I started uploading quotes from Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner this week to MoveMe Quotes. And one of the quotes I uploaded today was:
“Sometimes my grief feels as though I’ve been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I’m colliding with a wall that won’t give. There’s no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.”
…I’m sure you’ve had moments in your life when people were sharing feelings of grief and you didn’t know how to reply.
What occurred to me as I was reading this today was, if she was explaining this feeling to me directly… this deep, complex, very personal feeling… there’s nothing to explain back.
There’s nothing to fix. There’s nothing to cure. There’s nothing to correct.
There’s no need for any kind of worldly insight or prognosis.
What should be offered in response is simply space.
A space that’s warm. A space that’s supportive. A space that’s patient.
…A space where that person and his/her feelings can fully be.
Because oftentimes, in our relentless pursuit of happiness, we mistakingly believe that grief or pain or sadness is something that should be avoided, cured, or suppressed. And with the world’s insight available to us in just a few thumb taps, it can be tempting to want to curate some type of wise, logical, rational response. When really, it’s this very process of giving ourselves and our feelings space to breathe that we give ourselves what we’re really after in life… depth.