The Beauty of Grief’s Visit!

The Tender Geography of Grief: Mapping Where Love Still Lives

There are visitors who come into our lives uninvited, yet leave us changed in ways no one else could.

Grief is one of those visitors.

It does not knock softly. It enters, often sudden and wild, tearing through the known landscape of our hearts. As Jim Carrey once said, “grief is not merely an emotion, it is an unraveling, a hollowing, a carving away of what once was.'“

In the early days, the wound feels unbearable, a sharpness that seems it will never soften. We imagine we are breaking apart beyond repair. And yet, slowly, imperceptibly, the raw edges begin to mend.

The pain remains, but its texture shifts, becomes quieter, and woven into the fabric of who we are.

We realize then: we do not, “move on” from grief.

We move with it.

It reshapes us.

It teaches us to walk with love and loss held side by side.

Francis Weller speaks of five gates of grief, each one a sacred threshold:

• The grief we experience when we lose someone or something we love.

• The parts of ourselves that have been hidden or unloved.

• The sorrows of the world, the collective heartbreak we carry for the earth, for humanity.

• The things we expected but never received, the unmet longings.

• And finally, ancestral grief, the old, unspoken sorrows passed down through generations.

Grief is vast!

It is not limited to death alone.

It touches every unmet dream, every part of us we had to abandon to survive, every cry of the earth we could not answer.

And still, it is beautiful.

Grief is a profound testimony that love existed here.

That something mattered deeply!

It lingers in the laughter we still hear, in the memories that arise when we least expect, in the tender reaching for what is no longer visible but still utterly alive within us.

There is no timeline for this kind of sacred work.

Some days will be weighted with the heaviness of all that has been lost; others will be unexpectedly light, buoyed by the gratitude that we were touched at all. There will be moments when the ache feels new again, and that, too, is part of the way grief shapes a wider, more tender life within us.

Grief is not a failing to be hidden.

It is not something to overcome or conquer.

It is a ritual of remembrance!

A pilgrimage of the heart.

An initiation into a deeper way of being alive!

If you are walking with grief right now, know this: you are not broken. You are bearing witness to the love that formed you.

And if you would like a steady hand to walk alongside you during these tender thresholds, whether you are grieving a person, a dream, a version of yourself long gone, I would be honoured to walk with you.

Life’s transitions are not meant to be navigated alone.

Together, we can weave the beauty of what was into the becoming of what’s next!

You are welcome to reach out whenever you feel ready.

With warmth and quiet honoring, Donna xxx