The story and wisdom of Nora NcInerny touches my heart so deeply. Tears. There is such deep wisdom, compassion, nourishment, and empathic understanding here. Thank you Nora!
Her story also touches into mine...
When I was 24 years old and just five months after moving to Oregon, my father died suddenly on November 13th, 1975. He was 60 years old. At that time, I had no understanding of or support for the process of grieving. That night I also believed that I'd lost my whole family ... My father had died. I also knew in my deepest self that my dad had been the only one keeping my brother alive and that my twin would end up committing suicide — which he did just over two years later. And I felt like I'd lost my mentally ill mother forever after she called to say my father was dead and, in the same conversation, bought up everything she deemed horrible and unforgivable in me, refused to have me come home (to Michigan) unless I wore all the "right clothes" and cut my hair, and then slammed the phone down on me. I thought my mother had finally and completely rejected me for good on the same night that I learned of my father's death and realized that my twin brother would end his life sometime sooner than later. I allowed myself to cry that night for the loss of my whole family. Then, in the morning, I thought it was time to "move on."
Of course, nothing could be further than the truth. In our grief phobic or grief impaired culture, it is common for us or for our well meaning friends and family to believe that at a certain point we simply need to move on, let go, focus on the positive, and get on with our lives. This was certainly my belief system for years. However, this TED Talk illuminates what I recognize today to be a much deeper truth and reality — that we do not move on from great losses. However, if we open to the fullness of our grief, in time we experience a process where we are able to move forward.
Over the years, moving forward has indeed come to mean living with both sorrow and joy. My heart will always hold deep love, compassion, and grief for the losses of my twin, my father, and my "first mother" (the one who had been so brutal before the partial awakening of my "second mother"). While these losses and others are not as acute as they once were, I am conscious of how grief and joy are my companions in life. They are part of who I am and simply part of the human experience of us all. It is also true that while my losses do not define me, it is also true that all of my life experiences have brought me to this place in my life where I am today — on this amazing journey of ever expanding gratitude and joy, intimacy and deep connections, vulnerability and courage, compassion and empathic awareness, and deepening and abiding love. None of the great gifts that I experience in my life today would be possible had I not broken through "moving on" and embarked on the path of moving forward.
Our wounds are indeed where the light gets in. And joy and sorrow are inseparable — we cannot truly know joy without befriending our grief. Paradoxically, I have found an even greater capacity to be more fully alive after great loss. Such is the potential gift of grief for us all.
With heartfelt compassion and warmest blessings,
Molly
Please watch the TED talk here:
We Don't "Move On" From Grief.
We Move Forward With It.
In a talk that's by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, writer and podcaster Nora McInerny shares her hard-earned wisdom about life and death. Her candid approach to something that will, let's face it, affect us all, is as liberating as it is gut-wrenching. Most powerfully, she encourages us to shift how we approach grief. "A grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again," she says. "They're going to move forward. But that doesn't mean that they've moved on."
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