Harshness engenders beauty, as the dying time of fall creates ornate deciduous tapestries of color, as a thirsty vine drives flavor into the fruit, as the heat of the sun bakes heat into the pepper.
Such a sweet harvest then comes from bitter toil, from moments of frustration and despair. We are fated to follow this wheel of seasons, even as we tilt them off-kilter. Every autumn is every autumn. We remember back to who we were last year, who was with us, what we shared. We feel the absence, and feel what has grown in its place.
Common wisdom for grief is that the first year is the hardest. First we feel the absence of the present, we feel those routines and moments where once we’d have connection and now are only reminded of loss. Anticipated plans and opportunities pass by, and we grieve what sweetness we might have tasted together. An apple we could have shared that now rots on the ground. A familiar seat now filled by another person.
The second year has its own challenges, for now we are living in a time separate from the year which contained the last moments of what was. We are still passing over the same landmarks, the same anniversaries, but feel the gap between them. Not this spring but last spring we were holding hands. Not this winter but last winter we ate around the table together.
Harvest is bitter and sweet, as is the taste of grief. How can one turn off love in the heart after being so completely smitten? How can one negate the existence and presence of another? Yet we are skilled in the arts of covering over our pains. We swathe them in new clothes, new lovers. We bury them in food. We withdraw. We drink them to sleep. The lucky and strong among us simply let these pains be felt in their fullness, and continue the tasks of living, knowing one day we’ll be ready for life again and wanting it to be in place when we return.
Grief has no season, but winter is a rich season for grief, when there is nothing left to tend and nothing to grow. What was can hold the space, can hold the soil in place, can feed the worms and rotting ones while we shelter in comfort and quiet.
There is no shame in loving and no shame in losing. We journey together until we no longer can. Some seasons of growth are longer than others, but in the end this is a world of ripening, harvest, and decay. Blessed are the ones who taught us with their hands, their mouths, and their hearts how to love more deeply and more courageously. Blessed are the ones whose absence still marks our hearts.
The breaking of the heart is a pain that feels impossible to endure, and yet to let it be felt to completion, to let it heal in its own time, brings us to a bigger heart. A stronger heart. A more spacious heart. A heart capable of loving others and remaining true to Self. That breaking heart, that grief, is the slow death of those young dreams and visions that kept us too small, too possessive, too jealous and reactive.
Maturation is a kind of death, when we begin to see how our stories and behaviors are appropriate for a child but not for a person striving to be in their own power. There is nothing “bad” about being childlike, and there are ways of being that children are by necessity which does not make sense for relatively autonomous adults.
A child may need to rely primarily on a few people to meet their needs, and may become overwhelmed and give up when things get hard, and may feel scared and abandoned when someone they love and need withdraws from them. These experiences may become fixed in us as parts that hold to those child experiences. “I can’t do it.” “It’s too hard.” “It’s unfair.”
We may strive to give these parts to receive the loving healing they needed through our romantic and sexual relationships, only to find those woundings reactivated. While an adult mind might understand that even when someone makes a promise they may need to renegotiate it, the child self may feel that old devastation and rage at being failed, undergirded by a sense of hopeless dependence. That, “I cannot do this for myself, I need you to do it, and you failed me.”
Abandonment is a particular example of this, in that it makes complete sense for a child to become terrified by being abandoned by their caregivers, but for most of us who grow into relatively functional adults, abandonment is more of an emotional experience than the existential threat we may feel. It’s painful, and may be scary, and disappointing, and certainly can kill a relationship if our lovers fail or run away when we need them. But to be abandoned by an adult in an adult relationship is rarely a death sentence, unless there are really specific dependencies in the relationship and the partner does not have other resources.
When our emotions feel startling huge and out of proportion to what’s happening, often they are experiencings of child wounds, with their young and painful stories and fears that have not been processed. And when we feel them, instead of blaming others for them, we can start to turn our nurturing, loving hearts and open minds to attend to these hurt children. They are worthy of love and care, and often our loved ones are struggling with their own hurt children who need attention, so it is useful to learn how to offer that to ourselves.
And with that nurturing attention, that healing validation that these young parts need, there is a grieving that comes at all that was lost. All the hurt that happened to reach this point. All the ways we failed ourselves and our loved ones. All the treasured stories that turned out to be illusions. All drying up into beautiful varicolored leaves, preparing to be let go so that something new can grow. Once these stories and hurts served us, gave our identities form and purpose, but something within us is growing larger and ready to grow something richer, sweeter, fuller.
That spaciousness of heart comes when its breaking helps us to see ourselves as we truly are, to love every inch of that, to be at home in ourselves.
We break open into this spaciousness, preparing for the time when spring grows something brave and new in the remains of what was.