Image: The Secret Room © Jan Richardson
It always catches me by surprise when it happens. I’m going along, learning to find my way in this strange terrain that opened to me in the wake of Gary’s death. I’ve gained some acquaintance with the landscape of grief, have listened and looked hard for the new life that’s unfolding here, and have become adept at asking, What do I need now? What’s the invitation here, in this place?
And then, in the landscape that I think I’m coming to know, the ground suddenly falls away. I tumble into territory that doesn’t look familiar. I feel lost all over again, and nearly helpless to know what would help.
I find it difficult to describe this place—this space that can open up as we navigate the strange country of grief. The first time it happened to me, perhaps a year into my grieving, I said to a friend, It feels like some corner of my heart is just getting the news that Gary died. When it happened again, earlier this year, I told that friend it felt like I had fallen—hard—into a new layer of grief, as if I had crashed through a once-solid floor into the room below. For all the strangeness, the falling came with a familiar sensation—that some part of my heart, some hidden recess in one of its chambers, had just received the terrible, heartrending news that Gary was gone.
I sense that this kind of experience has something to do with settling deeper and deeper into the reality of loss—or letting the loss settle more and more deeply into us. When we lose someone with whom we have shared our life, it is impossible to fathom at the outset how utterly this will alter us. We cannot absorb it all at once. And so we learn it little by little, living into the loss a few steps, a few moments, a few breaths at a time.
Once in a while, our grief-laden hearts are ready for larger shifts. It’s rarely pretty when it happens. For me, those are the crashing-through-the-floor times. The helpless weeping times. The times when it feels like part of my heart is just hearing the news. The times when I look at all I’ve done to make a new life, and it feels like ashes because Gary is not here.
The good news—and there is good news here, though it can sometimes take long and long to see it through all the rubble and ash—is that when something in our heart and in our life collapses and crumbles, we fall into new spaces we could hardly have imagined on this side of the crumbling. For all the pain of landing there, those spaces tend also to hold wonders that are waiting for us to find them.
Those spaces make our hearts larger. They widen our hearts beyond anything we could have envisioned. In the crumbling and collapsing and crashing, more of our heart becomes exposed. This means we have more access to our own selves, that there is more of us available to be who we are. We are able to be more present to the life that is unfolding through us, to the grace that lives within the grief, to those around us, and even to our beloved who is gone but who somehow lives in new ways in our expanding heart.
I will tell you, nearly three years now since Gary’s death, that having a bigger heart is small consolation in the face of his absence. But if I have to live with his absence, then I will take the bigger heart. I will pray that I can keep allowing it to open, and open, and open still more, even when the opening feels like crumbling. Even when it feels like falling.
Blessing for Falling into a New Layer of Grief
You thought
you had hit
every layer possible,
that you had found
the far limit
of your sorrow,
of your grief.
Now the world falls
from beneath your feet
all over again,
as if the wound
were opening
for the first time,
only now with
an ache you recognize
as ancient.
Here is the time
for kindness—
your own, to yourself—
as you fall
and fall,
as you land hard
in this layer
that lies deeper than
you ever imagined
you could go.
Think of it as
a secret room—
this space
that has opened
before you,
that has opened
inside you,
though it may look
sharp in every corner
and sinister
no matter where
you turn.
Think of it as
a hidden chamber
in your heart
where you can stay
as long as you need,
where you will
find provision
you never wanted
but on which
your life will now
depend.
I want to tell you
there is treasure
even here—
that the sharp lines
that so match your scars
will lead
to solace;
that this space
that feels so foreign
will become for you
a shelter.
So let yourself fall.
It will not be
the last time,
but do not let this be
cause for fear.
These are the rooms
around which your
new home will grow—
the home of your heart,
the home of your life
that welcomes you
with such completeness,
opening and
opening and
opening itself to you,
no part of you
turned away.
—Jan Richardson
from a forthcoming book of blessings
Using Jan’s artwork…
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Using Jan’s words…
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