Being cracked open by grief – the pain and the beauty of it.
One of the most beautiful (and often most painful) things grief can do is strip us of our masks and lay us bare.
Most of us are used to putting on certain faces. Largely this isn’t even a conscious activity.
We want to be liked or approved of. We have images of ourselves that we like to portray to the world….and likewise things about us that we wish would go away, hope nobody sees, and try to hide.
We lie to ourselves, sometimes in little ways….sometimes big, about who we really are, what we really want, how we really feel.
When anything huge and cataclysmic happens in life it temporarily strips all that away. We may no longer have the strength, energy, or inclinaction to hold up our masks or keep our defences in place. And cracks can become canyons under that kind of pressure – the things that you were coping with or telling yourself were fine e.g. a bad relationship, a job you loathe, low self-love/respect/care, suddenly become so visible and so painful and so intolerable.
This is usually NOT a comfortable position. To feel laid bare and defenceless to life. To feel cracked open. To feel all the things we struggle with suddenly huge around us (often we make the mistake of calling these grief too).
But oh what a beautiful place. Without all the masks and walls. What a beautiful, naked, vulnerable, heart-breakingly wide-open, raw space. It’s something most won’t choose….and will avoid at all costs.
But it’s HERE where you can really be found. It’s here where you can start to shed what isn’t you and rebuild (also an incredibly important thing that can feel scary and horrible).
It’s here where you can make changes.
It’s here where you can identify those canyons in your life (instead of ignoring or hiding from them when they seemed to be just cracks that didn’t matter) and do something about them.
If you allow it….this can be the space that YOU emerge from.
Remember that the caterpillar pretty much turns to mush in it’s cocoon (not many of us would agree to that too willingly) but only from there does it become a butterfly.
Kristie
xx
