Letting the grief in...

NOTE: This is from a writing course and written as is - no proofreading or editing! Please forgive any grammatical or spelling issues....

In the nursery of our childhood memories, there was a fun loving eternal child named Peter, searching for his shadow, and a motherly girl taking on the task of reattaching them together.

My grief, especially the anticipatory shit, is a shadow that haunts my days and looks for ways to block out the sun. My grief is following my soul around everywhere looking for a crack in the shell of protection to work its way in. My mind wants to let me stay the eternal child full of laughter and son and joy - so it hardens the shell as much as possible and shines light everywhere - in an effort to make the grief remain hidden in the small shadowy corners.

But my heart recognizes that Wendy is right - I am not whole unless the grief is allowed in, and so my heart takes Wendy's trusted sewing needle and pokes holes all over the shell of protection - it does not allow me to be engulfed and destroyed by cracking it open, but my heart begins to make space for the darkness to seep in.

Even though the shadows move slowly, they still stab like knives. Is this like the medicine of old where they foolishly thought the leeches on the skin would pull out the sick?

But then in the swirling strands of joy inside the shell, a strand of grief seeps in and they begin to twirl together, becoming so intwined that they are woven together as memory. Without the grief, would the joy have been real? And without the joy, would there have been grief?

Like the Beast transforming after Beauty's love falls on him, my soul, my mind, my heart - they all merge with the woven braids of emotions - and there I find myself, a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and a little bit healed.