After Kenny died, my day was split into three compartments: grieving, numbing out, and distraction. The grief was intense. Had I allowed it free rein, I likely wouldn’t be here today. I needed to absorb and integrate, to feel into nothing at all, to clear out of the painful shards without actually doing anything. I needed to let life simply be. Numbing accomplished that. Distraction was a contract with the busyness of life, cooking food, running errands, that sort of thing, things that required attention, that distracted the mind from Ken’s absence, from the pain and loss, from the difficulties of being alive.

Of course it wasn’t linear. It too, like all of life, was haphazard. I might be standing in the grocery aisle and see something I no longer needed to buy, something that Kenny loved and I enjoyed buying for him, and grieving would push distraction aside.

The world today … with its pressure-cooker-readying-to-blow levels of hate and antagonism; the solar flares kicking up and the Schumann resonance bouncing off the charts, energy hits that light up this nervous system like Independence Day fireworks (and not in a spectacular, wow ain’t that cool sort of way); the environment, which if you’re paying any attention you already know is winding up for a knockout of Biblical proportions … is telling me that same formula might be of extreme benefit to us all.

If we spend all of our time in grief, we slowly fade away, giving up (consciously or not) on this amazing gift of a life that we have been granted. If we spend it all in numbness, we dissolve into our chair, unable, unwilling to feel the joy, the aliveness that we are. If we ignore the grief, and don’t allow ourselves to integrate and absorb, to reset the body’s wiring, and instead, spend all of our time in action, we become the Energizer Bunny without an off switch, and eventually burn out.

The Sacred Thirds. Each compartment is equally important.

Grieving: for the world that we mistakenly imagined we lived in, for the world and person we wish for and want to see born, for the pain and suffering that seems inevitable, that is already being experienced by so many, for the flatness we feel at times, for the guilt and shame so deeply embedded, for all the many ways that we believe we have failed and are failing.

Numbing: allowing ourselves a time-out; giving ourselves a free pass, a day, a week, a month, to close our eyes, to just breathe, to require absolutely nothing from ourselves; granting permission to step away from the good fight (whatever that means to us); letting survival take care of itself for a breath or two; allowing ourselves to simply stop and be simple, to be what and as we are without judging ourselves; giving ourselves the grace of stepping out of life for a moment and closing the door behind us.

Distraction: All activity – daily life maintenance, protests, working on projects that we are passionate about. Now, you might not see these as distractions, but they are. They are movement out of grief and numbing, into the field of action.

Grief and numbing are still present. They always will be. This isn’t a plane of perfection. It is a plane of learning where life teaches us what is worth standing up for, what brings joy, happiness, peace, and what presents an uptick in the chaos. It is a plane where we come to recognize that the chaos is the perfection, not perfect as mind wants and seeks, but perfection, nonetheless.

Take care of yourselves. Do whatever you need to do for yourself. It isn’t selfish to save yourself first. Take a walk in the woods, drench yourself in slow, grace filled communion with nature. Sit and pet the dog, feel the fur, the heartbeat, the breaths moving in and out. Go out to a park, your yard, anywhere where the sun can be felt on your face and absorb its healing rays. Walk barefoot in the sand, on the grass, in the dirt. Grieve for our world, for those you love, for the loss and suffering. Let it pour through you. Stop holding back and let the tears fall. Live your very human life. Feel it all, the pain and joy, the sadness and happiness, the peace and discontent. Play. Smile. Get angry. Laugh.

Amaya is the author of 7 books, the latest Actuality: infinity at play. It is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and IngramSparks.
Actuality: infinity at play by Amaya Gayle Gregory, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

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