When someone close to us dies, it’s not just their loss that we grieve. We also grieve the part of ourselves that died with them.
The part that was in relationship to them. The role we played in their life. The part of us that believed we had to show up a certain way to please them or earn their love or respect.
Grief often disrupts our daily functioning precisely because of this loss.
The loss of a loved one can remove some of the structures of our lives — the anchors that tethered us to responsibilities, belief systems, or ways of being.
Without those anchors, we are free to inhabit a new persona, to evolve into the next iteration of ourselves.
The Liminal Space For the Living
At the same time, without those anchors we might feel unmoored.
Without the anchors that tethered us to who we were, we may not know who we are — or who we are becoming.
You may find yourself feeling confused about your life, your sense of self, your current trajectory, your business, your goals, and your place in the world.
Perhaps you feel disconnected from things and people you once held dear.
All of this is normal.
It’s normal to feel disconnected from who you were before the loss.
It’s normal to feel uncertain about who you will become.
It’s normal to question everything: your purpose, your beliefs, your relationships, your values.
It’s normal to reevaluate your life direction, your values, and how you want to spend your days.
It’s normal for life to feel like life is in flux. Because it is.
This is all part of the grieving process.
Every ending is a beginning. Every death rebirth. From the compost of the decay, new life emerges.
The death of a loved one plunges us into the liminal space between who we were before and who we will be without this person in our lives.
Seeds of Transformation in the Soil of Decay
As unsettling as it may be, this liminal space holds potential for profound transformation. It’s a place where we can grieve not just the person we lost, but the versions of ourselves that existed in their presence.
In so doing, we create space to let new parts of ourselves take root and grow.
In this space, grief and growth coexist. From the soil of what’s been lost, something new is waiting to emerge.
This garden of growth is not a place of quick answers to logical questions. It’s a place of gentle discovery and unfolding.
What emerges from the soil must be cultivated with patience and trust. The questions aren’t answered with words, but by following the clues of our experiences.
As the late poet Rainer Maria Wike famously wrote:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. — Rainer Maria Rilke
In this liminal space of grief, our heaviest task is to trust the process. Life and death occur in cycles, but not on our timing.
So trust the space you’re in right now. Trust that, with time, you will grow into a deeper understanding of who you are and who you are becoming. Trust that from the darkness of your grief, a light will emerge to illuminate the path forward.
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