Recently I had the great pleasure of talking with my friend and colleague Kellie Stirling about grief. It was a rich and rewarding conversation - I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

One of the reasons I think grief is so hard is because it’s kind of sticky. It sticks together with other things, and sometimes it’s hard to untangle them.

Here’s one way to tend to some of the sticky, tangly emotions when they show up in our lives. I hope you find it useful.

Really, grieving the end of my morning coffee is perfect - it’s perfect because everything ends, specially cups of coffee, and it’s a strange idea that some grief is more valid than other grief, that there’s things that are acceptable to grieve for and things that are not.

It's a strange idea that grief is for special occasions and is not our constant companion, that it's not a very human thing to feel, that it should be avoided if possible.

We have forgotten how to feel it. We have grown afraid.

Imagine if, when someone is grieving, we collectively knew what to do. Imagine if we had the kind of culture who gathered round grief, made space for it, gave time to it. Imagine if we had the kind of culture that wasn’t afraid of it. Imagine if grief was acknowledged and shared. Imagine if we knew how to move with grief, to move it through our bodies and our hearts, and to let it change us, soften us, open us into love again.

Grief isn’t just sadness.

It contains a whole world of emotions, in so many different flavours. Sadness is one - and rage, anger, frustration, ‘it’s not fair!’ and railing against what we can’t change. Numbness and shut down, depression and dissociation. Sometimes guilt. Helplessness, hopelessness. Sometimes grief is a howling whirlwind, sometimes it’s a soft and tender melancholy. Grief is raw, and real, and very human.

And many of us (most of us?) are afraid of it.

Imagine we're in a boat, and it's taking on water here and there - maybe we pass through a big storm, maybe it rains, maybe we hit something and end up with a hole, maybe it's wear and tear over time. If we don't bail it out and keep the water low, we're going to end up with wet feet.

Grief is kind of like that. If we don’t take the time to tend to it regularly, we might end up drowning in it…

Often our grief feels bottomless, like it’s too big for our bodies to contain. And so we make the choice, consciously or unconsciously, to stay a bit numb, to keep busy, to look the other way.

Wise choices.

Grief is a land we’re not made to travel alone.

What if we remembered how to create a solid ground for grief, and travelled it together?