GRIEF IS THE THING WITH TEETH.
[No. 77]
HOW DO YOU GRIEVE? WHERE DOES GRIEF SHOW UP IN YOUR BODY?
A guest post by poet & mystic Monique Mitchell
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
Emily Dickinson
If “hope is the thing with feathers,” then grief is the thing with teeth. It gnaws, ravenously, like a vulture in the desert; you, the unwilling carcass, waiting for its hunger to end.
Beautiful Bryce [Collage by Monique Mitchell]
Where does grief show up in the body? Everywhere.
3 coconut dates and a gallon of water. After my best friend, Bryce, died in 2016, this is the only thing I consumed. 3 coconut dates. A gallon of water. Each day, with little exception, for weeks. My eyes began to sink in. My cheeks hollowed. My collarbones, pronounced, begged someone to notice that I was barely there. Grief had eaten me to the bone. I was a whisper.
“Have you tried writing to him?” asked Nena, who too had lost a friend. [No, I hadn’t.] Desperate to get the grief inside of me out, skeptical, I began penning letters to an angel. At first, I was furious. With fate. With the man who killed him. With everyone and everything. But within a week, something began to leak. I started seeing yellow butterflies everywhere, like the one that rested on his coffin for the entirety of his burial ceremony. In high school, I nicknamed Bryce “Yellow Mamba,” after Kobe’s “Black Mamba.” Was this his way of letting me know he was still around? Was he still around?
Our lives are an anthology of the stories we tell ourselves. In 2016, I decided to tell myself that death is not an end, but an entrance. It became a mantra. An initiation into a new way of being, and a new way of being without. Therefore he was near, still is. Still rowdy, still lighter than air. This story is what anchors me when I feel myself fading away. It put meat on my bones and inspired me to honor the gods by feeding on everything that makes me feel alive. Because I am. In every sense and that is a miracle. What are the chances?
I no longer grieve through starvation. This is an accomplishment. I have given myself permission to be the ravenous one, tasting every bit of goodness this life has to offer. Whether that’s taking a solo trip to the desert to have dessert, making art with my friends’ kids, or writing love letters to ghosts. I taste it all, and come back for seconds.
Whereas grief is hungry for flesh, angels are hungry for words, for blessings. They are listening. Today, I grieve by putting pen to paper once again, knowing these pages are like immaculate offerings on the altar. Libations poured out and waiting patiently.
I starve the grief by feeding myself.
Then, I feed my angels poetry, and never stop – at all.
WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO GRIEF?
[BOOK YOUR ASTROLOGY READING WITH MONIQUE HERE……..]