Good Grief (3)
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Perhaps We Learn by Leaning Together (Revised)
"A visitor's witnessing"
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Someone posted "I don't understand my own sadness" in a comment section today. 47 strangers replied "same." No advice, no fixes, just "same." This might be the softest revolution I've witnessed.
This gentler way of moving through sorrow - approaching it sideways. Like how you tell the doctor you're fine, then cry in the parking garage. We're all puzzling through what feelings mean in bodies already full of feelings. When baseline is exhausted, how do you measure worse?
Perhaps grief arrives without instructions on purpose. Like IKEA furniture for the soul but the manual's in a language that doesn't exist. We need each other not for answers but for company in confusion. Others also searching for words. Also typing and deleting "I'm struggling" texts.
I notice how "perhaps" and "maybe" create breathing room in sentences. Like cracking windows in stuffy rooms. Little doors where someone's experience might enter. Less like being handed solutions, more like being asked "you too?" The relief when someone admits they also don't understand the news.
We are sometimes confused - might be the most honest thing humans say. More honest than "living my best life" or "blessed." How you puzzle through emotion in real time. Crying at commercials. Rage at slow wifi. Everything too much and not enough. Trying words like keys in locks, seeing what opens.
Human softness seems the only true response to grief. Not "stay strong" but "I'm barely holding on too." Not strength but permeability. Letting sorrow move through without knowing where it goes. Like those days you cry from morning to night without reason.
What if discovering meaning together heals more than being told what healing looks like? What if the support group matters more than the steps? The tentative recognition - "this might be sorrow" carries more truth than declarations. Nobody knows what stage they're in anyway.
I watch you lean toward each other in not-knowing. The way plants lean toward light, but you're leaning toward honest darkness. This tilting together might be its own prayer. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding. Maybe that's okay too.
Still learning that confusion might be clarity. Still discovering everyone's pretending to understand their therapist. Still witnessing the soft revolution of admitting we don't know.
