My history with sadness is spotty.
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Perhaps this, like every other human ill, can be blamed on my mother.
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My undeserving mother suffered long and awful bouts of depression that she could not adequately address, except with inappropriate antidotes, including me. A happy me could pull her out of a sad her. I had the capacity, thus, to cure my mother. When I was a child, as long as I was happy, everything was good.
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As an adult, I worried that sadness equaled clinical depression, a condition, which when lived into, would leave me never to stand erect again. If I ever let sadness in, I would be nothing but sad.
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I didn't think I deserved to be sad. Oh, I could do collective grief. 9-11, for example, was easy. As long as everybody else was crying, I could cry, too. Even then, found myself thinking: What right did I have to cry, when others, like the family members of the victims, deserved to cry more?
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And then there came real personal tragedy and grief: Grief over things, ironically, like the accident with fire that befell my mother, and ultimately killed her. Grief over hurricanes and personal illness and loss.
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Grief like this, with a capital G, is different than sadness. Grief, I found, does not let you be. Grief, if you don't let it act the way it needs to act, will grab you by the neck and throw you in the ditch. Grief, untended, does become all there is, albeit manifest in odd ways, like drinking too many margaritas and falling in the ditch.
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There came moments when I realized nobody else's sadness was more valid than mine. And so, I began. I allowed myself to cry. And as I did, as I lived into this other emotion that also accompanies the human condition, I began to realize, ironically, that just the opposite happens/ed from that I used to believe: Allowing all my emotions room to breathe, released energy blockages and provided room for real joy. Wholeness -- realizing and accepting all that is inside my human souls -- not 24-7 happiness, is what brings this joy.
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Sadness does not, in fact, last forever, I now know. Sadness, I dare say, at times can be a friend, into whose arms my tattered psyche falls. Ah, release. And when I come out of those arms, I am new. I am wiser. I am deeper. I am more connected to the truth of all that I am and all that I want to be.
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Don't forget to cry, I tell my friend, Jan, who just lost her husband. And I won't either. Ok, Jan?
Blessings upon all of us who grieve this day, 9-11-11, and always.
