Jewels from the Dark

Countless times I sat down to write something in the last year. Countless times I got right back up again, unable and unwilling to feel my grief. How does someone even begin to process through so much loss? Especially when the loss is so……and there go any words adequate enough to describe it.

Is grief a big enough word to contain the enormity of the loss I feel? My hope. My purpose. My passion. My plans. My career. My profession. My arm.

Merriam-Webster defines grief as “1a – deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement; 1b – a cause of such suffering; 2a – trouble, annoyance; 2b – annoying or playful criticism; 2c – an unfortunate outcome; 2d – mishap, misadventure.”

No…that does not even come close to what I need to hold my tears and give shape and words to what I feel.

Sorrow is the word I keep coming back to. I have become a sorrowful person. Deeper and wider than grief. Anguish is another. I am stuck in anguish.

It may sound all doom and gloom – because it is. That is the space I find myself occupying most days. I have never been a super sunny optimist; but I am hopeful enough to look for jewels from the dark.

I have been researching Logotherapy and its progeny, Meaning Therapy, a bit this week. Viktor Frankl is one of my heroes and he is quoted as saying, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”¹ If ever there was a man who could mine jewels from the dark, it was Frankl.

So. Stimulus = excruciating loss. Response = well, so far, denial. I am forcing myself to now take a step back into that liminal space between stimulus and response. Because it is here that I will find my power and growth and freedom.

I have nothing else to offer right now. Just the permission to take a step back, into the shadow world between stimulus and response. We shall see what jewels I may find waiting there for me.

1. Wong, P. T. P. (2020). Existential positive psychology and integrative meaning therapy. International Review of Psychiatry 32(7-8), 565-578. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540261.2020.1814703 ↩︎