Eclipse

GRIEF — MOURNING THE SELF

YOU CAN NO LONGER BE

*Grief without a funeral

Something ended inside you and nobody saw it happen.

You don't need an event to prove that something is over.

Maybe you're not lost. Maybe you're between versions of yourself.

*Identity death

You keep asking, “Who am I now?” because the old answers stopped working.

Stop demanding that the new you introduce itself immediately.

Not knowing who you are may be the first moment you're no longer pretending.

*Fear of the empty space

You want to fill the emptiness because emptiness feels like nothing.

Don't.

The empty space isn't proof that nothing is coming. It's proof that something left.

*Disappointment

It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

You thought you'd be somewhere else by now.

Maybe you are not grieving your life.

Maybe you're grieving the life you expected it to become.

*The unlived life

You can torture yourself forever with the person you could have been.

But that person never lived.

You did.

Stop abandoning the life that is here for the one that wasn't.

*The survival self

That version of you fought, performed, pleased, controlled, worked, hid and endured.

Don't hate that self.

It got you here.

But surviving yesterday doesn't have to become your identity tomorrow.

*Loss of certainty

You used to know what you believed. What you wanted. Where you were going.

Now you don't.

Good.

Certainty disappearing doesn't always mean you've lost your way. Sometimes you've outgrown the map.

*Anger underneath grief

Why did this happen? Why did I waste so much time? Why didn't I know?

Because you couldn't know then what you know now.

Stop putting today's consciousness on trial for yesterday's choices.

*Shame about grieving

You think you should be over it.

You think you've grieved long enough.

There is no correct amount of time for something that changed you.

Stop turning your sadness into evidence that you're failing.

*Resurrecting what already ended

You keep reaching backward because at least you recognize what's back there.

Familiar doesn't mean alive.

Sometimes what you're trying desperately to save is the very thing asking to be released.

*Fear that letting go means losing yourself

You aren't only afraid of losing them, it, that place, that life.

You're afraid of who you'll be without it.

But if losing it means you don't know who you are anymore—maybe too much of you was living in it.

*Out growing something you still love

This one hurts because nothing has to be wrong.

Sometimes something changes shape before you understand what it is becoming.

Love does not always disappear when something changes.

You can feel yourself changing without knowing what that means for everything around you.

Not everything changing is ending.