Grief~The Gift Of Feeling Held

This Kind Of Holding

Was Never Meant To Be Done Alone...

We Are AllOne

“A magnificent killer whale named Tahlequah gave birth and caught the world’s attention. Her calf died only thirty minutes after being born, each of those blessed minutes a sacrament to the progeny of love.

But the real reason journalists and photographers and millions of viewers followed this mother’s story, was her willingness to grieve unbidden, to become a thing utterly governed by kinship.

After a year and a half of growing this enormous life inside of her belly, and the immense feat of labor, and a half an hour of looking into one another’s eyes, Tahlequah proceeded to carry her dead baby on the tip of her nose for seventeen days, traveling more than a thousand miles all throughout the Salish Sea.

And some people think that grief is not inexplicably beautiful. But perhaps it’s because those people (who are us people) no longer see grieving enacted publicly as a plea for sanity, as a way of feeding that which grants us life.

There was no real grieving at my mother’s funeral~

sniffling and shoving tears back up into our eyes, yes, but no keening. No collapsing into the bottomless cavern of one another’s trembling arms, no crying out into the insufferable heat of that late~ summer day, and certainly no carrying my mom’s dead body as a holy procession all throughout the places she ever knew and loved.

So I continued to carry her mostly on my own. I wailed in the privacy of my own home long after the funeral was over, with only the hurting eyes of my husband to behold me~ a kind of holding that was never meant to be done alone.

I imagine that if killer whales were not endangered, Tahlequah would have swam those seventeen days with a grand procession of many other glistening, black and white giants all across the ocean. Or perhaps she swam for one thousand miles to personify the loneliness of her grief in a world spiraling toward oblivion.

And our savagery for not swimming alongside her; for taking pictures, for watching her exquisite ceremony on our little screens as if it were pure entertainment, as if that couldn’t be any one of us, carrying our dead children out into the dark and emptied streets."

From ‘The Progeny of Love' by April Tierney, Artwork by Lori Christopher

Story & Image: David Attenborough Fans.

Via Hermanus Whale

The Gift Of Silent Support

In our darkest moments, we don't need solutions or advice.

We simply crave the warmth of human connection. A gentle touch, a silent presence~ these are the anchors that ground us when life's storms rage.

Don't try to fix me.

Don't carry my burden or chase away my shadows.

Instead, be the steady hand I can hold as I navigate my inner landscape. Sit with me in the quiet, bearing witness to my struggle without trying to change it.

My pain is my own to feel, my battles my own to fight.

But your presence reminds me I'm not alone in this vast, sometimes terrifying world.

It whispers that I'm worthy of love, even in all of my grief and my brokenness.

So when the night seems endless and I lose my way, will you simply be there? Not as a savior, but as a companion.

Hold my hand until dawn breaks and I find my strength again.

Your silent support is the greatest gift you can offer.

It's the love that helps me remember who I am, even when I've forgotten.

~Author Unknown

Art: Rachel Byler