A New Season…A New Angle on Grief

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

One can no longer doubt that the seasons are changing…even here in Winter hardened Minnesota.  The sun feels genuinely warm today.  I think I could last make that claim six months ago.  In my own personal development timeline six months ago might as well be a lifetime ago.  So much has changed in the intervening months.  I am so much healthier than I was.  And yet there remains that ponderous, leaden grief.

My grief feels a bit like the huge mounds of snow that have only grudgingly shrunk as the warmth of Spring begins to take a firmer hold.  Is my grief better?  Yes.  Am I done with the grieving process?  No.  I don’t feel anywhere close to the end of grieving.  But I also don’t feel anywhere near the beginning of my journey either.  I am well on my way.

As winter fades and the color green grows I feel both delight and relief, excitement and occasionally an inner calm that seems unlikely given the fairly recent events of my life.  I even feel that subtle shade of happiness known as contentment every so often.  The hardship of the past winter is over.  I survived it.  And I survived it relatively unscathed.  Now that Spring has come thoughts of spring inspired cleansing are filling my mind.  That ‘plate of my life’ that was brimming full last July is much less so now.  I am clearing out all sorts of issues and loose ends.  I am lightening my load…and as I lighten my load I myself feel lighter.  I feel inclined to take a nap in a window collecting full sunshine with a cat on my stomach.  Days like today are the kind that hypnosis is made for.  I could almost fall into an altered state of consciousness just being outside bathing in the sun.

Even though it’s been nearly ten months since the unnecessarily dramatic events of last June I still feel as if I am waking up from a very unfortunate dream.  I’ve been coming into full wakefulness one step at a time.  Like taking one step after another up and out of a dank cellar I find myself emerging into the light of a bigger and brighter possibility.  I can see no horizons in this new reality.  Anything does indeed seem possible.  The limitations of my past do not have to constrain me a moment longer.  I can think outside the box of my past life.  My future will not equal my past.  I only wish I had been at this developmental stage in my life before turning forty.  But considering the amount of illness in my own families of origin I am indeed doing quite well.

The day features not just lovely sunshine but a wind that finally has no touch of the power of Winter in it.  The wind is now blowing from a different part of the world.  A different mindset is necessary now that a different season is beginning.  It’s time to emerge from hibernation.  It’s time to cultivate the new and joyful beginnings we have dreamed about during the solitude of winter.

I am happy for the arrival of Spring.  And I am still sad.  Joy and wistfulness intermingle within me.