“Love” is a word that is referenced weekly in my office; rarely, however, do I hear what is being described as being related to love. Instead, when someone says they love someone, for example, they are typically describing something quite the opposite: an intense dependence rooted in fear and desperation, where the intensity of the fear has become the mistaken counterfeit. There is often a very constricting, obsessive, controlling and possessive quality to it, with loving qualities such as peace, joy, curiosity, understanding, connection, play and excitement nowhere to be found in the description.
In order to become someone who can both give and receive love freely; more is required of us than having a strong desire alone. Unfortunately, the capacity for genuine love requires that we enter into a non-negotiable contract with grief. Simply put, we cannot have any more than we can handle losing in this lifetime, making grief a fundamental and non-negotiable prerequisite to love. Further, it is our level of skill or competency with grief that stretches our capacity for love. You see: The greater the love we allow into our hearts, the more devastating the heartache that will come when it’s time to say goodbye, something every human being will have to do with everything they hold dear in this lifetime.
In an unconscious attempt to avoid future heartache, many people now choose (often unconsciously) to avoid true love at all costs, even though they so desperately crave it and will never be fully fulfilled without it. Tragically, the unwillingness to cosign with grief keeps them from ever being able to meet this deeply fundamental human need. I have known many people who will not let themselves be psychologically touched in any deep and meaningful way because where there is a genuine, intimate connection (love), there must be equal room for the pain when it’s time to let go of the connection (grief). And again, the deeper the connection, the deeper the sorrow that is to come. There is simply no way around it: it’s the price we must be willing to pay at the end of a loving experience.
Generally speaking, most people are not well-versed in the practice of grief because grief is seen as a “negative” emotion, a “weakness,” and an “ugly” experience (yes, I’ve heard emoting described as “ugly” too many times). In our modern-day obsessive-compulsive drive toward the “light,” and the “positive,” we have shunned the “dark,” losing access to love and the truly positive experiences available to us in the process. We have been terrible spiritual hosts to all the shadow emotions in modern times, but perhaps none more so than to the great deity of grief, and the sacrifices are certainly manifest.
My heart breaks for those who so deeply desire to both give and receive love. I watch them wrestle tirelessly to obtain it, but their unwillingness to engage in any deep and meaningful grief work leaves them continuously coming up short. In the business of love, we are not allowed to take out a loan for more that we can afford to pay back. A wonderful man and shaman, the late Howard Lawler, once told me while I was working with him at his Ayahuasca retreat center in the Peruvian Amazon Basin many years ago, that the spirit world operates on reciprocity. I barely understood what this meant at the time (even though I thought I did), but in this context, I believe it means that to be given the gift of love, we must be willing to pay it back with a broken heart in the future.
Today, when someone comes to work with me and I hear or see a deep longing for love, even self-love, they are universally rejecting the physical-emotional expression of their grief. Most people do not want to ever appear or be seen as “messy” and many will directly say so; and grief work is certainly messy, very messy (if it’s true, deep, and authentic). Further, most people do not want to “lose control” and grief work requires letting go of control; that is, a complete surrender in order to fully clear the residual physical-emotional material held in a previously closed, shut-down, broken heart. Many people are deeply concerned about what they will look and how they will be perceived in this often terrifying, broken-down state, and so, if they understand what is needed at all, they also prefer to go it alone—to not be seen by anyone else in the process (as most people learned as young children these types of emotional experiences were NOT welcome and frequently led to rejection or admonishment)—and yet, perhaps most disappointing of all, to be transformed and cleared, grief requires a compassionate witness with their capacity for love enabled.
As adults, every day we have the choice to go about becoming a gracious host to the deity of grief, thus becoming open to receiving love once again, but I am not seeing many people willing to open up to the great pain of significant loss that’s part of the deal. Instead, I have witnessed greater and greater efforts towards denial and suppression. Further, in recent years, I have also noticed a very troubling, related phenomenon: where there was once a tiny allowance for a sliver of grief-related emotion at funerals, quite sadly, that too is now being replaced with a more “up-beat” counterfeit: the “celebration of life” event. No more funerals. No more room for even a modicum of grief. Once more, the possibilities for love are continually traded away due to our refusal to be welcoming hosts to grief when the loss comes. Tragic.
And as I close this piece, I’d like to offer one final point: Please know that time alone will never heal the wounds of significant loss. While time is a variable in the equation, without being willing to become a practitioner of grief, time will only give you the opportunity to further deny your needs in the pursuit of more and more avoidance and distraction techniques (commonly read: addictive-compulsive behaviors). Rest assured, however, no matter how many layers of avoidance or distraction you develop, grief will never stop chasing you down, even in your sleep. Like the dearest, most loyal friend and ally you could ever have, grief does not want you to miss out on the opportunity for love the entirety of your precious human life.