Part of grieving is not knowing.

Grieving is a process by which our hearts, our physicality, metabolize the pain of loss and change.

It is our mind that wants to know, to have some certainty as ground to stand on. The mind is trying to solve the perceived problem of the pain, aka grief, with answers we cannot ever know until we enter the unfolding mystery of our own aliveness.

Grief is not a problem, nor a pathology. It is something our intelligent and wise hearts know how to do. In the same way, the body that knows how to break food down to metabolize and make new, so do our hearts. So does our soul, our psyche.

This is a wild part of our liminal nature we’ve tucked away, been taught not to trust. But the liminality of not knowing, the in-between spaces of grieving, are perhaps the most trustable places of all.

If we learned that our grief is not lovable or we don’t understand the spiral of grief, our minds will likely try to step in to come up with solutions.

But, part of grieving is not knowing.

We simply do not know what will come next. Who we will be on the other side. If we will find love again. How we will flourish without the presence of what was so precious to us.

There is no certainty about what the future holds.

When there is loss, we not only lose the thing that has died, but also the relationship that we formed with it; the parts of ourselves that were attached; our identities that carried this relationship; the beliefs we had about life, ourselves, and others; our relationship to God; our understanding of love; the cycles of life. All of it dies into the mystery.

It all becomes a mix, being broken down in the psychological and spiritual metabolic processes that serve more life, more love, more truth, more freedom, and more of what really matters in our lives.

This place might feel like there is nothing to hold on to, but we have internal legs that know how to walk without the ground beneath certainty’s feet.

One way our grief expresses itself is our projection of it into the future: Will I ever have…? Will there ever be…? How will I…? What will happen to…?

Beneath these questions are prayers born out of our loss, born out of what is dying within us, born out of the love of our grief.

This is a place we can turn the mind to; these are prayers we can speak into the mystery:

May this pain be transformed into something beautiful.

May I learn how to trust the loving mystery, even in this pain.

May I know love again.

May I live what truly matters to me and have the holy strength to fulfill what is truly in my heart.

May I have the courage to let go of what needs to die within me so I can live.

May I forgive myself, the past, and what has been lost.

May I forgive life and love itself so I may come into harmony with what is meant to be.

Beneath our desire to know, in the not knowing, something beautiful is being whispered from the depths of our essential selves.

Listen, listen with all your heart.

It’s safe to not “know.”

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