Designed for commitment to longterm practice —>
Stijn Pommée, Lady’s Mantle #2, 2025, 10 x 14.5, graphite on cotton paper. Image used with permission from the artist.
Dear reader,
I can usually tell when I haven’t been making enough space for my grief.
I get irritable, tired, and sluggish.
The world starts to feel like too much. I’m shorter with the people I love. Faster and more thoughtless in my movements, like rushing to eat or shower. The laundry begins piling up.
These are signals I’ve learned to recognize, which mean: I don’t have enough space to return to myself, let alone tend to my grief.
So I pump the brakes. I look at my calendar and ask: Where can I find a moment this week, this month, for uninterrupted time to myself?
I clear the space. I show up for it.
Eventually, with space and presence, what’s true for me begins to bubble up. Maybe I don’t achieve the catharsis that I know I need, but I release the emotional pressure a bit to make way for its possibility. Care is a skill and a practice.
Now that I know this about myself, I anticipate it – at the turn of each season I make space for grief and grieving just as much as I set intentions for the next three month cycle.
For a long time, I thought this kind of attention was something grief required only when it became impossible to ignore, when the tsunami wave arrived and demanded a response. But grief doesn’t only live in those moments.
Sometimes it is sharp and close to the surface. Sometimes it feels deep and stacked over time. Sometimes we notice it indirectly: in our bodies, our relationships, or our capacity to meet the ordinary demands of a day. To even feel connected to ourselves.
When there isn’t enough room for what we’re carrying, grief can collect and stagnate within us, causing more pain.
I’ve come to understand that we don’t have to wait for the wave. We can approach our grief gently, in small bits over time. We can make space to notice what is here, tend to it, and perhaps discover something about what it has to teach us.