Eclipses are associated with major endings and beginnings.
They often mark times of major transitions in our individual lives and in the collective experience.
The sudden plunge into darkness in the middle of the day that occurs in a solar eclipse can sow chaos and confusion.
Most of all, eclipses bring awareness to how little control we have over the world we walk through.
All of this is a recipe for grief.
Grief is often a component of an eclipse hangover.
Eclipses ask us to face our grief.
Grief is not just borne of death or other forms of endings.
Grief arises in moments of uncertainty. When we realize we have no control over the workings of the world, when life is thrown into chaos, you can be assured that grief is there, waiting in the wings.
It can impact you even if you didn’t watch the eclipse.
How Grief Shows Up
Grief can show up in the most subtle of ways.
Fatigue. Irritability. Confusion. Ambivalence. Agitation. Feeling ill at ease.
Clothes that feel uncomfortable. A feeling of disconnection from your body. Feeling stuck, lazy, hopeless, or unmotivated.
Or feeling the opposite: antsy and eager to move. Restlessness. Wired. Anxious.
If you are feeling heavy or irritable, defensive or vulnerable, industrious or lazy, agitated or anxious, know that grief is likely lurking in the shadows.
Everything feels off.
You don’t need to have suffered a loss or experienced anything profound in this moment of time for grief to arise. It’s always there.
The Wrong Way to Address Grief
Let’s start with how most of us usually try to handle our grief.
Nobody likes to confront grief or talk about it.
We often try to push it away by staying busy, numbing out, lashing out, or working out.
We might try to deny its existence. I have nothing to grieve. I am not grieving. We might try to make it bad or wrong, by labeling it unproductive. Perhaps you fear you’ll get caught in grief soup forever, when you just want to be happy and joyful.
Grief is often the unwanted stepchild at the family dinner of emotions.
None of this is constructive.
Grief isn’t going to go away just because you don’t want it at the table. It’s a part of the family. It has a right to be there.
Grief will linger under the surface. It waits for us to move through the outer layers of anger, fear, denial, sadness, rage, resentment, agitation, and anxiousness.
It bides its time while we work through confusion and chaos.
It sits in silence while we go for a run, while we do endless errands, while we engage in endless scrolling of social media. Even while we bask in awe and wonder at nature.
It’s persistent. And patient. It waits for a pause. The in-between time. That sliver of silence.
And then, in that briefest moment between errands and dinner, between opening your eyes and getting out of bed, between arriving at your destination and getting out of your car, it pops up, like a clown out of those magic boxes.
Hello, friend. I’ve been waiting for you. Are you ready to talk to me now?
If you don’t acknowledge it, it will subtly direct your decisions in ways that sabotage you.
How to Work With Grief
The most simple way to work with grief is to honor it.
Grief is the wise elder that arrives to teach us lessons.
Acknowledge it. Welcome it. Celebrate it.
It is the portal to the joy and happiness you want to feel.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...