If you close your eyes and imagine yourself on a dance floor, how would grief affect your movement and rhythm in the dance called your life?  

In The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller writes, “It is the accumulated losses of a lifetime that slowly weigh us down--the times of rejection, the moments of isolation when we feel cut off from the sustaining touch of comfort and love. It is an ache that resides in the heart, the faint echo calling us back to the times of loss. We are called back, not so much to make things right, but to acknowledge what happened to us. Grief asks that we honor the loss and, in so doing, deepen our capacity for compassion.” 

He goes on to say, “When grief remains unexpressed, however, it hardens, becomes as solid as a stone. We, in turn, become rigid and stop moving in rhythm with the soul. When we are in touch with all of our emotions, on the other hand, we are more verb than noun, more a movement than a thing. But when our grief stagnates, we become fixed in place, unable to move and dance with the flow of life. Grief is part of the dance.” 

It was years ago, but the memory remains fresh in my mind. I had just disclosed something that felt shameful and then discredited myself over the wounds of a friend. Across from me, in the local Ping Shan Dao tea shop, tears streamed down my mentor’s face as she unexpectedly reflected back my felt pain. With compassion, she honored my grief and also drew out what was deeply buried in my heart. “That’s not true about you,” she said as she named what was. Something significant shifted internally through the way she bore witness to my story and gently reframed it. My acknowledged grief was released, and I was freed to trust the truth about myself and the situation, so that my dance could resume. 

What an honor God gives us as His children, to hold compassion-filled space for one another, in order to give full expression to our grief.

“The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.” Proverbs 20:5