy