To Love, Even When That Means We Will Grieve

I have been thinking a lot lately about grief and choices- the choices we make, the ones others make, and the things we would never choose but have no control over. Knowing the grief that awaits would we choose the same?

I've decided in most cases I would. When I think of my deepest wounds, the ones whose grief is so intertwined with my life I would be unrecognizable if that grief somehow vanished, I know that those wounds and that grief have also led me to my deepest truths.

There are losses- some due to death, others to growth- I think of literally every day. My grief has braided itself into the threads and yarns that weave together as the landscape of my existence. In some cases I grieve what I had, and in others I grieve what never existed but what I wished for so long and so hard to be real.

The longing of those deep griefs will never disappear, even if over time it becomes more of an echo or a whisper. An alongside that echo is a deeper joy at simply existing as myself, a greater appreciation of the fullness of my human experience, because I've made space for all of it: the love that came first and the wounding, longing, and grieving that came next and stays with me by the fire through every season. We all sit together and sometimes one gets a little louder than others, but they all bring a beauty I want to live inside of, even if sometimes it's painful.

So, yes to those beloveds, both once real and the ones that I wished for, I would have loved you anyway even if I had known how big the grief would be when you were gone. I would have loved you with more gratitude and grace, but I would have loved you as deeply as I did the first time, even knowing how deep the well of grief would be in your absence.

Grieving you has led me to myself and the joy and beauty I exist within now.

To all the lovers and grievers and truth seekers carrying the weight of grief and wondering if it was all worth it, I see you, I love you, and it is.