Theloopylululog

WordPress, my love…you need to get your memory tested.

Didn’t we all wring our hearts out to dry writing about our favorite quotes just a couple of days ago?

Well…now that you have anyway asked and I’m already here, a quote that perfectly descibes my outlook on life is this.

Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.

~Margaret Wheatley

YES, you know I strongly believe that Nothing is impossible and When the going gets tough, Lulu gets going!

But today, I want to shed my toughie cloak and embody this quote. Be the brave one that starts an all important conversation right here, right now.

It’s not always easy. It’s not always welcome. I do it anyway because it is the right thing to do. Join me if you can. It’s alright if you can’t. WordPress will soon enough throw a prompt our way about a quote that has captured our hearts lately and you bet we will find a way to get together on that day.

Alright then.

Today what matters to me the most is Unattended grief.

Unattended grief is the grief that doesn’t come with flowers and funerals, casseroles and condolences. The kind of grief we learn to swallow, silence, rationalize, minimise and push deep down into our bodies so we can move forward and survive. It is the grief that lives within us in the stories we were never allowed to tell. ~ John from Johnergy Healing

Today I feel called to hold space for this grief not just for myself but for anyone of you who feels it’s time we stopped being the tough ones all the time. And allow ourselves the grace to be brave and put the burden we have been carrying for so long in silence, just for one moment.

I am being brave enough to honour that grief. I hope you are too. I call upon you to walk with me as I witness and honour all the unattended grief that is here to be seen and mourned. If at some point our grief hold hands and share their pain, I pray you welcome your own grief and sit with it… just for a moment as I sit with mine. Know that we are in this together.

A brief history of the source of all this unattended grief:

At 8, my parents made the decision to move from a small village to the city. It was made to secure our future so we could all have the freedom to make the choices we could in the future. Choices that weren’t available in the tiny village. Choices that by definition makes or breaks a life.

BUT it never involved my consent.

I was being uprooted from everything I knew.

From the home that saw me becoming a confident biped from a crawling, falling quadruped. From the school that allowed me share my wild tarzan-self with the other village kids.

Castlerock nurtured the seed in me to grow it’s roots deep into it’s earth and helped me soar into it’s skies. My heart synced with it’s own and we made music together as one; tuning ourselves to the rhythm of the divine.

And I was being uprooted now without a faintest hint of where I was being forced to go.

Parents of a certain generation grew up emotionally stunted themselves and passed their emotional unavailablity to the generations that followed them, slyly naming it sensible parenting. They believed in making choices for others especially their children, without even sitting with them and having a decent conversation that involved the others’ opinion. They sat their kids down and told them their decisions, forcing their choices on innocent kids who were small in size but held vast inner worlds within, that were never acknowledged.

Witnessing and Honouring all the grief that went unseen and unheard:

Today I am honouring the grief of my lost childhood in a place that was the first one who SAW me and let me BE ME.

I honour the loss of my fellow saplings – my friends and our companionship- so as to get ahead in life and make a name for ourselves.

Today it is about missing Juber, Shamim, Kamala, Mary, Robert, Subba Rao and Nirmala. Little humans who didn’t notice my stutter or my colour. Who shared my tiffin and my wild runs through the forests. Whose surnames and religion didn’t even make any sense back then. We saw each other and lit up a paradise worthy of a billion fireflies. Nothing else mattered. Why would it to an 8 year old anyway?

Today I honour the grief of losing that unabashed freedom that came with being SEEN. A tiny village in the middle of nowhere held space for everyone across borders of race, religion, colour and caste – that cities and countries I visted since never did.

Today it is about the kid who still waits…

A child waiting for someone to share the burden it still carries. A child with open arms laden with dreams waiting for someone to share them with. A child with all the unspent love within her, waiting for someone to share it with.

Today I honour the grief my body holds in places soft and tender, hiding behind places, hardened and championed to become safe spaces. Today it’s okay to be jellylike – letting go of armoured facades and well worn war cries.

Today I honour the grief of settling in a city. A city that never saw me as one of it’s own. No matter how much I learnt to put the past behind and loved her for who was was. I was always the other.

I welcome the grief today of being abused by a parent who never owned or acknowledged the part they played in the direction my mind forced itself to digress – towards blackholes of depression.

I invite to sit with me the grief of a dad who was emotionally unavailable and the grief of a mother who never saw me beyond the perfect daughter she expected me to become.

Today I mourn the silent screams for help of a girl that went unnoticed and unwitnessed by her own siblings.

I call forth the grief of being taken for granted by men; family, friends and partners alike and for being taken for granted by women; friends, teachers and family alike.

Today I honour the grief of a mother I chose not to become and the grief of the unborn child I could never hold in my arms.

Today I hold space for the grief of losing a life I loved a little more than all the other lives I chose to live.

Today I welcome to sit by me the grief of choosing life even when the other options seemed to be easier and safe.

Today I mourn the grief of doing life over and over in the ways I know, struggling to get past habits and mindset that have moulded themselves stuck as the way to be.

I open myself to grief of having to learn to live in all the unknown ways that wake me up every dawn and the grief of the exhaustion that follows that is never acknowledged.

Today I accept without judgement the grief of loving and losing and loving and losing; of never being the chosen one.

Today I honour the grief of being the black sheep in the family and the grief of being the bold one to break ancestral trauma.

I witness with unconditional love the grief of swallowed desires and the ensuing grief of holding back when all I want is to destroy the world.

Today I grieve the grief of never being seen as a human beyond the woman.

Today I honour the grief of being the lone wolf.

Today I witness and honour the grief of hiding all this grief that have had nowhere to go…as also the grief of letting ennui take over the baton from joy.

Today I let all the unattended grief within me come forward and hold presence for them, honouring them and their existence. I am who I am for the grief I hold within.

I SEE them. I HEAR them.

Ease, Grace and Gratitude:

If you are here, I offer you my gratitude for walking with me, offering your kind presence through the grief that came by and stopped by us. I hope you witnessed some of your own with the same kindness, ease, grace and love you showed mine.

If you are here, thank you for being a witness to my grief. Thank you for gracing me with your unconditional presence. Thank you for holding hands with me when I stumbled and lost balance. Thank you for honouring my tears and fears. Thank you for being the brave one to walk through fire, mourning all that we lost in order to gain who we are today.

Thank you for starting a conversation that is much needed now all over the world. Please carry forward what we have started here into your own lives and light a candle for all the griefs of ones who aren’t with us anymore…those we couldn’t witness and honour. And hold space for the ones you are fortunate enough to witness.

Grief is just love with no place to go. So if you get a chance to be that place for someone to pour all that love into, take it. It is a blessing, my friend.

Thank you for being a part of this meditation and may you be blessed with peace, peace and peace.