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I was talking to my friend Stevie today about grief. How true grief renders one’s Knowing. I posted an emo, public Instagram story and anyone who read it could clearly tell I wasn’t in the greatest state of mind.

I didn’t mention grief specifically in my post, I mentioned difficulty and hardship. However - I had actually WANTED to post about grief. She picked up on the thread I never explicitly weaved … she knew the song I was singing, without me having to give it a name. We both know we are connected in a way not all humans have experienced.

There’s a certain kind of grief that changes you forever. There’s a distinct “before” and “after”. As Stevie beautifully expressed it … there is a veil that gets lifted. As I crassly put it … it’s when life makes you her bitch.

There is the spiritual practice of learning to surrender…

And then there is the deep realization that learning to surrender is a joke.

That we never had control to begin with.

There is a certain kind of confidence, lightness, and solidity to the humans that think they can have control. There is also a certain kind of confidence and lightness to the humans that know they don’t have control … but these two signals can never cross. You can’t see from the other side what you don’t know.

But you can feel in the gaze of another that Knows.

The controllers approach life like it’s a self help manual…if only you turn to just the right page, gain the correct understanding from this just right perspective, life will offer up her gems.

Here’s a secret …

You don’t have to go searching. If you’re patient enough and you live long enough …the lessons will come to you. The truth will reveal itself.

And if I were you … I’d enjoy my innocence. You don’t want to be in a rush to learn this lesson.

This lesson will strip you bare. Layer after layer after layer.

Until everything you thought you once were gets put down.

The scraps of an old way of being, no longer having the breath to sustain itself.

Gets put down.

The comfort, once found in familiarity.

Gets put down.

The secure container you’ve always been holding? The bottom falls away and everything once within starts to pour out.

Out and out and out, faster than you can catch it.

Until everything you thought you once were loses its shape and there’s nothing left to do. You can keep holding onto your now empty vessel, or you can choose to live. If you choose to live … as you set your empty vessel down … when you turn away from it … suddenly there is nothing, anything at all … between YOU and LIFE.

You see the movement of forever and ever … your blip of existence barely making a ripple on the surface of eternity. It’s all happening with or without “you”. The best you can try to do is wake up to the fact that it’s happening at all.

And what IS it exactly thats happening?

That’s a good question.

Put it down.