For a sad friend

April 19, 2015  |  ibrainmapadmin

A friend called on Wednesday. She said she was feeling sad because she’d just lost someone she loves. She wished she didn’t feel so sad.

When we are inside the sad lonely place called grief it feels like it will never end. No matter what anyone says from outside that small dark hole of hurting we can’t hear it or believe it. The grief becomes our whole world, as if the light has gone out of our life. The darkness and sadness shadow everything and it feels like nothing can be the same again. And it is true.

And yet slowly like a tide turning, and the quiet soft coming of Spring-greening after the longest winter, light will return.

When we have loved deeply the sadness takes our love and squeezes it like a wet dishcloth until out heart aches and we gag on the pain. It is our loving and our willingness to love that brings with it the unbearable sorrow when we lose someone we love.

Perhaps we can save ourselves from sorrow by not loving. But what kind of life is it without love.

As we open our heart wider and wider to love another, to love the world, we let in more light and with it that light comes the possibility of shadow. It seems that everything in this wide universe has another side, a polarity, like the Tao of yin and yang.

I want to say to my friend, but know it could sound like a cliché while she is on the shadow side of the bright moon of loving, relish your sorrow it is the fullness and depth of your loving, know you have loved well and that’s why your heart is breaking. (See it sounds like a cliché or something you’d read in a self-help book).

Letting our sorrow break us open softens our hearts, bleeding hot blood of deep feelings makes us strong in the end. It’s only when we turn away from our grief, fill it with distraction or addiction, that it burrows in like a worm into an apple to make our heart rotten.

I want to say to my friend, let it come, let your sorrow in, and let your tears rain down gently. Feel everything and keep moving, because your heart is a muscle that needs the stretching and pounding of your deepest feeling. Let yourself feel the pain of your strong love.

But I know how hard it is to hear and see when we fall in that dark place, where we can wander alone for days and weeks, months and sometimes years. I understand why people turn away from the hard ache of living and loving.

But as we face our sorrows and our heartache and keep breathing and walking (and writing) we will come through. And each time we come through with our heart open wider, the muscle of love is stronger. We can let in more of the world, and let in more love.

Yes, it can sound easy and even elegant when you’re standing outside that dark place. But in reality it is a slow and bumpy (and mostly lonely) ride, and we can easily fall in and out of growing our heart. It can close in a moment, as we turn away when it’s too much to bear. But if we are willing to come back to that beating heart it will open again, like a dark rose bud with the sweetest perfume, (just watch out for the thorns).

All we can do is tread gently, and sit on the fence beside our bleeding heart, and hold our own hand, as Mr Leunig would say (p233 in my book, i-brainmap, freeing your brain for happiness).

Sitting on the fence

Come sit down beside me

I said to myself,

And although it doesn’t make sense,

I held my own hand

As a small sign of trust

And together I sat on the fence.

– Michael Leunig