That feeling is grief.
I have been struggling greatly since we were asked to return to the second lockdown of the year. This wave has hit me suddenly and taken me out, side swiped by so much emotion. My studio classes ended at level three lockdown a few weeks previous and I decided to take the plunge and teach online. The learning curve has been steep yet gave me something to focus on. The level 5 was to follow and while I had made my adjustments already to continue to offer my yoga classes to students and my son continues with his schooling, I asked myself then why am I struggling so profoundly with this second full lockdown?
“We can not heal what we do not allow ourselves to feel.”
I have sat with these feelings, (interestingly manifesting physically through particularly tight hips) and wondered what is the discomfort infiltrating my body, heart and soul. The deep pervasive sadness and loneliness is wrapped in the damning package, I realised, of hidden grief and lost hope. I have felt grief through my bodily fibre’s before with the loss of my Father a few years previous, so I am well acquainted with the sensation of its weighty grip. I sat and let the emotions arise, coming first almost coyly and then, like a volcano erupting, the sadness poured over the edges of my body.
We have spent so much of this year saying goodbye to the million little things that make life bearable. Coffee with a friend, dinner with family, days out to beautiful places, sporting events, library trips, playdates, yoga class, a giggle with a work colleague, music festivals, the intangible pleasures such as simply having a sneaky moment alone, in a cafe, with cake, after the weary weekly shop and people watching (one of my favourites). The little things are what get us through the dark days, the drudgery of survival and those little things like a string of fairy lights, guide us, connecting us from one big event to next and from one end of our life to the other. We have lost so much. Now we continue to work, alone, from home with little or no outlets, no little lights to lead the way, no stolen moments of joy.
“There is no hierarchy of pain.”
Yet even saying that, I feel my logical mind’s guilt invoking voice arise and object for even allowing myself feel this loss. It argues, like there is some hierarchy of pain , that I am not entitled to feel this way, that I am still very fortunate and that “things could be worse” and while all this is indeed true and I may not be suffering with the permanence of an actual death or loss of something great and tangible like my home and I do still have so much to be grateful for. It is however not only ok for me to acknowledge what I am feeling, the grief of the loss of so many little joys, it is an absolute necessity that I allow myself process what is happening, how my body is containing these million little paper cuts, for we can not heal what we do not allow ourselves to feel.
Acknowledge it.
So while I will not dwell on the sadness and loneliness and allow it the power to overwhelm me, I will bow to it, acknowledge it, thank it for its purpose in guiding me to see the value of all those things I took for granted and I will let it move through me, so it can not mug me in the quiet hours and steal my peace.