Losing someone you love,
Someone who has taken root in your heart and wrapped themselves around your soul,
Can feel like losing a part of yourself,
A light within you suddenly extinguished.
It's hard sometimes,
It's hard,
And sometimes feels impossible,
But somehow you keep breathing.
It is a brokenness that defies repair,
It's never a clean break,
It's not something that can be stitched back together or reset.
Instead,
The wounds become a part of your being,
The wounds become a scar that will never vanish,
Yet still,
Life finds its way through.
The trunk of a tree,
Strong and reaching,
Suddenly cracked and broken,
Not destroyed,
But split,
A wound exposed to the elements,
And yet it continues to stand.
Ivy,
Soft and tender,
Begins to climb,
Weaving itself lovingly around the break.
Moss gathers,
Ancient and gentle,
A quiet witness.
Together they cradle the wounded trunk,
Holding it with quiet resilience.
The tree knows that it will never be the same,
But it also knows that it is still alive,
And in that living,
It learns how to hold both brokenness and beauty.
This is grief,
The loss of someone you've loved deeply,
For years or maybe a lifetime,
Never truly disappears,
It doesn't fade away like mist on a valley.
It becomes a part of your world's weather,
Sometimes thunderous,
Sometimes still,
But always present.
You do not move on from grief,
Instead you learn to live alongside it,
You learn to walk hand in hand with it,
Just as you once walked beside your beloved.
Grief is a companion that speaks the language of love.
It doesn't come to torment you,
It comes to honour what you had,
To show you how deeply you felt,
How sacred the connection truly was.
It carves you open,
Not to destroy,
But to deepen.
Grief is not the opposite of love,
It is love's echo,
Reverberating in your soul.
Don't run from it,
Sit with it,
Let it unfold around you like mist in a forest.
Let the ache fill you,
Let your tears fall freely,
For in those tears is truth,
In every drop,
A memory,
A moment,
A piece of the love you still carry.
You are not weak for grieving,
You are not broken in a way that needs fixing,
You are simply learning what it means to feel the depth of your own heart.
Sometimes the pain feels unbearable,
Like your world has been ripped apart and scattered.
You wonder how anything could possibly continue,
But still,
Sunrise follows night.
Breath returns,
Unbidden.
Birds sing as though nothing has changed,
And yet everything has.
Perhaps they know something we've forgotten,
That grief is part of nature,
Not separate from it.
You are not made to outrun your sorrow,
You are made to feel it fully,
To be changed by it.
Grief is not a punishment,
It is a mirror,
Showing you the magnitude of what was loved and what was lost.
It asks nothing but your honesty.
It wraps its arms around you and says,
Feel this,
It's okay,
I'm here.
And so you sit with it,
You let the quiet moments teach you,
You let the night wrap around you like a blanket.
You let the memory of a laugh,
A voice,
A shared silent moment move through you.
There will be days when you smile through tears,
Days when a scent,
A song,
Or a line of sunlight takes you by surprise,
And you feel them again,
Maybe even closer than before.
It is possible that they never truly left,
That they are now part of the wilderness of the world.
Perhaps they are in the petals of the first bloom you see in spring,
Perhaps they are in the wings of the butterfly that pauses beside you,
In birdsong that carries something familiar,
In the rhythm of ocean waves.
Maybe love reshapes itself after death,
Becoming everything you need to feel it again.
Look for them in the smallest things,
The shimmer of leaves in the wind,
A sudden breeze on your cheek when the world is still.
Maybe,
Just maybe,
They are trying to remind you that you are never alone.
And when you find yourself before a tree that is broken but still growing,
Wrapped in ivy's embrace,
Remember,
Healing doesn't mean forgetting,
It doesn't mean replacing.
It means allowing love to transform,
To expand beyond form.
It means allowing grief to become a teacher rather than a tormentor.
Grief and love are not opposites,
They are partners in the great dance of being alive.
To grieve deeply is to have loved deeply,
And to love is to accept the risk of loss.
Yet what a beautiful risk it is,
To let another soul become a part of yours,
To carry them within,
Not just in memory,
But in the very way you move through the world.
So let the ivy hold your broken places,
Let the moss soften the sharp edges,
Let the seasons move through you,
Carrying both sorrow and grace.
Life may never be the same,
But it can still be meaningful,
Still full of beauty,
Still sacred.
Your beloved lies in the love you continue to give,
In the stories of them you tell,
In the silence you keep,
In the tears you allow,
In the joy you dare to feel again.
Let grief be your companion,
Let love be your guide,
And trust,
Trust that the broken tree is still a tree,
And that you,
Even in your brokenness,
Are still whole.
Namaste
