To Keep the Candle Wick Burning
A reflection on this 7 year cycle of grief & love and the immense opportunity we have to create a more beautiful world right now.
This article is dedicated to my brother, Christopher William Holt, my greatest teacher who transitioned 7 years ago today from brain cancer. It is he who has taught me of the grace that life and death offers and the importance of letting grief in. I wanted to share this with you because I believe letting grief move us is our doorway into the deeper love we are all being called to embrace right now. I love you big brother, I feel your love for me every day.
___
I write to you from a little desk nestled in the jungle with the morning light streaking in and steam from my coffee cup billowing, twirling, moving back and forth. This steam appears as if it is going everywhere all at once, as if it has lost its direction. Life can feel like that sometimes too. But with steady attention, you can see that the only way is up, the only way is through. Even steam dissipates into a new form that the eyes cannot perceive, but the heart senses.
It has been 7 years, 7 cycles, since my brother has moved from form into formlessness and I have learned so much from his death. I have learned of the sacred union between grief and love and the immeasurable gift of presence. I have learned and experienced a resiliency and endurance unique to the human spirit that chooses to continue onwards no matter what. And I have seen the pain that leaches like a poisoned river when grief is not let in. For me, the past 7 years have felt like an alchemical process from going deep into the underworld’s forest to uncover love, a deep and unwavering love that crosses all perceived boundaries.
When he died, I was spontaneously initiated into a version of me that would begin a journey that was called living with death, but in fact, I was learning how to live with life. I began the journey of the spiral and found myself learning how to keep the candle wick within me burning in moments of despair so I could always find my way home.
It took me 3 years of mounting pressure to finally notice and release all this guilt I had; a common feeling of grief. I remember the moment it happened so vividly. My partner and I had just hiked 4 hours to a waterfall in Vietnam on the day of his death anniversary. I remember seeing the skin of a snake on the walk in the the rice fields and feeling a premonition, something was about to change. I took a micro-dose of psilocybin for the first time ever that day and as I looked up at the waterfalls powerful vertical drop, I felt as if the water was pushing at my shoulders. All the unexpressed denial, guilt, rage, and sadness was humbling me down to the earths floor. I remember thinking “what would it feel like if I let all that weight go?”. Like a great big WOOSH this invisible yet visceral water slid down my back and a rainbow appeared-literally in that moment. I felt tears from the well within my heart burst out of my eyes and I was smiling.
This was the first time I let grief in to help me, instead of seeing it as my enemy behind closed curtains. It was that moment that everything shifted. Now, this isn’t a fairytale, I still experience every emotion possible throughout the years of relating. Sometimes the pain is like a mountain sitting on my chest. Grief is a lifelong relationship! But I did stop clinging to this particular suffering and instead saw it as an opportunity to feel even deeper. It was my way of honoring the brother that gave me life after he left his.
At this point, the juxtaposition of the outside world was louder than ever. Life seemed to carry on as usual, yet I was becoming so completely undone that nothing was ‘usual’ anymore. I started to see that our westernized culture didn’t know how to be with grief and in turn, didn’t know how to love deeply- but wanted to. I often wonder if there would be any wars or violence if grief was honored and held by many hands.
Grief, as a spirit, has no bias. No matter who you are, no matter what accomplishments or walls you’ve created for yourself, grief has most certainly entered into your life. You don’t have to lose a loved one to experience grief. You could be grieving a life you once lived, the state of the world, grieving a relationship, job, security or home. Whether you have opened the door to grief or held it shut is an entirely different story. However I want to be clear that grief is not just sadness. Grief, to me, is a process of noticing the suffering and transforming it into wisdom with a fresh and yet ancient perspective of the sacredness of life. It is part of the hero’s journey.
Grief, to put it simply, is a teacher of love.
Grief is a life long journey with many non-linear phases.
Grief is an initiation to turn naïveté and innocence into wisdom and gratitude.
Grief is the water well of wisdom that we pull from in times of need. Because we have been through this, because we have learned to keep our waters flowing, we know how to offer a fully encompassing love to ourselves and the weary travelers we meet along the way.
We as a collective need to re-educate ourselves to embrace and move with grief so that we can rise fuller in love with life. Our collective family is experiencing a lot of suffering right now and in these moments we have a very special opportunity to switch the narratives that have been playing out of war, greed, isolation, and violence, and instead choose community, love, health, wellbeing for all, and unity. All great change begins as a seed within oneself.
If I come across as love and lighty- I want to be clear. I don’t agree with this bypassing phenomena that is sweeping the world. In fact, I feel in my bones that the only way to hold ourselves in love and light is to acknowledge the full spectrum of the human experience. It’s the paradox we are all met with. To be in love we must learn to hold the grief. To be in light we must see and navigate the darkness.
Francis Weller, an amazing author, writes “The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That's how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I'll bend toward cynicism and despair.”
Our work right now is to recognize the parts within us and around us that dwell in cynicism and offer them something they have been longing for- a compassionate space to unfurl. We are creators of our own inner worlds, and we have the power and the responsibility to our collective family and future generations to choose something better. It’s in the times of extremes that the most potent medicines are gentleness, beauty, and grace.
It’s important for me to acknowledge my mother right now. A woman who has lost her only son and has to bear the weight of that every single moment. An incomprehensible experience, a journey of living with the dead and with the living. Mom, I love you and acknowledge your willingness to wake up and smile. I love that you can see your son in the feathers that fall from the sky and the sounds of the wind moving your backyard chimes. I love you and invite in your grief because I now know how to hold it for us both. Thank you for teaching me how to endure, embrace, and continue letting those light leaks in.
In the field of dancing flowers and crystal clear waters. In the forests of old groves and buzzing eco-systems. In the place where we choose to offer our lives in service to love, I will meet you there…
M
___
P.S. in 2017, I wrote an article called “The Winding Road of Grief”. It recounts the experience in more detail from a 27 year olds point of view with vulnerability, humor, and a closeness to an experience that cracked me open. It’s interesting to read it to see how time and space has molded me into a person that can hold so much. If you’d like to read it, you can find it here.