The Gaze Of Unconditional Love

Albert. Such a good boy. RIP, old friend.

Photo by Matthew J. Walker

Every physical attachment in life is temporary, including the ones to each and every one of our loved ones. But love outlasts even death, and will live on with us, as long as we are alive to feel it. The irrational fear in grief is that we will somehow forget, but love is never forgotten. Love never dies.

Honor Your Grief

Grief takes on many forms and can be ambiguous, recurring, sudden, or long and drawn out. Grief can feel like anxiety or depression. There is no timeline to mourning or any predictable succession to grief—the stages can appear out of order, or all at once. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you it’s time to move on. Be with this sacred process—breathe through it, and honor it.

In therapy, we grieve our childhoods for what we didn’t get but we needed, and if we don’t, we will continue to unconsciously repeat our patterns in effort to master the wrongs. We grieve our past choices and regrets, but the past is what led us to where we are now, so we should honor our mistakes, too, and whatever pain brought us to the present.

Loss in life is certain because life isn’t fair, and we must honor ourselves every time it shows up. The grief of 2020 will not be forgotten in our lifetimes. The grief of our nation, our world, our humanity.

Love Is Stronger Than Death

But maybe, just maybe, the love that lives on with each one of us, beyond all of this collective loss, can offer the cumulative strength to begin to heal and rebuild our injured world with expanded awareness and perspective.