​The Tides of Grief

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Grief is the word we, as mere mortals, use to try to contain the vast, untamable sorrow of losing those we love. I’ve spent years dipping my feet in its shallows, sometimes burying my head in the sand, hoping to avoid its full weight. But now, in my forties, the grief tsunami has hit.

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Maybe it’s because I’ve reached the halfway point of my life, and the absence of so many loved ones feels sharper, more pronounced. Maybe it’s because I’ve had more time to reflect, to sit with the losses that once seemed distant but now draw closer. Whatever the reason, I now understand that grief never truly disappears. The pain changes—it ebbs and flows, rises and falls—but the missing never stops.

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If misery loves company, then grief seems to crave community. I still remember how I felt in high school when I first read John Donne’s For Whom the Bell Tolls after losing my friends. That poem planted a seed of understanding in me: loss is universal. It touches everyone, even if it’s not always spoken out loud. I'm reminded of this each time I sit with clients through their pain. 

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And yet, in the swell of all the heartbreak, there is a strange kind of comfort in that shared experience. No matter how isolating grief feels, we are never truly alone in it. Humanity—every single one of us—has heard or will hear that bell toll. Some, heartbreakingly, more often than others. It's within that refrain that we are one. Grief is part of our collective consciousness, and that knowingness anchors me. 

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 For Whom the Bell Tolls

by

John Donne 1624

 

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

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To all of those who graced my life with theirs.